This paper investigates the empirical relationship between inclusion and state capacity , as theorized by Besley and Persson (2009). We examine the impact of racial discrimination on Black U.S. military enlistment during the onset of WWII. We find that discrimination had a large and negative effect on volunteer enlistment after the Pearl Harbor attack. The result is robust to a large number of controls that account for potential confounders. The negative effect of discrimination is moderated by geographical proximity to Pearl Harbor, and is larger for educated men. We provide consistent evidence for Japanese Americans.

We study the labor force nonparticipation in U.S. metropolitan areas during the early period of the COVID-19 crisis. While the magnitudes are small, we observe statistically significant differences between non-white and white workers’ labor nonparticipation. In particular, non-white workers in the ‘very-low teleworkable’ industries are more likely to drop out of the labor market. Aside from race or ethnicity, market conditions, including a lack of jobs, or a belief that jobs are unavailable, are important explanations for labor market nonparticipation. Health concerns and household responsibilities become more significant over time in motivating non-white workers to drop out of the labor market.

This article reviews the global health and economic consequences of the 1918 influenza pandemic, with a particular focus on topics that have seen a renewed interest because of COVID-19. We begin by providing an overview of key contextual and epidemiological details as well as the data that are available to researchers. We then examine the effects on mortality, fertility, and the economy in the short and medium run. The role of non-pharmaceutical interventions in shaping those outcomes is discussed throughout. We then examine longer-lasting health consequences and their impact on human capital accumulation and socioeconomic status. Throughout the paper we highlight important areas for future work. (JEL E24, E32, I12, I15, J13, J24, N30)

This report provides a closer look at the well-being of the early care and education (ECE) workforce in California, using data collected by the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment (CSCCE) through the 2020 California Early Care and Education Workforce Study. For decades, low levels of public investment in this sector have kept the ECE workforce—largely women of color and immigrant women—in a grim financial bind. During the first year of the pandemic, the majority of early educators continued to work in person—risking their health and that of their families—while K-12 schools closed for distance learning. This report reveals new details on the economic realities of life as an early educator during the COVID-19 public health crisis.

Regulators often enact price restrictions with the goal of improving access to affordable products. However, the design of these regulations may interact with firm strategic entry and exit decisions in ways that mitigate the effects of pricing regulation or eliminate access to certain products entirely. In the US individual health insurance market, the Affordable Care Act established community rating areas made up of groups of counties in which insurers must offer plans at uniform prices, but insurers do not have to enter all counties in a rating area. The exact design of each market has been left to individual states. Allowing partial entry creates trade-offs in rating area design: larger areas may support more competition, but heterogeneous areas may promote partial entry as firms choose to not enter high cost areas. To evaluate these trade-offs, I develop a model of insurer entry and pricing decisions and investigate how insurers respond to rating area design. I find that banning partial entry increases overall entry, average prices, and consumer welfare. I quantify the trade-offs of increasing rating area size and find returns to size concentrated when marginal costs are similar across counties in a rating area. Regulators must balance promoting competition with pooling high and low cost consumers in rating area design.

Background: New York City began public reporting of restaurant sanitary inspection grades in 2010. The policy’s impact on the incidence of foodborne illness has not been previously studied. Methods: We used a retrospective cohort design to evaluate whether the introduction of sanitary grades in 2010 reduced the incidence of Salmonellosis. To estimate the policy impact, we performed a difference-in-differences analysis in which in New York City was compared to a “synthetic control group” consisting of a weighted sample of comparison geographies. We evaluated reported Salmonellosis cases from April 2003 through December 2015 from the National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System (NNDS) (National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System, Weekly Tables of Infectious Disease Datan.d.). Our main outcome measure was quarterly risk-adjusted cases of reported Salmonellosis per 100,000 residents. Results: Results of our difference-in-differences analysis found that the New York City restaurant sanitary grades program was associated with a non-significant reduction in risk-adjusted cases of reported Salmonellosis per 100,000 (−0.31, 95% confidence interval = (−1.41, 0.80)). This finding was robust across all specifications. Conclusions: Consistent with recent evidence that public reporting has had little impact on public health, public reporting of restaurant sanitary inspection grades did not appear to decrease the incidence of Salmonellosis.

We examine the consequences of monetary policy on racial disparities, focusing on therole of bank lending to firms through collateral and selection channels. Leveragingcomprehensive loan-level data from the U.S. credit register (Y-14Q) of the FederalReserve, we show that firms in Black communities obtain business loans that aremore expensive and have a shorter maturity. These firms are also more likely toexperience adverse credit supply shocks, controlling for firm risk and investmentopportunities, as well as geographic and cultural covariates. We also study theeffects of monetary policy across racial groups and document that, following amonetary policy tightening, banks extend loans to firms in Black communitiesat disproportionately higher interest rates. Furthermore, banks pass a monetarytightening through to loan rates for borrowers who have no collateral, have priordefaults, and have a shorter banking relationship, but even more to loan ratesfor firms in Black communities. Our findings suggest that monetary policy has distributional consequences in the form of tightened selectivity for Black minorities through lending conditions. Our analysis calls for place-based policies that target certain minority groups.

The median age at first marriage in the United States has increased steadily since the mid-20th century, with a persistent gender gap (FP-21-12). In this profile, we use the 2021 Current Population Survey to document overall trends through 2021 and the 2020 American Community Survey (ACS) 1-Year Experimental IPUMS data to examine differences by race/ethnicity and education as of 2020. 1 The CPS and ACS tend to mimic each other for the median age at first marriage but differ slightly due to differences in how age at marriage is measured.2 For instance, in 2020, the CPS median age at first marriage for men was 30.5, and for women it was 28.1; the comparable figures for the 2020 ACS are 29.7 and 28.3, respectively.

This analysis cautions scholars to be more attentive to what constitutes the “metropolitan.” Between 1990 and 2010, the Office of Management and Budget brought ninety-one metropolitan areas into existence and altered the boundaries of almost half of the others. Because metropolitan area reclassification not only creates new metropolitan areas but also frequently leads to the incorporation of peripheral, majority-White, counties, this article analyzes the effects of these territorial alterations on aggregate metropolitan racial diversity, changes in the aggregate counts of White people in metropolitan areas, and differences in the counts of census tracts in which White people form significant majorities. Using census data from 1990, 2000, and 2010, we demonstrate that the 2010 reclassification produces metropolitan areas that are relatively more White and relatively less diverse than those based on the 1990 definitions. In addition, using 2010 metropolitan boundaries rather than those from 1990 boosts the counts of predominantly White census tracts at the expense of other types. The reclassification process appears superficially to be race neutral, because it entails the periodic evaluation of intercounty economic linkages. We point out, however, that racialized residential processes help forge these new patterns of economic and social interaction.

This paper investigates the patterns of Minority representation and voter registration in U.S. municipal governments. For the period 1981-2020, we report substantial levels of strategic underrepresentation of African American, Asian, and Latino voters in U.S. local politics. Disproportionality in the representation and in voter registration rates of Minority groups are widespread, but stronger when racial or ethnic minorities are electorally pivotal. Underrepresentation is determined by the combination of several endogenous institutional features, starting from systematic disparity in voter registration, strategic selection of electoral rules, city’s form of government, council size, and pay of elected members of the council. We provide causal evidence of the strategic use of local political institutions in reducing electoral representation of minorities based on the U.S. Supreme Court narrow decision of Shelby County v. Holder (2013), which deemed unconstitutional Voting Rights Act (VRA) Section 4(b), removing federal preclearance requirements for a specific subset of U.S. jurisdictions.

While the significance of familial support in college receives substantial and growing attention, Asian American college students’ experiences of such support remain unclear. In a series of three articles that draw on a total of 140 intensive semi-structured interviews, this dissertation explores the effect class has on students’ experiences of three different types of familial support: 1) students’ receipt of parental support, 2) students’ provision of parental support, and 3) students’ receipt of sibling support. The first article “The Power of Class and Not Institution Type: Asian American Four and Two-Year College Students’ Receipt of Parental Support” employs a trichotomous class design and finds that class affects the amount of financial and academic support four and two-year students receive from parents. Across institution type, students from more disadvantaged backgrounds receive substantially less of this help; however, academic support most impedes college students’ academic success. The second article “‘It’s More Us Helping Them Instead of Them Helping Us’: How Class Disadvantage Motivates Asian American College Students to Help their Parents” considers the support four-year students can provide for parents. Employing the same trichotomous class design, it illustrates that most students express the importance of helping parents (i.e., a facet of filial piety). Yet, only students from more disadvantaged class backgrounds supply translation support and speak seriously about viii future provisions of financial support; both of which have implications for students’ stress and struggle in college. The third article “The Sibling Advantage: Asian American First Generation College Students and the Academic Support they Receive from Siblings” shows how some Asian American first gen four and two-year students benefit immensely from the academic support their older, college-educated siblings provide. Comparing their receipt of support to that of Black and white first gen four-year students and Asian American continuing gen four and two-year students, it reveals that race—more specifically immigration—and class interact to shape students’ receipt of sibling support. Together, these articles highlight the heterogeneity of family involvement for Asian American college students, demonstrating how students from different class backgrounds have experiences of both advantage and disadvantage

The high cost-of-living in “superstar” US metropolitan areas has become an area of increasing scholarly and policy concern. One question relates to whether low socioeconomic status (SES) and other historically disadvantaged residents are getting pushed out of these city-regions. To unpack what is occurring with respect to migration out of large expensive metros, I examine who is moving out of these areas in the US and where they are going. I use regression, coarsened exact matching, and latent class analysis to understand who is staying within large expensive US metros and who moves out of them, as well as what revealed preferences underlie these moves. I find evidence that lower SES households are slightly more likely to leave superstar US city-regions, though Black, Latinx, and immigrant households are less likely to leave than White and US-born households. Rather than leaving, many low SES households may instead continue to live in these areas while enduring increasingly crowded living arrangements and/or long commutes. The results also highlight substantial heterogeneity in where households go to once they move, suggesting migration out of these urban areas may be more complex than simply the push of high cost-of-living.

In the three decades before the pandemic, mean achievement of U.S. 8th graders in math rose by more than half a standard deviation on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Between 2019 and 2022, U.S. students had forfeited 40 percent of that rise. To anticipate the consequences of the recent decline, we investigate the past relationship between NAEP scores and students’ later life outcomes by year and state of birth. We find that a standard deviation improvement in a birth cohort’s 8th grade math achievement was associated with an 8 percent rise in income, as well as improved educational attainment and declines in teen motherhood, incarceration and arrest rates. If allowed to become permanent, our findings imply that the recent losses would represent a 1.6 percent decline in present value of lifetime earnings for the average K-12 student (or $19,400), totaling $900 billion for the 48 million students enrolled in public schools during the 2020-21 school year.

In the United States (US), individuals of Puerto Rican heritage die of drug overdoses at higher rates than other Hispanic groups or non-Hispanic Whites; yet, little is known about the extent to which drug overdose mortality affects island-born, versus US-born, Puerto Ricans. The distinction between Puerto Rican-born and US-born provides a starting point for culturally tailored services and interventions, as place of birth often informs language preferences and cultural identifications. Therefore, this study analyzed 2013–2019 death certificate data from the National Center for Health Statistics for 415,111 US deaths attributed to drug overdose. Drug overdose deaths were compared for island-born Puerto Ricans (N=3516), US-born Puerto Ricans (N=4949), and individuals not of Puerto Rican heritage (N=406,646). Drug overdose mortality rates, including age-specific and directly age-standardized rates, were calculated for each subgroup using population estimates from the US Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. Results indicated that age-adjusted drug overdose mortality rates over the period of 2013–2019 were significantly higher for island-born than US-born Puerto Rican men (46.8 versus 34.6, per 100,000), with rates in both groups significantly higher than for men not of Puerto Rican heritage (24.0 per 100,000). For women, in contrast, drug overdose mortality rates were lower for island-born than US-born Puerto Ricans (8.6 versus 11.1, per 100,000). Within stateside Puerto Rican communities, island-born men experience a disproportionate burden of drug overdose mortality, necessitating targeted, culturally appropriate interventions built around the specific norms, circumstances, and lived experiences shared by Puerto Rican migrants who use drugs.

In this thesis, I demonstrate how digital inequality is the latest layer in the web of social, cultural, and economic exclusions. Previous research has shown that individual characteristics impact internet and communication technology (ICT) access and adoption. I utilize Van Dijk’s four forms of access to move past the binary of the digital divide. Using the 2019 American Community Survey Public Use Microdata Sample (5 year estimates), I develop two logistic regression models that incorporate individual and community-level factors to predict the likelihood of a resident achieving universal connectivity or being smartphone dependent. The findings indicate that there is a polarity between those who have universal connectivity versus those who are smartphone dependent. Wealthier, more educated residents have the highest rates of obtaining a universal connection. Inversely, residents with lower incomes, with less than a college education are increasingly smartphone dependent.

Qualitative work has found that Latino food pantry recipients share food and reciprocally provide social support to their food-insecure neighbors. These findings suggest that neighborhood cohesion (NC) may serve as an important community-level resource that Latinos utilize as a coping mechanism when food-insecure. High levels of NC may be a proxy for instrumental support outside the household and act as a buffer against the adverse health effects of food insecurity including type 2 diabetes (T2D), which is highly sensitive to food insecurity. The purpose of this study was to quantitatively test this theory by examining whether NC moderated the association between T2D and food security (FS) status among Latino adults nationwide. We used data from the 2013–2018 National Health Interview Survey (n = 23,478). We found that FS status was associated with T2D prevalence, with Latino adults having a higher odds of T2D if they had low FS or very low FS compared to their FS counterparts. We also found Latinos adults who reported high NC had a lower odds of T2D compared to those who reported low NC. However, we did not find there was significant interaction between FS status and NC on T2D. NC may instead be a precursor to FS status, rather than a buffer of food insecurity on T2D. Low NC may lead to less instrumental support and tangible benefits that determine FS. Additionally, perceived NC might not align with objective NC and T2D may be too distal of a health outcome to test the protective effect of NC.

The extent to which cumulative social disadvantage-defined as aggregate social risk resulting from multiple co-occurring adverse social determinants of health (SDOH)-affects the risk of all-cause mortality, independent of demographic and clinical risk factors, is not well understood. The objective of this study was to examine the association between cumulative social disadvantage, measured using a comprehensive 47-factor SDOH framework, and mortality in a nationally representative sample of adults in the United States. The authors conducted secondary analysis of pooled data for 63,540 adult participants of the 2013-2015 National Death Index-linked National Health Interview Survey. Age-adjusted mortality rates (AAMRs) were reported by quintiles of aggregate SDOH burden, with higher quintiles denoting greater social disadvantage. Cox proportional hazards models were used to examine the association between cumulative social disadvantage and risk of all-cause mortality. AAMR increased significantly with greater SDOH burden, ranging from 631 per 100,000 person-years (PYs) for participants in SDOH-Q1 to 1490 per 100,000 PYs for those in SDOH-Q5. In regression models adjusted for demographics, being in SDOH-Q5 was associated with 2.5-fold higher risk of mortality, relative to Q1 (adjusted hazard ratio [aHR] = 2.57 [95% confidence interval, CI = 1.94-3.41]); the observed association persisted after adjusting for comorbidities, with over 2-fold increased risk of mortality for SDOH-Q5 versus Q1 (aHR = 2.02 [95% CI = 1.52-2.67]). These findings indicate that cumulative social disadvantage is associated with increased risk of all-cause mortality, independent of demographic and clinical factors. Population level interventions focused on improving individuals' social, economic, and environmental conditions may help reduce the burden of mortality and mitigate persistent disparities.

The development of Multilevel Regression and Poststratification (MRP) has allowed scholars to more accurately estimate subnational public opinion using national polls. However, MRP generally fails to recover reliable estimates from polls whose respondents are selected using cluster sampling-also called area-probability sampling. This is in part because cluster-sampled polls rely on a complex form of random sampling focused on national representativeness that may result in small or unrepresentative subsamples in subnational geographies. This has limited MRP's usefulness in subna-tional opinion estimation in several contexts, including historical polls in the United States, where cluster-sampling was common into the 1980s, and large academic studies in many countries today. In this paper, I test two approaches to improve estimation from MRP with cluster-sampled polls. The first is pooling data from multiple surveys to produce a larger sample of clusters. The second is Clustered MRP (CMRP), which extends MRP by modeling opinion using the geographic information included in a survey's cluster-sampling procedure. Using simulations, I show that both methods improve upon traditional MRP, and I validate them using historical polls in the United States.

Objective: To understand the importance of family and household structure, including cohabiting partners and nonkin adults, in explaining Black-White versus Hispanic-White newborn poverty disparities in the United States. Background: The official poverty measure (OPM) has typically been used in scholarly studies of newborn and childhood poverty, but this measure excludes cohabitors' and nonkin household members' presence and income. Both are likely to have poverty-preventing roles when a birth is nonmarital. Method: A household poverty measure inclusive of all household members is compared to the OPM, using data on households of White, Black, and Hispanic newborns from the 2005–2017 American Community Survey (N = 342,048). Regression decompositions are used to investigate the roles of mother's education and partner and other coresident adult presence and resources. Results: Lower maternal educational attainment explains most of the Hispanic-White poverty disparity at birth. The prevalence and poverty-alleviating effectiveness of cohabitation and living with other adults, however, is greater for Hispanic than for Black unmarried mothers, and is greater for foreign-born than for US-born Hispanics. Conclusion: Black mothers' lesser access to the resources of a partner or other adults in the year of the newborn's arrival is critical in producing a remarkably high Black-White newborn poverty disparity. Official poverty obscures the greater benefits of cohabitation and living with other adults for newborns of Hispanic mothers overall, and of foreign-born Hispanic mothers in particular.

The 1920s in the United States were a time of high income and wealth growth and rising inequality, up to the peak in 1929. It was an era of technological innovations such as electrification as well as booms in consumer durables, housing, and asset markets. The degree to which these skill-biased opportunities shaped property wealth inequality depends on how local and macro-level industrial shocks were capitalized into real estate values. We uncover the pattern for California, a state where shocks in oil, housing and stocks were large, and which has annual data on city-level property values and population counts. We show that electricity both increased values and reduced inequality in property values, while other booms had more short-lived and localized effects.