About

Judith K. Hellerstein is a Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Maryland. She received her PhD from Harvard University in 1994 and joined the Maryland faculty in 1996. She is also a faculty associate of the Maryland Population Research Center and a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. Her research primarily focuses on labor market outcomes across gender, race, and ethnicity. Her work explores various aspects of labor economics, including spatial dimensions of labor markets, workplace segregation, the impact of residential and labor market networks, and occupational choices influenced by family dynamics. Hellerstein has contributed to understanding employment problems in urban Black labor markets, the effects of business cycles on divorce, and issues related to racial and skill-based segregation in the workforce.

Research topics

• Economics
• Social Science
• Sociology
• Political Science
• Economic growth
• Geography
• Public economics
• Positive economics
• Labour economics
• Demographic economics
• Business

Selected publications

• Toward an Understanding of the Returns to Cognitive Skill Across Cohorts

  Journal of Political Economy Microeconomics · 2026-02-11

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Replication Data for: Toward an Understanding of the Returns to Cognitive Skill Across Cohorts

  Harvard Dataverse · 2025-10-20

  datasetOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This is the replication package for "Toward an Understanding of the Returns to Cognitive Skill Across Cohorts," accepted in 2025 by the Journal of Political Economy: Microeconomics.

  PublisherDOI

• Toward an Understanding of the Returns to Cognitive Skills Across Cohorts

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2024-03-01 · 1 citations

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Recent research concludes that wage returns to cognitive skills have declined in the U.S. We reassess this finding. Using decomposition methods, we document the pivotal role played by dynamic shifts in the distributions of pre-labor market cognitive skills. Our findings show these shifts explain the declining estimated returns to cognitive skills, especially for white men. We discard measurement error as a potential driver. Although often overlooked, grappling with changing pre-labor market skill distributions is necessary for capturing the evolution of labor market returns to cognitive skills. This may prove especially important in the future given continuing changes in skill development in recent youth cohorts.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Toward an Understanding of the Returns to Cognitive Skills Across Cohorts

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Toward an Understanding of the Returns to Cognitive Skills Across Cohorts

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2023-01-01

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Parental Skills, Assortative Mating, and the Incidence of Autism Spectrum Disorder

  American Journal of Health Economics · 2023-03-17

  article

  We assess theories that autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is heritable and transmitted through parental skills using data from Denmark. We construct parental skill measures by mapping Danish occupations to the Occupational Information Network (O*NET) survey of US occupations and principal factor analysis. We find that fathers’ skills are linked to ASD in children. A one standard deviation increase in a systems and ordering skills factor correlates with a modest but statistically significant 0.041 percentage point (2.4 percent) increase in ASD incidence. There is a negative and slightly larger relationship with communication skills. ASD also is similarly correlated with Deming’s (2017) routineness and social skills measures, and fathers again play larger roles. We also find evidence consistent with Baron-Cohen (2002) whereby extreme personality traits in parents affect ASD incidence; having two parents with high systems and ordering relative to communication skills leads to a 35 percent higher diagnosis rate than having parents with “balanced” skills. While all of these estimates are meaningful given the costs of ASD, they explain only a small fraction of variation in ASD diagnoses. Finally, although assortative mating on skills exists, we cannot detect a role for it in recent dramatic increases in ASD.

  PublisherDOI

• Parental Skills, Assortative Mating, and the Incidence of Autism Spectrum Disorder

  RePEc: Research Papers in Economics · 2021-01-01

  preprintOpen access

  We use rich administrative data from Denmark to assess medical theories that autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a heritable condition transmitted through underlying parental skills. Positing that occupational choices reflect skills, we create two separate occupation-based skill measures and find that these measures are associated with ASD incidence among children, especially through the father's side. We also assess the empirical relevance of assortative mating based on skill, concluding that intertemporal changes in assortative mating explain little of the increase in ASD diagnoses in recent decades.

  OA PDF

• Parental Skills, Assortative Mating, and the Incidence of Autism Spectrum Disorder

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2021-01-01

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Parental Skills, Assortative Mating, and the Incidence of Autism Spectrum Disorder

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2021-04-01 · 3 citations

  report

  We use rich administrative data from Denmark to assess medical theories that autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a heritable condition transmitted through underlying parental skills.Positing that occupational choices reflect skills, we create two separate occupation-based skill measures and find that these measures are associated with ASD incidence among children, especially through the father's side.We also assess the empirical relevance of assortative mating based on skill, concluding that intertemporal changes in assortative mating explain little of the increase in ASD diagnoses in recent decades.

  PublisherDOI

• Parental Skills, Assortative Mating, and the Incidence of Autism Spectrum Disorder

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2021-01-01

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant R01HD042806

  NIH · $1.1M · 2009

Frequent coauthors

• David Neumark

  226 shared

• Sai Luo

  Bureau of Labor Statistics

  67 shared

• Sergio Urzúa

  National Bureau of Economic Research

  67 shared

• Melissa McInerney

  Tufts University

  58 shared

• Chiara Orsini

  Michigan State University

  58 shared

• Scott A. Imberman

  Michigan State University

  54 shared

• Todd E. Elder

  54 shared

• N. Meltem Daysal

  University of Copenhagen

  54 shared

Education

• Ph.D.

  Harvard University

  1994