• The Earnings and Labor Supply of U.S. Physicians

  Gottlieb, Joshua D., Maria Polyakova, Kevin Rinz, Hugh Shiplett, and Victoria Udalova. 2025. Quarterly Journal of Economics 140(2), 1243-1298.

  Published version July 2023 version Census version NBER version BFI version BFI research brief Authors’ non-technical summary Physician earnings data Washington Post (1) Washington Post (2) BibTeX
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  Abstract: Is government guiding the invisible hand at the top of the labor market? We use new administrative data to measure physicians’ earnings and estimate the influence of health care policies on these earnings, physicians’ labor supply, and the allocation of talent. Combining the administrative registry of U.S. physicians with tax data, Medicare billing records, and survey responses, we find that physicians’ annual earnings average $350,000 and make up 8.6% of national health care spending. Business income makes up one-quarter of earnings and is systematically underreported in survey data. Earnings increase steeply early in the career, and there are major differences across specialties, regions, and firm sizes. The geographic pattern of earnings is unusual compared with other workers. We argue that these patterns reflect policy choices to subsidize demand for physician care, amplified by restrictions on physician entry, especially in certain specialties. Health policy has a major impact on the margin: 25% of physician fee revenue driven by Medicare reimbursements accrues to physicians personally. Physicians earn 8% of public money spent on insurance expansion. These policies in turn affect the type and quantity of medical care physicians supply, retirement timing, and the allocation of talent across specialties.

  @article{GottliebEtAlPhysicians2025,
    title  = {The Earnings and Labor Supply of U.S. Physicians},
    journal = {The Quarterly Journal of Economics},
    volume = {140},
    number = {2},
    pages = {1243-1298},
    year = {2025},
    month = {01},
    issn = {0033-5533},
    doi = {10.1093/qje/qjaf001},
    url = {https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjaf001},
    eprint = {https://academic.oup.com/qje/article-pdf/140/2/1243/61430185/qjaf001.pdf},
  }

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• The Effect of Emergency Financial Assistance on Mobility, SNAP Receipt, and Presence of Dependents

  Hungerman, Danial, David C. Phillips, Kevin Rinz, James X. Sullivan, and David N. Wasser. 2025. AEA Papers and Proceedings 115, 85-89.

  Published version BibTeX
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  Abstract: This paper studies emergency financial assistance for people at risk of homelessness using federal tax and census data. We use an established quasi-experimental research design to examine how assistance affects address histories, number of children, and receipt of food benefits (SNAP) in Illinois. We find no evidence that assistance affects moves or children, but we observe a small increase in SNAP uptake among the lowest-income callers. We consider whether prior studies that limit focus to local geography estimate treatment effects with bias; we find that limiting outcomes to Illinois does not noticeably change observed treatment effects.

  @article{10.1257/pandp.20251004,
    Author = {Hungerman, Daniel and Phillips, David C. and Rinz, Kevin and Sullivan, James X. and Wasser, David N.},
    Title = {The Effect of Emergency Financial Assistance on Mobility, SNAP Receipt, and Presence of Dependents},
    Journal = {AEA Papers and Proceedings},
    Volume = {115},
    Year = {2025},
    Month = {May},
    Pages = {85–89},
    DOI = {10.1257/pandp.20251004},
    URL = {https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/pandp.20251004}
  }

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• Granular Income Inequality and Mobility using IDDA: Exploring Patterns across Race and Ethnicity

  Kondo, Illenin, Kevin Rinz, Natalie Gubbay, Brandon Hawkins, John Voorheis, and Abigail Wozniak. 2024. In Race, Ethnicity and Economic Statistics for the 21st Century, eds. Randall Akee, Lawrence F. Katz, and Mark Loewenstein, National Bureau of Economic Research, forthcoming.

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  Abstract: We explore the evolution of income inequality and mobility in the US for a large number of subnational groups defined by race and ethnicity, using granular statistics describing income distributions, income mobility, and conditional income growth derived from the universe of tax filers and W-2 recipients that we observe over a two-decade period (1998–2019). We find that income inequality and income growth patterns identified from administrative tax records differ in important ways from those that one might identify in public survey sources. The full set of statistics that we construct is available publicly alongside this paper as the Income Distributions and Dynamics in America, or IDDA, dataset. Using two applications, we illustrate IDDA’s relevance for understanding income inequality trends. First, we extend Bayer and Charles (2018) beyond earnings gaps between Black and White men and document that, unlike those for other groups, earnings for both Black men and Black women fell behind earnings for White men following the Great Recession. This trend lasted through 2019, the end of the data period. Second, we document a significant reversal in the convergence of earnings for Native earners in Native areas.

  @inbook{NBERc14963,
   Crossref = "NBERakee-1",
   title = "Granular Income Inequality and Mobility Using IDDA: Exploring Patterns across Race and Ethnicity",
   author = "Illenin Kondo and Kevin Rinz and Natalie Gubbay and Brandon Hawkins and John Voorheis and Abigail Wozniak",
   BookTitle = "Race, Ethnicity, and Economic Statistics for the 21st Century",
   Publisher = "University of Chicago Press",
   year = "2024",
   month = "July",
   URL = "http://www.nber.org/chapters/c14963",
  }
  @book{NBERakee-1,
   title = "Race, Ethnicity, and Economic Statistics for the 21st Century",
   author = "Randall Akee and Lawrence F. Katz and Mark Loewenstein",
   institution = "National Bureau of Economic Research",
   type = "Book",
   publisher = "University of Chicago Press",
   year = "2025",
   URL = "https://www.nber.org/books-and-chapters/race-ethnicity-and-economic-statistics-21st-century",
  }

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• Did Timing Matter? Life Cycle Differences in Effects of Exposure to the Great Recession

  Rinz, Kevin. 2022. Journal of Labor Economics 40(3), 703–735.

  Published version Online appendix Working paper (Sept 2019) Non-technical summary Washington Post Wall Street Journal BibTeX
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  Abstract: I estimate the effects of exposure to the Great Recession on employment and earnings for groups defined by year of birth over the 10 years following the beginning of the recession. Younger workers experience the largest earnings losses in percentage terms (up to 13%), in part because they remain less likely to work for high-paying employers even as their overall employment recovers more quickly than that of older workers.

  @article{RinzTimingRecession2022,
    title  = {Did Timing Matter? Life Cycle Differences in Effects of Exposure to the Great Recession},
    author = {Rinz, Kevin},
    journal= {Journal of Labor Economics},
    year   = {2022},
    volume = {40},
    number = {3},
    pages  = {703--735},
    publisher={The University of Chicago Press}
  }

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• Labor Market Concentration, Earnings, and Inequality

  Rinz, Kevin. 2022. Journal of Human Resources 57(S), S251–S283.

  Published version Final pre-print Online appendix CARRA Working Paper (Sept 2018) Bloomberg Quartz The Economist BibTeX
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  Abstract: I document trends in local industrial concentration from 1976 through 2015 and estimate effects of concentration on earnings outcomes. Local concentration generally declined over that period, unlike national concentration, which declined sharply in the early 1980s before increasing to nearly its original level beginning around 1990. Increased local concentration reduces earnings and increases inequality. Because average concentration has fallen, the 90/10 earnings ratio was six percent lower and earnings one percent higher in 2015 than they would have been if local concentration were at its 1976 level. Most demographic subgroups experience mean earnings reductions, and all experience increases ininequality.

  @article{RinzConcentration2022,
    title  = {Labor Market Concentration, Earnings, and Inequality},
    author = {Rinz, Kevin},
    journal= {Journal of Human Resources},
    year   = {2022},
    volume = {57},
    number = {S},
    pages  = {S251--S283},
    publisher = {University of WEisconsin Press}
  }

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• Beyond the Classroom: The Implications of School Vouchers for Church Finances

  Hungerman, Daniel M., Kevin Rinz, and Jay Frymark. 2019. Review of Economics and Statistics 101(4), 588–601.

  Published version NBER version The Atlantic Business Insider Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel POLITICO USA Today America BibTeX
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  Abstract: Governments have used vouchers to spend billions of dollars on private education; much of this has gone to religiously affiliated schools. We explore the possibility that vouchers could alter the financial outcomes of religious organizations that are operating schools and thus have an impact on the spiritual, moral, and social fabric of communities. Using a data set of Catholic parish finances from Milwaukee, we show that vouchers are a dominant source of funding for many churches. Vouchers appear to offer financial stability for congregations as voucher expansion prevents church closures and mergers. However, voucher expansion causes significant declines in church donations and church revenue from noneducational sources.

  @article{HungermanRinzFrymark2019,
    title  = {Beyond the Classroom: The Implications of School Vouchers for Church Finances},
    author = {Hungerman, Daniel M. and Rinz, Kevin and Frymark, Jay},
    journal= {Review of Economics and Statistics},
    year   = {2019},
    volume = {101},
    number = {4},
    pages  = {588--601}
  }

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• Political Campaigns and Church Contributions

  Hungerman, Daniel M., Kevin Rinz, Tim Weninger, and Chungeun Yoon. 2018. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization.

  Published version NBER version BibTeX
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  Abstract: We combine a new dataset of weekly Catholic church donations with a new dataset of presidential-election campaign stops to explore the impact of stops on donations. We find that stops increase donations, with a campaign stop generating 2 percent more donations in the following week. Our results suggest that this effect is of short duration. Using a well-known list of politically-motivated words, we find that this effect does not appear to vary based on the political language used by the parish. Our results underscore the contemporary political dimension of US religiosity and the elemental relationship between religious and political events more generally.

  @article{HungermanEtAlCampaigns2018,
    title  = {Political Campaigns and Church Contributions},
    author = {Hungerman, Daniel M. and Rinz, Kevin and Weninger, Tim and Yoon, Chungeun},
    journal= {Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization},
    volume = {155},
    pages = {403--426},
    year = {2018}
  }

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• Where Does Voucher Funding Go? How Large-scale Subsidy Programs Affect Private-school Revenue, Enrollment, and Prices

  Hungerman, Daniel M. and Kevin Rinz. 2016. Journal of Public Economics 136, 62–85.

  Published version NBER version VoxEU Chalkbeat BibTeX
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  Abstract: Using a new dataset constructed from nonprofit tax-returns, this paper explores how vouchers and other large-scale programs subsidizing private school attendance have affected the fiscal outcomes of private schools and the affordability of a private education. We find that subsidy programs created a large transfer of public funding to private schools, suggesting that every dollar of funding increased revenue by a dollar or more. Turning to the incidence of subsidies and the impact of subsidies on enrollment, our findings depend on the type of program introduced: programs that restrict eligibility to certain groups of students create large enrollment gains but no change in price, while programs that offer unrestricted subsidies lead to price increases but no change in enrollment. We calculate elasticities of demand and supply for private schools, and discuss welfare effects.

  @article{HungermanRinzVoucher2016,
    title  = {Where Does Voucher Funding Go? How Large-scale Subsidy Programs Affect Private-school Revenue, Enrollment, and Prices},
    author = {Hungerman, Daniel M. and Rinz, Kevin},
    journal= {Journal of Public Economics},
    year   = {2016},
    volume = {136},
    pages  = {62--85}
  }

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Working Papers

• The Rise of Healthcare Jobs

  Gottlieb, Joshua D., Neale Mahoney, Kevin Rinz, and Victoria Udalova. 2025.

  Paper (March 2025) NBER version (March 2025) New York Times BibTeX
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  Abstract: Healthcare employment has grown more than twice as fast as the labor force since 1980, overtaking retail trade to become the largest industry by employment in 2009. We document key facts about the rise of healthcare jobs. Earnings for healthcare workers have risen nearly twice as fast as those in other industries, with relatively large increases in the middle and upper-middle parts of the earnings distribution. Healthcare workers have remained predominantly female, with increases in the share of female doctors offsetting increases in the shares of male nurses and aides. Despite a few high-profile examples to the contrary, regions experiencing manufacturing job losses have not systematically reinvented themselves by pivoting from "manufacturing to meds."

  @unpublished{GottliebEtAlRiseHealthcareJobs2025,
    title = "The Rise of Healthcare Jobs",
    author = "Gottlieb, Joshua D and Mahoney, Neale and Rinz, Kevin and Udalova, Victoria",
    institution = "National Bureau of Economic Research",
    type = "Working Paper",
    series = "Working Paper Series",
    number = "33583",
    year = "2025",
    month = "March",
    doi = {10.3386/w33583},
    URL = "http://www.nber.org/papers/w33583"
  }

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• The Effect of Emergency Financial Assistance on Employment and Earnings

  Hungerman, Daniel M., David Phillips, Kevin Rinz, and James Sullivan. 2024.

  Paper (Jan 2024) NBER version (Jul 2024) Summary BibTeX
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  Abstract: We examine the labor supply effects of short-term income transfers for families experiencing a housing crisis. We link callers of an emergency assistance homelessness prevention hotline to their federal tax records and measure their employment & earnings in years surrounding their calls. Our methodology exploits quasi-random variation in the availability of assistance to compare similar families receiving and not receiving funds. Looking up to four years post-assistance, we find evidence, especially for the lowest earners, of earnings and employment gains, and overall we find no evidence that assistance lowers earnings or employment. Our results indicate that any income effect of temporary transfers for those in crisis is minimal and that these transfers may convey labor market benefits for the poorest of the poor.

  @unpublished{HungermanEtAlEmergencyAssistance2024,
    title = "The Effect of Emergency Financial Assistance on Employment and Earnings",
    author = "Hungerman, Daniel M and Phillips, David C and Rinz, Kevin and Sullivan, James X",
    institution = "National Bureau of Economic Research",
    type = "Working Paper",
    series = "Working Paper Series",
    number = "32856",
    year = "2024",
    month = "August",
    doi = {10.3386/w32856},
    URL = "http://www.nber.org/papers/w32856"
  }

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• Re-examining Regional Income Convergence: A Distributional Approach

  Rinz, Kevin and John Voorheis. 2023.

  Paper Summary Data Data readme BibTeX
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  Abstract: We re-examine recent trends in regional income convergence, considering the full distribution of income rather than focusing on the mean. Measuring similarity by comparing each percentile of state distributions to the corresponding percentile of the national distribution, we find that state incomes have become less similar (ie they have diverged) within the top 20 percent of the income distribution since 1969. The top percentile alone accounts for more than half of aggregate divergence across states over this period by our measure, and the top five percentiles combine to account for 93 percent. Divergence in top incomes across states appears to be driven largely by changes in top incomes among White people, while top incomes among Black people have experienced relatively little divergence.

  @unpublished{RinzVoorheisConvergence2023,
    title  = {Re-examining Regional Income Convergence: A Distributional Approach},
    author = {Rinz, Kevin and Voorheis, John},
    year   = {2023},
    institution = "Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau",
    type = "Working Paper",
    series = "Working Paper Series",
    number = "23-05",
    year = "2023",
    month = "February",
    URL = "https://ideas.repec.org/p/cen/wpaper/23-05.html"
  }

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• The Distributional Effects of Minimum Wages: Evidence from Linked Survey and Administrative Data

  Rinz, Kevin and John Voorheis. 2018.

  CARRA WP (Mar 2018) Equitable Growth WP (May 2018) BibTeX
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  Abstract: States and localities are increasingly experimenting with higher minimum wages in response to rising income inequality and stagnant economic mobility, but commonly used public datasets offer limited op portunities to evaluate the extent to which such changes affect earnings growth. We use administrative earnings data from the Social Security Administration linked to the Current Population Survey to over come important limitations of public data and estimate effects of the minimum wage on growth incidence curves and income mobility profiles, providing insight into how cross-sectional effects of the minimum wage on earnings persist over time. Under both approaches, we find that raising the minimum wage increases earnings growth at the bottom of the distribution, and those effects persist and indeed grow in magnitude over several years. This finding is robust to a variety of specifications, including alternatives commonly used in the literature on employment effects of the minimum wage. Instrumental variables and subsample analyses indicate that geographic mobility likely contributes to the effects we identify. Extrapolating from our estimates suggests that a minimum wage increase comparable in magnitude to the increase experienced in Seattle between 2013 and 2016 would have blunted some, but not nearly all of the worst income losses suffered at the bottom of the income distribution during the Great Recession.

  @unpublished{RinzVoorheisMinWage2018,
    title  = {The Distributional Effects of Minimum Wages: Evidence from Linked Survey and Administrative Data},
    author = {Rinz, Kevin and Voorheis, John},
    year   = {2018},
    institution = "Center for Administrative Records Research and Applications, U.S. Census Bureau",
    type = "Working Paper",
    series = "Working Paper Series",
    number = "2018-02",
    month = "March",
    URL = "https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/working-papers/2018/adrm/carra-wp-2018-02.pdf"
  }

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• Labor Market Effects of the Affordable Care Act: Evidence from a Tax Notch

  Kucko, Kavan, Kevin Rinz, and Ben Solow. 2017.

  CARRA WP (Jul 2017) BibTeX
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  Abstract: States that declined to raise their Medicaid income eligibility cutoffs to 138 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL) under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) created a "coverage gap'' between their existing, often much lower Medicaid eligibility cutoffs and the FPL, the lowest level of income at which the ACA provides refundable, advanceable "premium tax credits'' to subsidize the purchase of private insurance. Lacking access to any form of subsidized health insurance, residents of those states with income in that range face a strong incentive, in the form of a large, discrete increase in post-tax income (i.e. an upward notch) at the FPL, to increase their earnings and obtain the premium tax credit. We investigate the extent to which they respond to that incentive. Using the universe of tax returns, we document excess mass, or bunching, in the income distribution surrounding this notch. Consistent with Saez (2010), we find that bunching occurs only among filers with self-employment income. Specifically, filers without children and married filers with three or fewer children exhibit significant bunching. Analysis of tax data linked to labor supply measures from the American Community Survey, however, suggests that this bunching likely reflects a change in reported income rather than a change in true labor supply. We find no evidence that wage and salary workers adjust their labor supply in response to increased availability of directly purchased health insurance.

  @unpublished{KuckoRinzSolowACA2017,
    title  = {Labor Market Effects of the Affordable Care Act: Evidence from a Tax Notch},
    author = {Kucko, Kavan and Rinz, Kevin and Solow, Ben},
    year   = {2017},
    institution = "Center for Administrative Records Research and Applications, U.S. Census Bureau",
    type = "Working Paper",
    series = "Working Paper Series",
    number = "2017-07",
    month = "July",
    URL = "https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/working-papers/2017/adrm/carra-wp-2017-07.pdf"
  }

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• Undone by the Market? The Effects of School Vouchers on Educational Inputs

  Rinz, Kevin. 2015.

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  Abstract: By altering the market for private schooling, large-scale school voucher programs may have effects on the educational experience of private school students beyond the effects of small-scale programs. Using eight large, state-level, voucher-style programs adopted between the late 1990s and mid-2000s and a unique dataset on school expenditures and teacher compensation, I estimate the effects of vouchers on educational inputs experienced by students in private school. Large-scale, voucher-style programs alter the inputs students experience in ways that tend to worsen the experience of black students while improving the experience of white students. These effects are driven by changes in inputs deployed at newly established schools. Back-ofthe-envelope calculations indicate that the market effects of vouchers are large enough to substantially reduce the benefits of moving from public to private school for black students, reversing more than 100 percent of the gains in student-teacher ratio, 87 percent of the gain in per-teacher compensation, and 51 percent of the gain in instructional hours. My estimates suggest that extrapolation from prior studies may be inappropriate when considering how larger programs affect students.

  @unpublished{RinzUndoneByMarket2016,
    title  = {Undone by the Market? The Effects of School Vouchers on Educational Inputs},
    author = {Rinz, Kevin},
    year   = {2015},
    note   = {Manuscript}
  }

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Resting Papers

• The Effects of Right to Work Laws on Wages: Evidence from the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947

  Rinz, Kevin. 2015.

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  Abstract: This paper uses an historical setting in which the introduction of “right to work” (RTW) laws was arguably exogenous - the period following passage of the Taft-Hartley Act - to produce credibly identified estimates of the effects of these laws on wages. The average effect of RTW laws on wages across all sectors of the economy is likely small and slightly negative. Some evidence indicates wage effects are more negative within the highly unionized sector.

  @unpublished{RinzRightToWorkTaftHartley1947,
    title  = {The Effects of Right to Work Laws on Wages: Evidence from the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947},
    author = {Rinz, Kevin},
    year = {2015},
    note   = {Manuscript}
  }

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Granular Income Inequality and Mobility using IDDA
Detailed measures of income inequality and moblity for various demographic groups, nationally and at the state level, 1998–2019. (Minneapolis Fed OIGI data explorer)

Re-examining Regional Income Convergence: A Distributional Approach
State-level income distribution data, 1998–2019. Includes data for full populations and subgroups by gender and race/ethnicity. (readme, data)

Who Values Human Capitalists’ Human Capital? Healthcare Spending and Physician Earnings
Mean 2017 physician earnings for the 125 largest commuting zones (1990 vintage), for all physicians and by Medicare specialty. (readme, dta, csv, download all)

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