We explore the impact of rising incomes at the top of the distribution on spatial sorting patterns within large U.S. cities. We develop and quantify a spatial model of a city with heterogeneous agents and non-homothetic preferences for neighborhoods with endogenous amenity quality. As the rich get richer, demand increases for the high quality amenities available in downtown neighborhoods. Rising demand drives up house prices and spurs the development of higher quality neighborhoods downtown. This gentrification of downtowns makes poor incumbents worse off, as they are either displaced to the suburbs or pay higher rents for amenities that they do not value as much. We quantify the corresponding impact on well-being inequality. Through the lens of the quantified model, the change in the income distribution between 1990 and 2014 led to neighborhood change and spatial resorting within urban areas that increased the welfare of richer households relative to that of poorer households, above and beyond rising nominal income inequality.

We explore the impact of rising incomes at the top of the distribution on spatial sorting patterns within large U.S. cities. We develop and quantify a spatial model of a city with heterogeneous agents and nonhomothetic preferences for locations with different amenities of endogenous quality. As the rich get richer, their increased demand for luxury amenities available downtown drives housing prices up in downtown areas. The poor are made worse off, either being displaced or paying higher rents for amenities that they do not value as much. Endogenous provision of private amenities amplifies the mechanism, while public provision of other amenities in part curbs it. We quantify the corresponding impact on well-being inequality. Through the lens of the quantified model, the change in the income distribution between 1990 and 2014 led to neighborhood change and spatial resorting within urban areas that increased the welfare of richer households relative to that of poorer households by an additional 1.7 percentage points on top of their differential income growth.

This study contributes to debates over only children versus children with siblings by comparing companionship patterns and well-being among adolescents with and without siblings in the home. The sibling socialization literature suggests children without sibling interactions may be at a disadvantage, spending more time alone and experiencing worse well-being. Conversely, theories positing a quantity-quality trade-off with increasing family size suggest parents may ensure that only children have higher quality social interactions than adolescents with siblings. Using the American Time Use Survey (N = 6,177), this study shows that only children spend more time alone than children with siblings, but also more one-on-one time with parents. Additionally, only children are less stressed when alone and have less negative feelings when with peers, but have less meaningful interactions with non-household adults than do children with siblings. Only children may be more adapted to spending time alone as well as with peers.

The Washington region faces serious housing challenges that undermine the well-being of many residents. Regulatory constraints on how much new housing can be built, what types of housing are added to the stock, and where that housing is located limit production and increase its cost. Constrained housing supply, coupled with regional growth, pushes up rents and prices for existing housing. These pressures cause especially steep housing cost increases and displacement in some communities that have historically been home to people with low and moderate incomes and people of color.

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Under the federal Affordable Care Act (ACA), California expanded eligibility for Medi-Cal, the state’s Medicaid program, to most non-elderly, non-disabled low-income adults. Although this change focused directly on improving the health and well-being of adults, it is likely that Medi-Cal expansion has had a dramatic effect on households with children. In recent years, as the federal government has attempted to dismantle the ACA, California policymakers have continued to push forward with efforts to protect and expand coverage gains. A better understanding of the impact of adult Medi-Cal on child well-being can help inform state efforts to expand health care coverage and improve outcomes for low-income children and families.

Using numbers of industrial robots shipped to primarily manufacturing industries as a supply shock to an industry labor market, we estimate that an additional robot reduces employment by roughly two to three workers overall and by three to four workers when robots are likely to be good substitutes for humans. The supply shock also reduces wages. The estimates far exceed those of an additional immigrant on employment and wages. While growth of robots in the 2000s was too modest to be a major determinant of wages and employment, the estimated effects suggest that continued exponential growth of industrial robots could disrupt job markets in the foreseeable future and thus merit attention from analysts and policymakers concerned about the economic well-being of workers.

Critics deride American suburbs as dull, aesthetically displeasing, socially isolating, unhealthy, environmentally unsound, and lacking in accessibility. However, the dramatic shift of the American population to the suburbs in the post-WWII period suggests suburban living may have advantages. Using data from the American Time Use Survey, this paper examines whether residence in a principal city versus the suburbs offers a more emotionally satisfying lifestyle. First, the findings show that demographically similar city residents and suburbanites engage in a very similar amount and composition of out-of-home activities. Second, the ratio of travel time to activity time for specific travel/activity couplets is lower for city residents for a few activities, and lower for suburbanites for others, but on the whole the differences in accessibility implied by these travel time prices are minor. Third, the activities in which city residents and suburbanites engage are associated with very similar degrees of subjective well-being (SWB), including both life satisfaction and affect. The most noteworthy difference between the two geographies is that suburbanites have modestly but measurably higher SWB than demographically similar urbanites in terms of feelings of happiness (hedonic affect), a sense of meaning (eudaimonic affect), and life satisfaction. These findings suggest that there may be advantages to suburban living.

The tragic killing of Michael Brown at the hand of Darren Wilson, a Ferguson, Missouri, police officer, further highlighted the long-standing disparities in health, education, employment, and overall well-being disproportionately burdening Black boys and young men in the St. Louis region. Since that event and the associated developments, actions have centered on attending to structural determinants, racism, and equity. However, less attention has been devoted to the overall well-being of Black boys and young men ages 18–29 in the St. Louis region and to the paucity of available economic opportunities. This brief report seeks to shift the focus by documenting regional trends in three economic social mobility indicators and crime rates. The analysis substantiates an urgent need for regional interventions to remedy the stagnant social mobility levels of Black males.

Background and Objectives The encore years, or later life stages when adults enjoy health and free time, are the prime opportunity for leisure to maximize the overall quality of life. Physically active leisure is widely known to be linked to overall subjective well-being (SWB). However, experienced SWB or momentary emotion during active leisure as well as passive leisure has yet to be examined. Research Design and Methods Data were derived from the 2012/2013 American Time Use Survey Well-being modules. Propensity score matching (PSM) was used to identify comparable matched samples of older adults. Results The PSM identified 211 older adults who reported a series of emotions (i.e., happy, meaningful, tired, sad, stressed, pain) during active leisure, and the comparable counterpart (n = 211) during passive leisure. Results from the Wilcoxon Rank Sum tests showed that active leisure was associated with greater levels of experienced happiness and meaningfulness, as well as with lower levels of sadness (p < .05). Discussion and Implications Physically active leisure is linked to greater levels of experienced SWB among older adults. Although more detailed roles of active and passive leisure for experienced SWB are yet to be verified, choices that older adults make in their free time may significantly impact their experienced SWB and, in turn, their overall quality of life. Aging and public health policies should enhance accessibility to active leisure to promote older adults’ SWB.

There is evidence that people with a higher income tend to have better overall social, physical, and economic well-being. However, poverty is multidimensional and means more than just a lack of money and income (UNDP 2009; Potter et al. 2012). The differential effects of economic poverty, such as malnutrition and exposure to environmental pollutants, have variable effects on human growth and development depending on the conditions to which individuals and populations are subject. Understanding how the long-term consequences of food scarcity and pollution will affect the human body in its entirety will better contribute to understanding social harms. As such, detailed descriptive statistics and multivariate linear regression were used to analyze skeletal and documentary data from the Robert J. Terry Anatomical Collection and the Coimbra Identified Skeletal Collection, with the goal of addressing the impacts of racism, poverty, and chronic stress on growth and development. Specifically, this study used Ecofeminist theory to look at why racism and poverty in the Terry Collection has a very different impact than poverty in the Coimbra Collection.

The tax code helps set the rules for how our economy works and how wealth and power are distributed. Low taxes on the wealthy and corporations result in fewer revenues, which lead policymakers to constrain investments in programs and benefits important to women. A powerful but lesser-known effect is how these low taxes also incent or enable behaviors that have negative downstream effects on women’s economic well-being, stability, and opportunity.

American working conditions have deteriorated over the last 30 years. One commonly-noted change is the rise of nonstandard and unstable work schedules. Such schedules, especially when held by mothers, negatively affect family functioning and the well-being and development of children and bear implications for the intergenerational transmission of disadvantage. This paper describes and compares the working schedules—in terms of type, duration, and variability—of American mothers in 1990 and 2012 in an attempt to assess whether nonstandard and unstable schedules are growing more common. Analyses demonstrate that evening work has increased in prevalence for single mothers but not for their partnered peers. Mothers in both single-mother and two-partner households experienced considerably greater within-week schedule variability and higher likelihood of weekend work in 2012 than they did in 1990. These changes resulted from widespread shifts in the nature of work, especially affecting less-educated mothers.

Standard practice within the correctional system dictates that certain needs, such as antisocial personality, cognitions, and peers, are to be prioritized when providing interventions. However, greater concern has arisen regarding the prevalence of non-criminogenic needs, including traumatic experiences and mental health problems, in the justice-involved youth population and whether these youths’ needs are being met while in the juvenile justice system. The juvenile justice literature indicates that Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), which may act as a proxy for trauma, and mental health concerns are prevalent in the justice-involved youth population. While these topics have been examined independently, the current study utilized a large sample of male (n = 38,100) and female (n = 12,762) youths on community supervision to identify whether these youths’ needs are currently being addressed in Washington State. Moreover, the effect of programming on these youths’ adverse experiences and specific mental health problems (internalizing, externalizing, or co-occurring symptoms) was examined to ascertain whether provided interventions ameliorated the effect of these needs on youths’ recidivism. Life course theory was also tested to assess whether early-onset youth differed from those with a late onset on their reoffending. In a statistically weighted sample of youth with need-service matches versus those with mismatches, results demonstrated that mismatches were not associated with increased recidivism. Additionally, mediated path analyses showed that only substance abuse treatment impacts the relationship between ACEs and reoffending for males. Internalizing symptoms presented as a protective factor that was mediated by substance use treatment. Conversely, both externalizing and co-occurring symptoms presented as risk factors, but the effect of the latter was decreased by substance abuse programming for males. Lastly, early-onset of deviance resulted in higher recidivism odds. These findings have implication for practice, insofar that they add context regarding which youth histories (ACEs) and attributes (mental health symptomatology) affect treatment efficacy, thus potentially reducing risk to the public and improving youths’ personal well-being. In short, the results suggest a move away from a hyper-focus on risk to consideration of both youths’ needs and their responsivity to programming.

Aging population is a worldwide phenomenon. In the United States, as in 2015 about 48 million Americans are over 65 or older, which accounts for 14.9 percent of the total population. And by 2030, one of every five Americans will be over the age of 65. The ramifications of an aging population are serious and potentially large because it challenges the fiscal and macroeconomic stability tasks through increase in government spending on pension, health care and social benefits programs for the elderly such as Social Security and Medicare programs. This dissertation composes of three essays that aim at examining the relationship between government policies and the preparedness for retirement and healthcare aspects of the aging population. In Chapter 1, I examined the effect of federal tax policy in encouraging working classes to save more for their retirement, especially among those who are approaching to be retired. One of the big questions that center the empirical research on retirement and saving is whether the American save enough for their consumption in post-retirement period. Although the answer is still unsolved due to disagreement over what constitutes adequate saving for retirement. It is of great importance to see how government policies help promote saving for retirement. The second and third Chapters examined the effects of the federal minimum wage expansion to home care workers on employment, and on the utilization and the cost of home care services that become increasingly important for senior and disabled people in the country. In sum, the dissertation provides important evidence on how public policies influenced economic behaviors among the older workers and families, and have critical policy implications in bolstering the financial and healthy well-being of the older Americans.

Racial and ethnic socialization are essential to the social development of racial and ethnic minorities and have several implications for their psychological well-being. However, the unique contributions of racial socialization and ethnic socialization among Black African immigrants remain understudied. This study aims to explore the mechanisms that underlie the association between racial and ethnic socialization and acculturative stress using a sample of 173 first, 1.5, and second-generation Sub-Saharan African immigrants in the U.S. This study used a path analysis to test an exploratory model that links race and ethnic socialization to acculturative stress through race and ethnic public and private appraisals and identity. Findings of the study revealed that a best fit model comprised of a partially mediated path for the relations of ethnic socialization and acculturative stress, and a fully mediated path for the relations of racial socialization and acculturative stress. Astoundingly, ethnic socialization accounted for about twenty percent of the variance in acculturative stress, yet, racial socialization was not a significant predictor of acculturative stress. As expected, racial socialization significantly predicted racial identity. Messages about race and beliefs and attitudes towards race inform African immigrants’ attitudes and . . .

Most adults spend almost half their waking hours at work. How people feel during work can have far-reaching consequences for their quality of life. This study traces male and female workers’ affective experiences at work to the gender composition of their occupations. To do this, we draw on nationally representative time diary data on affective experiences at work from the 2010, 2012, and 2013 well-being modules of the American Time Use Surveys, as well as data on occupational gender composition from the Current Population Surveys. Our analytic sample contains 5216 activity records of working at main jobs from 4486 non-self-employed workers. We find significant gender differences in the relationship between occupational gender composition and affective well-being: Working in occupations with higher percentages of male workers is associated with higher levels of unpleasantness and lower levels of meaningfulness at work for women but these associations are not significant for men. We discuss the implications of our findings for gender inequality in work-related well-being and for the stalled progress towards gender integration in occupations.

Since the early 1990s, the social safety net for families with children in the United States has undergone an epochal transformation. Aid to poor working families has become more generous. In contrast, assistance to the deeply poor has declined sharply, and what remains often takes the form of in-kind aid. A historical view finds that this dramatic change mirrors others. For centuries, the nature and form of poor relief has been driven in part by shifting cultural notions of which social groups constitute the “deserving” and “undeserving” poor. This line was firmly redrawn in the 1990s. Did the re-institutionalization of these categorizations in policy have material consequences? In this study, we examine the relationship between the decline of traditional cash welfare during the 2001-2015 period and two direct measures of wellbeing among households with children: household food insecurity and public school child homelessness. Using models that control for state and year trends, along with other factors, we find that the decline of cash assistance is associated with increases in these two forms of hardship.

Females live a lot longer than males in most parts of the world today. But that was not always the case. We ask when and why the female advantage emerged. We show that reductions in maternal mortality and fertility are only partial reasons. Rather, the sharp reduction in infectious disease in the early twentieth century played a role. Those who survive most infectious diseases carry a health burden that affects organs and impacts general well-being. We use newly collected data from Massachusetts containing information on cause of death since 1887 to show that females between the ages of 5 and 25 were disproportionately affected by infectious diseases. Both males and females lived longer as the burden of infectious disease fell, but women were more greatly impacted. Our explanation does not tell us precisely why women live longer than men, but it does help understand the timing of their relative increase.

A recent series of studies by the Equality of Opportunity Project has documented substantial geographical differences in intergenerational income mobility. These spatial differences are important because they suggest that place matters more than previously thought in determining economic well-being. In this article, we show that family characteristics vary widely across areas and simulations indicate that differences in these family characteristics can explain a substantial share of the variation in intergenerational income mobility across places documented by the Equality of the Opportunity Project. Additionally, we show that the characteristics of families that move differ substantially from families that do not move and that family characteristics differ by the type of move made, which raise questions about the external and internal validity of causal inferences based on the Equality of Opportunity Project’s analysis of movers.