Over the past 75 years, household income in the United States has increased substantially. Still, by some measures, income inequality has increased as well. This has been the subject of contested public policy and political discourse. The question still stands: How can we better articulate the nuanced changes in American incomes? It is difficult to have conversations about income inequality without an agreed-upon set of terms, metrics, and concepts. United States Income, Wealth, Consumption, and Inequality, edited by Diana Furchtgott-Roth, examines the trends in income growth in the United States and explores various measures of income, including market, post-tax, and post-transfer income. Within each chapter, distinguished experts explain how income and wealth--and the way we measure t...

Residential and school segregation historically mirrored one another, with school segregation seen as simply reflecting residential patterns due to neighborhood-based school assignment policy. We argue that the relationship is circular, with school options also influencing residential outcomes. To explore this, we examine what happens when neighborhood and school options are decoupled via public school choice in the form of charter schools. We hypothesize that the expansion of charter schools could simultaneously lead to an increase in school segregation and a decrease in residential segregation. We test this hypothesis with data from the Census and the Common Core of Data in a national sample of over 1,500 metropolitan districts. We find that Black-White school segregation increased and residential segregation declined in response to increases in charter enrollment share from 2000 to 2010. In districts with charter schools, the average increase in charter enrollment share corresponded to a 12 percent increase in school segregation and 2 percent decline in residential segregation. We find no relationship between charter school expansion and school segregation between White and Hispanic students, perhaps because Hispanic students attend more racially diverse charters than White or Black students. White-Hispanic residential segregation did decline as charter enrollment increased. Our results demonstrate that educational policy is consequential for both school and neighborhood population processes. Decoupling these two contexts via public school choice results in their segregation patterns moving in opposite directions, rather than mirroring one another. Our findings also provide a cautionary lesson for unfettered expansion of choice without integration imperatives.

Teen employment effects are central to the minimum wage debate, but important indirect effects on education receive relatively little attention. I investigate the effect of changes in the minimum wage on high school dropout decisions. Consistently across two sources of variation and three individual-level datasets, I find that increases in the minimum wage substantially reduce the dropout likelihood of low-socioeconomic status (SES) teens but have no effect on other teens.

Finalist for the 2021 C. Wright Mills Award, given by the Society for the Study of Social Problems Race, place, and identity in a changing urban America Over the last five decades, South Los Angeles has undergone a remarkable demographic transition. In South Central Dreams, eminent scholars Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo and Manuel Pastor follow its transformation from a historically Black neighborhood into a predominantly Latino one, providing a fresh, inside look at the fascinating—and constantly changing—relationships between these two racial and ethnic groups in California. Drawing on almost two hundred interviews and statistical data, Hondagneu-Sotelo and Pastor explore the experiences of first- and second-generation Latino residents, their long-time Black nei...

We use newly collected data on property tax rates, assessment values, and property tax levies to study the effect of falling home prices associated with the Great Recession on local property tax revenues. We tease out the mechanical channel through which home values affected assessed values, and the policy channel through which policymakers responded to changes in the tax base. We find that the resilience of property tax revenues can be attributed to two main factors: a small correlation between home price changes and assessed values after 2007, and large increases in property tax rates in areas facing a negative shock in their tax base. Contrary to the mainstream perception, we find that the recession had a small but negative and lasting impact on the tax base. Negative shocks were offset by as much as 80-85% in the long run, implying that a 10% decrease in the tax base lead to only a 1.5% decline in property tax revenues. We document a large variation in responses, and look at the role of property tax rate and levy limits during and post-recession. Rate limits seem to reduce the ability of policymakers to offset negative shocks in the tax base and lead to a bigger decline in revenues. Jurisdictions with a levy limit are much more likely to smooth out negative and positive shocks.

The past two decades have been marked by disruptions in the way transportation is provided to society. Examples are carsharing, ridehailing services, and electric scooters. Understanding how sensitive travel behavior is during transportation disruptions is a key part of planning for the future of transportation. While the effects of people's attitudes and perceptions on travel behavior and choices have been studied in the past, their role in response to disruptions remains under explored. This dissertation explores the effect of attitudes on travel behavior and perceptions for two distinct disruptions: the advent of autonomous vehicles (AVs) and the COVID-19 pandemic. Before diving into such elaborate relationships, it is important to understand how attitudinal data is collected and measured. Thus, a study of the effects of different survey methods on the collection of attitudes towards transportation disruptions is performed. This dissertation finds that having a favorable perception of AVs is the most important factor in defining one’s willingness to use them. More importantly, those who only heard about AVs without knowing much about them were actually less likely to have a favorable perception when compared to those who never heard of AVs prior to the survey, reinforcing the need for thoughtful education and awareness initiatives. Additionally, gender also played an important role in expectations about the AV Future: not only are women less interested in using AVs as a pooled ride service, but also that the effect of attitudes on defining that choice was different for men and women. Regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, two different attitudes towards COVID were identified: concern about the effects of the COVID-19 response, and concern about the health effects of the coronavirus. Both shaped the ways people traveled, and how often they did so. These findings reinforce the need for the broad collection of attitudinal data and the incorporation of such parameters on future travel forecasting.

Despite being the longest relationships across the lifespan, the sibling dyad is the most under-studied relationship in the family system. Researchers have documented the harmful and beneficial effects of sibling relationships and family dynamics on individual well-being. Extending this research to middle childhood, the current study examined family functioning, sibling relational dynamics, and self-reported adjustment and internalizing symptoms among 8- to 11-year-old children. Path analyses revealed significant direct effects between conflictual family functioning and children’s psychological well-being. Significant interactions between family functioning and sibling dynamics suggested that congruent relational dynamics at multiple levels of the family system had a cumulative impact on the child’s well-being. Findings from the current study highlight the role of family functioning and the unique contributions of sibling relationships to children’s functioning, suggesting that consideration of sibling relational dynamics may improve treatment planning by pointing out additional targets for intervention and/or potential sources of support.

Pain is a major health problem among U.S. young adults. The passage of the Affordable Care Act's young adult mandate in 2010 allowed individuals to remain on their parents' health insurance until age 26. Although studies have documented the positive effects of this mandate on various health outcomes, less is known about its association with self-reported pain among young adults. Using the 2002 to 2018 National Health Interview Survey (N = 48,053) and a difference-in-differences approach, we compared the probabilities of reporting pain at 5 sites (low back, joint, neck, headache/migraine, and facial/jaw) and the number of pain sites between mandate eligible (ages 20-25) and ineligible (ages 26-30) adults before and after the mandate. In fully adjusted models, the mandate was associated with a decline of 2 percentage points in the probability of reporting pain at any site (marginal effect, −0.02; 95% confidence interval [CI], −0.05 to −0.002; weighted sample proportion, 0.37) and in the number of pain sites (coefficient, −0.07; 95% CI, −0.11 to −0.01; weighted sample average, 0.62). These results were primarily driven by the association between the mandate and the probability of reporting low back pain (marginal effect, −0.03; 95% CI, −0.05 to −0.01; weighted sample proportion, 0.20). Additional analyses revealed that the mandate was associated with improvements in access to care and reductions in risk factors for pain—including chronic conditions and risky health behaviors. To the extent that the results are generalizable to other health insurance programs, removing financial barriers to medical care may help reduce pain prevalence.

We study the effect of industrial robots in the presence of offshoring. A simple model shows that if robots displace foreign-sourced tasks, automation is necessarily welfareimproving for the domestic economy. If instead robots displace domestically-produced tasks, automation can lower domestic welfare through a deterioration of the terms of trade, even when beneficial in autarky. These results underscore the importance of identifying which workers are in more direct competition with automation. Using data on imports of industrial robots and exploiting variation across industries, occupations and local labor markets, we find that automation displaces US workers, but that its effect is weaker in commuting zones that are more exposed to offshoring. Industrial robots also lower the incidence of offshoring and their negative employment effects are concentrated in non-offshorable occupations. These results are consistent with the view that automation contributes to the reshoring of economic activity, which in turn tends to mitigate any adverse labor market effects for US workers.

This dissertation is composed of two chapters on the economy-wide effects of the Earned Income Tax Credit and one chapter on the effects of monopolistic market structure in urban rental markets. Each chapter considers unintended consequences of public actions given an interconnected market place. For chapter this is skill substitutability, chapter two spatial connections, and chapter three preferences and market power. Chapter one studies the general equilibrium incidence of the Earn Income Tax Credi by formalizing the theoretical mechanisms and quantifying its empirical importance. The Earned Income Tax Credit is a $67 billion tax expenditure that subsidizes 20% of all workers. Yet all prior analysis uses partial equilibrium assumptions on gross wages. I derive the general equilibrium incidence of wage subsidies and quantify the importance of EITC spillovers in three ways. I calculate the GE incidence of the 1993 and 2009 EITC expansions using new elasticity estimates. I contrast the incidence of counterfactual EITC and Welfare expansions. I quantify the effect of equalizing the EITC for workers with and without children. In all cases, I find spillovers are economically meaningful relative to the intended direct effects. Chapter two studies the county level labor market effects of state supplements to the Earned Income Tax Credit. Twenty eight states spend $4 billion to supplement the federal Earned Income Tax Credit, with several justifying the tax expenditure as a pro-work incentive. Yet no systematic evaluation of these supplements exists. I use state border policy variation to identify state supplements effects. I first document that subsidy rates are greater when a state’s neighbor already has a supplement. Next, I assess whether supplements affect county level EITC take-up, migration, commuting, employment, and earnings. Estimates are sensitive to the estimation design and sample used. While supplements increase benefits to low-income workers, results fail to provide robust evidence of increased economic activity.

India, which has long suffered from undernutrition, has seen a rapid rise in overweight incidence in the last decade and a half. These changes are characterized by significant within-country differences in overweight incidence that vary by gender and regional development levels. In this paper, we provide an integrative framework, linking the income-gradient hypothesis of obesity with biological, obesogenic, and environmental factors to provide an explanation on the emergence of within-country differences in overweight patterns. We utilize measured body mass index (BMI), along with individual-and household-level data of over 800,000 men and women surveyed in the National Family Health Surveys of 2005-06 and 2015-16 to identify correlates of within-country differences in overweight incidence. A decomposition analysis reveals that among women, in addition to increasing access to obesogenic technologies, biological factors are associated with overweight incidence. Among men, obesogenic factors related to technology use and health behaviors are associated with the rise in overweight incidence, but biological factors are not. At lower levels of regional development, overweight incidence is associated with greater access to obesogenic technology such as motorized transport, which reduces physical activity among men at higher rates than women. At higher levels of economic development, obesogenic behaviors, such as watching more television and reducing smoking, are associated with overweight incidence. Our results corroborate the call by public health experts for group-specific policies to stem the rise of overweight incidence in developing countries.

One of the most pressing questions facing policy makers is how quickly the labor force might return to its pre-pandemic strength. Answering this question requires understanding the employment and retirement trajectories of older workers in the pandemic. The labor force is roughly 3.8 million workers short of where it would be if we still lived in the pre-Covid economy, and nearly half of this shortfall is accounted for by those 55 and older. Meanwhile, the retired share of the population is roughly 2 percentage points above its pre-pandemic trend line.

Data from the 1870 census reveals who was denied the right to vote -- with surprising information about citizenship and voting during Reconstruction.

Introduction The use of mail-order pharmacies is generally associated with lower healthcare costs and improved medication adherence. To promote the use of mail-order pharmacies, it is important to understand the time trends in their use and whether these trends vary by population subgroups. Methods This study used the 1996–2018 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey to determine the annual prevalence of mail-order pharmacy use (defined as purchasing ≥1 prescription from a mail-order or online pharmacy) among U.S. adult prescription users and its variation by population characteristics. Logistic regression was used to determine the correlates of mail-order pharmacy use. Results were presented for medications and therapeutic classes most commonly purchased by mail-order pharmacy exclusive users. Analyses were conducted in December 2020. Results The annual prevalence of mail-order pharmacy use among U.S. adult prescription users increased from 10.2% (95% CI=9.3, 11.1) in 1996 to 17.0% (95% CI=15.9, 18.1) in 2005 and then declined to 15.7% (95% CI=14.9, 16.6) by 2018. Absolute differences in the prevalence of use by race/ethnicity, education, and health insurance coverage widened over time, whereas they remained stable when stratifying by sex, age, marital status, region, limitations in daily activities, pain interference, health status, number of chronic conditions, and access to medical care. Among mail-order pharmacy exclusive users, the 3 most commonly purchased medications were atorvastatin (16.7%), levothyroxine (13.6%), and lisinopril (13.1%); the 3 most commonly purchased therapeutic classes were cardiovascular agents (57.9%), metabolic agents (52.1%), and central nervous system agents (29.6%). Conclusions The prevalence of mail-order pharmacy use has declined in recent years and has shown significant variation across population subgroups. Future research should examine whether the declining trends and variation in use may influence the management of chronic conditions and the disparities in health and healthcare costs.

County of residence is not observed in the public-use 1970 and 1980 Decennial Census data, to preserve respondent confidentiality. Instead, the metro 1% samples delineate ‘county groups’ for each year. This prevents researchers from conducting research with these Decennial Census data at the level of any timeconsistent geographic unit smaller than commuting zones—and that is only possible using probabilistic crosswalks written by other researchers (Autor and Dorn, 2013). I provide and detail new populationbased crosswalks which allow researchers to probabilistically distribute individuals to their counties-of residence, enabling research with these data at the county level. To demonstrate the accuracy of the crosswalks, I compare the results to a variety of county-level data from the Census Bureau.

Urban areas across the Unites States are facing a housing affordability crisis. One approach some cities and states have taken is to reduce or eliminate single-family zoning. Singlefamily zoning prevents the construction of more-affordable apartments in vast swaths of the American urban landscape. This policy shift has already occurred in Minneapolis, Sacramento, and Oregon, and is under discussion in California, Massachusetts, and North Carolina, among others. Independent of any effects on housing affordability, changes to land use will have effects on transport. I evaluate these effects using a microsimulation framework. In order for land use policies to have an effect on transport, they need to first have an effect on land use, so I first build an economic model to simulate where development will occur given a loosening of single-family zoning. Transport outcomes will vary depending on which households live in which parts of the region, so I use an equilibrium sorting model to forecast how residents will re-sort across the region in response to the land use changes induced by new land-use policies. This model also jointly forecasts how many vehicles each household will choose to own. Finally, I apply an activity-based travel demand microsimulation model to forecast the changes in transport associated with the forecast changes from the previous models. I find that while there is opportunity for economically-feasible redevelopment of singlefamily homes into multifamily structures, the amount of redevelopment that will occur varies greatly depending on the exact expectations of developers about future market conditions. Redevelopment is focused in higher-income neighborhoods. The transport effects of the redevelopment are minimal. Average car ownership across the region does not change hardly at all, although residents of new housing units do have somewhat lower car ownership. Vehicles kilometers traveled, mode choice, and congestion change very little as well. This does not mean that upzoning does not affect transport in i

The coronovirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has prompted many school districts to turn to distance or at-home learning. Studies are emerging on the negative effects of distance learning on educational performance, but less is known about the socio-economic, geographic and demographic characteristics of students exposed to distance learning. We introduce a U.S. School Closure and Distance Learning Database that tracks in-person visits across more than 100,000 schools throughout 2020. The database, which we make publicly accessible and update monthly, describes year-over-year change in in-person visits to each school throughout 2020 to estimate whether the school is engaged in distance learning. Our findings reveal that school closures from September to December 2020 were more common in schools with lower third-grade math scores and higher shares of students from racial/ethnic minorities, who experience homelessness, have limited English proficiency and are eligible for free/reduced-price school lunches. The findings portend rising inequalities in learning outcomes.

This dissertation consists of three essays in the economics of education. The first essay considers the impact of charter school openings on student achievement, behavior, and demographics in the traditional public sector. Using longitudinal school- and student-level data, I estimate the effect of charter school openings on traditional public schools in Massachusetts and North Carolina by comparing schools near actual charter sites to those near proposed charter sites that were never ultimately occupied. I find that charter openings reduce public school enrollment by around 5 percent. I find no impact of charter openings on student achievement in math or ELA, and my 95 percent confidence interval rules out effects larger than 0.05 standard deviations in either direction. I find no effects on attendance or suspensions. The second and third essays contribute to the literature on immigrant integration, education, and language skills. The second essay, which is co-authored with Blake Heller, considers the effect of English language training on the civic and economic outcomes of adult immigrants in Massachusetts. Using a randomized enrollment lottery for one of the largest public adult English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) programs in the state, we estimate the causal effect of English language training on voting behavior and employer-reported earnings. We find that attending ESOL classes more than doubles rates of voter registration and increases annual earnings by $2,400. We show that increased tax revenue from earnings gains fully pay for program costs over time, generating a 6% return for taxpayers. The third essay of this dissertation considers the effects of English language skills on the civic integration of childhood immigrants in the United States. This work is single authored. Using an age-at-arrival instrumental variable strategy, I identify the causal effect of English language skills on naturalization, voting behavior, military service, volunteerism, and perceptions of neighborhood cohesion. I find that English ability positively affects the probability of naturalization (men), military service, and volunteerism but does not affect voter registration or measures of social cohesion. I find suggestive evidence that the effect on naturalization may be mediated by the effect of language skills on educational attainment. Taken together with my second essay, these findings confirm the role of language skills as a determinant of the civic incorporation of immigrants while highlighting potentially important heterogeneity across outcomes and gender.

This thesis focuses on how the frictions at the firm-level production decisions impact aggregate productivity. The first chapter quantifies the impact of trade secret protection on labor outsourcing, and consequently, on aggregate productivity. First, using event studies and differences-in-differences around the staggered adoption of the Uniform Trade Secrets Act, I show that better trade secret protection leads to increased outsourcing. Second, to quantify the resulting gains in productivity, I build a structural model of outsourcing and multi-industry dynamics and estimate it with data from the U.S. manufacturing sector. I decompose the cross-state differences in labor outsourcing into differences in firing cost, industry composition, demand volatility, and trade secret protection. Strengthening trade secret protection for all states to match the state with the strictest protection would increase the outsourcing employment by 29% and aggregate output by 0.8%. iv

This research investigates how diversity discourse unfolds as part of commercial gentrification when public and private growth actors call for increased diversity in a city that is majority Latinx in the United States. My argument is twofold: first, commercial gentrification is itself a racialized project to manage diversity; second, the discourse around diversity foments spatial strategies used by both state and private actors that dislocate immigrant communities and economies. This in-depth case study using Santa Ana, California, provides a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between diversity and commercial gentrification in a majority Mexican immigrant city. The research finds that, as diversity discourse promotes liberal colorblind practices within a majority Latinx city, it also contributes to distributing resources along racial lines. Diversity discourse presented a liberal and inclusive form of gentrification while also providing a justification for the displacement of immigrant-serving businesses by positioning them as exclusionary or backward. The dislocation or erasure of immigrant-serving businesses occurred through spatial strategies backed by the state to make new property available in the downtown commercial area. Removal was not only physical but also occurred through assimilation, wherein businesses ‘adapted’ to survive. Planning and development actors in this case failed to recognize the value of cultural and economic community networks while also diverting attention and resources away from immigrant-serving businesses. The case provides unique insight into the multiplicity of economic and political interests in a Latinx-majority place.