Sanctuary cities, enacted by local governments, are jurisdictions that limit cooperation with the U.S. federal government in the enforcement of immigration policies and, as a result, often carry the connotation of “paradise for illegal immigrants.” Over the past decade, a large number of counties in the U.S. have adopted the sanctuary city status. This immigrant-friendly policy has received much attention with polarized opinions. Major concerns about the policy include the potential impact on the labor market, sanctuaries becoming a magnet attracting illegal immigrants, and the potential budget burden of increasing public benefit expenditure. Despite the tremendous concerns and attention from the public, there is little research on the topic. This dissertation aims to bridge this knowledge gap and investigate sanctuary cities’ social and economic implications. The first essay of this dissertation examines whether native workers in sanctuary cities would experience a decrease in wages. Using the information on sanctuary city adoption status and individual-level data, a difference-in-difference (DID) model is employed to estimate the sanctuary status impact on the wages of natives. After controlling for demographic, economic, political, and industry factors, no statistically significant impact was found. The finding is consistent in a series of robustness tests, suggesting sanctuary status has no detrimental effects on native workers’ wages. This result prompts a further research question about the potential reason. The second essay addresses a more fundamental question about sanctuary cities that underlies much of the controversy and concern associated with sanctuary cities: are sanctuary cities attracting illegal immigrants? The impact of the policy on the labor market and other major socioeconomic variables hinges on the answer to this critical question. This essay tests the effect of sanctuary city status on the net inflow of likely undocumented immigrants (LUIs) defined in the literature. The study finds no significant effects, suggesting undocumented immigrants are in fact not gravitating toward sanctuary cities. Further examination shows that this coincides with the lack of significant differences in LUI detentions between sanctuaries and non-sanctuaries. Undocumented immigrants are not eligible for public benefits, but their children born in America (U.S. citizens) are. So sanctuary cities might suffer a budgetary burden. The third essay analyzes whether these mixed-status families in sanctuary cities are more likely to obtain public benefits for their children. The results show that sanctuary city status does not increase the probability of mixed-status families receiving public benefits, except Medicaid. Many of the findings in the dissertation are contrary to a priori expectations and have important policy implications.

Postponement of first marriage (Julian, 2022), the high prevalence of divorce (Carlson, 2022), and declining levels of remarriage (Reynolds, 2022) are linked to higher likelihoods of experiencing singlehood throughout one's life course (Hemez, 2019). This Family Profile examines sociodemographic variation among single adults aged 18 and older in 2022 using data from the 2022 ASEC Current Population Survey from IPUMS-CPS. Singlehood is defined as not currently being married or cohabiting. We differentiate singles by marital status: never married, widowed, and divorced/separated.

The association between women's labor force participation, their alcohol consumption patterns, and mortality risk is unclear. This study assessed all-cause mortality risk among women in the United States, considering their labor force status and alcohol drinking. This study used discrete-time hazard models to examine this association using 2001–2015 National Health Interview Survey-Linked Mortality Files (NHIS-LMF) data (n = 147,714) for women aged 25 to 65 with 5725 deaths in this sample. Complex survey-weighted adjustments and E-values calculations were used to limit quantitative and observational biases. Alcohol consumption and labor force status together lead to substantial mortality risks. There is a statistically significant mortality risk among unemployed women (HR 2.15, 95% CI 1.18–3.91) and women not in labor force (HR 2.38, 95% CI 1.87–3.01). In the stratified models, non-Hispanic blacks (HR 1.48, 95% CI 1.30–1.67) and Asians (HR 1.93, 95% CI 1.54–2.44) have heightened mortality risks borne out of employment. Women with higher psychological distress have a 26% higher risk of all-cause mortality when not in labor force. With the help of cross-sectional data, this study demonstrates that women not in labor force and unemployed women are more likely to be affected by their drinking habits, and their employment status is associated with lower mortality risk. Further research should be focused on cause-specific mortality, gender roles and norms, reasons for unemployment, and comorbidities using more recent data, causal modeling techniques, and an extended mortality follow-up period.

There is a well-documented educational gradient in marriage, with smaller shares never-married among the highly educated than among the less educated (FP-22-01). However, the population of college-educated individuals has increased, and there is growing heterogeneity among this population. In turn, there is likely heterogeneity in the marriage experience among those with a bachelor’s degree. This profile uses the American Community Survey (ACS) to examine the share of adults aged 35-39 with a bachelor’s degree or more by race/ethnicity and gender and, among this group, the share never-married by race/ethnicity and gender in 2005 and 2019. We focus on those aged 35-39 because this age bracket is above the median age at first marriage (the age in which at least 50% of people were married) in 2019 for college-educated men and women (FP-21-12) and is above the average age of those enrolled in higher education in the U.S. (Fishman et al., 2017).

Individuals at clinical high risk for psychosis (CHR-P) experience attenuated positive psychotic symptoms and impaired level of overall functioning. Currently, methods available for detecting individuals at risk are sub-optimal with early detection services for CHR-P individuals identifying only a small minority (5-12%) of first episode psychosis (FEP) cases prior to illness onset. Moreover, once CHR-P subjects have been identified, available methods of predicting their clinical outcomes have limited accuracy. This thesis aims to improve the detection of individuals at high risk of developing psychosis (Part A), and the estimation of psychosis risk in this population (Part B). It will also review gaps in current knowledge and provide directions for future research (Part C).

This paper examines the effect of campaign appearances in the context of the one-sided nationwide tour by William J. Bryan, the Democratic US Presidential candidate in 1896. During this electoral campaign, Bryan went on an unprecedented whistle-stop train tour, while the Republican candidate followed a front-porch campaign. To identify the causal effect of campaign speeches, we exploit several estimation strategies, including a within-county difference-indifferences design and a neighbor-pair fixed effect estimator. We find that campaign visits by the Democratic candidate increased his vote share by about one percentage point on average. This increase likely stems from the persuasion of previously non-aligned industrial workers.

The recent rise of sub-national minimum wage (MW) policies in the US has resulted in significant dispersion of MW levels within metropolitan areas. In this paper, we study the effect of MW changes on local housing rental markets exploiting the placed-based nature of MW policies. For each location we define both the log MW where the average resident works (the “workplace MW”) and the log MW in the location itself (the “residence MW”). We derive a partial-equilibrium model of a housing market in which MW levels in each location affect housing demand by changing the income of commuters and the prices of non-tradable consumption. The model shows that the workplace MW has a positive effect on rents whereas the residence MW has a negative effect. We construct a ZIP code by month panel using rents data from Zillow, and use a difference-in-differences design to estimate the effect of residence and workplace MW changes on median housing rents. Our baseline results imply that a 10 percent increase in the workplace MW and no change in the residence MW will increase rents by 0.69 percent (SE=0.29). If the residence MW also increases by 10 percent, then rents will increase by 0.47 percent (SE=0.16). We use our results to study the incidence of two counterfactual MW policies: a federal MW increase and a city MW increase. We estimate that landlords pocket 9.2 and 11.0 cents for every dollar increase in worker income in areas affected by these policies. However, the incidence varies systematically across space.

We examine how the Affordable Care Act Medicaid expansion affected the insurance coverage and the sources of coverage among low-income nursing home aides using the 2010–2019 American Community Survey data. Insurance coverage for low-income nursing home aides increased from about 60% to nearly 90% in expansion states but rose to only about 80% in nonexpansion states. Using a difference-in-differences regression design, we find that Medicaid expansion was associated with a 5.1 percentage-point increase in overall insurance coverage. Expansion states had a 12.2 percentage-point gain in Medicaid that was partially offset by a 6.4 percentage-point reduction in private insurance coverage. Our results show that ACA Medicaid expansion increased insurance coverage for low-income nursing home aides; however, there was substantial crowd-out of private insurance coverage in this population. Policymakers should consider expanding Medicaid while incentivizing affordable private health insurance options for low-income nursing home aides to improve insurance coverage.

This article describes the linkage methods that will be used in the Decennial Census Digitization and Linkage project (DCDL), which is completing the final four decades of a longitudinal census infrastructure covering the past 170 years of United States history. DCDL is digitizing and creating linkages between nearly a billion records across the 1960 through 1990 U.S. censuses, as well as to already-linked records from the censuses of 1940, 2000, 2010, and 2020. Our main goals in this article are to (1) describe the development of the DCDL and the protocol we will follow to build the linkages between the census files, (2) outline the techniques we will use to evaluate the quality of the links, and (3) show how the assignment and evaluation of these linkages leverages the joint use of routinely collected administrative data and non-routine survey data.

The measles vaccine was introduced in 1963. Take-up of the vaccine in the United States occurred quickly and universally, leading to reductions in morbidity and mortality. New biological evidence on how the measles virus interacts with our immune system indicates the impact of the measles vaccine may be underestimated. Using a difference-in-difference identification strategy, I find evidence the measles vaccine increased earnings and employment. Long-term follow-up of adults finds an increase in income of 1. 1 percent and positive effects on employment. This increase in income is not from an increase in hours worked but rather from greater productivity.

This paper studies how U.S. local labor markets respond to employment losses after recessions. Following each recession between 1973 and 2009, we find that areas that lose more jobs during the recession experience persistent relative declines in employment and population. Most importantly and contrary to prior work, these local labor markets also experience persistent decreases in the employment-population ratio and per capita earnings. Our results imply that limited population responses result in longer-lasting consequences for local labor markets than previously thought, and that recessions are followed by persistent reallocation of employment across space.

This paper examines the relation between counter-stereotypical female role models and women's labor supply and occupational choices. Using hand-collected data from Gallup surveys that cover more than 50 years, we create a direct measure of counter-stereotypical female role models based on the fraction of local survey respondents who state that they admire famous women in business, politics, or science. We show that admiring counter-stereotypical female role models is associated with more women participating in the labor market, working in male-dominated and STEM industries, and taking managerial positions, which eventually alleviates the gender pay gap.

Long COVID encompasses a suite of long-term symptoms that commonly include fatigue, shortness of breath, and so-called brain fog, along with many others. Individuals with long-term symptoms may be unable to work (or work full-time) as a result of their condition, and there is growing speculation that long COVID may be restraining labor supply. In this note, I use two survey datasets to document four facts about long COVID in the United States. First, long-term COVID symptoms are much more prevalent among women, adults under 65, Hispanics and Latinos, and non–college graduates than among other demographic groups. Second, COVID "long haulers" cite specific physical and cognitive impairments commonly associated with the condition in media and medical reporting. Third, the share of working-age adults reporting serious difficulty remembering, concentrating, or making decisions has risen steadily since the start of the pandemic. Fourth, growing shares of women and of non–college graduates report simultaneously (i) being out of the labor force due to disability and (ii) experiencing these cognitive difficulties. Non-participation attributed to disability was declining steadily in the years leading up to the pandemic, but that downward trend has stalled. Long COVID is likely one reason why.

A great deal of social policy in the United States is decentralized, allowing state and local policymakers and administrators to make discretionary decisions that structure program access and outcomes. A large body of scholarship has demonstrated the racialized nature of this decentralized structure by either examining the influence of racial attitudes and/or racial composition on policy choices, or exploring how these policy choices and/or administrative practices contribute to racial inequities in social welfare program outcomes. While the vast majority of this work has focused on cash assistance programs, there is increasing attention on the racialization and racial equity consequences in a broad set of social policies. This project contributes to this line of research by examining one of the most significant social welfare programs—the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)—with a primary focus on a particularly vulnerable target population, able-bodied adults without dependents (ABAWDs). In the first empirical chapter of my dissertation, I draw on the administrative burden framework to identify four key dimensions of program experience affected by state SNAP policy choices: learning costs, psychological costs, compliance costs, and supportiveness. In this chapter I create novel empirical measures of administrative burdens and supportiveness using data on SNAP policy choices from the SNAP Policy Database (ERS, USDA, 2019), a county waiver dataset (Dickert-Collin et al., 2019), and the FNS-583 Employment and Training (E&T) Program Activity Report. I then examine the extent of cross-state and over-time variation in these measures from 1996 to 2015. The results indicate substantial cross-state and over-time variation in administrative burden and supportiveness. In the second empirical chapter I examine the association between race-related factors (racial composition and state-level racial attitudes) and SNAP policy choices related to administrative burden and supportiveness, using a panel regression with data from 1996-2015. The state racial composition measures are pulled from the publicly available American Community Survey (ACS) (Ruggles et al., 2021), and the state-level racial attitudes are derived from the racial resentment scale in the American National Election Survey (Smith, Kreitzer, & Suo, 2020). The results from this chapter demonstrate an adverse relationship between the Black racial composition measures and states imposing aspects of administrative burden in SNAP, and a positive relationship between the Latino racial composition measures and states decreasing aspects of administrative burden in SNAP. The last empirical chapter of my dissertation analyzes the association between SNAP policy choices, the race-related factors, and racial inequity in the receipt of SNAP benefits for ABAWDs from 2000 to 2015. In order to create the ABAWD caseloads, I utilize demographic characteristics from ACS (Ruggles et al., 2021). The results from this chapter indicate that the supportiveness dimension of SNAP policy choices and the proportion of the Latino state population were negatively related to Black ABAWDs receiving SNAP benefits over white ABAWDs. The results of my entire dissertation project build on the current state of knowledge about discretionary decision-making and racial equity in social welfare programs in several ways. First, in using a social equity framework, this project examines a primary site of discretionary decision-making in social welfare programs and explores the role of race and racism. In so doing it identifies how and where racial inequities are sustained. The project provides empirical evidence to inform public policy and administration scholars on how racial bias and decentralized policy designs can undermine the equitable provision of social welfare programs for racially minoritized low-income constituents. Lastly, by emphasizing the broader societal concerns on the pervasiveness and harmful effects of structural racism, this project contributes to broader societal calls on actualizing social and racial equity by addressing how racism is often embedded in public policy and administration.

Black and white Americans tend to have different names today. This divide was long in the making. I show that the racial divergence in naming patterns was a gradual and continuous process spanning the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. I then exploit the migration of households from the South to determine if place matters for name choices. Children born after their households moved receive names that are less black or more white than their older siblings, a difference that widens with time spent outside the South. This may reflect the cultural assimilation of households rather than a response to economic incentives.

We investigate if increased deportations under the Secure Communities (SC) program impacted the marriage patterns of immigrant women in the United States. We focus on country of origin-MSA deportation rates, arguing this is appropriate given the dominance of endogamous marriage among immigrants and large heterogeneity in removal rates. We find that rising deportations increased marriage rates and endogamous marriage, decreased exogamous marriage to immigrants from other countries, and had no impact on marriage to native-born men. This is striking because SC likely reduced same ethnicity partners in marriage markets. We find some evidence that increased network effects may explain these results.

We analyze work commute time by sexual orientation of partnered or married individuals, using the American Community Survey 2008-2019. Women in same-sex couples have a longer commute to work than working women in different-sex couples, whereas the commute to work of men in same-sex couples is shorter than the one of working men in different-sex couples, also after controlling for demographic characteristics, partner’s characteristics, location, fertility, and marital status. These differences are particularly stark among married couples with children: on average, about 3 minutes more one-way to work for married mothers in same-sex couples, and almost 2 minutes less for married fathers in same-sex couples, than their corresponding working parents in different-sex couples. These gaps among men and women amount to 50%, and 100%, respectively, of the gender commuting gap estimated in the literature. Within-couple gaps in commuting time are also significantly smaller in same-sex couples. We interpret these differences as evidence that it is gender-conforming social norms boosted by parenthood that lead women in different-sex couples to specialize into jobs with a shorter commute while their male partners/spouses hold jobs with a longer commute.

This study describes and analyzes the challenges that musicians face in the United States, based on a survey of 1227 musicians, which was conducted in 2018 by the Music Industry Research Association and the Princeton University Survey Research Center, in partnership with MusiCares. It reveals that the average American musician earns income from three music-related activities per year, but for 61% of musicians this is not sufficient to meet living expenses. We explore important factors affecting music-related income, focusing on the impact of attending a high school featuring music education, of joining MusiCares membership, and the interaction between these factors and being born in the U.S.A. Attending schools with music education increases music-related earnings, while MusiCares membership has a negative association. However, when MusiCares membership is controlled for, attending a high school featuring music education is associated with at least 36% higher music-related earnings. In addition, the earnings advantage among attendees of music high schools is around 56.8% higher for those who were born in the U.S.A. than those who were foreign-born.

The growing importance of social skills has led to an increase in returns to wages and employment for workers specializing in social skill-intensive occupations. Between 2012 and 2019, social skill-intensive occupations grew by 3 percentage points as a share of the U.S. labor force. Math-intensive occupations also grew by a similar amount during this time. To analyze these patterns, I utilize a model of team production where workers trade tasks to exploit their comparative advantage. Social skills reduce coordination costs between workers and allow them to specialize and cooperate with other workers more effectively by trading tasks. This model predicts that workers adept in social skills sort into occupations that utilize and reward their abilities more, which is evaluated by looking at the changes between the NLSY79 and NLSY97 survey waves. Using various skill measures and covariates across these waves, I find that the positive labor market returns to social skills slightly diminished in the 2010s when compared to the greater returns of the 2000s.

Regional public universities educate approximately 70 percent of college students at four-year public universities and an even larger share of students from disadvantaged backgrounds. They aim to provide opportunity for education and social mobility, in part by locating near potential students. In this paper, we use the historical assignment of normal schools and insane asylums (normal schools grew into regional universities while asylums remain small) and data from Opportunity Insights to identify the effects of regional universities on the social mobility of nearby children. Children in counties given a normal school get more education and have better economic and social outcomes, especially lower-income children. For several key outcomes, we show this effect is a causal effect on children, and not only selection on which children live near universities.