In this Economic Commentary, we use the Current Population Survey to identify and examine the influx of young adults who moved in with their parents during the COVID-19 pandemic—the so-called boomerang kids—and how being in their family home influences their labor market decisions and sensitivity to occupational risk relative to that of other young adults. We find that most boomerang kids come from high-income families that can financially support them through nonemployment spells that are, on average, longer than those of young adults not living with their parents. Young adults living with their parents are also more responsive to the risk of COVID-19 exposure in the workplace and are less likely to work in occupations with high exposure risk.

Entrepreneurship is often seen as the cure-all solution for poverty reduction. Proponents argue that it leads to job creation, higher incomes and lower poverty rates in the cities in which it occurs. Others argue that many entrepreneurs are actually creating low-productivity firms serving local markets. Yet, despite this debate, little research has considered the impact of entrepreneurship on poverty in cities. This paper addresses this gap using a panel of US cities for the period between 2005 and 2015. We hypothesize that the impact of entrepreneurship will depend on whether it is in tradeable sectors, so likely to have positive local multiplier effects, or non-tradeable sectors, which may saturate local markets. We find that entrepreneurship in tradeables reduces poverty and increases incomes for non-entrepreneurs, a result we confirm using an instrumental variable approach, taking the inheritance of entrepreneurial traits as the instruments. In contrast, while there are some economic benefits from non-tradeable entrepreneurship, we find these are not large enough to reduce poverty.

Hmong refugees fled from Laos to relocation camps in Thailand after the end of the Vietnam War, and thousands later resettled in the United States. We use Census microdata to explore measures of economic progress of working-age male Hmong refugees. To provide perspective, their progress is compared with that of other Southeast Asian refugees and other immigrant groups. Hmong refugees arrived in the United States with lower levels of human capital, so their economic progress was slow. Labor force participation rates were lower, and many earned low incomes in low-status occupations. Hmong men’s wages grew relatively slowly.

We propose a general framework for model-free difference-in-differences analysis with confounders. Following the natural steps in practice, we start by searching for the preferred data setup, namely thesimultaneous selection of confounders and potential data (outcome) transformations. We then offer a test for the credibility of identification assumptions. The treatment effects themselves are estimated in two steps: first, the heterogeneous effects stratified along the confounders, then second, the average treatment effect(s) for the population(s) of interest. We suggest bootstrap procedures to calculate the standard errors of these estimates, as well as for significance tests. We study the asymptotic statistics as well as the finite sample behavior (via simulations) of our tests and estimators. We address practical issues that arise such as bandwidth selection, incorporating sample weights and dealing with discrete data in both the outcome variable and set of confounders. These are addressed in a setting whereby we look at the impact of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program on human capital responses of non-citizen immigrants. We find that past (linear parametric) estimates are similar regarding (albeit underestimating) the positive impact of DACA on school attendance (for individuals aged 14-18) and the positive impact on high school completion, but at the same time, fail to identify the negative impact of DACA on school attendance for college aged individuals.

Covid-19 and its fallout have had a staggering effect on labor markets around the world. In April 2020, the unemployment rate rose to a post-WWII record high of 14.7 percent (+ 10.3 percentage points from April 2019) in the United States (Bureau of Labor Statistics 2020). One group of workers that has been of particular concern to policymakers is the young, likely owing to their relatively fragile financial situations as well as the potential for long-term scarring effects of reduced employment during the pandemic (Schwandt and von Wachter 2020; Gould and Kassa 2020). In this paper, we examine the effects of the pandemic recession on young workers, whom we define as being 21–30 years old, relative to older age groups. In doing so, we use the techniques of our companion paper, Cowan and Garcia (2021), which analyzes how employment has changed over the course of the pandemic for all workers by gender, race/ethnicity, and educational level. In this paper, we also examine how the experience of young workers has differed across categories within these classifications.

Importance: The elimination of racial and ethnic differences in health status and health care access is a US goal, but it is unclear whether the country has made progress over the last 2 decades. Objective: To determine 20-year trends in the racial and ethnic differences in self-reported measures of health status and health care access and affordability among adults in the US. Design, Setting, and Participants: Serial cross-sectional study of National Health Interview Survey data, 1999-2018, that included 596 355 adults. Exposures: Self-reported race, ethnicity, and income level. Main Outcomes and Measures: Rates and racial and ethnic differences in self-reported health status and health care access and affordability. Results: The study included 596 355 adults (mean [SE] age, 46.2 [0.07] years, 51.8% [SE, 0.10] women), of whom 4.7% were Asian, 11.8% were Black, 13.8% were Latino/Hispanic, and 69.7% were White. The estimated percentages of people with low income were 28.2%, 46.1%, 51.5%, and 23.9% among Asian, Black, Latino/Hispanic, and White individuals, respectively. Black individuals with low income had the highest estimated prevalence of poor or fair health status (29.1% [95% CI, 26.5%-31.7%] in 1999 and 24.9% [95% CI, 21.8%-28.3%] in 2018), while White individuals with middle and high income had the lowest (6.4% [95% CI, 5.9%-6.8%] in 1999 and 6.3% [95% CI, 5.8%-6.7%] in 2018). Black individuals had a significantly higher estimated prevalence of poor or fair health status than White individuals in 1999, regardless of income strata (P < .001 for the overall and low-income groups; P = .03 for middle and high–income group). From 1999 to 2018, racial and ethnic gaps in poor or fair health status did not change significantly, with or without income stratification, except for a significant decrease in the difference between White and Black individuals with low income (−6.7 percentage points [95% CI, −11.3 to −2.0]; P = .005); the difference in 2018 was no longer statistically significant (P = .13). Black and White individuals had the highest levels of self-reported functional limitations, which increased significantly among all groups over time. There were significant reductions in the racial and ethnic differences in some self-reported measures of health care access, but not affordability, with and without income stratification. Conclusions and Relevance: In a serial cross-sectional survey study of US adults from 1999 to 2018, racial and ethnic differences in self-reported health status, access, and affordability improved in some subgroups, but largely persisted.

The good news, as a recent CRR brief suggests, is that older workers were not disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 Recession with respect to initial job losses. 1 However, many older workers, like their younger counterparts, did experience layoffs. How did they fare? The specific question addressed in this brief is the prevalence of job exits among older workers and the extent to which they led to outright retirement. The analysis compares the results across earnings lev- els and to other benchmarks – the Great Recession and the strong economy of 2019. Using the Current Population Survey (CPS), the brief focuses on two age groups of workers: 1) those approaching retirement (ages 50-61); and 2) those of retirement age (62+), who may be more likely to exit the labor force entirely.

We assess the likelihood of moderate and severe psychological distress among Black immigrants. We test the region of context framework, which states that Black immigrants from majority-Black and racially mixed regions of origin have better health outcomes than Black immigrants from majority-white contexts. We utilize data from IPUMS Health Surveys, 2000–2018. We employed partial proportional odds models to assess the likelihood of moderate and severe psychological distress among Black immigrants and U.S.-born Black Americans. All immigrant groups, except for Black Europeans, are significantly less likely to be in moderate and severe distress vis-à-vis U.S.-born Black Americans (p &lt; 0.01). Black Africans are about 54–58% less likely to be in severe distressed compared to U.S.-born Black Americans. Black immigrants from racially mixed and majority-Black contexts (Mexico, Central America, Caribbean, South America, and Africa) are significantly less likely to be afflicted with moderate and severe distress than U.S.-born Black Americans.

Child sexual abuse is often perceived differently based on characteristics of the victim and the perpetrator. However, unknown is whether variations in perceptions occur when the relationship to an...

I study the rates of, selection into, and sorting of European immigrants' secondary migration within the United States and their geographic assimilation during the Age of Mass Migration. These phenomena are recognized as important components of the economics of immigration, but data constraints have limited prior study of them in this context. As part of the debate over immigrant distribution, they were also major issues in the broader twentieth-century immigration policy debate, which were influenced by the widely held view that immigrants in the early twentieth century were less geographically mobile and specifically more attached to urban areas than were natives and earlier immigrants. I find that immigrants throughout the Age of Mass Migration were at least as likely as natives to make inter-county moves, were more attached to urban areas, were more likely to move to urban destinations, and shared natives' increasing attachment to urban areas over time. In spite of their mobility, immigrants experienced relatively little assimilation in their place-of-residence distributions relative to natives with time in the United States, though they did experience somewhat more convergence on natives in terms of urbanization. These results help to better understand immigrant assimilation and the effects of immigration during the Age of Mass Migration and imply that the contemporary views of immigrant immobility were either false, oversimplified, or the product of changes in the US economy.

Summary socioeconomic indexes that capture information about wealth, education, employment, and housing are in wide use in public health. Here we compare the widely used Area Deprivation Index (ADI) to the Yost index. Though they are derived largely from the same data, there are substantial differences between the two. Examination of the geographic areas where the two indexes are most dissimilar suggest that the Yost index has greater face validity and that the ADI is highly sensitive to locations with incomplete census data and with census data containing outliers.

This paper studies the relationship between religious liberty and economic freedom. First, three new facts emerge: (a) religious liberty has increased since 1960, but has slipped substantially over the past decade; (b) the countries that experienced the largest declines in religious liberty tend to have greater economic freedom, especially property rights; (c) changes in religious liberty are associated with changes in the allocation of time to religious activities. Second, using a combination of vector autoregressions and dynamic panel methods, improvements in religious liberty tend to precede economic freedom. Finally, increases in religious liberty have a wide array of spillovers that are important determinants of economic freedom and explain the direction of causality. Countries cannot have long-run economic prosperity and freedom without actively allowing for and promoting religious liberty.

This project will investigate the consequences of symbolic violence within the proposed structure of mass education in Argentina by critically examining Domingo Faustino Sarmiento’s, Educación Popular, written prior to his presidency in the newly independent nation with the hope of inciting progress driven by reform. Symbolic violence is a concept introduced by sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, which he believed is used to develop social constructions by way of race, social class and gender. Sarmiento displays symbolic violence and discrimination throughout the text with particular attention to women and students of low socioeconomic status. Today, progress involves a refining process of established norms, policies, and institutions. This research aims to display the deep-rooted inequalities that continue to be reinforced throughout public education by the very institution which aims to equalize: public education. To guide Sarmiento’s education reform, he examined the development of exemplary mass education through travels abroad, taking particular interest in the United States, whom he considered as being the most successful pioneer since its inception in Boston, Massachusetts in 1639. He composed his observations and findings, presenting them as an essay to the government in the hopes of propagating nationalized education in Argentina during his presidency in 1868. While Sarmiento paved the way toward a moral and democratic nation, his character remains problematic and unreliable. A thorough examination will prove that his mass education activism was founded on sexist and elitist principles with lingering effects, today.

This article reviews the post-World War II mass production of houses in Los Angeles and the roots of today’s housing shortage. Even with a high production rate, minorities and low-income Angelenos have experienced racial barriers and displacement. Today, L.A.’s homeless population is disproportionally Black, while home ownership is disproportionally white. The article concludes with four proposals for responding to today’s shortage of affordable and racially equitable housing.

Since the beginning of the “Korean Wave” in the 2010s, Korean language and the Hangeul alphabet are integral parts in the dissemination of South Korea’s soft power across the world. For instances, the South Korean government provided support for the preservation of Cia-Cia language of Cia-Cia ethnic group in Bau-Bau, Southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia - a program that was originally initiated by Hunminjeongeum Society Foundation in 2008. This study examines the perception of students with Cia-Cia ethnic background toward South Korea. Questionnaire surveys and interviews are used to further look into their perceptions. This study, that started from a thesis, finds that the students who participated in the program have positive perceptions of South Korea. Furthermore, the demonstration of Korean culture and the use of Korean language become more apparent in the students’ daily life, creating a new social reality in the local community. Such finding suggests that international assistance has effectively become a part of South Korea’s soft power expansion strategy.

Introduction The COVID-19 pandemic has been associated with loss of revenue, reduced work hours, and reduced earnings for physicians in the United States.1-3 Furthermore, pandemic restrictions and related regulatory changes allowing physicians greater flexibilities potentially altered physicians’ work activities and environments.4,5 We analyzed a longitudinal data set to examine changes in US physician work hours and activities before and after the COVID-19 pandemic emerged. Methods We analyzed the Current Population Survey (CPS) basic monthly data from January 2019 to December 2020, obtained through the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS). Administered by the US Bureau of the Census, the CPS contains demographic and employment information. The response rate ranged between 65% and 83%. (See eAppendix 1 in the Supplement for detailed information about the data.) Participants were interviewed 8 times during a 16-month period, allowing for longitudinal analyses. This study followed the Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology (STROBE) reporting guideline. This study was deemed exempt from review by the American Institute for Research institutional review board because it used publicly available survey data and was not human subjects research in accordance with 45 CFR §46. Participants gave consent prior to each interview. First, we estimated panel regression models with individual- and time- fixed effects (year and month) using linked person-level data. This controlled for time-invariant factors (eg, sex, race/ethnicity, medical specialty) and minimized potential bias due to a decrease in survey response rate. Time-invariant factors, whether available in the survey (eg, sex, race/ethnicity) or not (medical specialty), were not included in the statistical model as independent variables. Next, we used pooled data to compare pre–COVID-19 (January 2019 to March 2020) and during COVID-19 (April to December 2020) mean percentages of physicians working full-time, performing the same activities, and laid off. Additionally, we compared mean percentages of parents of preschool-aged children (younger than 5 years of age) among both male and female physicians. Survey weights were applied in all analyses, and regression models were clustered at the person level. Comparisons were tested with simple linear regression, and P < .10 was considered statistically significant. Analyses were performed using Stata version 14.1 (StataCorp) in February 2021. Results Our data set included 8853 observations of 2563 unique physicians (weighted demographic data were 5311 male physicians [60%] and 6230 White physicians [70.4%]; weighted mean [SD] age was 46.7 [13.4] years). In January 2019, mean weekly hours worked per week by physicians was 50.8 (95% CI, 47.7-51.8 hours per week). In March 2020, this began to decrease (49.2 hours per week; 95% CI, 48.0-50.3 hours per week; P = .05) and reached the lowest point in May 2020 (47.5 hours per week; 95% CI, 46.1-48.8 hours per week; P < .001) (Figure). Work hours stabilized in the summer before reaching another low in November. Mean weekly work hours in December 2020 were 47.8 (95% CI, 46.6-49.1 hours per week; P < .001), an approximate 6% decrease from January 2019. The percentage of physicians reporting full-time work status declined from 84.17% (95% CI, 83.13% to 85.22%) before COVID-19 to 80.65% (95% CI, 79.03%-82.27%) (P < .001) during the pandemic, and those who claimed to “still have the same activities” at work declined from 83.90% (95% CI, 82.65% to 85.14%) to 78.00% (95% CI, 76.01% to 79.98%) (P < .001) (Table). Although rare, the percentage of physicians reporting being laid off increased from 0.05% (95% CI, −0.01% to 0.11%) to 0.45% (95% CI, 0.21% to 0.70%) during COVID-19 (P < .001). The percentage of parents of preschool-aged children among full-time, female physicians decreased from 17.98% (95% CI, 16.05% to 19.91%) to 14.10% (11.59% to 16.60%) (P = .009) and did not significantly change among male physicians. Discussion This study found that physicians’ work hours have significantly decreased since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in the US, accelerating an existing, gradual decline.6 There was also a decreased percentage of physicians working full-time, a rise in the percentage who were laid off, and increased changes in physicians’ usual activities. These observed changes may reflect the decrease in health care utilization1 and the increased flexibilities instigated by COVID-19–driven regulations.4 The decline in the percentage of parents with preschool-aged children among only female physicians may suggest a disproportionate uptake of childcare responsibilities among female physicians. This study leveraged the timely, longitudinal design of CPS data to provide early evidence of changes in physician work hours and patterns. However, this study also had limitations: the CPS sample size of physicians was small and lacked detailed information. Future studies analyzing physician-specific data are needed to fully examine the impact of the pandemic on the physician workforce.

Daily commuting of workers is a complex phenomenon that has attracted research attention for many years and, despite the significant literature acknowledging differences between morning and evening commuting, commuting to and from work are considered symmetric trips in much of the prior research. We explore the asymmetries in time spent commuting to and from work, in seven countries, using detailed time use records from the Multinational Time Use Study (MTUS). We focus on the duration, mode of transport, and timing of commuting trips, and we provide evidence on what socio-demographic characteristics are related to such asymmetries. We find that commutes to work (usually in the morning) last longer than commutes from work (usually in the afternoon or evening), although there are quantitative differences among countries. The timing of commuting also differs across countries, although commutes to work are more concentrated at certain hours in the morning than commutes from work. Our results may serve for a better design of public policies that take this heterogeneity into account in the commuting behavior of different population groups.

Foreign-born married women in the U.S. have historically lower labor force participation rates (LFPR) than comparable natives. In addition to family and individual characteristicsdiscrepancies between foreign- and native-born women, foreign-born married women often face work restrictions according to their visa status in the U.S. This paper quantitatively explores the labor market effects of an H-4 Employment Authorization Document (EAD) policy change, which allowed spouses of certain H-1B visa holders to work legally in the United States. I use American Community Survey data from 2010-2019 and the difference-in-differences approach to compare labor outcomes for selected noncitizens and naturalized citizens before and after the policy change, controlling for family and individual characteristics. I find that this policy change significantly increased LFPR and employment-to-population ratio (EPR), indicating that visa work restrictions keep some foreign-born out of the labor market.

The health costs of in-person schooling during the pandemic, if any, fall primarily on the families of students, largely due to the fact that students significantly outnumber teachers. Data from North Carolina, Wisconsin, Australia, England, and Israel covering almost 80 million person-days in school help assess the magnitude of the fatality risks of in-person schooling (with mitigation protocols), accounting for the age and living arrangements of students and teachers. The risks of in-person schooling to teachers are comparable to the risks of commuting by automobile. Valued at a VSL of $10 million, the average daily fatality cost ranges from $0.01 for an unvaccinated young teacher living alone to as much as $29 for an elderly and unvaccinated teacher living with an elderly and unvaccinated spouse. COVID-19 risk avoidance may also be more amenable to Bayesian updating and selective protection than automobile fatalities are. The results suggest that economic behaviors can sometimes invert epidemiological patterns when it comes to the spread of infectious diseases in human populations.

Despite established recommended standard definitions, measures, and methods by the UN Washington Group on Disability Statistics and the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) to assess dimensions of disability, national censuses vary widely in the questions used to identify people with disabilities. Although many seek to conform ex-ante to ICF definitions, they also deviate from this basic framework in different ways. This complicates ex-post harmonization and standardization for cross-national comparisons of disability prevalence and outcomes influenced by disability status, such as labor market participation. Addressing these issues, this study uses IPUMS International Census microdata since 2,000 to examine disability measurement across 65 countries. We find that definitions, terminology, measurement, and instructions to both respondents and enumerators matter for understanding disability prevalence cross-nationally. For instance, questions that included potentially stigmatizing language were associated with lower rates of disability reporting, but questions that listed specific limitations were associated with higher rates. Beyond disability, our findings also speak more broadly to ongoing challenges in survey harmonization for cross-national comparison.