Date/Time
Date(s) - 27/03/2026
11:00 am - 12:30 pm

Joseph Pedtke, Assistant Professor at Clemson University will present to our graduate students and faculty in KTH 334!

Joseph Pedtke is an Assistant Professor in the John E. Walker Department of Economics at Clemson University. His research lies at the intersection of macroeconomics, labor economics, and family economics, with a particular focus on human capital, inequality, and intergenerational mobility. Before joining Clemson, he completed his PhD in Economics at the University of Minnesota in 2024 and previously held research positions at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, and the Institute for Social Research and Data Innovation. Joseph holds a BA in Economics and Mathematics/Statistics from Carleton College.

His research agenda explores how changing economic conditions impact parental human capital investments, the causes and consequences of rising inequality and falling intergenerational mobility, and heterogeneity in labor market outcomes. Recent work focuses on the effects of rising rates of single parenthood, increasing education prices, and policy reforms on inequality and intergenerational mobility, and how local housing and education policies shape the geography of opportunity in the United States.

He will be presenting, “The Implications of Family Structure, Education Prices, and Policy Reforms for Inequality and Intergenerational Mobility”

Abstract

Parents devote considerable resources towards their children’s development, making trade-offs between time and education investments and working, consumption, and leisure. In recent decades, families in the United States experienced rising rates of single parenthood, increasing education prices, and changes to taxes and transfers, which altered available resources and trade-offs to investments across families. This paper explores the implications of these trends for inequality and intergenerational mobility. After documenting changes in family resources and parental investments over time, I develop a dynastic model of human capital investment to quantify the contributions of these trends to increases in inequality and intergenerational persistence. I find that single parenthood is a major contributor through two channels: (1) less available time for single parents limits work hours, family income, and investments for their children’s human capital development and (2) the resulting lower human capital comes with a greater probability of becoming a single parent as an adult, as single parents tend to have less education and lower wages. Education prices, on the other hand, had only minimal effects as families reduce investments at similar rates in response to price increases. Moreover, changes to taxes and transfers had heterogeneous impacts on parental investments by producing differing income and substitution effects depending on family characteristics. The results highlight the importance of considering family structure and parental investments when designing assistance programs.

Learn more about Joseph’s work and connect with him through his professional website.