This paper studies the implications of low energy prices today for energy efficiency and climate policy in the future. If adjustment costs mediate manufacturing plants’ responses to increases in energy prices, incumbents may be limited in their ability to re-optimize energy-inefficient production technologies chosen based on past market incentives. Using U.S. Census data and quasi-experimental variation in state energy prices, we first show that the initial electricity prices that manufacturing plants pay in their first year of operations are important determinants of long-run energy intensity. Plants that open when the prices of electricity and fossil fuel inputs into electricity are low consume more energy throughout their lifetime, regardless of current electricity prices. We then measure the relative contributions of initial productivity and capital adjustment frictions to creating this “technology lock-in” by estimating a model of plant input choices. We find that lock-in can be largely explained by persistent differences in the relative productivity of energy inputs chosen at entry. We discuss how these long-run effects of low entry-year energy prices increase the emissions costs of delayed action on carbon policy.

While the influenza vaccine is recommended for all pregnant women, influenza vaccine coverage among this high-risk population remains inadequate. Factors associated with vaccine coverage among pregnant women, including insurance status, are poorly understood. In a cross-sectional study of the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) data from 2012 to 2018, we evaluated predictors of self-reported influenza vaccine coverage in pregnant women. Among 1,942 pregnant women surveyed, 39% reported receiving the influenza vaccine in accordance with national recommendations. Influenza vaccine coverage increased by 8 percentage points from 2012 to 2018. Only 15% of uninsured pregnant women received the influenza vaccine, compared to 41% of those with insurance (design-corrected F-test, p-value < 0.001). In the multivariate Poisson regression analysis, significant predictors of influenza vaccine coverage were health insurance (prevalence ratio [PR] 1.90, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.23-2.93), ratio of household income to federal poverty level (FPL) threshold greater than 400% (PR 1.54, 95% CI 1.20-1.96), graduate school education (PR 1.52, 95% CI 1.04-2.23), and the 2015-2018 survey year period (PR 1.27, 95% CI 1.08-1.49). While previous literature focuses heavily on demographics, our research underscores the need to further explore modifiable factors that impact vaccine uptake during pregnancy, particularly the interplay between health insurance and access to care.

Parents rely on public schools to maintain paid work outside the home. The COVID-19 pandemic caused unprecedented closures of this critical resource in spring 2020. In the fall of 2020, school districts across the country reopened under varied instructional modes. Some school districts returned to in-person instruction; some operated remotely. Others reopened under hybrid models, wherein students alternated times, days, or weeks of in-person instruction. To capture this variation, we developed the Elementary School Operating Status (ESOS) database. ESOS provides data on elementary school districts’ primary operating status in the first grading period of the 2020-2021 school year, covering 25 million students in over 9,000 school districts in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. In this research note, we introduce these data and show extensive variation in school operating status at the state and school district levels. We show that school districts with greater representation of Black and Hispanic students were less likely to offer in-person instruction. We also show that fewer in-person elementary school instruction days was associated with reductions in maternal employment. ESOS is a critical source of information to support plans to address long-term implications for students who experienced less in-person learning over the past year, and reentry support for mothers who exited employment in the absence of in-person instruction and care.

The COVID-19 pandemic has hit people of color-(POC-) owned businesses disproportionately harder because they are likely to be concentrated in industries immediately affected by the pandemic (such as arts and entertainment, personal services, construction, repair, transportation, and restaurant industries). The first month of the shelter-in-place wiped out some 3.3 million businesses nationwide (or 22%), including some 440,000 Black-owned (41% drop), 660,000 Latinx-owned (32%), and 230,000 Asian-owned (26%) businesses. These POC-owned businesses also faced systemic inequalities prior to the pandemic, and were discriminated against even in the early stages of seeking financial capital. When controlling for credit score and other business characteristics, bank loan officers are still more likely to ask Black and Latinx owners questions about their personal finances, while offering less help and information on loan terms. When controlling for credit scores, Black start-ups are also more likely to report loan denials than white start-ups. Racism, racial profiling, and violence against POC owners--some of whom have been targeted in their own stores--has been an ongoing issue exacerbated by the pandemic. Due to poor data availability, very little is known about the impacts to POC-owned businesses in the San Francisco Bay Area. Bay Area cities generally do not track their POC-owned businesses systematically, so they know very little about what is happening specifically to entrepreneurs of color. Some cities have been tracking business closures; for instance, the City of Oakland estimated that about 37% fewer businesses were operating in February 2021 compared to February 2020. However, they have not been tracking business closures by race or ethnicity. Given the ongoing challenges in obtaining data on POC-owned business vulnerability, the Urban Displacement Project conducted a multi-stage process that culminated in the creation of an online mapping tool which highlights vulnerable POC-owned businesses and explores the feasibility of a permanent infrastructure for collecting data, monitoring business health, and recommending policies to support POC-owned businesses. We held one-on-one conversations and focus groups with local stakeholders, including city governments, various ethnic chambers, economic development directors, CDFIs and small business associations. The conversations served as ground-truthing exercises, but also helped surface more information about the specific vulnerabilities businesses are experiencing.

BACKGROUND Academic research on the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 among Native Americans has largely been restricted to particular indigenous groups or reservations. OBJECTIVE We estimate COVID-19 mortality for Native Americans relative to other racial/ethnic groups and explore how state-level mortality is associated with known risk factors. METHODS We use the standardized mortality ratio (SMR), adjusted for age, to estimate COVID-19 mortality by racial/ethnic groups for the United States and 16 selected states that account for three-quarters of the Native American population. The prevalence of risk factors is derived from the American Community Survey and the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. RESULTS The SMR for Native Americans greatly exceeds those for Black and Latino populations and varies enormously across states. There is a strong positive correlation across states between the share of Native Americans living on a reservation and the SMR. The SMR for Native Americans is highly correlated with the income-poverty ratio, the prevalence of multigenerational families, and health insurance (excluding the Indian Health Service). Risk factors associated with socioeconomic status and comorbidities are generally more prevalent for Native Americans living on homelands, a proxy for reservation status, than for those living elsewhere. CONCLUSIONS Most risk factors for COVID-19 are disproportionately high among Native Americans. Reservation life appears to increase the risk of COVID-19 mortality. CONTRIBUTION We assemble and analyze a broader set of COVID-19-related risk factors for Native Americans than previous studies, a critical step toward understanding the exceptionally high COVID-19 death rates in this population.

We consider the economic development potential of recent dramatic growth in Latina business ownership. Regression modeling with American Community Survey data reveals (a) compared with salaried workers, the entrepreneurial (incorporated business) and other self‐employed (unincorporated business) have, respectively, higher and lower rates of English proficiency, college completion, and homeownership; (b) the median Latina entrepreneur earns more than the median unincorporated self‐employed but less than a comparable salaried worker; and (c) type of work matters less to Latina’s earnings than having a college degree and working full‐time. Working Latinas can benefit from educational opportunities, family‐friendly work arrangements, and business incorporation.

A wealth of demographic research has explored the determinants of sex ratios at birth, but few studies have considered the role of foetal loss (spontaneous abortion), in producing feminine sex ratios. One challenge is measuring the occurrence of foetal loss, which is difficult to recognize and report in survey research. This study uses the length of the birth interval as a proxy for foetal loss; foetal loss restarts the clock on time to conception and lengthens the birth interval. We use Demographic and Health Survey data on second births to women in 17 sub-Saharan African countries. Results show that longer second birth intervals are significantly related to lower odds of a male second birth and to feminine sex ratios at birth. These findings suggest that high levels of foetal loss, which could signal underlying poor maternal health in a population, have dramatic effects on the sex ratio at birth.

Fueled by the politics of xenophobia and national security, the United States immigration enforcement system has expanded and strengthened in recent decades, resulting in more abuses of Mexican migrants by United States officials during apprehension, detention, and deportation. We find that the geography of United States enforcement operations and the social characteristics of the Mexican consular districts in which migrants report these abuses determine when and where the Mexican state assists Mexican nationals who are targets of abuse. Our findings illustrate the limits of sending-state engagement in safeguarding the rights of its diaspora in an age of migration control.

As US income inequality increased, labor-intensive production became more concentrated into lower-wage regions. While economically profitable, the higher concentration can lead to more volatile firm outcomes. Using federally-mandated minimum wage increases as a quasi-natural experiment, we show that the increase in the federal minimum wage in states where the state minimum is bound to the federal mandate tempers the concentration. As a result, the profit volatilities of downstream firms in treated states decrease. We find that a one dollar increase in the federal minimum wage leads to a 3.63 percentage point decrease in production concentration in bound states, which is then associated with a 24.4% decrease in profit volatility of customer firms in those states. Our findings highlight the volatility spillover cost born by firms dependent on geographically concentrated production.

The U.S. Black neonatal mortality rate is more than twice the White rate. This dramatic disparity can be decomposed into two components: (1) disparities due to differences in the distribution of birth weights, and (2) disparities due to differences in birth weight–specific mortality. I utilize this distinction to explore how the social context into which infants are born contributes to gaps in mortality between Black and White neonates. I analyze variation in Black–White differences in neonatal mortality across 33 states using 1995–2010 data. For each state, I calculate the contribution of differences in birth weight distribution versus differences in birth weight–specific mortal ity to the total disparity in mortality between White and Black neonates. Disparities are largely a product of different birth weight distributions between Black and White newborns (mirroring the pattern for the United States as a whole). However, in at least nine states, differences in birth weight–specific mortality make a notable contribution. This pattern is observed even among those from advantaged sociodemographic backgrounds and is driven by differences in mortality among very low birth weight neonates. This calls attention to inequality in medical care at birth as an important contributor to racial disparities in neonatal mortality.

We exploit the introduction of sulfa drugs in 1937 to identify the causal impact of exposure to pneumonia in infancy on later life well-being and productivity in the United States. Using census data from 1980-2000, we find that cohorts born after the introduction of sulfa experienced increases in schooling, income, and the probability of employment, and reductions in disability rates. These improvements were larger for those born in states with higher pre-intervention levels of pneumonia as these were the areas that benefited most from the availability of sulfa drugs. These estimates are, in general, larger and more robust to specification for men than for women. With the exception of cognitive disability and poverty for men, the estimates for African Americans are smaller and less precisely estimated than those for whites. This is despite our finding that African Americans experienced larger absolute reductions in pneumonia mortality after the arrival of sulfa. We suggest that pre-Civil Rights barrers may have inhibited their translating improved endowments into gains in education and employment.

This paper empirically examines the personal characteristics of truck drivers that are associated with a greater probability of driver turnover. Exploration of this phenomenon is significant in part because knowing who is likely to leave a trucking company helps decision makers in trucking firms identify effective measures needed to reduce driver turnover. Estimation results of a discrete driver quit choice model along with findings from estimating a driver wage equation, are used to predict the driver compensation needed to mitigate high driver turnover. These findings show that at the mean, drivers who stay on the job receive $54.25 (2018 dollars) more per week than drivers who leave, which translates to $2836.20 annually and is 6.02% percent above the mean wage of drivers who leave their job. The value of this annual wage differential is less than the mean value of the conservatively low estimate of $3654.72 (2018 dollars) computed in past research as the per driver cost of truck driver turnover. We interpret these results to suggest that it is cost effective for trucking companies to increase driver compensation. Indeed, truck driver wage trends do show a recent pattern of wage gains.

Individuals living in every region of the world are increasingly vulnerable to negative health outcomes due to extreme heat exposure. Children, in particular, may face long-term consequences associated with heat stress that affect their educational attainment and later life health and well-being. Retrospective individual-level analyses are useful for determining the effects of extreme heat exposure on health outcomes. Typically, future risk is inferred by extrapolating these effects using future warming scenarios that are applied uniformly over space and time without consideration of topographical or climatological gradients. We propose an alternative approach using a stochastic weather generator. This approach employs a 1 °C warming scenario to produce an ensemble of plausible future weather scenarios, and subsequently a distribution of future health risks. We focus on the effect of global warming on fetal development as measured by birth weight in Ethiopia. We demonstrate that predicted changes in birth weight are sensitive to the evolution of temperatures not quantified in a uniform warming scenario. Distributions of predicted changes in birth weight vary in magnitude and variability depending on geographic and socioeconomic region. We present these distributions alongside results from the uniform warming scenario and discuss the spatiotemporal variability of these predicted changes.

This project centers on the topic of rental housing affordability for southern metropolitan areas in the United States. In an attempt to understand how rents have changed in relation to incomes in cities throughout the American south, this study uses IPUMS data to compare changes in the distributions of rents and incomes from 2000 to 2019 for each of the geographies in question. The Constant Quartile Mismatch metric employed in this project was first implemented in the study "A constant quartile mismatch indicator of changing rental affordability in US Metropolitan areas, 2000 to 2016". This thesis hopes to extend the work done in this initial study by focusing the relatively novel Constant Quartile Mismatch Indicator specifically on southern metropolitan areas. By taking this geographic focus, this project hopes to illicit rental affordability dynamics that may be unique to the Southern United States.

Morbidity and mortality have been increasing among middle-aged and young-old Americans since the turn of the century. We investigated whether these unfavorable trends extend to younger cohorts and their underlying physiological, psychological, and behavioral mechanisms. Applying generalized linear mixed-effects models to data from 62,833 adults from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (1988-2016) and 625,221 adults from the National Health Interview Surveys (1997-2018), we found that for all sex and racial groups, physiological dysregulation has increased continuously from Baby Boomers through late-Generation X and Generation Y. The magnitude of the increase was higher for White men than for other groups, while Black men had a steepest increase in low urinary albumin (a marker of chronic inflammation). In addition, Whites underwent distinctive increases in anxiety, depression, and heavy drinking, and they had a higher level than Blacks and Hispanics of smoking and drug use in recent cohorts. Smoking is not responsible for the increasing physiological dysregulation across cohorts. The obesity epidemic contributes to the increase in metabolic syndrome but not in low urinary albumin. The worsening physiological and mental health profiles among younger generations imply a challenging morbidity and mortality prospect for the United States, one that might be particularly inauspicious for Whites.

Objective: To contextualize experiences of activities during the day and investigate whether the contour of the day is correlated with well-being during activities. Methods: Drawing on American Time Use Surveys, we employ sequence and cluster analyses to create distinct typologies of daily life patterns, and bivariate analyses to describe whether well-being across activities varies by these typologies. Results: We identified four typologies characterized by different primary activity of the day: leisure (22.7%), TV (22.4%), housework (47.5%), and work (7.5%). Individuals in the work and leisure clusters tend to report more positive well-being and individuals in the housework and TV clusters tend to report more negative well-being in experiences of activities during the day. We also found that well-being experiences in the same activity differed across individuals in the different typologies. Conclusion: Understanding the daily life patterns of older adults may be important, given its correlation with well-being during activities.

By age 77 a plurality of women in wealthy Western societies are widows. Comparing older (aged 70+) married women to widows in the American Time Use Survey 2003-18 and linking the data to the Current Population Survey allow inferring the short-and longer-term effects of an arguably exogenous shock-husband's death-and measuring the paths of adjustment of time use to it. Widows differ from otherwise similar married women, especially from married women with working husbands, by cutting back on home production, mainly food preparation and housework, mostly by engaging in less of it each day, not doing it less frequently. French, Italian, German, and Dutch widows behave similarly. Widows are alone for 2/3 of the time they had spent with their spouses, with a small increase in time with friends and relatives shortly after becoming widowed. Evidence from the European countries shows that widows feel less time stress than married women but are also less satisfied with their lives. Following older women in 18 European countries before and after a partner's death shows that widowhood reduces their feelings of time pressure. U.S. longitudinal data demonstrate that it increases feelings of depression. Most of the adjustment of time use in response to widowhood occurs within one year of the husband's death; but feelings of reduced time pressure and of depression persist much longer.

We show that cities with higher population density specialize in high-skill service jobs that can be done remotely. The urban and industry bias of remote work potential shaped the recent pandemic's economic impact. Many high-skill service workers started to work remotely, withdrawing spending from big-city consumer service industries dependent on their demand. As a result, low-skill service workers in big cities bore most of the recent pandemic's economic impact. Our findings have broader implications for the distributional consequences of the U.S. economy's transition to more remote work.

This paper examines the federal decennial censuses as sources of information for studying the social and demographic attributes and changes in attributes of American Indians. We have three main purposes: first, to describe briefly the history of the decennial census program, with particular focus on the treatment of American Indians in that program; second, to consider the structure and content of the 1900-1940 decennial censuses, particularly as they relate to American Indians; and third, to provide discussion of the quality of the 1900-1940 census data collections. We conclude that the 1900-1940 decennial censuses provide an especially substantial body of information to study American Indian individuals, their society, and social change over a substantial and important period of time—the first four decades of the 20th century. Of particular value is the fact that the data are available in microdata files from IPUMS for both samples and complete-counts of the American Indian population, permitting extensive individual-level analyses. At the same time, we recognize that all data sources including censuses contain errors and present opportunities for misinterpretation. Given the issues that we discuss, such opportunities for error may be greater in using the 1900-1940 censuses for American Indians than the average research undertaking. Nevertheless, we are optimistic that if these data are analyzed and interpreted with great care, they provide many opportunities for increasing knowledge of American Indians, their society, and social change over these decades.