A large and growing percentage of households are missed in the monthly Current Population Survey (CPS). For the survey as a whole, the rate of nonresponse is roughly 13 percent. This is higher for Blacks, with the share for young Black men being about 30 percent. The BLS's current methodology effectively assumes that, with adjustment for various characteristics, people who are not included in a follow-up survey may not differ systematically from those who are included. The present paper, however, provides evidence that this may not be the case. With the rotation panel structure of the CPS data from 2003 to 2019, we investigate bias from nonresponse in CPS and its association with one’s prior labor market status, paying particular attention to how the relationship differs by race, ethnicity, and gender. Our analysis suggests that people are considerably more likely to be missing in a subsequent observation if they are unemployed or not in the labor force in the prior observation. We also estimate what the real labor market outcomes might have been when adjusting for nonresponse and undercoverage. Findings indicate that the current methodology may underestimate the national unemployment and labor force participation rates by about 0.7 and 0.5 percentage points, respectively. The gap between observed and adjusted unemployment rates tends to grow beginning in 2015. The unemployment rate is more understated for Blacks than for whites, particularly with a gap of about 3.3 percentage points for young Black men (age 16 to 34). The unemployment rate for Black women is understated by around 2.4 percentage points.

The United States has admitted more than 3 million refugees since 1980 through official refugee resettlement programs that provide temporary assistance. Scholars have highlighted the success of refugee groups to show the positive impact of governmental programs on assimilation and integration. In the past, however, refugees arrived without formal selection processes or federal support. We examine the integration of historical refugees using a large archive of recorded oral history interviews to understand linguistic attainment and economic outcomes of migrants who arrived before 1940. Using detailed measures of vocabulary, syntax and accented speech, we find that refugee migrants achieved higher levels of English proficiency than did economic migrants, a finding that holds even when comparing migrants from the same country of origin or religious group. This study improves on previous research of immigrant language acquisition, which typically rely on self-reported measures of fluency, and on studies of refugees, which typically assign refugee status based on country-of-birth alone. Our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that refugees, being unable to immediately return to their origin country, may have had greater incentive to learn or be exposed to English, which increased their linguistic attainment. Our results provide an optimistic historical precedent for the incorporation of refugees into American society,

To predict the effect of bankruptcy laws on entrepreneurial activity, we exploit the 2005 and 2011 staggered state-level increases in exemptions for the amount of personal wealth protected under Chapter 7 bankruptcy in the United States. We focus on three types of outcomes—firm establishments, entrepreneurship quality, and individual self-employment. Using state-, cross-border-county-neighbor-pair-, and individual-level data, the additional state-level exemptions do not affect any of the three types of entrepreneurial activities, and in cases where the association is statistically significant, the effect sizes are negligible. Our results are inconsistent with theories that predict that asset protection in bankruptcy improves entrepreneurial activity.

Over the past few decades, there have been considerable changes in union formation in the U.S. Using data from the Current Population Survey (CPS), we examine the relationship statustrends of adults aged 18-40 by age group and gender from 2019 to 2021 (amid the COVID-19 pandemic). For this profile, single is defined as those who are neither married nor cohabiting with a partner. Between 2019 and 2021, the share of adults under the age of 40 who were married declined slightly for both men and women in all age groups (except for women aged 35-39 who remained relatively constant). There were no dramatic shifts in relationship status prior to the pandemic and during the pandemic.

Voluntary home buyout programs have gained increasing popularity as a natural hazard mitigation tool over the past couple decades. However, a strong emphasis on the monetary value of disaster mitigation leaves open the possibility of inequity in distribution of the benefits of buyouts that may exacerbate social justice issues under conditions of increasing disaster damages due to climate change. Using a complete dataset of U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) funded buyout properties we describe the demographic makeup of neighborhoods and counties that have participated in FEMA buyout programs since the 1980s and evaluate differential disadvantages in the chances of receiving a buyout and the amount of money received by buyout participants across characteristics associated with social vulnerability. We find that urban counties with greater resources are more likely to receive funds to administer a buyout program, and that within these counties, minority homeowners are less likely to receive federal aid dollars. In addition, we identify a trend of increasing disparity specifically for Black populations. Our findings suggest that intended objectivity in how voluntary buyout dollars are distributed has led to unintentional inequities at multiple scales that may become more pronounced without changes to existing policy and highlight the growing need for social equity consideration in strategic retreat planning.

In 2019, Asian American and Pacific Islander women were paid just 84.6 cents per dollar earned by White non-Hispanic men, even though Asian women are 40 percent more likely to have at least a Bachelor's degree. 1 • In California, the state with the largest Asian American and Pacific Islander population, women earned just 76 cents on the dollar earned by White Non-Hispanic men, and in 18 states they earned 75 cents or less than White men. In 2019, the median earnings of Asian American and Pacific Islander women for a year of full-time work were just 84.6 percent of White non-Hispanic men's, and just 73.3 percent of the median annual earnings of Asian American and Pacific Islander men. 2 While Asian American and Pacific Islander women had the highest median annual earnings for full-time year-round women of the largest racial and ethnic groups in the United States, $55,000 3 compared to $47,299 for all women workers, 4 this hides large differences in the labor market experiences for different groups of women. The earnings of Vietnamese, Cambodian, Hmong, and Pacific Islander women were just barely half or less than the earnings of the highest-earning groups of Taiwanese, Indian, and Malaysian women. 5 * Of all 44 states and Washington DC with sufficient data to allow earnings estimates.

Married mothers who relocate are less likely to be employed after an interstate move than married childless women and nonmobile mothers. Here, we ask whether moving to a state with more expensive childcare is associated with lower odds of maternal employment among mothers who had been employed prior to relocation. We use hierarchical binomial logistic regression models, combining data from the 2015 Amer­i­can Community Survey five-year sam­ple and state-level childcare costs to as­sess mar­ried moth­ers’ em­ploy­ment fol­low­ing an in­ter­state move, con­trol­ling for states’ economic conditions. We show that employment odds for married mothers were about 42% lower than those for childless married women in the year following a move. Married mothers who moved to more expensive childcare states had odds of employment that were 18% lower than those of married mothers who moved to less expensive childcare states, showing that childcare accessibility shapes mothers’ employment decisions even among those with stronger labor force attachment. Moving back to respondents’ or their spouses’ state of birth and moving to states with more favorable economic conditions improved odds of employment as well. Overall, we show that moving to states with fewer childcare barriers is associated with higher levels of maternal employment, partly mitigating the negative labor market effects of interstate migration.

This dissertation primarily focuses on the topic of wage scarring. Wage scarring is the long-term negative disparity in wages that results from starting a career during a recession. Oreopoulus et al. (2012) and Kahn (2010) show that this disparity can last for up to 10 years and 20 years, respectively. I first became interested in this topic after witnessing the job search struggles many of my friends had after graduating college in 2008. I was lucky. I graduated in 2006. A tight labor market at the start of my career meant that I had relative ease finding a good paying job commensurate with my degree. Two years after I graduated, however, and the US economy was ravaged by the housing market crash. My friends starting their careers during that time were not as lucky. Without an abundance of available jobs reflecting what they learned in school, many were forced to take jobs to make ends meet instead. Through no fault of their own, the investment they made in their education had a significantly lower return than mine. I first study this topic in the context of migration. While it has been shown in the literature that starting a career during a recession can harm wages for college graduates, there is not much literature on the severity of this effect for other groups. In Chapter 1, I ask what happens when you migrate to the US during a recession. Although this question seems fairly straightforward, it is difficult to answer because of selective migration. As economic conditions worsen, potential migrants may become less likely tomove. To sidestep this selection problem, I use refugees as a my primary population of interest. Due to unique restrictions related to the US Refugee Resettlement program, refugees are not able to choose when they can migrate to the US. By exploiting the timing of these refugee arrivals, I am able to measure how much of an effect local economic conditions can have on employment and wage outcomes for refugees. I show that migration during a recession also creates a long-term negative wage disparity, especially for the most vulnerable migrant groups. I also study the mechanisms behind wage scarring. In particular, I want to understand why this effect persists. It makes sense why wage offers for inexperienced workers might be depressed during a recession. With less jobs available and more people applying, inexperienced workers face much higher competitive pressure. However, even after the economy recovers and these competitive pressures dissipate, the negative wage disparity observed with this cohort still persists. In the literature (Oreopoulus et al., 2012), job mobility is suggested as the principal cause. If scarred workers are not switching jobs once the economy recovers, they will not see increases in their wages. As these workers get older, the costs involved with switching jobs becomes greater. In Chapter 2, I show this disparity also persists because employers use prior wages to screen job applicants. This is a notable finding because it means that scarred workers may not see the same level of wage growth fromswitching jobs as non-scarred workers. As a result, it may take even more job mobility for scarred workers to reach parity with non-scarred workers. As recessions continue to disrupt the long-term career plans of young graduates and new labor market entrants, it is important to understand both the severity of this effect and the root causes of why it persists. This dissertation offers insight in both areas. I show that wage scarring can be especially severe for vulnerable immigrant groups. I also show that this effect persists partially because employers ask job applicants about their current and past salary. These contributions help to underline the importance of studying wage scarring and also offer insight into ways to potentially reverse this effect through policy

Introduction: This report examines the key demographic and socioeconomic trends in Brooklyn, New York between 1990 and 2017. The report focuses on the two community districts that have the first- and second- largest Latino populations in the borough: Bushwick (community district 4) and Sunset Park/Windsor Terrace (community district 7). Methods: This report uses the American Community Survey PUMS (Public Use Microdata Series) data for all years released by the Census Bureau and reorganized for public use by the Minnesota Population Center, University of Minnesota, IPUMSusa, (https://usa.ipums.org/usa/index.shtml). See Public Use Microdata Series Steven Ruggles, J. Trent Alexander, Katie Genadek, Ronald Goeken, Matthew B. Schroeder, and Matthew Sobek. Integrated Public Use Microdata Series: Version 5.0 [Machine-readable database]. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2017.This report analyzes data from PUMAS 05307 (1990) and 04012 (2000/2010/2017) for Sunset Park/Windsor Terrace and PUMAS 05304 (1990) and 04002 (2000/2010/2017) for Bushwick in Brooklyn, New York. Discussion: Over the past thirty years, the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Sunset Park/Windsor Terrace and Bushwick have experienced marked racial and ethnic changes. While the racial and ethnic composition of these areas has gone through considerable transformations, the Latino population remained the dominant group between 1990 and 2017. However, the share of the Latino population declined over this period, with a concurrent growth in the Asian population in Sunset Park/Windsor Terrace (from 13.1% in 1990 to 32.1% in 2017) and the non-Hispanic white population in Bushwick (from 5.1% in 1990 to 21.5% in 2017). While the median income for non-Hispanic white and non-Hispanic black households gradually increased, the income level of Latino and Asian households remained stable or declined in both neighborhoods over the same period.

The Link-Lives project, which is a cross-disciplinary research project, will take the difficult and time-consuming task of combining information from diverse archival sources relating to any given person, to build life-courses and family relations from 1787 to the present and make them freely and easily available. This will, on the one hand, expand the scope of registry-based research from decades to centuries and open up new avenues for intergenerational research in the health and social sciences and, on the other hand, ease the access to some of Denmark's digital treasures to the average citizen. It is a collaboration of the Danish National Archives, the Copenhagen City Archives and the University of Copenhagen. It is funded through two grants by the Innovation Fund Denmark, the Carlsberg Foundation and two small grants by the Ministry of Culture.

Why—contrary to much expert and popular opinion—more education may not be the answer to skyrocketing inequality. For generations, Americans have looked to education as the solution to economic disadvantage. Yet, although more people are earning degrees, the gap between rich and poor is widening. Cristina Groeger delves into the history of this seeming contradiction, explaining how education came to be seen as a panacea even as it paved the way for deepening inequality. The Education Trap returns to the first decades of the twentieth century, when Americans were grappling with the unprecedented inequities of the Gilded Age. Groeger’s test case is the city of Boston, which spent heavily on public schools. She examines how workplaces came to depend on an army of white-collar staff, largely women and second-generation immigrants, trained in secondary schools. But Groeger finds that the shift to more educated labor had negative consequences—both intended and unintended—for many workers. Employers supported training in schools in order to undermine the influence of craft unions, and so shift workplace power toward management. And advanced educational credentials became a means of controlling access to high-paying professional and business jobs, concentrating power and wealth. Formal education thus became a central force in maintaining inequality. The idea that more education should be the primary means of reducing inequality may be appealing to politicians and voters, but Groeger warns that it may be a dangerous policy trap. If we want a more equitable society, we should not just prescribe more time in the classroom, but fight for justice in the workplace.

Global surface temperatures are projected to escalate in intensity, duration, and frequency, particularly in urban areas, which are dominated by landscapes of imperviousness, accelerating the Urban Heat Island Phenomena (UHI). Geographies of thermal inequality emerge engendered by disproportionality in socioeconomic and demographic characteristics and variances in the magnitude of heat exposure. This study integrated the biophysical exposure index and the socioeconomic index to generate composite heat vulnerability indices at multiple time scales and applying different weighting mechanics. Outputs of the raster-based and vector-based approaches were compared. Remote sensing indices measuring vegetation health, surface water content, urban imperviousness, and bareness were used to characterize the biophysical metric. The objective was to visualize areas most susceptible accurately and precisely to the Urban Heat Island phenomena while ensuring both scientific and policy applications of the spatial representations.

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

The COVID-19 pandemic significantly affected data collection for the nation's primary source of household-level labor force data, the Current Population Survey (CPS). In the first four months of the pandemic period (March-June 2020) the average month-over-month nonresponse rate increased by 58 percent, while the size of newly entering cohorts declined by 37 percent relative to the prior 15 months. Together, these factors reduced the overall sample size of the CPS by around 16 percent. We hypothesize that these changes, and significant associated shifts in the demographic composition of the sample, were caused by the cessation of in-person interviewing. Geographic variation in nonresponse over this period does not appear related to variation in COVID case rates across metro areas or states. Using this change in interview method as a natural experiment, we compare labor market outcomes of those who entered the survey pre- and post-COVID pandemic and find that the change in how individuals were recruited into the survey affected estimates of unemployment and labor force participation. In an exercise generating a counterfactual group of “missing” respondents, we estimate that, between April and August of 2020, the average unemployment rate was 0.5 to 0.7 percentage points higher, and the labor force participation rate was 0.4 to 0.8 percentage points lower than estimates using the actual sample of respondents. One implication of these results is that web-based surveys, which are increasingly relied on in empirical labor market studies, may fail to reach important subpopulations of the labor market and that reweighting is unlikely to address the selection on outcomes we document.

During 23 October–16 November 2020, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene investigated coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreaks at 2 construction sites. Challenges in adhering to the New York State Department of Health “Interim COVID-19 Guidance for Construction” were reported. To minimize outbreaks, jurisdictions should increase tailored outreach to the construction industry, emphasizing infection prevention.

The quality of life literature revealed the role that natural resources and local consumption amenities play in household preferences for cities and their growing importance in determining the success of cities. As women's control over household resources has increased, a growing body of consumer behavior literature has been documenting gender differences in preferences for consumer goods. Yet, the quality of life literature does not seem to make any distinction along gender lines in determining preferences for local consumption amenities. We estimate the quality of life across US cities separately for unmarried men and women, and using a rich set of location-specific amenities, examine which amenities cause preferences to differ between men and women. Our results suggest that men and women's valuations of cities are correlated, suggesting commonality in preferences for many location-based amenities, most notably natural resources, but there are also important deviations in valuations especially for local public goods and gender role attitudes.

IMPORTANCE Immigration to the US results in greater racial/ethnic diversity. However, the contribution of immigration to the diversity of the US health care professional (HCP) work force and its contribution to health care are poorly documented. Objective To examine the sociodemographic characteristics and workforce outcomes of non–US-born and US-born HCPs. Design, Setting, and Participants This cross-sectional study used national US Census Bureau data on US-born and non–US-born HCPs from the American Community Survey between 2010 and 2018. Demographic characteristics and occupational data for physicians, advanced practice registered nurses, physician assistants, registered nurses, licensed practical nurses or licensed vocational nurses, and other HCPs were included for analysis. Data were analyzed between December 2020 and February 2021. Exposures Nativity status, defined as US-born HCP vs non–US-born HCP (further stratified by <10 years or ≥10 years of stay in the US). Main Outcomes and Measures Annual hours worked, proportion of work done at night, residence in medically underserved areas and populations, and work in skilled nursing/home health settings. Inverse probability weighting of 3 nativity status groups was carried out using logistic regression. F test statistics were used to test across-group differences. Data were weighted using American Community Survey sampling weights. Results Of a total of 657 455 HCPs analyzed (497 180 [75.5%] women; mean [SD] age, 43.7 [13.0] years; 518 317 [75.6%] White, 54 233 [10.8%] Black, and 60 680 [9.6%] Asian), non–US-born HCPs (105 331 in total) represented 17.3% (95% CI, 17.2%-17.4%) of HCPs between 2010 and 2018. They were older (mean [SD] age, 44.7 [11.6] years) and had more education (75 227 [70.1%] HCPs completed college) compared with US-born HCPs (mean [SD] age, 43.4 [13.3] years; 304 601 [55.2%] completed college). Nearly half of non–US-born HCPs (47 735 [43.0%]) were Asian. In major metropolitan areas, non–US-born HCPs represented 40% or more of all HCPs. Compared with US-born HCPs, non–US-born HCPs with less than 10 years and 10 or more years of stay worked 32.3 hours (95% CI, 19.2 to 45.4 hours) and 71.6 hours (95% CI, 65.1 to 78.2 hours) more per year, respectively. Compared with US-born HCPs, non–US-born HCPs were more likely to reside in areas with shortages of health care professionals (estimated percentage: <10 years, 75.3%; ≥10 years, 62.8% vs US-born, 8.3%) and work in home health settings (estimated percentage: <10 years, 17.5%; ≥10 years, 13.1% vs US-born, 12.8%). Conclusions and Relevance The contributions of non–US-born HCPs to US health care are substantial and vary by profession. Greater efforts should be made to streamline their immigration process and to harmonize training and licensure requirements.

Much has been written on the positive effect of direct democracy (initiatives, referendums) on voter turnout. However, we have limited knowledge about potential differential effects on voters belonging to various ethnic groups. The paper argues that depending on a group’s responsiveness to the political context, direct democracy can (dis-)integrate voters (from) into the electorate. Empirical analysis of Current Population Survey (CPS) voting supplement survey data, together with data on the absolute use of direct democracy across US states, corroborates this theoretical expectation, however lending more support for the disintegrating assumption. Frequent direct democratic elections further widen the negative voting gap between first-generation Asian voters and voters living in the US for three generations or longer, whereas they tend to diminish this voting gap for first-generation Hispanic voters. The disintegrative pattern for first-generation Asian voters remains even significant when excluding California from the state sample, yet not the integrative tendency for first-generation Hispanics. Additional analyses using alternative measures of direct democracy and voting, and applying statistical adjustments to address causality concerns, confirm the robustness of these findings, which shed light on the so-far underexplored (dis-)integrative potential of political institutions.

Proposition 209 banned race-based affirmative action at California public universities in 1998. Using a difference-in-difference research design and a newly-constructed longitudinal database linking all 1994- 2002 University of California applicants to their educational experiences and wages, I show that ending affirmative action caused underrepresented minority (URM) freshman applicants to cascade into lowerquality colleges. The “Mismatch Hypothesis” implies that this cascade would provide net educational benefits to URM applicants, but their degree attainment declined overall and in STEM fields, especially among less academically qualified applicants. URM applicants’ average wages in their 20s and 30s subsequently declined, driven by declines among Hispanic applicants. These declines are not explained by URM students’ performance or persistence in STEM course sequences, which were unchanged after Prop 209. Ending affirmative action also deterred thousands of qualified URM students from applying to any UC campus. These findings provide causal evidence that banning affirmative action exacerbates socioeconomic inequities. Complementary regression discontinuity and institutional value-added analyses suggest that affirmative action’s net educational and wage benefits for URM applicants exceed its net costs for on-the-margin white and Asian applicants.