The digitized historical Full Count Census waves from 1900-1940 are a rich source of information for individual-or household-level quantitative research on the Native American population, with the average census wave containing more than 300,000 Native American individuals. Without the missing information on reservation, however , there is no treatment variation in any of the major historical policies that Native Americans were exposed to, such as Indian boarding schools and land allotment. We describe the construction of a stable reservation-to-individual crosswalk that assigns a reservation to over ninety percent of individuals in the historical Native American population, and apply this crosswalk to answering some long-standing questions on within-reservation inequality.

Introduction: This study estimates the health, economic, and budgetary impact resulting from graduated sodium reductions in the commercially produced food supply of the U.S., which are consistent with draft U.S. Food and Drug Administration voluntary guidance and correspond to Healthy People 2020 objectives and the 2015–2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans. Methods: Reduction in mean U.S. dietary sodium consumption to 2,300 mg/day was implemented in a microsimulation model designed to evaluate prospective cardiovascular disease–related policies in the U.S. population. The analysis was conducted in 2018–2020, and the microsimulation model was constructed using various data sources from 1948 to 2018. Modeled outcomes over 10 years included prevalence of systolic blood pressure ≥140 mmHg; incident myocardial infarction, stroke, cardiovascular disease events, and cardiovascular disease–related mortality; averted medical costs by payer in 2017 U.S. dollars; and productivity. Results: Reducing sodium consumption is expected to reduce the number of people with systolic blood pressure ≥140 mmHg by about 22% and prevent approximately 895.2 thousand cardiovascular disease events (including 218.9 thousand myocardial infarctions and 284.5 thousand strokes) and 252.5 thousand cardiovascular disease–related deaths over 10 years in the U.S. Savings from averted disease costs are expected to total almost $37 billion—most of which would be attributed to Medicare ($18.4 billion) and private insurers ($13.4 billion)—and increased productivity from reduced disease burden and premature mortality would account for another $18.2 billion in gains. Conclusions: Systemic sodium reductions in the U.S. food supply can be expected to produce substantial health and economic benefits over a 10-year period, particularly for Medicare and private insurers.

Despite the existence of a large urban-rural education gap in many countries, little attention has been paid whether cities enjoy a comparative advantage in the production of human capital. Using Dutch administrative data, this paper finds that conditional on family characteristics and cognitive ability, children who grow up in urban regions consistently attain higher levels of human capital compared to children in rural regions. The elasticity of university attendance w.r.t. population density is 0.07, which is robust across a wide variety of specifications. Hence, the paper highlights an alternative channel to explain the rise of the city.

How do workers flow across the unemployment, employment, and non-participation over the life-cycle? Any policy which effects the margin of one state effects flows into a different state. For example, unemployment benefits will affect workers labor market supply decision as well at the employment choices. In this paper, I develop an equilibrium search and matching model over the life-cycle to characterize labor market flows. I model two major social insurance programs: unemployment insurance (UI) and Social Security Disability Insurance (DI) to account for their interaction on worker labor supply decision. My model incorporates incomplete markets, aggregate productivity shocks, and idiosyncratic heterogeneity. I put special attention to modeling DI and its effect on labor force participation.

A census is a political construct that reflects the ideological orientation of its creators. Legislators, intellectuals, and the public have contested the content and purposes of the U.S. census for 230 years. In each period, the meaning and uses of the census reflected the politics and priorities of the moment. In the 1850s, census planners suppressed information about slavery at the behest of southern legislators; in the 1880s, the census director promoted nativist theories of race suicide; and in the 1940s, census officials helped plan Japanese internment. The census is inherently political: its original purpose was reapportionment of political representation, and in virtually every decade, winners and losers of the demographic contest have debated the legitimacy of the results. In one case—the census of 1920—the results were ignored altogether and no reapportionment took place, as rural legislators feared losing power to the cities...

Breastfeeding is the optimal nutrition for an infant, yet only 25.4% of women in the United States decide to breastfeed. A Latina's choice for infant feeding must be made with accurate information as breastfeeding may reduce infant mortality and decrease chronic conditions such as obesity, depression, and diabetes. The study's purpose was to examine if Latinas are influenced by suggestions to not breastfeed by family members and health care providers or by events that may have happened at the hospital. Grounded in the theory of planned behavior, this study reviewed if social influences, marital status, and maternal education link to the beliefs that determine whether the Latina stops breastfeeding. The research questions examined the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System's responses in 18 states in the United States, plus New York City. This cross-sectional quantitative analysis used multiple logistic regression between proposed predictor variables and the outcome variable at the bivariate level for responses from 10,357 Latinas. The results confirmed that 33.4% had difficulty latching and 18.8% found breastfeeding too hard or painful or time-consuming. There were no associations between marital status and maternal education and breastfeeding decisions. There was an association indicating that family affects breastfeeding termination and an association with events at the hospital. The findings suggest that social norms are a standard affecting Latinas' perceived behavioral control and attitudes towards breastfeeding. The findings may be used for social change by infant nutrition advocates, health care providers, and public health organizations that advocate for prolonging breastfeeding.

With the COVID-19 virus spreading rapidly within the United States, workers in several key industries are at the frontlines of keeping U.S. residents healthy, safe, and fed.1 This includes not only doctors and nurses, but also the custodians who are cleaning hospital rooms, checkout clerks at grocery stores and pharmacies, scientists racing to develop treatments and a vaccine, and the people who grow, harvest, and transport food across the country. Immigrant workers are over-represented in a number of these occupations that are vital in the fight against the coronavirus. While the foreign born represented 17 percent of the 156 million civilians working in 2018, they accounted for larger shares in some frontline occupations: 29 percent of physicians, 38 percent of home health aides, and 23 percent of retail-store pharmacists, for example. Immigrant workers are also over-represented in some of the non-frontline industries that are being devastated as more people follow social distancing guidelines and more states and cities issue shelter-in-place orders. Travel restrictions, orders limiting the operation or mandating the shutdown of restaurants and bars, and the closure of businesses deemed nonessential have already led to mass layoffs. In just the first week of serious social distancing measures across the country, some 3.3 million new unemployment claims were filed—a rate that while unprecedented in U.S. history is likely only the tip of the iceberg.2 Immigrant workers are over-represented in many of the hardest-hit industries: hotels and restaurants, cleaning services for now-shuttered office buildings, and personal services such as in-home child care and hair and nail salons. The economic pain brought by this sudden and dramatic economic contraction will bring hardship to millions of Americans in the coming weeks and months. For many immigrant workers, the hardship will be exacerbated by limited access to safety-net systems and to federal relief, both for those who are legally present and those who are unauthorized. The Migration Policy Institute (MPI) estimates 6 million foreign-born workers are employed in vital, frontline industries; another 6 million work in some of the industries hardest hit by the fight against COVID-19.3 The first section of this fact sheet reviews the roles immigrant workers serve in industries at the frontlines of the COVID-19 response. The second section discusses the jobs immigrant workers fill within industries that are laying off large numbers of workers

What futures emerge as racial and ethnic diversity expands, and people of color become the majority in the United States? The nation is experiencing immense demographic changes in which populations of color are growing as the white population ages and declines. With this shift, racial and ethnic diversity has moved from the city core to places typically thought of as white spaces. Most people of color now live in suburbs and immigration to rural areas is a demographic lifeline for declining small towns. As racial segregation is the norm in the U.S., this growing diversity has far-reaching implications for racial inequality and may provide the basis for a more equitable society. However, there is a dearth of research on diversity outside the city and its outcomes. Will these demographic shifts lead to greater racial integration or fragmentation in American society? My dissertation grapples with this question by exploring the emergence of racial residential integration in suburbs across the nation. Drawing from Census data, the first article makes use of spatial analyses to identify the features of places that support integration. While prior research suggests that integrated communities are mere anomalies in a ubiquitously segregated landscape, I find that millions of people live in stably integrated communities. Destabilizing stereotypes of the “vanilla suburb,” integrated places are most frequently multiethnic across Blacks, Latinxs, Asians, and whites. Furthermore, whites do not flee from multiethnic suburbs, precluding the homogenizing forces of re-segregation. Beyond racial and ethnic composition, specific local characteristics facilitate the emergence of these communities: unincorporated suburbs that lack local governments, which historically excluded people of color; new housing stock built after the passage of antidiscrimination legislation; and economies that support racial integration in workplaces like the military and public sector. Where conventional urban sociology focuses on industrial cities like Chicago or New York, my work points outward to sprawling metro areas like DC, Miami, and Riverside to understand a ii new sociology of suburbs, where whites and people of color live near each other in ways that are stable across time. From a Civil Rights Movement perspective, residential integration may remedy the ills of segregation. For my second and third articles, I focus on two key outcomes, public education and income, to assess whether racial integration in communities indicates movement towards racial equality. Using geocoded data from the National Center for Education Statistics, I investigate the relationship between integrated communities and integration in schools. Historically, public schools are crucial institutions for the upkeep of segregation; however, I find that integrated suburbs host public schools with both high white enrollment and multiethnic diversity. Thus, students of color attend schools with white students, generally representing substantive cross-racial contact within institutions. Second, I explore economic inequality as it materializes across suburbs. Using median household income data, I find that integrated suburbs display smaller racial-economic disparities compared to other areas types like predominantly Black, predominantly Latinx, and micro-segregated, diverse environments. Both Black and Latinx median household incomes are roughly 20% higher in integrated suburbs compared to other area types, while whites’ and Asians’ substantially higher median household incomes remain unchanged across areas. Therefore, integrated places show smaller gaps in income between different racial groups, pointing towards greater equality. Using a spatial, place-based approach, I contend that the demography of the twenty-first century requires new theory that centers on multiethnic race relations as the U.S. undergoes rapid demographic change. While study after study details the causes and consequences of rigid urban segregation, this project contributes to an understanding of how multiethnic communities outside the city provide openings for racial integration to emerge and persist. Furthermore, findings may guide the formation of policies that mitigate the social problems of entrenched segregation. iii Multiethnic diversity in local contexts may attenuate white prejudice, allow communities to unsettle persistent forms of racial discrimination, and signal future trends as the US grows increasingly diverse. Most importantly, racial residential integration may be a path toward a more equitable society that provides people of color access to the higher quality place-based resources generally available to urban and suburban whites.

Self-supply of groundwater for domestic use in urban sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is common, but the extent to which it is practiced is unknown. We developed an open data based GIS method for continental Africa (without islands) using groundwater storage, depth to groundwater, aquifer productivity, and population density data. Furthermore, we developed proxies for public supply network coverage and socio-economic status, incorporating restriction measures for groundwater use. Our results indicate that in 2015 about 369 million urban inhabitants (~79% of the total urban population) of continental Africa could potentially supply themselves with groundwater. However, the likely number of urban inhabitants using groundwater obtained via self-supply was less: about 150 million (~32% of the total urban population). With the novel GIS based methodology presented here, the urban population using self-supply groundwater for domestic use can be determined, which is essential to inform policy and practice, and to influence public investment.

The present study conducts a nationwide study of the association of toxic industrial pollution and the facilities that produce it on trust and civic engagement. Data on pollution exposure come from the Risk-Screening Environmental Indicators Geographic Microdata (RSEI-GM) and Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) datasets for the years 1995 to 1999. Data on trust and civic engagement come from the 2000 restricted-access Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey (SCCBS). Statistical analyses indicate that exposures to more toxic air pollution associate negatively with various measures of trust and that increased numbers of TRI facilities associate negatively with various measures of civic engagement. The implication is that exposures to toxic industrial air pollution and the facilities that produce it not only adversely affect the physical health of nearby communities but also their social wellbeing, including underlying capacities for collective action.

This thesis contains three chapters studying the evolution of the American higher education landscape, the different forces that shaped their organization, and how they, in turn, influenced human capital accumulation. The chapters are organized into three time periods: 1850-1900, 1910-1940, and 1980-2010. In the first chapter, joint with Heyu Xiong, we investigate the founding of American colleges in the latter half of the 19th century. During this period, America experienced a significant expansion in its college infrastructure. By 1890, more institutions of higher learning existed in the United States than in all of Europe. In this paper, we study the role of denominational competition in the market provision of higher education. Specifically, we argue that denominational affiliation facilitated greater enthusiasm to build colleges through gains from differentiation. We document that nearly all colleges established in this period had denominational roots or origins. Empirical analysis using a panel of US counties reveals a robust positive relationship between religious fragmentation and the number of colleges established locally. The results using an IV strategy show that areas that became more religiously diverse experienced greater subsequent growth in the number of colleges. We conclude by estimating a model of school choice and show that students exhibited a strong preference to attend same-denominational colleges in terms of willingness-to-pay and willingness-to-travel. Religious diversity softened the extent of tuition competition between institutions and precipitated an “excess” entry of schools. In the second chapter, joint with Mike Andrews, we study a particular aspect of the land-grant colleges: the institutionalization of Home Economics. The land-grant colleges offered practical majors that contrasted with the historical practice of a liberal arts curriculum provided by private colleges. Home Economics was such a practical field for women. Even though Home Economics built on women’s traditional vocation as homemakers, we argue that it served as a gateway to bring women into science. Specifically, we propose that women came to dominate life sciences and chemistry because they were exposed to these subjects in large numbers through college home economics curricula in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As more women learned these subjects and entered these fields, they increasingly became known as womens subjects, reducing social stigma. We document three sets of facts. First, the science fields in which women constitute a majority today are the same fields that entered home economics curricula during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a time of rapid increase in college enrollment. Second, we use data from the Report of the Commissioner of Education to show that colleges with larger home economics programs had more women enrolled in science. Since home economics programs were often designed to train farmers wives, we verify these results using an instrumental variable based on a colleges land grant funding towards agriculture. Finally, we use data from historical college yearbooks to show that, at an individual level, women who major in home economics are more likely to double major in the sciences than are women who major in other subjects, such as music and education. The third chapter connects integrally to the second chapter, as I explore how gender norms can influence contemporary college major choices. I explore the hypothesis in the setting of the computer science major from 1980 to 2010. In this period, women’s representation increased in STEM fields overall, yet the percentage of women in computer science declined. I take advantage of computer science’s shifting departmental affiliation from mathematics to the traditionally masculine domain of engineering. Using a novel panel dataset on the university hierarchy from 1980 to 2010, I found that the percentage of women earning computer science bachelor’s degrees decreased when the computer science department moved from colleges of liberal arts and sciences to engineering schools. I document that computer science’s increasing affiliation with engineering school had more to do with following the trend of higher-ranked programs than reflecting a change in the curriculum.

Bank Street’s history is deeply rooted in the emergence of the birth-to-three field writ large. From its inception as the Bureau of Educational Experiments, the first members were absorbed with observing children in the nursery school and understanding “how the two-year-old meets his [her] world.” 1 When the program became the Harriet Johnson Nursery School in 1934, these educators continued to ponder the ways in which each child had a distinct and unique personality, but also began asking more global questions like, “How does the two-year-old solve problems of size, time, space, and number? What are the likes, dislikes, and fears of children this age?” 2 Today, over a century later, Bank Street College is proud to have multiple programs that support infants, toddlers, their families, and communities. These programs continue to pursue and extend the questions about child development that originally arose from deep observation at the core of Bank Street’s developmental-interaction approach. Even during the years when behavioral thinking reigned in psychology and education—a time when most child development institutes followed the physical sciences, taking exact measurements of babies—Lucy Sprague Mitchell, the College’s founder, was fond of telling this story to demonstrate what set Bank Street apart from most child development institutes at the time.

Over the last recent decades, the economic status of women has been changed significantly. Gender segregation levels have decreased, and women have started participating in male-dominated occupations like construction occupations. Nevertheless, the gender wage gap in construction occupations persists, which is one of the issues related to attracting more females to the construction industry. So far, no comprehensive study has been conducted on the gender wage gap in the construction occupation. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to portray the gender wage gap in construction occupations. Additionally, the spatial analysis of the gender wage gap is of paramount importance not only for its academic interest but also for its major role in area-based public policies that are targeted at eliminating inequalities. The researchers used recent survey data and commercially available software for spatial analysis. Analyses were performed at global (Moran's I) and local [local indicators of spatial association (LISA)] levels to test for the presence of spatial patterns. The results of the LISA analysis have shown spatial autocorrelation at local levels, which highlights the status of gender wage gaps in construction-related occupations in various states. This study will contribute to the existing body of knowledge in the area of labor and personnel issues, specifically workplace diversity and discrimination, and help the construction industry to better understand the wage gap, further investigate the problem, and make an effort to decrease it, which will help the industry attract more females.

Over the duration of North Carolina’s (NC’s) formal eugenics program (1933–1977), roughly 7,600 North Carolinians were sterilized after being deemed unfit to parent for reasons such as their supposed intellectual incapacity (“feeblemindedness”), mental health status (“mental disease”), or epileptic status. We used data abstracted from historical reports to provide an analysis of how sterilizations and NC’s program evolved across space and over time. We evaluated whether a county’s proximity to the state’s sterilization-approving board was associated with its female sterilization rate. Distinct spatial patterns emerged between those in institutionalized versus non-institutionalized settings, suggesting that processes of policy implementation for the program were multifaceted. We suggest that the Eugenic Board’s attachment to networks of professionals trained in eugenic ideology, appropriate local-level champions and funding, as well as overlap with other social ideologies were spatially-relevant factors that influenced county sterilization rates. While NC no longer has a eugenic sterilization program, a better understanding of this history may provide insights into current reproductive health services provision and utilization, as well as into contemporary views regarding fertility and reproductive capacity in the state.

This pilot investigation studies the priorities, perceptions and tactics of Latinx and Hispanic parents in Miami-Dade County as they navigate the school choice marketplace through interviews with nine parents of school-aged children about their experiences regarding the school choice system. This research expands on work done by others to understand how minority groups in general and specifically Latinx and Hispanic families engage differently from white families. Even though solidly in the middle class, the parents relied on strong ties to family and close family friends to both gather information to choose a school and as a way to provide many of the traits they felt were part of a quality school such as community, small size, and help coping with transportation and scheduling challenges. Parents also sought out dual-language programs for both academic and cultural reasons but were often disappointed in the difficulty of accessing these limited programs. Additional themes found likely apply to families in other demographics as well. These include: not believing that the school choice system is truly impartial; frustration with the difficulty of accessing highly sought after public charter and magnet schools; and using private schools, especially in early education, to gain advantage in accessing prestigious public programs.

Objectives: In the United States, Title X facilities are understood to be an effective starting point for improving teenagers’ reproductive health outcomes, including unintended pregnancy. We investigate geographic accessibility of Title X facilities and the relationship between geographic accessibility of Title X facilities and teenage birth rates in the state of North Carolina (NC). Methods: Vehicular travel time from each ZCTA to its nearest Title X facility was calculated using a geographic information system and summarized as the indicator of geographic accessibility. We used bivariate and multiple spatial lag regressions to evaluate the relationship between ZCTA-level teenage birth rates (n = 754) in 2016 and geographic accessibility to a Title X facility, as well as socioeconomic and demographic factors. Results: Nearly 60% of teenage women lived 30 min or less from a Title X funded facility, while approximately 12% of women lived 60 min or more from the nearest facility. In the regression models, percent non-Hispanic White, percent Hispanic, percent in Poverty, percent not enrolled in school, and population density were associated with teenage birth rates; however, geographic accessibility was only associated in the bivariate model. Conclusions: Our findings show that geographic accessibility of Title X facilities is lower in NC than in other states. However, our results suggest that geographic accessibility is not related to teenage birth rates. Overall, these findings may indicate that publicly funded family planning facilities are underutilized by proximal populations or factors other than proximity act as a barrier to utilization.

How quickly producers can adjust their workforce with changing demand is important for aggregate productivity. Labor outsourcing allows quick adjustments but potentially exposes sensitive information to outsiders, which may deter producers from outsourcing if the legal system does not adequately protect secret information. I quantify the impact of trade secret protection on labor outsourcing, and consequently, on aggregate productivity. First, using event studies and differences-indifferences 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 24% and aggregate output by 1.7%.

The study of segregation is essential for understanding how place influences life outcomes. Traditional segregation indices rely heavily on the use of areal units for calculation, which risks introducing both measurement and interpretation error. Using individual-level data avoids many of the problems facing traditional area-level indices. However, few segregation indices currently exist that are capable of utilizing such data. Given that our understanding is only as good as our measurement, it is imperative that our measures accurately reflect our perceptions of segregation. Utilizing the recent release of the complete 1940 Census count data, this article details a new individual-level segregation measure—the shortest path isolation (SPI) index. The SPI index captures the degree of racial isolation experienced by an individual, regarding both distance and interpersonal contact. With West Philadelphia as a sample study area, this article highlights the benefits of the SPI index for studying segregation at the individual level.

Seeking to reverse a downward trend in voter turnout and diversify its electorate, California implemented the New Motor Voter (CNMV) program in 2018. Under the CNMV, the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) registers all customers who affirm their eligibility to vote and do not actively decline registration. This report explores the CNMV’s impact on voter registration in California. The study finds: In its first year, CNMV more than doubled the number of people who registered through the DMV. Although it had ambiguous effects during the 2018 election cycle, CNMV continued to register people after the November election, leading to a higher registration rate overall. CNMV did not clearly increase registration among underrepresented groups. The CNMV has successfully facilitated participation and raised the registration rate in a promising debut. However, it has yet to clearly demonstrate that it can raise registration rates in an election season beyond what the excitement of the election would otherwise produce. Nor has it yet made the state’s electorate more representative of its broader population. It is possible that California’s automated voter registration system is not aggressive enough to draw in low-engagement groups. We recommend changes that would clarify the application process and further encourage participation. CNMV’s impact on turnout should also be examined. The reform has helped the state keep its registration file up to date, which may facilitate turnout for registrants who move shortly before an election. Finally, the DMV and the Secretary of State could improve their data reporting and availability policies to facilitate program evaluation.

I show that employee flight risk, a firm’s risk of experiencing significant employee departures and incurring large costs due to productivity losses, and costs related to searching for, hiring, and training new employees impacts its capital structure decisions. I proxy for these costs with the cross-industry labor mobility of a firm’s workers using a novel dynamic textual measure for this mobility based on network centrality. When firms face a higher risk of employee departures to firms in other industries, they maintain a lower debt ratio, hold more cash, and pay less dividends. The effect of cross-industry labor mobility on firms’ capital structure is stronger for firms with more workers who are skilled or in managerial occupations, firms in labor-intensive industries, firms with greater hiring costs, financially constrained firms, and when workers have lower switching costs. Conversely, the effect of cross-industry labor mobility on firms’ capital structure is weaker for firms in industries with higher relative performance and valuations. To infer causality, I make use of several different exogenous shocks to employee departure and job switching costs. Overall, my findings imply that firms choose more conservative financial policies when they face higher employee flight risk.