Machines increasingly replace people in routine job tasks. The remaining tasks require workers to make decisions and to have "soft" skills such as problem-solving, critical thinking and adaptability. This paper documents growing demand for decision-making and explores the consequences for life-cycle earnings growth. Career earnings growth in the U.S. more than doubled between 1960 and 2017, and the age of peak earnings increased from the late 30s to the mid-50s over this period. I show that a substantial share of this shift can be explained by increased employment in decision-intensive occupations, which have longer and more gradual periods of earnings growth. To understand these patterns, I develop a model that nests decision-making in a standard human capital framework. Workers predict the likely output of uncertain, context-dependent actions. Experience is valuable because it reduces prediction error, allowing workers to better adapt using data from similar decisions they have made in the past. Returns to experience accumulate more gradually in high variance, non-routine jobs. I test the predictions of the model using data from the three waves of the NLS. Life-cycle wage growth in decision-intensive occupations has increased over time, and it has increased relatively more for highly-skilled workers.

Black, Latinx, Native American, and many Asian households often have less wealth than White ones do. This racial wealth gap may be smaller among union members than nonunion members if union membership positively correlates with more wealth and if that correlation is greater among people of color than among White households. We use summary statistics and regression analyses based on the Federal Reserve’s triennial Survey of Consumer Finances from 1989 to 2019 for our analyses. We find that households of all races and ethnicities have more wealth as union members than as nonunion members. This increase is larger for Black households and households of other races than it is for Whites.

We study the effect of state recreational marijuana laws (RMLs) on workers' compensation (WC) benefit receipt among adults 40-62 years. We find that WC receipt declines in response to RML adoption both in terms of the propensity to receive benefits and benefit amount. We estimate complementary declines in non-traumatic workplace injury rates and the incidence of work-limiting disabilities. We offer evidence that the primary driver of these reductions is an improvement in work capacity, likely due to access to an additional form of pain management therapy.

The first mass migration of Mexicans to the United States occurred in the early twentieth century: from smaller pre-Revolutionary flows in the 1900s, to hundreds of thousands during the violent 1910s, to the boom of the 1920s, and then the bust and deportations/repatriations of the 1930s. Using a new linked sample of males, we find that the average Mexican immigrant held a lower percentile rank, based on imputed earnings, than US-born whites near arrival. Further, Mexicans fell behind in the following decade. Mexican assimilation was not uniquely slow since we also find that the average Italian immigrant fell behind at a similar rate. Yet, conditional on geography, human capital, and initial percentile rank, Mexicans had a slower growth rate than both US-born whites and Italians. Mexican assimilation was also remarkably constant throughout various shocks, such as violence in Mexico, migration policy change in the United States, and the Great Depression. We argue that Mexican-specific structural barriers help to explain why Mexican progress was slow and similar across this tumultuous period.

Purpose of the study Forty-nine people were killed in the Orlando shooting at Pulse nightclub on June 12, 2016. The objective of this study was to examine the association between the Orlando shooting and sexual minority mental health. Materials and methods We used data from the 2013–2018 National Health Interview Survey and a difference-in-differences approach to compare changes in severe psychological distress (SPD) between sexual minorities and their heterosexual peers. Results Compared to heterosexual men, the Orlando shooting was associated with a 25.6 percentage point (p < 0.05) increase in SPD for sexual minority men in June 2016. We did not observe a similar pattern of heightened SPD for sexual minority women following the Orlando shooting. Conclusion This study suggests that the Orlando shooting was detrimental to the mental health of sexual minority men.

The Current Population Survey (CPS) is the nation's primary source of information on labor force participation and is typically used to generate national-and state-level estimates for a wide variety of indicators. Scientists are increasingly interested in linking contextual data measured over finer-grained geographies to the CPS. Geographic units such as metropolitan areas, cities, and counties are identified in the CPS, but a close examination reveals counties with large populations absent from the data while counties with smaller populations in the same metropolitan area are identified. We describe the process used to assign geographic identifiers to respondents and how that process leads to counties with large population being left off. We also describe strategies to recover or assign county identifiers for respondents who are missing them. These strategies consider the complex spatial relationships among metropolitan areas, cities, and counties.

Objectives: This study investigates associations between hearing impairment, household composition, marital status, and all-cause mortality for a representative sample of United States adults aged 40 and older (N = 198,902). Methods: We use data from 11 waves of the National Health Interview Survey (2004-2014) linked to prospective mortality status through 2015. The risk of mortality over the follow-up period is estimated using Cox proportional hazard models. Results: Compared to those with good to excellent hearing, adults with moderate to severe hearing impairments and deaf adults had 11% and 21% higher risk of death from any cause over the follow-up period, respectively. Household composition and marital status, as indicators of household social support systems, associated independently with the risk of mortality but did not substantively change the association between hearing impairment and mortality. Discussion: Hearing impairment represents an important contributor to the length of life for adults age 40 and older, independent of other important and established determinants of mortality.

The 20th century beheld a dramatic transformation of the family. Some Kuznets style facts regarding structural change in the family are presented. Over the course of the 20th century in the United States fertility declined, educational attainment waxed, housework fell, leisure increased, jobs shifted from blue to white collar, and marriage waned. These trends are also observed in the cross-country data. A model is developed, and then calibrated, to address the trends in the US data. The calibration procedure is closely connected to the underlying economic logic. Three drivers of the great transition are considered: neutral technological progress, skill-biased technological change, and drops in the price of labor-saving household durables.

Background The number of nursing assistants (NAs) in the long-term care industry is on the rise, helping to service the needs of an increasingly aging population. Understanding influences on NAs service qualities and resident satisfaction is important to sustainable long-term care services. To date, the research evidence about NAs factors and resident satisfaction has not been synthesized. We aimed to address this gap in the evidence. Research design and methods Utilizing a mixed-methods systematic review, we searched PubMed, PsycINFO, AgeLine, MEDLINE, Scopus, and Google Scholar databases for journal articles with primary data published from database inception to March 2021. Both qualitative and quantitative literature were considered and a narrative summary provided. Study reporting quality was assessed using the Joanna Briggs Institute Critical Appraisal Checklists and Critical Appraisal Skills Programme Checklist. Results A total of 25 articles, spanning 9 countries and regions, were included in the review. Study reporting quality was good. A positive relationship between aged-care resident satisfaction and NAs job satisfaction (n = 8) was identified. Resident satisfaction was enhanced through NA training programs (n = 7), quality of daily interaction with NAs (n = 6), and the overall contribution of NAs in promoting residents` experiences (n = 4) Discussion The current findings highlight the important role of NAs in improving resident care in long-term care settings. Nursing home administrators need to better understand the value of NAs and to provide supports for growth and development in their work. Continuing the professional development of NAs can not only improve their skills but also benefit resident satisfaction and organizational sustainability.

BACKGROUND Research on assortative mating – how partner characteristics affect the likelihood of union formation – commonly uses the log-linear model, but this approach has been criticized for its complexity and limitations. OBJECTIVE The objective of this paper is to fully develop and illustrate a counterfactual model of assortative mating and to show how this model can be used to address specific limitations of the log-linear model. METHODS The model uses a sample of alternate counterfactual unions to estimate the odds of a true union using a conditional logit model. Recent data from the United States are used to illustrate the model. RESULTS Results show important biases can result from assumptions about the marriage market implicit in existing methods. Assuming that spouses are drawn from a national-level marriage market leads to underestimates of racial exogamy and educational heterogamy, while the exclusion of the unmarried population (the unmarried exclusion bias) leads to overestimates of these same parameters. The results also demonstrate that controls for birthplace and language endogamy substantially affect our understanding of racial exogamy in the United States, particularly for Asian and Latino populations. CONCLUSIONS The method gives the researcher greater control of the specification of the marriage market and greater flexibility in model specification than the more standard log-linear model. CONTRIBUTION This paper offers researchers a newly developed technique for analyzing assortative mating that promises to be more robust and flexible than prior tools. Further, it demonstrate best practices for using this new method.

Cliometrics is the application of economic theory and quantitative methods to the study of economic history. The methodology rose to favor in economics departments in the 1960s. It grew to dominate the discipline over the next two decades, culminating in the awarding of the 1993 Nobel Prize in economics to two of its pioneers, Robert Fogel and Douglass North. Cliometrics has always had its share of critics, and some have blamed it for the diminished role that economic history had in economics programs in the 21st century.

This dissertation consists of three studies on the economics of education and labor economics. The first essay seeks to deepen understanding of high school student engagement and effort response to changes in incentives. Changing the incentives students face is one lever for educators and policymakers to improve student learning in the presence of student disengagement. A statewide postsecondary admission policy which changes minimum college admissions standards for North Carolina high school students wishing to attend college in-state provides a setting to test how student effort responds to incentive structures. Regression discontinuity estimates show that students respond to the admission policy by increasing GPA and decreasing absences and suspensions. These effects suggest an increase in student engagement, however, the boost in GPA is driven by changes in course composition, with students substituting away from more demanding coursework. These unintended consequences of admission policies on student course-taking decisions can lead students to miss important learning opportunities in high school, possibly generating detrimental effects on student postsecondary success. The second essay, coauthored with Hugh Macartney and Eric Nielsen, analyzes the effect of the Great Recession on racial employment inequality in the United States. It is well understood that adverse economic shocks affect workers non-uniformly. We explore a new channel through which unequal employment outcomes may emerge during a downturn: the extensive margin of establishment deaths. Intuitively, workers who are concentrated in less resilient establishments prior to an economic decline will be disproportionately affected by its onset. Using rich employment and establishment data, we show that black workers bore the brunt of the Great Recession in terms of within-industry employment changes arising from establishment deaths. This finding has important implications for the evolution of worker disparities during future downturns. Finally, the third essay, coauthored with Clive Belfield and Brooks Bowden, examines the use

The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre resulted in the looting, burning, and leveling of 35 square blocks of a once-thriving Black neighborhood. Not only did this lead to severe economic loss, but the massacre also sent a warning to Black individuals across the country that similar events were possible in their communities. We examine the economic consequences of the massacre for Black populations in Tulsa and across the United States. We find that for the Black population of Tulsa, in the two decades that followed, the massacre led to declines in home ownership and occupational status. Outside of Tulsa, we find that the massacre also reduced home ownership. These effects were strongest in communities that were more exposed to newspaper coverage of the massacre or communities that, like Tulsa, had high levels of racial segregation. Examining effects after 1940, we find that the direct negative effects of the massacre on the home ownership of Black Tulsans, as well as the spillover effects working through newspaper coverage, persist and actually widen in the second half of the 20th Century.

Time-use data can often be perceived as inaccessible by non-specialists due to their unique format. This article introduces the ATUS-X diary visualization tool that aims to address the accessibility issue and expand the user base of time-use data by providing users with opportunity to quickly visualize their own subsamples of the American Time Use Survey Data Extractor (ATUS-X). Complementing the ATUS-X, the online tool provides an easy point-and-click interface, making data exploration readily accessible in a visual form. The tool can benefit a wider academic audience, policy-makers, non-academic researchers, and journalists by removing accessibility barriers to time use diaries.

This dissertation consists of three chapters. In the first chapter, I analyze credible intervals for quantiles constructed using Bayesian bootstrap techniques and show that credible intervals constructed using the "continuity-corrected" Bayesian bootstrap (Banks, 1988) have frequentist coverage probability error of only O(n [superscript -1]). In addition, I show that these "continuity-corrected" Bayesian bootstrap credible intervals achieve the same frequentist coverage probability as the frequentist confidence intervals of Goldman and Kaplan (2017), up to some error term of magnitude O(n [superscript -1]). Furthermore, I demonstrate that credible intervals constructed using the "continuity-corrected" Bayesian bootstrap have less frequentist coverage probability error than those constructed using the Bayesian bootstrap (Rubin, 1981). In the second chapter, I investigate three strikes laws, which mandate sharply increased sentences for criminals who commit a specific number of felonies. Specifically, I analyze the effect of these laws on violent crime rates using municipal-level data from the FBI. I compare violent crime rates of border municipalities in states with differing treatment statuses using a difference-in-differences specification with a sample matched on pre-treatment outcomes. I find no statistical evidence that three strikes laws reduce violent crime rates. I rule out reductions in violent crime rates greater than 1.3 [percent] and reject the hypothesis that three strikes laws reduce violent crime rates at the 5 [percent] significance level. Additional analyses and robustness checks support my main findings. In the third chapter, I examine medical marijuana laws (MMLs), which legalize the use, possession, and cultivation of marijuana by individuals with qualifying medical conditions. Namely, I employ municipal-level data from the FBI to analyze the effect of MMLs on violent crime rates. I compare municipalities in border regions with different treatments statuses using a difference-in-differences specification with a sample matched on pre-treatment outcomes. I find a lack of evidence for MMLs increasing violent crime rates, but I cannot eliminate the possibility of small-to-medium positive effects. However, I rule out increases in violent crime rates greater than 9.9 [percent] and reject the hypothesis that MMLs increase violent crime at the 10 [percent] significance level.

While city migrants see their welfare increase much more than those moving to towns, many more rural-urban migrants end up in towns. This phenomenon, documented in detail in Kagera, Tanzania, begs the question why migrants move to seemingly suboptimal destinations. Using an 18-year panel of individuals from this region and information on the possible destinations from the census, this study documents, through dyadic regressions and controlling for individual heterogeneity, how the deterrence of further distance to cities (compared to towns) largely trumps the attraction from their promise of greater wealth, making towns more appealing destinations. Education mitigates these effects (lesser deterrence from distance; greater attraction from wealth), while poverty reduces the attraction of wealth, consistent with the notion of urban sorting. With about two thirds of the rural population in low-income countries living within two hours from a town, these findings underscore the importance of vibrant towns for inclusive development.

Previous research on suburban poverty has found evidence that the population growth of minorities in suburbs is associated with higher poverty rates. However, it has remained unclear whether the changing poverty rates result from a shifting population composition in suburbs, rising poverty rates among one or more groups, or a combination of these processes. Here I estimate the relative strength of these processes for Asian, Black, Hispanic, and White populations in the Chicago-Joliet-Naperville metropolitan area using data from the 2000 census and 2008-2012 American Community Survey. The results show that between 67% and 92% of the poverty increase in suburbs is attributable to the increase in poverty and population growth of minorities. Most of the poverty increase is linked to the greater exposure of minorities to the economic effects of the Great Recession rather than their population growth. However, some of the poverty increase in inner-ring suburbs was linked to the population growth of poor minorities, especially Hispanics.

Background: Physicians marry other physicians at a high rate, and theories suggest being married to a physician (MTP) may impact a physician’s productivity in different ways. This impact may differ by gender and rurality of work location. This study empirically examines MTP’s effects by gender and rurality of physicians’ work location. Data and Method: This study uses both the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) 2019 National Sample Survey of Physicians (n = 6,000) and the American Community Survey data 2006–2017 (n = 72,900). We conducted cross-sectional, multivariate analysis with interaction terms between MTP, gender, and rurality, controlling for various work and personal characteristics. Results: A female MTP physician works 2.9 fewer hours (95% confidence interval [CI]: 4.3 to 1.4, p = 0.000) per week than a female non-MTP physician, while a male MTP physician’s weekly work hours are not significantly different from a male non-MTP physician’s. Compared to non-MTP counterparts, male MTP physicians are more likely to have on-call work, and female MTP physicians are much less likely to have on-call work; male MTP physicians earn $6,635 more (95% CIs: $1,613–$11,657, p = 0.010) per year, while female MTP female physicians earn $5,018 less (95% CIs: $10,684 to $648, p = 0.083). Furthermore, the MTP-associated gender differential effects are more prominent for physicians in rural areas than in urban areas. Results from both datasets are highly comparable. Conclusions: MTP’s effects widen the gender gap in physicians’ work hours, on-call probability, and earnings. Understanding and examining the mechanisms for these gender differential effects are essential to promote equity in the physician workforce.

The Illinois Public Employee Relations Report provides current, nonadversarial information to those involved or interested in employer-employee relations in public employment. The authors of bylined articles are responsible for the contents and for the opinions and conclusions expressed. Readers are encouraged to submit comments on the contents, and to contribute information on developments in public agencies or public-sector labor relations. The Illinois Institute of Technology and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign are affirmative action/equal opportunities institutions.

The objective of this thesis is to probe four demographic events from an economic perspective. Specifically, we employ the Easterlin relative income hypothesis to provide some explanation on movements regarding marriage, nonmarital fertility, and fertility postponement. Easterlin claims that young adults decide on several issues based on their relative affluence. By the latter, Easterlin implies that young adults compare their current (potential) economic condition to the one experienced during their childhood. Thus, the higher the affluence enjoyed in childhood, the higher their demands in young adulthood. This is, in short, the Easterlin relative income hypothesis. We retrieve data from IPUMSCPS for the period 1981-2016 across the US for white non-Hispanics (due to data availability) to provide some evidence on the latter. Results corroborate the hypothesis. Relative income of young adults found statistically significant for all the three aforementioned demographic events. In particular, relative income is related negatively to non-marital fertility and women’s fertility postponement, but positively to marriage rates. In addition, we find that relative income behaves better than the absolute one (in size and statistical significance aspects) with respect to marriage and premarital births. Next, we examine the fertility rebound. The latter took place in late 90s early 00’s especially in the most developed countries. Conventional wisdom tests for the rebound with respect to HDI (Human Development Index) and GDP (Gross Domestic Product) per capita. We differentiate by testing the rebound in terms of labour productivity and female labour force participation, except for GPD per capita. Our analysis focuses on the turning points of two developed OECD income country groups (high and low income) that spans the period 1970-2016. The aim is to find out the factor (among labour productivity, female labour force participation, and GDP per capita) for which the turning points of the rebound (if confirmed) between the two groups, are closer, or coincide (statistically insignificant). Results show that differences in turning points are closer for labour productivity rather than GDP per capita or female labour force participation. Some thoughts on why the latter might hold are provided at the first part of the paper, based on demography, economic theory, and recent evidence. We conclude that labour productivity arises as the most important economic factor for the onset of the fertility rebound.