Parental Job Loss and Children's Long-Term Outcomes: Evidence from 7 Million Fathers' Layoffs

How do parental layoffs and their large attendant income losses affect children's long-term outcomes? This question has proven difficult to answer due to the endogeneity of parental layoffs. I overcome this problem by exploiting the timing of 7 million fathers' layoffs when children are age 12–29 in administrative data for the United States. Layoffs dramatically reduce family income but only slightly reduce college enrollment, college quality, and early career earnings. These effects are consistent with a weak estimated propensity to spend on college out of marginal parental income. I find that larger effects based on firm closures stem from selection. (JEL I23, I24, I26, J13, J22, J31, J63)