The rise of working mothers radically changed the U.S. economy and the role of women in society. In one of the first studies of the 1975 introduction of the Earned Income Tax Credit, I find that this program increased maternal employment by 6 percent, representing one million mothers and an elasticity of 0.58. The EITC may help explain why the U.S. has long had such a high fraction of working mothers despite few childcare subsidies or parental-leave policies. I also find evidence that this influx of working mothers affected social attitudes and led to higher approval of working women.

Producing accurate, usable data while protecting respondent privacy are dual mandates of the US Census Bureau. In 2019, the Census Bureau announced it would use a new disclosure avoidance technique, based on differential privacy, for the 2020 Decennial Census of Population and Housing[19]. Instead of suppressing data or swapping sensitive records, differentially private methods inject noise into counts to protect privacy. Unfortunately, noise injection may also make the data less useful and accurate. This paper describes the differentially private Disclosure Avoidance System (DAS) used to prepare the 2010 Demonstration Data Product (DDP). It describes the policy decisions that underlie the DAS and how the DAS uses those policy decisions to produce differentially private data. Finally, it discusses usability and accuracy issues in the DDP, with a focus on occupied housing unit counts. Occupied housing unit counts in the DDP differed greatly from 2010 Summary File 1 differed greatly, and the paper explains possible sources of the differences.

Importance Preventive care is associated with decreased morbidity and mortality among older adults. Vision impairment may be a barrier to accessing care and health promotion information and therefore may contribute to decreased preventive care uptake. Objective To examine the association between self-reported vision impairment and uptake of preventive care services (ie, breast and colon cancer screenings and influenza and pneumococcal vaccinations). Design, Setting, and Participants Cross-sectional study using the 2015 and 2018 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) and 2016 and 2018 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) data, national surveys of US residents conducted through in-person household interviews in NHIS, and state-based telephone interviews in BRFSS. Participants included respondents 50 years and older based on eligibility for each preventive care service examined. Exposures Vision impairment, defined as self-reported trouble seeing, in NHIS, and self-reported blindness/serious difficulty seeing in BRFSS. Main Outcomes and Measures Self-reported uptake of breast cancer screening (women aged 50-74 years), colon cancer screening (aged 50-74 years), influenza vaccination (50 years and older), and pneumococcal vaccination (65 years and older). Multivariable regression models adjusted for relevant confounders, including age, were used to examine the uptake of each preventive care service by vision impairment status. Results Among NHIS participants, older US individuals with vision impairment (prevalence between 14.3% and 16.3% in the different age groups; n = 12 120-29 654) were less likely to report breast cancer screening (odds ratio [OR], 0.82; 95% CI, 0.71-0.96) and colon cancer screening (OR, 0.89; 95% CI, 0.79-0.99) but not influenza (OR, 1.06; 95% CI, 0.97-1.15) and pneumococcal vaccination (OR, 1.03; 95% CI, 0.91-1.16), as compared with their counterparts without vision impairment. In BRFSS (n = 228 649-530 027), those with vision impairment (5.9%-6.8%) were less likely than those without vision impairment to report breast cancer screening (OR, 0.67; 95% CI, 0.59-0.75), colon cancer screening (OR, 0.70; 95% CI, 0.65-0.76), and pneumococcal vaccination (OR, 0.89; 95% CI, 0.81-0.99) but not influenza vaccination (OR, 0.95; 95% CI, 0.89-1.00). Conclusions and Relevance Older Americans with vision impairment may be less likely to use cancer-related preventive services as compared with their counterparts without vision impairments. These findings suggest that interventions to improve access to health information and health care services for individuals with vision impairment may be needed to improve cancer screening among this population.

We study the effect of Medicare on financial strain, measured by annual changes in medical debt in collections, using credit bureau data. We exploit the program’s eligibility age at 65 and compare the experiences of those just under and over age 65 using a regression discontinuity design. We find that during our baseline study period Medicare reduced the annual probability of large medical collections, above $1,000, by 0.31 percentage points, a 19 percent reduction relative to the probability for those aged 60–64, and reduced new medical collections by approximately $380 at the 99th percentile, a 23 percent decrease. We hypothesize that Medicare mainly decreases medical collections among those who transition from uninsured to Medicare. Under that hypothesis we estimate a “treatment on the treated” average reduction of about $250 in new medical collections. We find support for our hypothesis by comparing discontinuities for those in zip codes with different uninsured rates pre-age 65, and comparing discontinuities before and after implementation of the main health insurance provisions of the Affordable Care Act. Our findings complement recent work on the role of Medicare in reducing risk of out-of-pocket medical expenditures and of health insurance in reducing medical collections.

Using data from the United States spanning the period between 1970 and 2017, we analyze the economic assimilation of subsequent arrival cohorts of Mexican and Central American immigrants, the more economically disadvantaged group of immigrants. We compare their wage and employment probability to that of similarly aged and educated natives across various cohorts of entry. We find that all cohorts started with a disadvantage of 40-45 percent relative to the average US native, and eliminated about half of it in the 20 years after entry. They also started with no employment probability disadvantage at arrival and they overtook natives in employment rates so that they were 5-10 percent more likely to be employed 20 years after arrival. We also find that recent cohorts, arriving after 1995, did better than earlier cohorts both in initial gap and convergence. We show that Mexicans and Central Americans working in the construction sector and in urban areas did better in terms of gap and convergence than others. Finally, also for other immigrant groups, such as Chinese and Indians, recent cohorts did better than previous ones.

We categorize occupations by a measure that captures the likelihood that jobs can be conducted from home (Dingel and Neiman, 2020), as well as a measure of low personal proximity in the workplace. The former relates to how well work can be done under social distancing policies, the latter relates to how quickly occupations might come back online. We then compare characteristics of workers in low work-from-home and high personal-proximity occupations. Relative to workers in high work-from-home occupations, workers in low work-from-home occupations are less likely to be white, have a college degree, or have employer provided healthcare, more likely to be in the bottom half of the income distribution, and more likely to rent their homes. These workers are less likely to have access to informal insurance channels: more likely to be single, and less likely to be born in the United States. They are also less likely to have had stable jobs: more likely to have been unemployed in the last year, less likely to be employed full-time, and less likely to be employed in large firms. Females are both more likely to be in high work-from-home occupations and more likely to work in high physical-proximity occupations, suggesting that the employment effects of broad social distancing policies on women may be less severe, but later integration into the economy may be more difficult.

There is growing interest in Differential Privacy as a disclosure limitation mechanism for statistical data. The increased attention has brought to light a number of subtleties in the definition and mechanisms. We explore an interesting dichotomy in parallel composition, where a subtle difference in the definition of a "neighboring database" leads to significantly different results. We show that by "pre-partitioning" the data randomly into disjoint subsets, then applying well-known anony-mization schemes to those pieces, we can eliminate this dichotomy. This provides potential operational benefits, with some interesting implications that give further insight into existing privacy schemes. We explore the theoretical limits of the privacy impacts of pre-partitioning, in the process illuminating some subtle distinctions in privacy definitions. We also discuss the resulting utility, including empirical evaluation of the impact on released privatized statistics.

The link between transportation infrastructure and income segregation has long been recognized in the literature, but has received renewed attention with the increased investment in rail transit in US cities. In this paper, we examine the impacts of rail transit investments on neighborhood income diversity and metropolitan income segregation. For the neighborhood-level analysis, we apply a difference-in-difference approach combined with propensity score matching in 11 metropolitan areas that invested in rail transit between 2000 and 2005. We then estimate the effect of changes in rail transit access on income segregation across the 50 largest metropolitan areas in the US between 1990 and 2010. We find no statistical evidence that rail transit investments spur changes in neighborhood income diversity when compared to similar neighborhoods elsewhere in the city. Similarly, we find no significant impact of new or expanded rail transit lines on metropolitan wide income segregation.

As New England states scramble to adapt to the spread of the COVID-19, it is becoming increasingly clear that both the health and economic implications will affect certain industries and demographic groups disproportionately. Service workers in particular are at high risk of either job loss or being called upon to work under very difficult and sometimes risky conditions. Massive numbers of service workers are being laid off as restaurants and stores scale down and close. The loss of income for these workers and their families can be devastating. At the same time, service workers in jobs categorized as essential are asked to come to work and face possible exposure. This brief analyzes data from the American Community Survey to describe which New England service workers will be most impacted by the effects of the coronavirus: those working in food service, cleaning and building maintenance, retail and hospitality, and warehouse jobs. We find that about one in five New England workers has one of these jobs. Workers in these occupations are more likely to be Hispanic, and they experience poverty at higher rates than New England workers generally. Within these jobs, women and people of color earn significantly less than their non-Hispanic white counterparts. In other words, the challenges posed by the pandemic exacerbate existing and long-standing inequalities. Policy responses should support this population in order to promote equitable recovery.

Background: Improving prediction of cigarette smoking during pregnancy (SDP), including differences by race/ethnicity and geography, is necessary for interventions to achieve greater and more equitable SDP reductions. Methods: Using individual-level data on singleton first births, 2010-2017 (N = 182,894), in a US state with high SDP rates, we predicted SDP risk as a function of reproductive partner relationship (marital status, paternity acknowledgement), maternal and residential census tract sociodemographics, and census tract five-year SDP rate. Results: SDP prevalence was 12.7% (white non-Hispanics, WNH), 6.8% (Black/African Americans, AA), 19.5% (Native American, NA), 4.7% (Hispanic, H), and 2.8% (Asian, AS). In WNH and AA, with similar trends in other groups, after adjustment for non-linear effects of maternal age and education and for census tract risk-factors, there was a consistent risk-ordering of SDP rates by reproductive partner relationship: married/with paternity acknowledged < unmarried/acknowledged < unmarried/unacknowledged < married/unacknowledged. Associations with census tract SDP rate, adjusted for maternal and census tract sociodemographics, were stronger for AA and H (OR 2.65-2.67) than for NA (OR = 1.91), WNH (OR = 1.75), or AS (NS). AA SDP was increased in tracts having a higher proportion of WNH residents and was reduced in comparison with WNH at every combination of age, education and partner relationship. Conclusions: Inattention to differences by race/ethnicity may obscure SDP risk factors. Despite marked race/ethnic differences in unmarried-partner cohabitation rates, failure to acknowledge paternity emerged as an important and consistent risk-predictor. Census-tract five-year SDP rates have heterogeneous origins, but the association of AA SDP risk with increased racial heterogeneity suggests an important influence of neighbor risk behaviors.

Although researchers generally agree that national family policies play a role in shaping mothers’ employment, there is considerable debate about whether, how, and why policy effects vary across country contexts and within countries by mothers’ educational attainment. We hypothesize that family policies interact with national levels of earnings inequality to differentially affect mothers’ employment outcomes by educational attainment. We develop hypotheses about the two most commonly studied family policies—early childhood education and care (ECEC) and paid parental leave. We test these hypotheses by establishing a novel linkage between the EU-Labour Force Survey and the Current Population Survey 1999 to 2016 (n = 23 countries, 299 country-years, 1.2 million mothers of young children), combined with an original collection of country-year indicators. Using multilevel models, we find that ECEC spending is associated with a greater likelihood of maternal employment, but the association is strongest for non-college-educated mothers in high-inequality settings. The length of paid parental leave over six months is generally associated with a lower likelihood of maternal employment, but the association is most pronounced for mothers in high-inequality settings. We call for greater attention to the role of earnings inequality in shaping mothers’ employment and conditioning policy effects.

The Bartik instrument is formed by interacting local industry shares and national industry growth rates. We show that the typical use of a Bartik instrument assumes a pooled exposure research design, where the shares measure differential exposure to common shocks, and identification is based on exogeneity of the shares. Next, we show how the Bartik instrument weights each of the exposure designs. Finally, we discuss how to assess the plausibility of the research design. We illustrate our results through two applications: estimating the elasticity of labor supply, and estimating the elasticity of substitution between immigrants and natives.

Although the associations among marital status, fertility, bereavement, and adult mortality have been widely studied, much less is known about these associations in polygamous households, which remain prevalent across much of the world. We use data from the Utah Population Database on 110,890 women and 106,979 men born up to 1900, with mortality follow-up into the twentieth century. We examine how the number of wife deaths affects male mortality in polygamous marriages, how sister wife deaths affect female mortality in polygamous marriages relative to the death of a husband, and how marriage order affects the mortality of women in polygamous marriages. We also examine how the number of children ever born and child deaths affect the mortality of men and women as well as variation across monogamous and polygamous unions. Our analyses of women show that the death of a husband and the death of a sister wife have similar effects on mortality. Marriage order does not play a role in the mortality of women in polygamous marriages. For men, the death of one wife in a polygamous marriage increases mortality to a lesser extent than it does for men in monogamous marriages. For polygamous men, losing additional wives has a dose-response effect. Both child deaths and lower fertility are associated with higher mortality. We consistently find that the presence of other kin in the household—whether a second wife, a sister wife, or children—mitigates the negative effects of bereavement.

Objectives To explore the efficacy of machine learning (ML) techniques in predicting under-five mortality (U5M) in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs) and to identify significant predictors of U5M. Design This is a cross-sectional, proof-of-concept study. Settings and participants We analysed data from the Demographic and Health Survey. The data were drawn from 34 LMICs, comprising a total of n=1 520 018 children drawn from 956 995 unique households. Primary and secondary outcome measures The primary outcome measure was U5M; secondary outcome was comparing the efficacy of deep learning algorithms: deep neural network (DNN); convolution neural network (CNN); hybrid CNN-DNN with logistic regression (LR) for the prediction of child’s survival. Results We found that duration of breast feeding, number of antenatal visits, household wealth index, postnatal care and the level of maternal education are some of the most important predictors of U5M. We found that deep learning techniques are superior to LR for the classification of child survival: LR sensitivity=0.47, specificity=0.53; DNN sensitivity=0.69, specificity=0.83; CNN sensitivity=0.68, specificity=0.83; CNN-DNN sensitivity=0.71, specificity=0.83. Conclusion Our findings provide an understanding of determinants of U5M in LMICs. It also demonstrates that deep learning models are more efficacious than traditional analytical approach.

Importance: Earlier administration of intravenous tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) in acute ischemic stroke is associated with reduced mortality by the time of hospital discharge and better functional outcomes at 3 months. However, it remains unclear whether shorter door-to-needle times translate into better long-term outcomes. Objective: To examine whether shorter door-to-needle times with intravenous tPA for acute ischemic stroke are associated with improved long-term outcomes. Design, Setting, and Participants: This retrospective cohort study included Medicare beneficiaries aged 65 years or older who were treated for acute ischemic stroke with intravenous tPA within 4.5 hours from the time they were last known to be well at Get With The Guidelines-Stroke participating hospitals between January 1, 2006, and December 31, 2016, with 1-year follow-up through December 31, 2017. Exposures: Door-to-needle times for intravenous tPA. Main Outcomes and Measures: The primary outcomes were 1-year all-cause mortality, all-cause readmission, and the composite of all-cause mortality or readmission. Results: Among the 61426 patients treated with tPA within 4.5 hours, the median age was 80 years and 43.5% were male. The median door-to-needle time was 65 minutes (interquartile range, 49-88 minutes). The 48666 patients (79.2%) who were treated with tPA and had door-to-needle times of longer than 45 minutes, compared with those treated within 45 minutes, had significantly higher all-cause mortality (35.0% vs 30.8%, respectively; adjusted HR, 1.13 [95% CI, 1.09-1.18]), higher all-cause readmission (40.8% vs 38.4%; adjusted HR, 1.08 [95% CI, 1.05-1.12]), and higher all-cause mortality or readmission (56.0% vs 52.1%; adjusted HR, 1.09 [95% CI, 1.06-1.12]). The 34367 patients (55.9%) who were treated with tPA and had door-to-needle times of longer than 60 minutes, compared with those treated within 60 minutes, had significantly higher all-cause mortality (35.8% vs 32.1%, respectively; adjusted hazard ratio [HR], 1.11 [95% CI, 1.07-1.14]), higher all-cause readmission (41.3% vs 39.1%; adjusted HR, 1.07 [95% CI, 1.04-1.10]), and higher all-cause mortality or readmission (56.8% vs 53.1%; adjusted HR, 1.08 [95% CI, 1.05-1.10]). Every 15-minute increase in door-to-needle times was significantly associated with higher all-cause mortality (adjusted HR, 1.04 [95% CI, 1.02-1.05]) within 90 minutes after hospital arrival, but not after 90 minutes (adjusted HR, 1.01 [95% CI, 0.99-1.03]), higher all-cause readmission (adjusted HR, 1.02; 95% CI, 1.01-1.03), and higher all-cause mortality or readmission (adjusted HR, 1.02 [95% CI, 1.01-1.03]). Conclusions and Relevance: Among patients aged 65 years or older with acute ischemic stroke who were treated with tissue plasminogen activator, shorter door-to-needle times were associated with lower all-cause mortality and lower all-cause readmission at 1 year. These findings support efforts to shorten time to thrombolytic therapy.

As a complement to the federal EITC, some states offer their own EITC, typically calculated as a percentage of the federal EITC. In this paper, we analyze the effect of state EITC on education using policy discontinuities at U.S. state borders. Our estimates reveal that an increase in state EITC leads to a statistically significant drop in high school completion. We then use a life-cycle matching model with directed search and endogenous educational choices, search intensities, hirings, hours worked, and separations to investigate the effects of EITC on the labor market in the long run and along the transitional dynamics. We show that a tax credit targeted at low-wage (and low-skilled) workers reduces the relative return to schooling, thereby generating a powerful disincentive to pursue long-term studies. In the long run, this results in an increase in the proportion of low-skilled workers in the economy, which may have important implications in terms of employment, productivity, and income inequalities. Abstract As a complement to the federal EITC, some states offer their own EITC, typically calculated as a percentage of the federal EITC. In this paper, we analyze the effect of state EITC on education using policy discontinuities at U.S. state borders. Our estimates reveal that an increase in state EITC leads to a statistically significant drop in high school completion. We then use a life-cycle matching model with directed search and endogenous educational choices, search intensities, hir-ings, hours worked, and separations to investigate the effects of EITC on the labor market in the long run and along the transitional dynamics. We show that a tax credit targeted at low-wage (and low-skilled) workers reduces the relative return to schooling, thereby generating a powerful disincentive to pursue long-term studies. In the long run, this results in an increase in the proportion of low-skilled workers in the economy, which may have important implications in terms of employment, productivity, and income inequalities.

Basic Information. The US National Cancer Institute (NCI) The National Cancer Institute is the oldest and largest of the 27 institutes and 6 centers that comprise the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), which are part of the US Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) Public Health Service (PHS). First established in 1937 by Congress, NCI’s mission and responsibilities were expanded in the National Cancer Act of 1971. Currently, the NCI’s main responsibility is to coordinate the National Cancer Program, which fosters research, training, and health information dissemination programs with respect to the cause, diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of cancer, rehabilitation from cancer, and survivorship concerns of cancer patients and their families.

We empirically assess the effect of historical slavery on the African American family structure. Our hypothesis is that female single headship among blacks is more likely to emerge in association not with slavery per se, but with slavery in sugar plantations, since the extreme demographic and social conditions prevailing in the latter have persistently affected family formation patterns. By exploiting the exogenous variation in sugar suitability, we establish the following. In 1850, sugar suitability is indeed associated with extreme demographic outcomes within the slave population. Over the period 1880-1940, higher sugar suitability determines a higher likelihood of single female headship. The effect is driven by blacks and starts fading in 1920 in connection with the Great Migration. OLS estimates are complemented with a matching estimator and a fuzzy RDD. Over a linked sample between 1880 and 1930, we identify an even stronger intergenerational legacy of sugar planting for migrants. By 1990, the effect of sugar is replaced by that of slavery and the black share, consistent with the spread of its influence through migration and intermarriage, and black incarceration emerges as a powerful mediator. By matching slaves’ ethnic origins with ethnographic data we rule out any influence of African cultural traditions.

This paper establishes a series of facts regarding migration and human capital ac- cumulation in the context of a period of large scale egalitarian land distribution. The settlement of the American West was facilitated by the enactment of the Homestead Act of 1862, which entitled any adult (women and free blacks included) to 160 acres of land in the Public Domain. I show two important facts: first, literacy rates were already increasing in areas that were to be settled by the Homestead Act, prior to the enactment of the law, and they continued converging to more settled areas in the decades after. Second, school enrolment rates only began converging to non-Homestead areas after the enactment of the law. I explore two salient mechanisms: land inequality and migration. I show that the reduction in land inequality was important, but that the role of selective migration is potentially dominant given that the school enrolment gains were concentrated among the children of recent arrivals.mmm