The prevalence of Autism Spectrum Disorders continues to rise despite barriers of changes to diagnostic criteria and lack of insurance coverage. Increases in prevalence affect costs associated with a disorder since cost of health care services are often estimated based on utilization of services. This can also affect an individual’s ability to access to health care services. To equitably distribute autism services to individuals an accurate estimation of the true prevalence of autism is needed. Access to health care can be influenced by the type of insurance coverage a person holds. Other factors, such as socio-economic status, ethnicity, location of diagnosis and geographic residence of the patient may influence the ability of individuals ability to access health care services. This is potentially also true for autism. To examine the national prevalence of autism in relation to the type of insurance a person holds, the region of the country, recent provider visit and SES using a publicly available, data from the National Health Interview Survey was examined. Statistical methods determined change in variable proportions over time and a logistic regression model was used to determine the relationship between the predictor variables (e.g., insurance type, geography, SES, and provider visit) and a diagnosis of autism. There were statistically significant differences in the change of the predictor variables over time, yet the change in percent of proportion was small. The regression model revealed Medicaid (as compared to Military insurance, private pay and employer-based insurances) was significantly related to a diagnosis of autism. Medicaid enrollment appears to provide increased access to a wider variety of autism services compared to private insurances, which could affect the ability of an individual receiving an autism diagnosis. However, further exploration of other potential factors were inconclusive, and future studies should consider more the role of specific provider types as well as site of diagnosis (educational vs clinical).

This paper explores the long-run health benefits of education for longevity. Using mortality data from the Social Security Administration (1988-2005) linked to geographic locations in the 1940-census data, we exploit changes in college availability across cohorts in local areas. We estimate an intent to treat effect of exposure to an additional 4-year college around age 17 of increasing longevity by 0.13 months; treatment on the treated calculations suggest increases in longevity between 1-1.6 years. Some further analyses suggest the results are not driven by pretends , endogenous migration, and other time-varying local confounders. This paper adds to the literature on the health and social benefits of education.

Children's health indicators such as mortality and adverse birth outcomes are poorer in the United States than in comparable nations. These measures also show racial inequities within the United States, with Black children experiencing the highest levels. Mass incarceration may partially explain these findings. High incarceration rates can disrupt community functioning, influencing behavior and health. The purpose of the current study was to conduct a macro (state)-level analysis examining whether yearly state incarceration rates predict health outcomes including infant, child, and teen mortality as well as preterm birth and low birth weight. It was hypothesized that prior year incarceration rates would show positive relationships with all outcomes and that relationships would be stronger for Black than for white children. Yearly state-level panel data were gathered from 1990 to 2017. Weighted least squares regression used states' prior year incarceration rates to predict child health outcomes, using controls for overall state effects and year-to-year effects. Time-varying covariates such as state unemployment rate were also included to address the possibility of spurious relationships. Results indicated that as hypothesized, incarceration rates positively predicted infant mortality, child mortality (for Black children only), preterm births, and low-weight births. Relationships tended to be stronger for Black than for white children.

Racial disparities in labor markets are pervasive. We study a time period, the 1940s, featuring persistent labor-market improvements for Black workers, which we trace to the WWII production effort. Government war contracts not only increased demand for labor, generating labor shortages, but also barred racial discrimination in hiring. This combination led to increased hiring of Black workers into skilled positions, thereby raising their wages through at least 1970, long after the war contracts and requirement of non-discrimination had ended. This persistence is due to a decline in discrimination, manifested in part through union integration. The effects of WWII production transmit to the next generation, as evidenced by the higher HS completion rates of Black children, suggesting that labor-market interventions that reduce discrimination can increase rates of mobility among Black families.

Coyotes are ubiquitous in habitats across North America, including in urban areas. Reviews of human-coyote encounters are limited in scope and analysis and predominantly document encounters that tend to be negative, such as human-wildlife conflict, rather than benign experiences. The objective of our study was to use citizen science reports of human-coyote interactions entered into iNaturalist to better understand the range of first person accounts of human-coyote encounters in Madison, Wisconsin. We report 398 citizen science accounts of human-coyote encounters in the Madison area between October, 2015 to March, 2018. Most human-coyote encounters occurred during coyote breeding season and half of all encounters occurred in moderate development land cover. Estimated level of coyote aggressiveness varied significantly, with 90% of citizen scientists scoring estimated coyote aggression as a 0 and 7% scoring estimated aggression as a 1 on a 0-5 scale (with 0 being calm and 5 being aggressive). Our best performing model explaining the estimated distance between the human observer and a coyote (our proxy for a human-coyote encounter) included the variables distance to nearest paved road, biological season of the year relative to coyote life history, and time of day/night. We demonstrate that human-coyote interactions are regularly more benign than negative, with almost all first-hand reported human-coyote encounters being benign. We encourage public outreach focusing on practices that can foster benign encounters when educating the public to facilitate human-coyote coexistence.

A growing list of the more than 20,000 municipalities in the United States are considering pathways to achieve renewable energy goals. One emerging trend is for municipalities to incorporate energy objectives into their franchise agreements with an electric service provider. Franchise agreements are contracts between municipalities and utilities that grant the utility authority to serve customers in the municipality. In some cases, municipalities have negotiated renewable energy objectives into these agreements. It is still unclear how many municipalities have exercised this authority and to what effect. From a national dataset of 3500 franchise agreements, we selected five cities that adopted renewable energy or energy efficiency objectives into or alongside their franchise agreements for deeper analysis: Chicago, Illinois; Denver, Colorado; Sarasota, Florida; Minneapolis, Minnesota; and Salt Lake City, Utah. We generated seven key takeaways for other cities considering this pathway to achieve their energy objectives. In summary, municipalities can leverage franchise negotiations to pursue both modest and ambitious clean energy goals (i.e. 100% renewable electricity). This analysis provides municipalities with critical insight on how they can use this potentially formidable tool to achieve their own energy objectives.

Little is known about America’s worst drought outside of the area known as the Dust Bowl. I create a new dataset of county-level migration, drought, and Depression severity to study the impact of drought with an emphasis on migration. I find that the drought influenced county-level in and out-migration especially during and after 1934, which was the worst drought year in the last millennium. Counties that suffered extreme drought in 1934 witnessed an 8.1 percentage point decline in population (from 1930 to 1935) compared to non-drought counties within the same state. Net population declines related to drought continued through the late 1930s. These results contribute to our understanding of what circumstances lead to mass environmental migration.

Through interactions with their parents, children develop the basic foundations for skills that play a direct role in their adulthood economic well-being. What are the consequences of disruptions to family structure and parental absence on a child's long-run success? This paper provides estimates of the causal effects of parental absence on a child's adulthood economic well-being by leveraging an individual-level, historical dataset and a natural experiment that yields plausibly exogenous variation in parental death. Specifically, I use digitized records of nearly all mining accidents in the U.S. during the early 20 th century, and compare the adulthood outcomes of children of fatal mining accident victims to children whose parents suffered serious, yet non-fatal accidents. Adults who lost their parents during early childhood experienced a 15 percent loss of income in 1940. Most of the estimated earnings penalty is attributed to differences in employment. Specifically, bereaved sons are more likely to be out of work, report unemployment assistance, and work fewer weeks.

Starting in 1899, the United States fielded interventionist censuses in Puerto Rico, following its annexation in 1898. US officials intended to revamp the island’s institutions and Americanize Puerto Ricans. Censuses factored into these efforts. The 1899 US census included White, Black, and mixed-race categories. The 1930 census merged the Black and Mulatto categories into “Colored,” a scheme used through the 1950 census. In addition to reducing the number of categories, the US census officials tried to introduce a narrower definition of whiteness that would have excluded most Puerto Ricans. Although the US definitions should have produced a “blackening” of the census, Puerto Ricans subverted the official classifications. This “whitening” trend, most pronounced from 1899–1920, continued through the 1950 census. Notably, everyday understandings of race coexisted with the more restrictive official ones, and the official ones never replaced the fluid, multiple ones used in everyday life. Ultimately, the United States census dropped the race categories from the 1960 through 1990. Therefore, the strong US state could not successfully deploy transformative census categories.

Over the past year, New York City has grappled with the health and economic impacts of COVID-19, both of which have disproportionately harmed low-income New Yorkers and communities of color. Rates of unemployment have reached heights not seen since the Great Recession,1 businesses have been forced to close,2 and, to make ends meet, millions of New Yorkers have become increasingly reliant on aid policies and programs, like food pantries3 and expanded unemployment benefits.4 While the impact of COVID-19 has been felt across New York City’s economy, those working in specific industries and occupations have been hit especially hard. A recent Poverty Tracker report showed that nearly half of workers in New York City lost employment income as a result of the pandemic, but workers in industries like food, hotel, entertainment, construction, and retail saw more sizable losses.5 Poverty Tracker data has also highlighted that work and income loss was more prevalent among Black and Latino New Yorkers than white New Yorkers. Black and Latino New Yorkers were also more likely to work as essential and frontline workers, putting them at risk of contracting COVID-19.6 Finally, those who lost work and income during the pandemic were more likely to be living in or near poverty prior to the pandemic compared to those who did not lose work. The Poverty Tracker can also shed light on what helps families and individuals move out of poverty. Research has shown that stable employment, increases in income, and education gains can trigger movements out of poverty.7 These findings highlight that obtaining higher levels of education, like associate’s, bachelor’s, and more advanced degrees, can provide pathways towards economic mobility. But despite the known relationship between education and economic mobility, less than half of working-age New Yorkers, and less than a third of working-age Black and Latino New Yorkers hold a college degree. The findings presented in this report make it clear that New York City must focus on expanding access to college for all, in addition to creating stronger employment opportunities for those who do not pursue a higher education. This report uses Poverty Tracker data to analyze the occupations in which workers without a college degree are most likely to move out of a low-income status from one year to the next. In addition to examining how mobility prospects differ by occupation, we also examine the specific job qualities and benefits provided by jobs with higher-mobility outcomes for workers (in comparison to jobs with lower-mobility outcomes). Finally, we focus on the racial composition of the most-and least-mobile occupations, highlighting inequalities in access to higher-mobility jobs among New Yorkers. Findings from this report should inform the plans and policies that policymakers and business leaders implement to rebuild the city’s economy and to protect against future economic crises like the one brought on by COVID-19. The Poverty Tracker shows that far too many New Yorkers struggle to make ends meet and that the goals of the city’s economic recovery must move past a return to the status quo. Instead, the city must focus on expanding access to education and higher quality jobs for New Yorkers of all racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic groups, in addition to shoring up our country’s safety net so that families are better prepared for current and future crises.

Why do cities adopt and maintain laws that restrict land use, creating a shortage of affordable housing? Dominant explanations emphasize the economic incentives of homeowners to preserve their property values. The origins and racially disparate impacts of these laws suggest another motivating factor: the desire to maintain and further racial segregation by white residents. I characterize for the first time the extent of exclusionary zoning in the United States: across over 100 of the largest cities in the country, the median city allows multi-family housing to be built on only 12% of residential land. Then, leveraging exogenous factors for Black migration to Northern cities from 1940 to 1970, I show that increasing racial diversity causes cities to zone less land for multi-family housing. Analysis of public opinion surveys during this time period shows the Great Migration caused a racial backlash among urban white voters, which translated to policy action. This evidence suggests that exclusionary zoning was adopted to maintain racial segregation and that opposition to multi-family housing cannot just be explained by desire to maintain property values. I rule out alternative explanations of increased homeownership rates, different city institutions, or differences in federal intervention driving variation in zoning. These findings show how racial threat can be channeled into racialized public policy and provide a new explanation for inequality in housing markets today.

Background The benefits to adults who quit smoking increase over time as former smokers live longer, healthier lives. Youth who never smoke will benefit for decades. Thus, the long-term population effects of tobacco prevention and control policies may be substantial. Yet they are rarely quantified in evaluations of state tobacco control programmes. Methods Using a microsimulation model, we predicted the benefits to Minnesotans from 2018 to 2037 of having reduced cigarette smoking prevalence from 1998 to 2017. We first simulated the health and economic harms of tobacco that would have occurred had smoking prevalence stayed at 1997 levels. The harms produced by that scenario were then compared with harms in scenarios with smoking declining at observed rates from 1998 to 2017 and either expected declines from 2018 to 2037 or a greater decline to 5% prevalence in 2037. Results With expected smoking prevalence decreases from 2018 to 2037, Minnesotans will experience 12 298 fewer cancers, 72 208 fewer hospitalisations for cardiovascular disease and diabetes, 31 913 fewer respiratory disease hospitalisations, 14 063 fewer smoking-attributable deaths, $10.2 billion less in smoking-attributable medical expenditures and $9.4 billion in productivity gains than if prevalence had stayed at 1997 levels. These gains are two to four times greater than for the previous 20 years, and would be about 15% higher if Minnesota achieves a 5% adult prevalence rate by 2037. Conclusions The tobacco control measures implemented from 1998 to 2017 will produce accelerated benefits during 2018–2037 if modest progress in tobacco prevalence rates is maintained.

Recent cohorts of U.S. children increasingly consist of immigrants or the immediate descendants of immigrants, a demographic shift that has been implicated in high rates of child poverty. Analyzing data from the 2014–2018 Current Population Survey and using the U.S. Census Bureau’s Supplemental Poverty Measure, we describe differences in child poverty rates across immigrant generations and assess how these disparities are rooted in generational differences in the prevalence and impact of key poverty risk factors. Our estimates show that poverty rates among Hispanic children are very high, particularly among first-generation children and second-generation children with two foreign-born parents. Low family employment is the most signifi cant risk factor for poverty, but the prevalence of this risk varies little across immigrant generations. Differences in parental education account for the greatest share of observed intergenerational disparities in child poverty. Supplemental comparisons with third+-generation non-Hispanic White children underscore the disadvantages faced by all Hispanic children, highlighting the continued salience of race and ethnicity within the U.S. stratification system. Understanding the role of immigrant generation vis-à-vis other dimensions of inequality has significant policy implications given that America’s population continues to grow more diverse along multiple social axes.

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) substantially lowered the trade barrier between Mexico and the United States. I study the effect of American industries’ increased competition against Mexican imports on educational attainment at the postsecondary level. Using the commuting-zone-by-state level variations in the protection against import competition, I find evidence for a substantial increase in both enrollment and degree acquisition in public two- year colleges as a result of lowered tariffs on manufactured goods from Mexico. Educational attainment at four-year colleges, in the contrary, does not respond to NAFTA in a statistically meaningful manner.

This study examines place brands in U.S. cities and their relationship to high-technology industry growth from 2010 through 2016. It uses latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) to measure the multiple dimensions of place brands manifesting in travel guide descriptions in over 100 U.S. cities. Findings highlight five dimensions of cities’ place brands: Revitalization, Gastro Hubs, Local Centers, Vibrancy, and History and the Arts. Cities with a more prominent place brand of Vibrancy have experienced more growth in both tech employment and tech establishments from 2010 through 2016. This study has three major contributions. First, it illustrates the value of LDA in comparative research on place brands. Second, it suggests that cities’ place brands are dynamic combinations of five dimensions which collectively produce a unique local brand. Third, the study suggests that Vibrancy is the most effective place brand dimension in attracting tech investment and fostering growth.

While the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic fallout have hit many workers in the United States hard, lockdowns in response to the initial wave of infections affected the employment of immigrants more than U.S.-born workers. Immigrants experienced steeper job losses and are more heavily concentrated in industries and regional economies with relatively high unemployment compared to the U.S. born. But after rising to higher peaks in 2020, the unemployment rates for immigrant men and women dropped below those of U.S.-born men and women by July 2021. This issue brief uses monthly U.S. Census Bureau data from the Current Population Survey (CPS) to examine the extent of job losses and shifts in employment patterns among immigrant and U.S.-born workers from mid-2019 to mid-2021. It looks at the same three-month period in each year (May to July), as opposed to the last months immediately before the pandemic, in order to account for seasonal employment patterns. This analysis found a steeper drop in the number of employed immigrants than in the number of employed U.S.-born adults between May–July 2019 and May–July 2021, owing in part to border closures, slowdowns in visa processing, and other immigration restrictions that have reduced the total size of the foreign-born adult population. The total number of working-age immigrants (ages 16 and older) fell by 0.7 percent, or about 313,000 individuals, while the U.S.-born working-age population grew by 2.6 million. Over the two-year period, the total number of employed workers in the United States declined by 5.2 million, with immigrants accounting for almost 28 percent of that drop (1.5 million people) even though they comprised a smaller 17 percent of the workforce in mid-2019. Immigrants and the U.S. born experienced a comparable drop in their labor force participation (1 to 2 percentage points), but immigrants had slightly larger increases in unemployment.

This dissertation consists of three essays on the task approach to labor markets. In the first chapter, I document that since 2000 the polarization of wages in the U.S. labor market stopped, as the wages of non-routine manual occupations fell in relative and absolute terms. I analyze the end of wage polarization through the lens of a dynamic general equilibrium model with occupation-biased technical change, human capital accumulation, and occupational mobility. I show that wage polarization ended because workers in non-routine manual occupations had lower initial human capital and lower human capital accumulation over time, and because after 2000 mobility across occupations fell, which magnified the differences in human capital accumulation across occupations. The second chapter estimates the effect of the import competition from China on the intensity of tasks performed by workers within U.S. manufacturing establishments between 2002 and 2017. I measure the changes in the intensity of these tasks by linking information on occupational employment from the Occupational Employment Statistics to the occupational characteristics from the Occupational Information Network (O*NET). I find that this “China shock” led establishments to significantly decrease the intensity of cognitive and interpersonal tasks, and to increase the intensity of manual and routine tasks. These estimations are consistent with US establishments reallocating employment to become more similar to their Chinese competitors and have important implications for the design of public policies. The third chapter explores the importance of changes in the intensity of tasks performed by workers to explain the evolution of wages. Despite changes in the workplace, the literature is based on the questionable assumption that the intensity of tasks remains constant over time. I harmonize and compare over time the intensity of non-routine cognitive, non-routine manual, interpersonal, and routine tasks in the Dictionary of Occupation Title (DOT) and the O*NET. I find the new fact that a sizable part of wage changes is due to increases in the return and the intensity of cognitive tasks. I show that this fact has implications for three well-documented wage trends during the last decades: wage polarization, increasing college premium, decreasing gender-wage gap.

Since the late 1990s, the U.S. has experienced a substantial rise in drug overdose and overdose deaths due to the increased use of opioid drugs. This study estimates the effects of the opioid epidemic on crime relying for identification on geographic variation in the distribution of OxyContin, which in turn was driven by initial state drug prescription policies. Using the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) data, I find that compared to states with stringent prescription policies, the rate of property and violent crimes in states exposed to OxyContin increased by 12% and 25%, respectively. Thus, the supply shock of opioids combined with loose policies on prescription drugs can create unintended and negative consequences in non-health issues, such as crime. This conclusion is supported by suggestive evidence on mechanisms of mental health conditions, alcohol abuse, and illegal drug markets.

Background/Purpose: Psychological distress can influence cancer mortality through socioeconomic disadvantage, health-risk behaviors, or reduced access to care. These disadvantages can result in higher risks of cancer occurrence, a delayed cancer diagnosis, hamper adherence to treatment, and provoke inflammatory responses leading to cancer. Previous studies have linked psychological distress to cancer mortality. However, studies are lacking for the U.S. population. Methods: This study examines the Kessler six-item psychological distress scale as a risk factor for U.S. cancer mortality using the pooled 1997-2014 data from the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) linked to National Death Index (NDI) (N = 513,012). Cox proportional hazards regression was used to model survival time as a function of psychological distress and sociodemographic and behavioral covariates. Results: In Cox models with 18 years of mortality follow-up, the cancer mortality risk was 80% higher (hazard ratio [HR] = 1.80; 95% CI = 1.64, 1.97) controlling for age; 61% higher (HR = 1.61; 95% CI = 1.46, 1.76) in the SES-adjusted model, and 33% higher (HR = 1.33; 95% CI = 1.21, 1.46) in the fully-adjusted model among adults with serious psychological distress (SPD), compared with adults without psychological distress. Males, non-Hispanic Whites, and adults with incomes at or above 400% of the federal poverty level had greater cancer mortality risk associated with SPD. Using an 8 years of mortality follow-up, those with SPD had 108% increased adjusted risks of mortality from breast cancer. Conclusion: Our study findings underscore the significance of addressing psychological well-being in the population as a strategy for reducing cancer mortality.

Digitalization reduces entrepreneurship entry barriers. Better access to information, digital social networks, online entrepreneurship education programs (e.g., MOOCs) Reduction of uncertainty; Improving entrepreneurial abilities. Better access to financial resources, Fintech services, crowdfunding and –investing.