Despite the introduction of multiple factors, multidimensional approaches cannot represent the complexity of the objective determinants of well-being (ODW). This paper proposes an alternative OWD model that adds a systemic approach, by using Bayesian networks algorithms to discover a directed two level network of variables nested in subnetworks of determinants. The network was inferred by using subsamples of the 2013 version of the American Community Survey. Network analysis methods applied to the model provided new insights concerning single ODW relevance and the roles that are useful to focus selective welfare interventions; they also offered a big picture that is fundamental to reason about the unpremeditated universal character of the selective US welfare policies.

Analyzing microdata covering more than 30 million U.S. households, I document that families with a financially sophisticated husband are more likely to participate in the stock market than those with a wife of equal financial sophistication. This pattern is not driven by gender differences in risk preference or selection effects, but can be explained by gender norms. The baseline effect is attenuated among individuals brought up by working mothers, but becomes stronger among descendants of pre-industrial societies in which women specialized in activities within the home and households with a husband born and raised in a southern state. In a controlled experiment, I show that gender identity has a causal impact by constraining womens influence over intra-household financial decision making. These findings suggest that gender identity norms can have real consequences for household financial well-being.

Parents differential treatment is a common family dynamic that has been linked to youths well-being in childhood and adolescence in European American families. Much less is known, however, about this family process in other ethnic groups. The authors examined the longitudinal associations between parents differential treatment (PDT) and both depressive symptoms and risky behaviors of Mexican-origin sibling pairs from early adolescence through young adulthood. They also tested the moderating roles of cultural orientations as well as youth age, gender and sibling dyad gender constellation in these associations. Participants were mothers, fathers, and 2 siblings from 246 Mexican-origin families who participated in individual home interviews on 3 occasions over 8 years. Multilevel models revealed that, controlling for dyadic parentchild relationship qualities (i.e., absolute levels of warmth and conflict), adolescents who had less favorable treatment by mothers relative to their sibling reported more depressive symptoms and risky behavior, on average. Findings for fathers PDT emerged at the within-person level indicating that, on occasions when adolescents experienced less favorable treatment by fathers than usual, they reported more depressive symptoms and risky behavior. However, some of these effects were moderated by youth age and cultural socialization. For example, adolescents who experienced relatively less paternal warmth than their siblings also reported poorer adjustment, but this effect did not emerge for young adults; such an effect also was significant for unfavored youth with stronger but not weaker cultural orientations.

Family structure in the United States has shifted substantially over the last three decades, yet the causes and implications of these changes for the well-being of family members remains unclear. This paper exploits task-based shifts in demand as an exogenous shock to sex-specific wages to demonstrate the role of the relative female to male wage in the family and labor market outcomes of women. I show that increases in the relative wage lead to a decline in the likelihood of marriage for those on the margin of a first marriage, and present suggestive evidence that these effects are concentrated among less-desirable matches. A higher relative wage also causes women to increase their hours of work, reduce their dependence on a male earner, and increase the likelihood of taking guardianship over their children. These findings indicate that improvements in the relative wage have facilitated womens independence by reducing the monetary incentive for marriage, and can account for 20% of the decline in marriage between 1980 and 2010.

Raising children and taking care of family members, while maintaining a job, and without compromising on economic security, career progression or one’s health and wellbeing, is a difficult task anywhere. In the United States, it comes with a set of additional challenges because of a complete absence or limited reach of supporting work-family policies – policies that are designed specifically to help people manage and reconcile their roles as workers and parents or caregivers – such as paid and job-protected parental leave, publicly provided or subsidized child care, rights to request workplace flexibility or part time work and paid leave to attend to ill or disabled family members. Consequently, workers in the US rely heavily on employer generosity, informal family support, and a patchwork of provisions available from various levels of government and with varying degrees of restrictive eligibility criteria. Researchers have repeatedly pointed to the important role of this duality – major changes in women’s work and family roles against a system of unresponsive social policies – in explaining important markers of women’s progress or paradoxes therein, such as a plateauing of labor force participation rates even as they continued to grow in comparable labor markets, existence of a comparatively higher wage penalty for having children compared to other high income countries and declining subjective wellbeing over a period that saw increasing economic empowerment for women as well as a shift in women’s relationship with employment, with more and more of them considering work to be a fundamental aspect of life satisfaction. In my dissertation, I build on these lines of enquiry to study how such substantial changes in work and family lives, juxtaposed against a comparatively stagnant system of supportive work-family policies, translate into mothers’ performance in the US labor market as well as their subjective wellbeing by family and employment status and what, if any, is the effect of small but important state level policy shifts. The dissertation consists of three related empirical papers. In Paper 1 (co-authored with Prof. Jane Waldfogel), we examine changes in the family wage gap –the difference in hourly wages between women with children and women without children –over 1977-2007. We use data from the Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplements and adjust for selection into motherhood, by estimating ordinary least square models and employing augmented inverse probability of treatment weighting, and adjust for employment using Heckman selection correction. We find evidence of a significant decline in the motherhood wage penalty but only for married mothers. Overall however, there is a persistent 5-8% significant penalty to motherhood in both 1977 and 2007. While Paper 1 sheds light on mothers’ relative economic well-being compared to non- mothers, the results may not provide much information on their overall quality of life, particularly when the policy environment offers few choices for combining work and family. In Paper 2 therefore, I examine patterns in women’s subjective wellbeing by family and employment status. I replicate least squares regression models from key prior studies using new data – the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System annual surveys from 2005 to 2010 and the American Time Use Survey’s Well Being modules, 2012 and 2013 – and additionally estimate inverse probability of treatment weighted models, to adjust for selection. I find evidence of a positive association of being a parent with subjective wellbeing as well as a positive association of being employed with subjective wellbeing. Confirming prior research, I also find no evidence of the combination of these relationships translating into a “double bonus” for wellbeing and instead find a penalty to being an employed parent. In more detailed analysis of specific work and family categories, I further find that women who are working but not raising families and women who are raising families but not working, tend to report higher levels of life satisfaction on average than women who are doing both. These results further point to the challenges of negotiating work and family responsibilities in the present policy environment. While work-family reconciliation policies overall have not caught up to the changing demands of the family and the workplace in the US, a handful of states (California in 2004, New Jersey in 2009, Rhode Island in 2014 and New York, expected from 2018) have made important strides in that regard by implementing paid family leave insurance programs (PFL) – provisions that ensure benefit payments when parents take leave from work on account of childbirth, thereby making the leave more accessible. These policy changes motivate the focus of paper 3 where I examine the effects of New Jersey’s 2009 policy change on women’s subjective wellbeing. Using data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) annual surveys and random child selection modules from 2005 to 2012, I identify potentially eligible mothers from individual level variation in month-year of child’s birth and state level variation in parental leave policies, and employ a difference in difference research design. Along with overall life evaluation, I also look at multiple self-reported indicators of wellbeing, such as self-rated general health, physical health, stress, depression and emotional wellbeing and whether adequate social and emotional support is available. I find no evidence of a significant effect of the 2009 policy change in New Jersey on women’s subjective wellbeing overall, but strong evidence of improvements in women’s physical health. I further find variation in effects in subgroup analyses, with significant positive effects on the life satisfaction of employed single mothers and women from lower-middle income families, as well as significant improvements in the experience of stress, depression and emotional wellbeing for groups with such relative socio- economic disadvantages. The dissertation thus explores how the changing nature of work and family lives, juxtaposed against a comparatively stagnant system of supportive work-family policies, affect the quality of women’s lives in the United States, using both standard measures such as wages and newer measures such as subjective wellbeing, and by directly examining how small but important state level policy shifts affect women’s wellbeing. Results highlight the importance of work-family reconciliation in women’s wellbeing in every socio-economic and demographic subgroup, but indicate that the nature of the problem may not be the same everywhere, drawing attention to the need for tailored interventions and policies and cautioning against exclusive reliance on either objective or subjective measures of wellbeing to monitor social progress and evaluate social policies.

In Florida and across the country, women are making great strides. More women are earning bachelor’s degrees and women’s entrepreneurship is growing rapidly. Yet, too many women and girls live in poverty with limited access to education, health care, and other important supports that would allow them to achieve economic stability. Wide disparities also persist among Florida’s women by geographic locations and across racial and ethnic groups. Improving the status of women from all backgrounds and walks of life is key to Florida’s future. The Status of Women in Florida by County: Poverty & Opportunity provides data and analysis of several aspects of Florida women’s economic security and access to opportunity. It calculates a Composite Index based on four indicators—health insurance coverage, educational attainment, business ownership, and poverty rates—and ranks all 50 states and the District of Columbia on the composite score and component indicators. The report also examines additional data for Florida on topics such as poverty by household type, home ownership, the number of public assistance recipients, and English proficiency. Data are analyzed by counties in Florida (when available) and disaggregated by racial and ethnic groups. This report is the first in a series of four publications on the status of women across Florida’s counties. Future reports will examine women’s Health & Well-Being and Employment & Earnings. This report is released in tandem with a briefing paper, “The Status of Women in Florida by County: Population & Diversity,” which provides data on different populations within Florida and examines the implications of these data for policies to improve women’s status. These publications aim to provide critical data that can . . .

The U.S. healthcare industry has been an engine for job growth over the last couple of decades. Much of the job growth has occurred among healthcare occupations that require less than a bachelors degree, and are often referred to as low- and middle-skilled occupations. Healthcare occupations predominate among the twenty occupations with the fastest projected growth rate over the next decade according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).1 Many of these occupations are allied health occupations such as physical therapy assistants/aides, occupational therapy assistants/aides, and home health aides. These positions are common entry points for a healthcare career given their low education entry requirements. Federal agencies such as the Administration for Children and Families have taken notice of these growing job opportunities in healthcare, funding programs targeting recipients of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and other low-income groups to train for entry-level healthcare occupations.2 Also, the topic of how to move people into jobs requiring less than a bachelors degree in healthcare has been discussed in several forums held by the countrys leading researchers.3 As the U.S. healthcare system seeks to reduce costs, employers are finding new and creative ways to use individuals in low- and middleskilled positions who are less costly to employ.4-9 Questions are emerging about the quality of these positions, especially in settings that rely heavily on low- and middle-skilled occupations, such as long-term care. There is concern about whether the country is building a health system on a weak workforce foundation. A recent report found that despite high demand for long-term care workers, individuals had been exiting long-term care at a high rate and moving into unemployment or out of the labor force altogether; in addition, these individuals had high rates of disability and poverty.10 There is growing apprehension among researchers that greater reliance on a low-skilled workforce without adequate pay may lead to high turnover, which can disrupt continuity of care and contribute to poor quality of care.11-13 Labor economists14 have studied the deficiencies in socioeconomic well-being of workers across occupation skill levels. Less attention has been given to the socioeconomic well-being of individuals working in healthcare, which may be an important contributor to turnover. In this study, we examined socioeconomic well-being, defined as being above the federal poverty level, having health insurance, and not relying on state/federal assistance programs, among individuals working in healthcare. We categorized healthcare workers according to the education requirements of their occupation, which allows us to determine whether socioeconomic well-being varies by skill.

This study asks (a) What are the relationships between types of living arrangements and psychological well-being for older adults? and (b) How do these relationships differ by gender? Data come from the 2010 wave of the National Health Interview Survey and include non-institutionalized adults aged 65 and older (N = 4,862). Dependent variables include self-rated quality of life and psychological distress. The study finds that older adults living alone or with others fare worse than those living with a spouse only. Yet, the outcomes of different types of living arrangements for older adults vary by gender. Women living with others are at greater risk of worse quality of life and serious psychological distress than men. Programs and policies must be responsive to the diverse needs of this population, rather than attempting a one-size-fits-all approach to housing and community-based services designed to promote older adults psychological well-being and independence.

Public interest and public policy attention on the importance of cognitive and social development of young children has increased in recent years, at least in part, because scholars and researchers have found that experiences early in life have critical developmental consequences. Although scholars have generated a great deal of data on young children, relatively little is known about spatial variation in the well-being of young children. This study uses 12 indicators of child well-being to construct a comprehensive composite index of child well-being for children age 0 to 5 in each state in the United States. Examination of the 12 indicators of well-being for young children shows a high level of variation across states. The modest positive correlations among the four domains in the index suggest that they are measuring different elements of well-being. The composite index reveals that the well-being of young children follows a familiar spatial pattern, namely the well-being of young children in states located in the Deep South and the Southwest is relatively poor and the well-being of children in New England and the upper Midwest is relatively good. However, there are a several exceptions to this pattern which underscores the importance of examining the wellbeing of young children separately for all children. This study adds to a growing literature that uses an index of well-being to examine different groups of children.

In this paper, we analyze the relationship between potential worker supply, measured through sex ratios, and commuting times in the United States. Using the American Time Use Survey 2003-2014, we analyze the relationship between commuting times and sex ratios by state and age, and show that the proportion of males to females is negatively related to the commuting times of both male and female workers. Furthermore, this result applies to both private and public sector employees, but does not apply to the self-employed. To the extent that employers compensate their workers for their commutes, our results are important for employers. Given the negative effects of commuting on wellbeing and health, our results imply that individuals living in areas with higher sex ratios may have comparatively better health and well-being outcomes than workers living in areas with lower sex ratios.

This brief examines the coverage experiences under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) of mothers living with dependent children. Focusing on mothers is important because just over 90 percent of children live with their mother, including about one-third who live with their mother and no other parent.1 Improving the health and well-being of mothers may indirectly benefit children—for example, reducing maternal depression could improve parenting behaviors and children’s health and development outcomes (Cummings and Kouros 2009; Lovejoy et al. 2000). Though no published research focuses on coverage changes for mothers under the ACA, evidence is available on coverage patterns for all parents. In the years leading up to the passage of the ACA in 2010, the share of parents without insurance coverage had been rising . . .

Housing-related poverty, which includes problems such as residential instability, unaffordability, and overcrowding, are common experiences among many low-income families. While a growing body of research examines the effects of housing-related poverty on children and families, we lack a thorough understanding of the extent to which housing problems impact families, and the mechanisms through which these potential impacts may occur. This body of research is critical for best directing policy efforts that aim to reduce incidences of housing-related poverty. This dissertation addresses this need for additional research on the impact of housing-related poverty as well as new policy considerations for its reducing its prevalence. Paper 1 uses data from Fragile Families and Child Well-being Study (FFCW) to estimate associations between residential and school instability and child vocabulary skills and behavior problems in middle childhood. My results indicate that school instability is more strongly and consistently associated than residential instability with increases in internalizing and externalizing behavior. Paper 2 also uses FFCW data, and in combination with data from HUD I examine the association between three measures of affordability – individual housing cost burden, city-wide fair market rent levels, and city-wide availability of affordable housing – and risk of material hardship. I find that unaffordability as measured by individual cost burden and local rents are more consistently associated with hardship than affordable housing supply. Paper 3 uses data from the 2013 American Community Survey to estimate reductions in poverty and housing cost burden that would result from a federal renter’s tax credit program under different proposal scenarios. My results indicate that a generous and well-targeted benefit aimed at low-income renter households could reduce the incidence of poverty status and housing cost burden, primarily when combined with existing credit programs available to many low-income households.

This study examined direct area-level effects of 4 common child well-being outcomes across multiple scales of residential and school neighborhoods to identify relevant contexts for measuring neighborhood effects on elementary school children. Results from growth curve models indicate that neighborhoods operationalized as residential and school census tracts exerted similar effect sizes while neighborhoods operationalized as school attendance zones showed attenuated effects. These results suggest that it may be reasonable to interchange residential and school census tracts when examining contextual effects on child well-being. In addition, results suggest that school attendance zones represent conservative, theoretically sound neighborhoods for elementary school children.

This paper aims at quantifying the welfare loss that a society can experience due to the segregation of the demographic groups that comprise it. In aggregating the well-being losses (gains) of the groups derived for being concentrated in low-status (high-status) organizational units, this paper embraces the distributive approach adopted in the literature on economic deprivation and poverty. In addition to developing several measures, this paper explores the welfare losses that the United States has experienced over the last decades due to occupational segregation by both gender and race/ethnicity. The analysis is undertaken at both a national and a regional level since occupational segregation along these lines is far from been a homogenous phenomenon across the country.

The Affordable Care Act (ACA, or “Obamacare”) has had dramatic impacts on reducing the numbers of uninsured Americans. However, it explicitly left out one important segment of the population with a noticeable lack of access to health insurance and medical care: unauthorized immigrants. While the politics of that decision were understandable, the consequences are problematic in states like California where an important share of the population (roughly seven percent) is undocumented and where an even larger share of children (nearly a fifth) have at least one undocumented parent. Insurance matters, although the connection to health is sometimes tenuous and unclear. Still, most Americans would rather be with than without – and one clear connection that does promote individual well-being is the way in which medical insurance helps to reduce financial risk . . . .

This study explores the question of structural change and inclusive development in South Africa and Brazil. Using Census data from the two countries, the analysis combines a household level multidimensional indicator of well-being with the applications of growth incidence curves and a sectoral decomposition of change to provide insight into the relationship between the place of households in the economy as reflected by employment sector and geographical location, and the extent to which the residents of those households are sharing in the benefits from growth. The results here suggest that current patterns are in some ways contradictory to received models of development and distribution, and, further, that redistribution alone is insufficient in creating inclusive development if the patterns of structural change do not sufficiently involve people in the processes of growth, particularly through accessible and remunerative employment.

Using a nationally-representative dataset of adults 1830 years old in the United States, this study examined the relationship between hookah use and subjective well-being. Levels of sadness, happiness, tiredness, pain, and stress were compared between persons who have used hookah and those who have not. Data were merged from the Tobacco Use Supplement of the Current Population Survey, the American Time Use Survey, and the Subjective Well-being Supplement to the American Time Use Survey for the years 20102012 for persons 1830 years old (n = 1147). Wald tests were used to compare mean differences in subjective well-being between hookah users and non-users. Lastly, multivariable regression was used to determine whether there were significant differences in subjective well-being between hookah users and non-users, controlling for demographic factors, self-perceived health, and cigarette smoking. The lifetime prevalence rate of hookah use was 5.2% among 1830 year olds. Hookah users reported higher levels of stress and sadness than non-users. These relationships remained significant after controlling for demographic characteristics, self-perceived health, and cigarette use. The results were robust to the use of different statistical models, different age cut-offs, the inclusion of additional covariates (such as income and population density), and separate analyses by sex. Hookah use is an emerging public health issue associated with increased levels of stress and sadness. Similar to cigarette use, healthcare providers may consider expanding their screening tests to include hookah use. Public policy geared toward greater prevention and control of hookah use is also recommended.

Owing to their colonial history and their historic integration with global markets, Indians have been migrating across the world for centuries. Today twenty million Indians live outside India (GOI 2000). They span the spectrum of class, profession, and history—ranging from construction workers in the Middle East and taxi drivers in New Jersey to bank managers in Latin America and information technology (IT) entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. Given the magnitude and diversity of the Indian diaspora, it is surprising how litt le we know about their activities and their impact on the country of origin. This chapter, based on the Comparative Immigrant Organizations Project (CIOP), examines how Indian immigrants in the United States have infl uenced development in India. Development is defi ned broadly to include policies and practices that aim to improve well-being in the socioeconomic and political realms. Surveys have shown that nearly 95 percent of overseas Indians send money to their families or close friends to support education, health, or other personal concerns in the homeland (Sampradaan . . .

Efforts to evaluate the impact of programs designed to safeguard the well-being of older adults in the US are stymied by the absence of adequate tools to answer a key question: how much income is enough in later life? The purpose of this paper is to report on a new indicator of income adequacy designed to correct this measurement gap. The Elder Economic Security Standard Index (Elder Index) is a geographically specific measure of the cost of living independently for older adults aged 65 and over. This paper provides an overview of the development of the Elder Index, demonstrates the variability in Elder Index values both geographically and across different residential settings, and provides an illustration of how the Elder Index may be used in establishing differences in economic hardship across subgroups of older adults. The paper concludes with a discussion of the potential research and policy uses of this new measure.

The effects of the 2008 financial crisis extend beyond just the economy. Economic contraction and increased unemployment for extended periods of time have been shown to affect both positively and negatively mental health and health behaviors. Joblessness increases time available to devote to healthy behaviors, however the financial uncertainty also increases stress-related health concerns. Using data from the 2006 and 2012 National Health and Interview Survey, this study examines the effects of the Great Recession on individuals physical health and psychological well-being. Understanding better how economic conditions influence health will allow the creation of public policy that benefits the population.