This paper studies the labor market effects of both documented and undocumented immigration in a search model featuring nonrandom hiring. As immigrants accept lower wages, they are preferably chosen by firms and therefore have higher job finding rates than natives, consistent with evidence found in US data. Immigration leads to the creation of additional jobs but also raises competition for natives. The dominant effect depends on the fall in wage costs, which is larger for undocumented immigration than it is for legal immigration. The model predicts a dominating job creation effect for the former, reducing natives' unemployment rate, but not for the latter.

Measuring change over time in areas such as family structure, employment, income, and poverty is of great interest to social scientists. The panel component of the Current Population Survey (CPS) affords the opportunity to observe short-term change in these areas. The Annual Social and Economic supplement (ASEC), with its wealth of information on income, health insurance coverage, benefits receipt, and many other topics, is a particularly popular resource for this purpose. However, commonly used methods for linking CPS ASEC files do not address how to link the ASEC oversample records across years, leading to smaller linked sample sizes and unreliable estimates for certain subpopulations. In this research note, we describe how to link individuals from the ASEC oversamples in the 2005-2020 data and the increase in sample size researchers can achieve by doing so. Finally, we illustrate the importance of including oversample records by examining poverty transitions over time.

This thesis investigates the theoretical definition, econometric estimation, and empirical realities of labor-market power. Its main chapter focuses on US manufacturing, finding that manufacturing workers received $1.10 cents of each marginal unit of production in 1973 but only 48 cents in 2014. I find that labor-market power is strongly correlated with adoption of ICT and automation technology. My estimates imply that labor-market power is significantly more important than markup power in US manufacturing. In the second chapter, I show thatwhen current production-based ”ratio estimators” of market power return values different from 1, they imply either model misspecification or input frictions (such as labor market power or labor adjustment costs). I argue that the latter interpretation is more plausible in practice, and that researchers and policymakers should largely reinterpret existing work using these estimators as measuring input frictions. Finally, in the third chapter I propose an estimation method that produces unbiased and consistent estimates of labor-market and markup power by flexibly modeling markups as a specified function of observables and fixed effects. My modified two-step estimator is simple in concept and implementation, requiring less onerous assumptions than popular proxy production estimators. In sum, this thesis argues that labor-market power is an important feature of the US labor market, and provides theoretical support and estimation techniques to study it further

Years of education is a commonly used outcome variable in many lifecourse studies. We argue that such studies may derive additional insights from analysis of years of education as an ordinal rather than continuous outcome. The conservative approach that we advocate for—the cumulative link model— produces estimates with acceptable properties when not the true model unlike the standard linear model, which experiences failures when inappropriately used. We illustrate this via simulation. In particular, studies of interactions can yield high levels of false discovery when the linear model is used for analysis of data from the cumulative link model; the cumulative link model avoids this problem. Further, estimates from the cumulative link model can be tested to determine whether the linear model is appropriate. We use empirical data to illustrate additional insights that are readily derived from application of the ordinal model and offer a suggested workflow for future analysis.

Tenure-track faculty play a special role in society: they train future researchers, and they produce scholarship that drives social and scientific innovation. Yet there exist substantial imbalances in the amount and visibility of scholarship, and the composition of the academic workforce. In this dissertation, I investigate the structural mechanisms that reinforce inequalities in terms of prestige, gender, and social class. For instance, the diffusion of research ideas are often viewed as a competition, where the best work spreads further because of its greater intrinsic quality, though elite institutions outpace others in terms of their production and visibility. Using methods from network science I highlight faculty hiring as a mechanism for epistemic inequality, and establish the theoretical trade-offs between university prestige and the quality of ideas. Next, publications are an important proxy for promotion and funding decisions across academia, yet men and women tend to publish at unequal rates. I quantify the unequal impact of parenthood on researchers’ productivity using causal inference, and highlight how paid parental leave policies are important in the recruitment and retention of women. Finally, there exist substantial financial barriers to educational attainment in the United States. I describe the socioeconomic diversity of the professoriate by combining survey data with large public datasets on income and education, and model the importance of parental education on faculty member’s placement within academia. I conclude by discussing how this lack of diversity is likely to deeply shape the types of scholarship produced and scholars trained.

This study examines the relationship between the 2004 introduction of California’s paid family leave (PFL) program on food security. While previous work has shown that PFL laws affect employment, poverty and health, there is no evidence so far whether such policies affect food security levels of families after the birth of a child. Estimating difference-in-differences (DD) and triple difference (DDD) models, this is the first study to evaluate potential effects on food security, which could be a potential mechanism explaining improvements in health outcomes for both infants and mothers found in previous studies. My analysis shows that California’s PFL implementation reduced the incidence of very low household food security by 2.29 (DD) and 1.98 percentage points (DDD) in the year following a birth. I find that the effects are driven improvements in food security among children who are 1.41 percentage points less likely to be food insecure after the PFL introduction. Subgroup analysis shows that the effects are largest for low-income households, a group that has been shown to highly value PFL benefits, as well as for families with more than one child.

Background. Cigars and cigarettes are both smoked, but much less is known about the former’s long-term health effects, due to its low prevalence and infrequent collection of cigar information in national surveys. Purpose. We conducted a follow-up mortality study of cigar-smoking men age 40-79 years in National Health Interview Surveys (NHIS). Methods. We used pooled NHIS les linked to the National Death Index to obtain follow-up from year of interview to year of death or December 31, 2015. We developed categories of cigarette and cigar smoking that accommodate dual and former use of both products. We used Cox proportional hazards models, adjusted for age, race/ethnicity, marital status, education, income and region to estimate hazard ratios (HRs, 95% condence intervals, CI) for mortality from all causes, heart diseases, malignant neoplasms, cerebrovascular disease, chronic lower respiratory diseases and two mutually exclusive categories: smoking-related and other diseases. Results. There were 14,657 deaths from all causes, including 3,426 never tobacco users, 3,276 exclusive cigarette smokers, and 176 exclusive cigar users. The latter had no statistically signicant evidence of increased mortality from all causes, heart diseases, malignant neoplasms, cerebrovascular disease, smoking related diseases or other causes. In contrast, the mortality experience of dual users of cigars and cigarettes and cigar smokers who formerly used cigarettes is similar to exclusive cigarette smokers. Conclusions. This study provides evidence that male cigar smokers age 40+ years had elevated mortality risks. However, after accounting for cigarette smoking and other confounding variables, we found signicantly increased mortality only among dual and former users of cigarettes.

The changing geography of male same-sex couples over the last decade has important implications for LGBTQ families and communities. While recent scholarship clearly documents that male same-sex couples are becoming more geographically diffuse, less clear is what locational factors drive this change. Some explanations center on the increased cost of housing in established “gayborhoods.” Others point to increasing social acceptance of same-sex couples opening up new residential opportunities. This paper explores these explanations in a spatial regression model that uses neighborhood attributes to predict change in the neighborhood concentration of male same-sex couples, while also accounting for spatial spillover effects from neighboring areas. Data come from the 2009–2013 and 2014–2018 American Community Surveys for four metropolitan areas: New York, Chicago, Atlanta, and San Francisco. Results suggest that gentrification of gayborhoods is generally associated with declining concentrations of male same-sex couples in these areas. But across the four metropolitan areas, there are notable differences in whether same-sex concentrations are more sensitive to housing values, rental costs, or the supply of affordable housing units. Outside of gayborhoods, increasing housing costs are generally associated with increasing same-sex concentrations. These findings add nuance to our understanding of gentrification’s impacts on same-sex couples and affirm that housing affordability is a key concern among same-sex populations. We discuss the theoretical and methodological challenges of continued study in this area.

The relative education hypothesis states that in contexts where university degrees are scarce, workers with bachelor’s degrees are sought after and enter cognitively skilled occupations; but as education expands across birth cohorts, some workers with bachelor’s degrees are unable to maintain their position in the labor market. In an earlier ASR article (Horowitz 2018), I found support for this argument; however, Furey (2021) shows model instability in estimates of the education–skill relationship. We should treat the results from these two studies as a range of possible estimates, and carefully consider interpretation of the findings in the context of the selected reference categories. Future revisions of the relative education hypothesis should consider that absolute and relative education effects might not shift concurrently, and also that labor market experiences may vary considerably by field of study and occupation.

By distinguishing among 426 occupational categories, but without including them as control variables, this paper explores the role that occupations play in explaining the wage differences among White, Black, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, and “other race” men and women were these groups analogous in terms of education credentials, immigration profile, English proficiency, region of residence, metropolitan area size, and other relevant attributes. We find that White, Black, Hispanic, Native American, and “other race” women derive important conditional wage disadvantages due to both their occupational sorting and underpayment within occupations. Occupational segregation impacts especially Black women whereas underpayment within occupation affects especially Native American women. On the contrary, White and Asian men not only tend to be concentrated in highly paid occupations beyond what would be expected as based on their characteristics, but also out-earn other groups within occupations. Black men is the only male group that tends to be concentrated in low-paid occupations after controlling for attributes. However, the male group that underpayment affects most within occupations is not Black but Native American men (although they are less affected than Native American women). This paper also provides a graphical analysis that allows identifying the occupations that bring losses/gains to the groups beyond what is expected as based on the groups’ characteristics.

Despite the special role of tenure-track faculty in society, training future researchers, and producing scholarship that drives scientific and technological innovation, the sociodemographic characteristics of the professoriate have never been representative of the general population. Here we systematically investigate the indicators of faculty childhood socioeconomic status and consider how they may limits efforts to diversify the professoriate. Combining national-level data on education, income, and university rankings with a 2017-2020 survey of 7,204 U.S.-based tenure track faculty across eight disciplines in STEM, social science, and the humanities, we show that faculty are up to 25 times more likely to have a parent with a PhD. Moreover, this rate nearly doubles at prestigious universities and is stable across the past 50 years. Our results suggest that the professoriate is, and has remained, accessible disproportionately to the socioeconomically privileged, which is likely to deeply shape their scholarship and their reproduction.

Exposure to Chinese import competition led to significant manufacturing job losses in the United States. Local labor markets, however, differ significantly in how they fared with respect to manufacturing employment. An important question is whether labor market institutions have an impact on the dynamic response of manufacturing employment to rising import penetration. We contribute to this debate by showing that minimum wages amplified the negative effect of Chinese import penetration on manufacturing employment in US local labor markets between 2000 and 2007. We develop a rigorous double-edged identification strategy. First, we construct shift-share instrumental variables to address the endogeneity of import penetration. Second, we use a border identification strategy to distinguish the effects of minimum wage policies from the effects of other local labor market characteristics that are unrelated to policy. Specifically, we rely on comparing commuting zones that are contiguous to each other but located in different states with different minimum wage policies. The approach essentially considers what happens to the response of manufacturing employment to import penetration when one crosses a policy border.

Over the years, Pew Research Center has explored the experiences and attitudes of U.S adults from different racial and ethnic groups. As the country continues to diversify along racial and ethnic lines, key indicators of social and economic well-being show that some groups are faring better than others. The charts below allow for comparisons between racial or ethnic groups over time on a range of measures including educational attainment, household income, life expectancy and others. You may select any two groups at a time for comparison.

To understand the relative advantage of a bachelor’s degree, we must consider the question: relative to whom? Using the Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement, Horowitz (2018) argues that educational expansion between 1971 and 2010 decreased college graduates’ skill usage and eroded their advantages relative to individuals without a postsecondary degree. However, the comparison group—individuals without a postsecondary degree—is inconsistently defined over time due to a change to the CPS in 1992; this group also includes individuals without a high school degree, high school graduates, and people with some college but no degree—three groups that have heterogeneous labor market experiences. I replicate Horowitz’s analysis and repeat it using two alternative education categorization schemes that address these limitations. I show that college graduates’ absolute and relative advantages in skill usage depend substantially on how we measure education. Notably, I find that college graduates maintain persistent relative advantages in skill usage when compared to high school graduates and individuals with some college, even as education expands. Although no classification system perfectly accounts for the full variation of the population, my findings demonstrate that researchers must carefully define key variables and comparison groups, especially when considering relative effects.

This is the first volume of a five-volume set of publications comprising the report titled “Transit Impacts on Jobs, People and Real Estate.” It is the culmination of four research projects funded by the the National Institute of Transportation and Communities (NITC), a US DOT funded National University Transportation Center. This volume includes a preface that review key findings of the prior four research grants, an executive summary that reviews key findings of all five volumes of the current report, the context that reviews the context of the present research including details on more than 50 fixed route transit systems in more than 30 metropolitan areas that were studied, and Chapter 1 on Developing Place Typologies for Transit Analysis. It presents a method to create a typology of places reflecting such factors as population and employment density, land use mix, centrality to downtowns, among others. This allows us to analyze transit station area outcomes with respect to the milieu within which those stations are located being high-, moderate-, low- and poor-mixed use/accessibil

Background: Prior studies demonstrated that wage disparities exist across race and ethnicity within selected health care occupations. Wage disparities may negatively affect the industry’s ability to recruit and retain a diverse workforce throughout the career ladder. Objective: To determine whether wage disparities by race and ethnicity persist across health care occupations and whether disparities vary across the skill spectrum. Research Design: Retrospective analysis of 2011–2018 data from the Current Population Survey using Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition regression methods to identify sources of variation in wage disparities. Separate models were run for 9 health care occupations. Subjects: Employed individuals 18 and older working in health care occupations, categorized by race/ethnicity. Measures: Annual wages were predicted as a function of race/ethnicity, age, sex, marital status, having a child under 5 in the household, living in a metro area, highest education attained, and usual hours worked. Results: Non-Hispanics consistently made more than Hispanic licensed practical/vocational nurses (LPNs/LVNs), aides/assistants, technicians, and community-based workers. Asian/Pacific Islanders consistently made more than Black, American Indian/Alaska Native, and Multiracial individuals across occupations except physicians, advanced practitioners, or therapists. Asian/Pacific Islanders only made significantly less when compared with White physicians, but more than White advanced practitioners, registered nurses, LPNs/LVNs, and aides/assistants. Based on observed attributes, Black registered nurses, LPNs/LVNs, and aides/assistants were predicted to make more than their White peers, but unexplained variation negated these gains. Conclusions: Many wage gaps remained unexplained based on measured factors warranting further study. Addressing wage disparities is critical to advance in careers and reduce job turnover.

Service work is seen by many to be less generative of working-class consciousness than non-interactive labor. This article interrogates that hypothesis using an original survey (N = 177) of New York State workers. Deploying intrinsic indicators for the intensity of service interaction and for working-class consciousness, the study finds that both the former and major demographic features fail to predict the latter while managerial status, workplace pain and discomfort, union membership, and job insecurity do. This supports an emergent view that services are broadly continuous with other forms of wage work and an older one that work itself is central to the production of class consciousness.

Economic growth might both increase and decrease income inequality, depending on the circumstances. The nature of this relationship matters at the city level as well. This paper examines the income-inequality relationship within U.S. metropolitan areas using cross-section and panel regression techniques over the 1980—2016 period. It finds that this relationship changes over time. A higher per capita income level was associated with a lower within-MSA inequality level in earlier years, but this association vanished later. For the 1980—2000 panel, per capita income increases are accordingly associated with decreases in inequality. In contrast, an increase in per capita income is associated with an increase in inequality in the 2006—2016 panel. The obtained results hint at polarization resulting from technological change substituting middle-skill routine tasks, but further research is still required to solve this puzzle.

Using the National Longitudinal Study of Youth 1979, I examine the association between income inequality and intergenerational income mobility in the United States. This study finds that rising income inequality is associated with strengthening the importance of parental family income to child’s income. Particularly, the evidence that greater income inequality decreases intergenerational income mobility is clearer when interstate migration problems are addressed. This evidence indicates that income inequality matters since it hinders the equal opportunity to succeed, especially for children from low-income families. If equality of opportunity is a value for policymakers, it provides justification for policy interventions and government efforts to reduce income inequality. A number of sensitivity tests confirm that the main results are robust and reliable.

Among those eligible to receive benefits, participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) has traditionally been well below 100 percent, especially among seniors (Haider et al. 2003; Currie 2006). In 2014, 83 percent of eligible individuals of all ages participated in SNAP, but only 42 percent of eligible seniors (60 years and older) (Gray and Cunnyngham 2016). Despite this low participation rate, there is a persistent need for nutrition assistance among millions of seniors. In 2016, 13.6 percent of seniors in the United States were marginally food insecure, 7.7 percent were food insecure, and 2.9 percent had very low food security (Ziliak and Gundersen 2018). Existing research suggests that seniors are particularly vulnerable to food insecurity and may experience severe health consequences (Leroux et al. 2020). Relative to food secure seniors, food insecure seniors have lower nutrient intakes and are at a higher risk of a wide variety of adverse health conditions, including diabetes, depression, activities of daily living (ADL) limitations, high blood pressure, congestive heart failure, heart attack, and asthma (Gundersen and Ziliak 2017). Although SNAP is thought of primarily as a federal program, states have been given the latitude to implement a number of policies beginning with welfare reform in 1996. These policies can increase SNAP eligibility by loosening the income and asset restrictions on households – and often do so more generously for households with seniors than without. Alternately, they can introduce or remove aspects of program administration that influence transaction costs or stigma, or they can increase program awareness through outreach. Ultimately, these state policies may substantially impact SNAP participation. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of these policy changes on the SNAP participation of low-income senior households as compared to low-income non-senior households.To our knowledge, ours is the first paper to investigate the roles of several state SNAP policies in senior household participation decisions. Our primary dataset is the December Current Population Survey Food Security Supplement between 2001 and 2014. We collect detailed information on eleven state policies and estimate their impacts on the probability of household SNAP participation using a model with state and year fixed effects as well as controls for household characteristics. Then, in an effort to obtain more precise estimates, we re-estimate the models with a single “simulated eligibility” measure representing overall generosity of eligibility criteria in place of individual eligibility variables, the six policies related to transaction costs combined into a single count variable, and single stigma and outreach policies.