Good morning, Chairman Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Ranking Member Jim Moran(D-VA), and members of the committee. My name is Julia Gordon, and I direct the Housing Finance team at the Center for American Progress, a nonpartisan think tank dedicated to improving the lives of Americans through progressive ideas and action. Thank you so much for convening this hearing on the critical topic of inequality and opportunity in the housing market. I greatly appreciate the opportunity to testify today about the state of our housing recovery and its relationship to the well-being of families and the broader economy.

This paper analyzes 24 African census samples from 13 countries available via the African Integrated Census MicroData website (http://ecastats.uneca.org/aicmad) to illustrate how microdata may be used to assess development and pinpoint basic human needs at local administrative level over time. We calculate a Human Development Index-like measure for small administrative areas, where much of the responsibility lies for executing policies related to health, education, and general well-being. The methodological proposals introduced in this paper are particularly pertinent for the case of Africa. While it is true that data for much of Africa is not appropriate for economic growth rates or per capita income estimates, the analysis in this demonstrates that they are good enough for many other purposes. Indeed, a major aggravating problem that contributes to the 'African statistical tragedy' is the lack of accessibility to existing census microdata. This paper aims to illustrates the usefulness of census microdata - which are vastly underutilized in Africa - and hopefully contribute to make them more transparent and freely accessible.

BACKGROUNDMen's ability to fill the provider role remains a consistent requirement for marriage across the class spectrum and cross-nationally. Fiscal concerns appear less salient for transitions to parenthood or to informal unions such as cohabitation.OBJECTIVEThis paper evaluates whether marital expectations and marital transitions of new mothers are associated with the economic characteristics of father.METHODSAnalyses are based on observed and imputed data on fathers from the first two waves of the Fragile Families and Child Well-Being Study. Logistic regression models assess factors predicting mothers initial expectations of marrying their baby's father, and transitions into marital unions by the second interview.RESULTSMost women expect to marry their baby's father, although estimates are lower when men's data are repaired by imputation. Multivariate analyses find mother's marital expectations are most strongly associated with men's educational attainment, but not with men's earnings at the child's birth. Transitions to marriage are positively associated with men's earnings levels, although estimates are considerably lower than previously reported thresholds. Furthermore, the odds of marrying do not increase monotonically as men's income level rises once missing data are imputed.

Climate variability is an inherent characteristic of the Earth's climate, including but not limited to climate change. It affects and impacts human society in different ways, depending on the underlying socioeconomic vulnerability of specific places, social groups, households and individuals. This differential vulnerability presents spatial and temporal variations, and is rooted in historical patterns of development and relations between human and ecological systems. This study aims to assess the impact of climate variability on livelihoods and well-being, as well as their changes over time and across space, and for rural and urban populations. The geographic focus is Southern Brazil-the states of Parana, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul-- and the objectives include (a) to identify and map critical areas or hotspots of exposure to climate variability (temperature and precipitation), and (b) to identify internal variation or differential vulnerability within these areas and its evolution over time (1980-2010), using newly available integrated data from the Terra Populus project. These data include geo-referenced climate and agricultural data, and data describing demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of individuals, households and places.

Research on family structure and child well-being rarely includes children in same sex parent families, a notable omission since 28% of lesbian couple households contain children. Using the 2010-2013 pooled Current Population Survey, we examined children's economic well-being by family structure. These data were ideal for this study because they included a sizable number of children in same-sex cohabiting families and the CPS measured both official and supplemental poverty, incorporating the cohabiting partner. Using the official poverty measure, children in cohabiting mother families were more likely to be poor than their counterparts in either the other cohabiting (two biological parent or stepparent) or married parent families. Yet, using the supplemental poverty measure, these children were no longer worse off and did not differ from children in different-sex two parent families, indicating that partner contribution vary considerable by family structure.

The well-being of women is integral to the economic vitality and overall health of Utah. Nearly one million women live in the state; when they thrive, so do their families and communities. Initiatives in Utah to strengthen women's overall well-being must address complex realities. On the one hand, Utah's women have made significant progress in recent decades. They are active in the workforce, make important economic contributions to their families and communities, have experienced a narrowing of the gender wage gap, and are more likely to have a college degree than two decades ago. On the other hand, Utah's women face persistent challenges. They continue to earn less than men-even when their educational levels are higher. They are also more likely than men to be poor and to experience intimate partner violence. In addition, women in Utah, as in the United States overall, are underrepresented in political leadership and face racial and ethnic disparities. 1 These challenges must be addressed for the state as a whole to thrive. This briefing paper provides an overview of how women in Utah fare in key dimensions of their lives: earnings, education, and economic security; physical and emotional health and safety; and political leadership and participation. While it lies beyond the scope of the paper to address other key aspects of women's overall well-being-such as faith and spirituality, family and friendships, civic and community involvement, and sports and fitness-the data provided here identify important areas of progress and challenges for Utah women and suggest policy directions that would benefit the state as a whole. Utah Women and Work: Strong Labor Force Participation, Large Gender Wage Gap Women have made great strides in Utah's workforce in recent decades. Although women's labor force participation rate did not increase between 1995 (when it was 61.2 percent; IWPR 1998) and 2012 (when it was 61.6 percent; Appendix Table A), the population and workforce of Utah have become more educated and more likely to work in professional and managerial occupations (IWPR 1998; Appendix Table A). On the whole, women's labor force participation in Utah is relatively strong: Utah ranks 17 th in the nation for its female labor force participation rate and has a higher share of women in the workforce than the nation overall (58.8 percent). Like the nation as a whole, however, women's labor force participation rate in Utah is much lower than men's (76.1 percent; Appendix Table A). In Utah, as in all states in the nation, women who work full-time, year-round earn less than men. In 2012, median annual earnings for Utah women were $33,100 compared with $48,000 for men (Appendix Table A). Among the largest racial and ethnic groups, earnings vary considerably. Non-Hispanic white women and men in 2009-2011 had the highest median earnings ($32,525 for women and $48,787 for men), followed by non-Hispanic minority women and men ($28,298 for women and $34,105 for men). Hispanic women and men had the lowest median earnings ($23,276 and $29,000; Appendix Table B and IWPR 2014a).

There are persistent differences in self-reported subjective well-being across U.S. metropolitan areas, and residents of declining cities appear less happy than other Americans. Newer residents of these cities appear to be as unhappy as longer term residents, and yet some people continue to move to these areas. While the historical data on happiness are limited, the available facts suggest that cities that are now declining were also unhappy in their more prosperous past. One interpretation of these facts is that individuals do not aim to maximize self-reported well-being, or happiness, as measured in surveys, and they willingly endure less happiness in exchange for higher incomes or lower housing costs. In this view, subjective well-being is better viewed as one of many arguments of the utility function, rather than the utility function itself, and individuals make trade-offs among competing objectives, including but not limited to happiness.

N kpuna, Native Hawaiian elders, are recognized as major sources of wisdom and knowledge in the Native Hawaiian community. Yet, due to many factors, including Western acculturation and historical trauma, n kpuna suffer serious health and social disparities. Although over 36%of n kpuna reside outside of Hawaii, almost no data areavailable on their well-being. Kpuna, caretakers, and key informants in Hawaii and Los Angeles were interviewed, and the Census 2000 and 2010 Public Use Microdata Samples were analyzed to determine the particular challenges facing kpuna outside of Hawaii. Kpuna in the continental United States had a better socioeconomic status than those in Hawaii, but they had much less access to cultural activities and less family support. Several communities in the continental US have formed cultural and civic groups to provide this support.

Most developed countries have foreign aid programs that aim to alleviate poverty and foster economic growth in less developed countries, but with very limited success. A large body of evidence indicates that the root of the economic development problem is cross-country differences in the productivity of labor. If workers are much more productive in one country than in another, the obvious way to help people in less developed countries is to allow them to help themselves by moving to places where they can be more productive. Yet immigration laws severely constrain such movement.

This paper sets out to clarify the characteristics of Irish immigrants in England & Wales and the United States in the late 19th century by comparing the family system of the Ireland-born immigrants to that of Britain-born and American-born citizens, and by examining the pull and push factors for Irish immigrants, from the perspective of the Hajinal's theory and family strategies. To verify this hypothesis, I used the 100% census data of 1881 (England & Wales) and the 1880 (the United States) in NAPP (North Atlantic Population Project) issued by the Minnesota Population Center to analyze the Irish immigrant families in England & Wales and the United States. In conclusion, the Irish-Britain and the Irish-American migrants, who had lived in extended family households or multiple family households in their home country, formed simple family households in England & Wales and the United States, their host country, assimilating themselves to England & Wales and the United States communities. The head and members of each household adopted a family strategy in which all family members should have jobs, to pursue their well-being. However they had their identity, for example the large number of children and their ethnic endogamy.

Bostons population is becoming older than ever before. The oldest Baby Boomer is approaching 70 and reinventing what it means to be a senior citizen. Waves of Boomers will forge a new path into later life, creating a population of seniors that is larger and more long-lived than previous cohorts, and diverse in new ways. In 2010, more than 14% of Bostons residents were 60 years or older, representing 88,000 older people. By 2030, projected increases in the older population will result in as many as 130,000 seniors residing in Boston. How will Boston accommodate its growing older population? What steps may promote livability for Boston residents of all ages; where residents will want to, and can expect to, age in place with security, dignity, and well-being?This report was produced in collaboration between the Boston Commission on Affairs of the Elderly and the Center for Social and Demographic Research on Aging at the Gerontology Institute of the University of Massachusetts Boston. Its aim is to offer a glimpse into important issues relating to aging in Boston. The demographic profilepresented here highlights the citys cultural, racial and ethnic diversity as a central context for the changing needs and concerns of older Bostonians. Potential challengesrelating to health and caregiving, social engagement, income security, and housing are identified; as well, theopportunities presented by an older population are recognized.

This dissertation consists of three independent chapters. Chapter 1 examines the determinants and welfare implications of the increased geographic of workers by skill from 1980 to 2000. I estimate a structural spatial equilibrium model of local labor demand, housing supply, labor supply, and amenity levels. The estimates indicate that cross-city changes in Örmsídemands for high and low skill labor were the underlying forces driving the increase in geographic skill sorting. I Önd that the combined e§ects of changes in citiesíwages, rents, and endogenous amenities increased well-being in- equality between high school and college graduates by a signiÖcantly larger amount than would be suggested by the increase in the college wage gap alone. Chapter 2 examines the abilities of state and local governments to extract rent from private sector workers by charging high tax rates and paying government workers high wages. Using a spatial equilibrium model where private sector workers are free to migrate across government jurisdictions, I show that variation in areasíhousing supply elasticities di§erentially restrains governmentsíabilities to extract rent from private sector workers. Governments in less housing elastic areas can charge higher taxes without worry of shrinking their tax bases. I test the modelís predictions by using worker wage data from the CPS-MORG. I Önd the public-private sector wage gap is higher in areas with less elastic housing supplies. Chapter 3 studies the standard practice in regression analyses to allow for clustering in the error covariance matrix when an explanatory variable varies at a more aggregate level than the units of observation. However, the structure of the error covariance matrix may be more complex, with correlations not vanishing for units in di§erent clusters. I show that with equal-sized clusters, if the covariate of interest is randomly assigned at the cluster level, only accounting for non-zero covariances at the cluster level, and ignoring correlations between clusters as well as di§erences in within-cluster correlations, leads to valid conÖdence intervals. However, in the absence of random assignment of the covariates, ignoring general correlation structures may lead to biases in standard errors.

Climate variability affects and impacts human society in different ways, depending on the underlying socioeconomic and demographic vulnerability of specific places, social groups, households and individuals. This differential vulnerability presents spatial and temporal variations, and is rooted in historical patterns of development and relations between human and ecological systems. This paper aims to (a) identify and map critical areas or hotspots of vulnerability to climate variability and its evolution over time (1980-2010), and (b) identify internal variation or differential vulnerability within these areas, using newly available integrated data from the Terra Populus project. These data include geo-referenced climate data, and data describing demography and socioeconomic characteristics of individuals, households and places. This study focus on Southern Brazil Parana, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul and assess the impact of climate variability on livelihoods and well-being, and their changes over time and across space, for rural and urban populations.

While internal, rural-to-urban migration is responsible for much of Viet Nams recent economic growth, there has been little attention directed at the ways in which migration is intersecting with poverty to leave some children particularly vulnerable to exploitation and inadequate care. Indeed, a complex household registration system, which serves to limit both legal migration and access to social services, means that many young migrants migrate illegallyand thus invisibly and the children of migrants, whether they migrate with their parents or are left-behind in the care of rural relatives, have difficulty accessing needed educational and health services. Given the diversity of childrens migration experiences, the frequency with which they migrate, and the reality that poverty exacerbates risk, a wider lens is required in order to better understand and design policy and programming to address the patterning of care and protection vulnerabilities that face children situated at the nexus of economic disadvantage and migration. Investigating the relationships between poverty, migration and child well-being, this report is one of three country case studies undertaken as part of a 2-year Oak Foundation- funded programme of work which explored the potential for greater linkages between child protection and anti-poverty work in low and middle income countries. The research draws on qualitative and participatory research methodologies to ascertain the drivers of migration, assess the key threats facing migrant and left-behind children and explore the programming options that communities believe would better protect their children.

A recent study by Colman, Dee, and Joyce (CDJ) used data from the National Youth Risk Behavior Surveys (NYRBS) and found that parental involvement (PI) laws had no effect on the probability that minors abstain from sex or use contraception. We reexamine this issue using data from the NYRBS in combination with data from the State Youth Risk Behavior Surveys (SYRBS) and a variety of identification strategies designed to address the role of state-level time-varying unmeasured heterogeneity. Consistent with CDJ, we find that PI laws have no effect on minor teen females' abstinence decisions. However, when we (i) exploit additional state policy variation than was available to CDJ, (ii) use 18+ year-olds as a within-state control group, and (iii) rely on states with enjoined PI laws as an additional counterfactual group, we find evidence that the enforcement of PI laws decreases the probability of unprotected sex and increases use of the birth control pill. Despite the potential to diminish unwanted pregnancy, our findings provide only limited evidence that PI laws are associated with improved adolescent psychological well-being.

This paper proposes an index that quantifies the well-being (ill-being) of a target group associated with its occupational segregation: that is, this index assesses the gains/losses of that group which are derived from its underrepresentation in some occupations and overrepresentation in others. This index has several good properties. In particular, it is equal to zero when either the group has no segregation or all occupations have the same wage, and increases when individuals of the group move into occupations that have higher wages than those left behind. This well-being measure permits to rank different demographic groups using distributive value judgments that are in the line of those conducted in the literature on economic inequality.

The children of Mexican immigrants face formidable barriers to achieving socioeconomic mobility due to their parents' precarious economic position and high rates of unauthorized status. In the short term, Mexican immigrants often coreside in extended household living arrangements with extended kin and unrelated friends and associates to shelter themselves from economic deprivation and insecurity of unauthorized status. Using individual-level Census data, the present study examines how family economic resources relate to household living arrangements. The results are consistent with various theories of immigrant household formation, especially those that explain household structure in terms of economic need and processes of immigration. Families residing in extended arrangements are unique, however, in terms of how often they include a householder and how much they contribute to total household resources, indicators that families may hold more supportive roles within extended households. The implications of the findings for the well-being of immigration children are discussed.

This book fosters a deeper understanding of the growing Latino elderly population and the implications on society. It examines post-WWII demographic and social changes and summarizes research from sociology, psychology, economics, and public health to shed light on the economic, physical, and mental well-being of older Latinos. The political and cultural implications including possible policy changes are also considered. Written in an engaging style, each chapter opens with a vignette that puts a human face on the issues. Boxed exhibits highlight social programs and policies and physical and mental health challenges that impact Latino elders. Web alerts direct readers to sites that feature more detailed information related to the chapters issues. Each chapter also features an introduction, examples, tables, figures, a summary, and discussion questions. The self-contained chapters can be presented in any order.

The shift towards more time-intensive and child-centered parenting in the U.S. is widely assumed to be positively linked to healthy child development, but implications for adult well-being are less clear. We go beyond prior work on parenthood and well-being to assess the multidimensional nature of mothers and fathers subjective well-being in time with children. Our emphasis on parenting (activities) as opposed to parenthood (status) draws attention to how the nature and context of time use contribute to differences in parents happiness, meaning, sadness, stress, and fatigue. We posit that time with children may elicit more positive and negative feelings than time without children, particularly among mothers, whose greater investments in childrearing may be associated with more strain but also more meaning. Relying on nationally representative time diary data from the 2010 well-being module of the American Time Use Survey (N = 23,282), we find that parents consistently report more positive affect in time with children than without. Mothers report less happiness, more stress, and greater fatigue (but not more meaning) in time with children than fathers, and their greater fatigue is not explained by mediating factors such as the quality and quantity of sleep and leisure, activity type, or solo parenting.

Steady increases in womens labor force participation over the past half century have occurred alongside the ratcheting up of expectations for intensive parenting. We know little about how mothers fare in the context of dual devotions to work and parenting. Using a new module in the 2010 and 2012 American Time Use Surveys, we assess mothers subjective well-being in parenting in the context of her and her partners work arrangements. Preliminary results suggest that compared to non-working mothers, working mothers do less of the desirable parenting tasks like play and more of that which is less desirable. This differential may explain working mothers lower happiness and higher stress and fatigue in parenting.Further, mothers working full-time while theirpartners work less than full time report less happiness, more stress, and more fatigue inparenting than those with other workarrangements, even full-time working mothers withfull-time working partners.