Author Date

2025-12-08

Degree Name

Department

Economics

College

Family, Home, and Social Sciences

Defense Date

2025-12-08

Publication Date

2025-12-09

First Faculty Advisor

Christian vom Lehn

First Faculty Reader

Brennan Platt

Honors Coordinator

Joseph P. Price

Keywords

occupational choice, preference heterogeneity, automation, paid leave

Abstract

I study the relationship that preferences for meaningful work—work that provides utility through more than just income—have with wages and time spent working in a variety of scenarios by developing, calibrating, and validating a Roy-inspired structural model of occupational choice where heterogeneous households choose to provide standard and "meaningful" work, where each type of labor has a distinct wage. Within the framework of the model, I find that meaningful work is associated with lower wages and higher hours; that in response to exogenous transfers, households will work less overall but spend more time on meaningful work; that policies that mandate expanded non-wage benefits lead to households moving to more meaningful careers; and that automating meaningful labor is less effective than standard labor. I validate several of these relationships using General Social Survey (GSS) and American Community Survey (ACS) data.