If you had the unfortunate experience of acquiring a disability that hindered your ability to work and that suddenly put you in financial distress, you might be grateful for government-provided disability payments. Such income might do more than cover monthly living expenses, but may also keep you from such traumatic financial events as eviction, foreclosure, or bankruptcy.

For those who have never needed the aid provided by Social Security disability programs, the process might seem straightforward: go online, fill out a form, attach a doctor’s letter, and wait for the assistance to arrive.

On March 8 and 9, 2019, BFI’s Ronzetti Initiative for the Study of Labor Markets...

The Great Recession of 2007-09 was the worst US economic downturn since the Great Depression, with the unemployment rate peaking at 10 percent and the broader measure of unemployment that includes discouraged workers and those working part-time for economic reasons (known as U6), at 17.1 percent. However, those are aggregate numbers, and many regions of the country fared much worse while others experienced a relatively mild decline.

How is a woman’s life influenced by where she grew up and where she lives...

Imagine two girls who grew up as friends on the same street, in the same rural town, where they attended the same church and schools, and generally shared the same cultural experiences through high school. Eventually, these two girls become adults and end up living in different places, perhaps hundreds of miles apart. Now imagine two other adult women who live in the same place but who were raised in different places.

In 1940, the median black man’s earnings would have placed him at the 24th percentile of the earnings distribution for white men. In an era of Jim Crow, with segregated schools and job discrimination, such a low number is perhaps unsurprising. However, in 1970, after years of laws and court rulings designed to end such practices, and after blacks migrated North to explore opportunities in cities supposedly more hospitable, that ranking had actually worsened. In 2014, with decades of anti-discrimination rulings in place, that number has barely improved, as the median black man’s earnings would place him at the 27th percentile of white men.

Erik Hurst, the V. Duane Rath Professor of Economics at the Booth School of Business,...