The paper studies whether and how the variation in child mortality relates to place in Colombia.Using census data samples of 578.404 Colombian women born between 1939 and 1985, we present evidence ofthe large geographical variation in child mortality between municipalities in a multilevel framework.Municipalities at the border and close to the coast rank among the unhealthiest by comparison to the mainpopulation clusters up in the mountains. We confirm the independent association between community educationand child mortality, controlling for individual and family education. Furthermore, we confirm the strong andenduring individual level relationship between maternal education and child mortality over time, and the lessstrong, but independent, effect of fathers education in child mortality: the gender gap reversal in education.However, among the women, the relative difference in child mortality is persistent over time despite theadvances of the last decades. In short, the individual risk factors are more important than the context, and thequestion ahead is which specific contextual factors improve the well-being of the least advantaged members ofthe community.

This study asks: 1. What are the relationships between types of living arrangements and psychological well-being for older adults? and 2. How do these relationships differ by gender? Data come from the 2010 wave of the Integrated Health Interview Series and include non-institutionalized adults age 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.

The next mayor faces several challenges in the economic development arena: a climate of fiscal austerity; the imperative to leave a legacy that distinguishes the new administration from its predecessors; and an obligation to steward continued growth while working to repair the economic distress and dislocation that still affect one in five of the city’s residents. If the next administration commits to pursuing growth and equity goals simultaneously in economic development policy, it can consolidate the achievements of the Bloomberg administration while responding to the many advocates and stakeholders who believe there is much more to be done. In short, the new mayor should move policies aimed at reducing poverty and connecting a new generation of New Yorkers to the middle class to the center of the agenda, rather than separating the quest for new sources of wealth and growth from the quest to improve the economic well-being of unemployed and low-earning residents. There are many things to learn from the current administration, and many of its economic development initiatives should and will continue. Yet the next mayor needs to look for a new play book on reconciling growth and equity by explicitly setting more evenly spread job growth, more evenly spread income growth and greater economic mobility for low wage-earners as goals. Luckily, it is not necessary for a new administration to feel around in the dark for solutions. Several cities – including Los Angeles, as outlined in a companion essay by Cecilia Estolano -- have pursued pro-growth strategies that also focus on economic mobility. Estolano’s examples and others show how embedding policies that put community partnerships into the DNA of city government and promote basic workforce linkage policies in conjunction with economic development projects can achieve both equity and growth. This paper reviews the recent history of economic development policy and suggests three “growth with equity” strategies for New York City: ∙ Replace discretionary and as-of-right subsidies to firms with investment in public infrastructure and the adoption of labor demand strategies ∙ Use available public levers to increase training, earning, and economic mobility opportunities for unemployed and low-wage workers ∙ Strengthen the City's core blue-collar employment base by bringing a deliberate equity vision to the management of the city’s physical assets, especially industrial land.

This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the Lanham Act of 1940, a heavily-subsidized and universal child care program that was administered throughout the U.S. during World War II. I begin by estimating the impact of the Lanham Act on maternal employment using 1940 and 1950 Census data in a difference-in-difference-in-differences framework. The evidence suggests that mothers paid work increased substantially following the introduction of the child care program. I then study the implications of the Lanham Act for childrens long-run outcomes related to educational attainment, family formation, and labor market participation. Using Census data from 1970 to 1990, I assess well-being in a lifecycle framework by tracking cohorts of treated individuals throughout their prime working years. Results from difference-in-differences models suggest that the Lanham Act had strong and persistent positive effects on well-being, equivalent to a 0.36 standard deviation increase in a summary index of adult outcomes. In addition, a supplementary analysis of distributional effects shows that the benefits of the Lanham Act accrued largely to the most economically disadvantaged adults. Together, these findings shed light on the design of contemporary child care systems that balance the twin goals of increasing parental employment and enhancing child well-being.

In the discourse on economic development, two important recent findings have been that the majority of the worlds poor now live in countries classified as middle income countries, and that while there is a trend of convergence in national income of countries, inequality within countries is becoming increasingly important. One of the most important questions concerning the alleviation of poverty globally is whether or not economic growth in these converging countries is sufficiently inclusive. Thisstudy explores the association between growth, poverty and inequality in the middle income countries of South Africa, Thailand, and Colombia. While, conventionally, the research in the field has focused on economic dimensions of distributions, this research includes an exploration of distributions of other indicators of quality of life, using variables such as asset ownership, access to public services, and health and education outcomes, to create an indicator of overall well-being for each individual household. The analysis relies on census data, and the large sample allows for more definitive analysis of smaller groups and sub-categories within the population. Improvement in and changing distribution of this indicatorover time is evaluated, while assessing the possibly changing importance of racial or ethnic identity, sector of employment, geographic location, and structural economic change. I find persistent differences in household well-being, and in distribution of the gains of growth, related to the households physical location and its link to the economy via the sector of or type of employment of the household head, in all three countries.

Social and economic policies designed to improve working conditions and employee well-being in adulthood have often resulted in the unintentional improvement of the health of children and their parents. Unfortunately, the USA is behind in implementing such policies and is losing ground in the health of its families compared to most other industrialized countries. We present historical patterns of infant mortality and womens life expectancy, both indicators of child and family health, over time and across the USA and other industrialized countries. Using a predominantly ecosocial framework, we review the channels or mechanisms that may link social or economic policy to a physiological change in children and/or their close family members. We continue to review a range of family and labor policies and evidence linking specific family and work policies to child and family health outcomes. We argue that, despite challenges, the identification of social and economic policies that impact the work/family interface and promote family health and well-being is critical and that the conditions which improve health for families will likely require modification in the public policy arena.

Women and girls in West Virginia have made some social and economic progress in recent decades, but the need for further improvements remains. Many female residents in the state are vulnerable to challenges such as poverty, limited access to child care, the gender wage gap, and adverse health conditions. In addition, women and girls in West Virginia face stubborn disparities in opportunities and outcomes—including disparities that exist among women and girls from different racial and ethnic groups as well as among those from various geographic areas in the state. Addressing these challenges and disparities is essential to promoting the well-being and vibrancy of West Virginia’s many communities. This report provides comprehensive data to assess the progress of women and girls in West Virginia and identify places where additional improvements are still needed. The report analyzes issues that profoundly affect the lives of women and girls in the state, including employment, earnings, and education; economic security and poverty; and health and well-being. The report also tracks trends in progress in West Virginia (between 2000 and 2010) by comparing its findings with the 2002 report, The Status of Women in West Virginia (IWPR 2002). In addition, the report examines the status of women and girls in five regions of the state (Northern Panhandle, North Central, Eastern Panhandle, South Central, and Southern) as well as in the nation as a whole. The data on women’s and girls’ status that it presents can serve as a resource . . .

This paper presents research findings on the major risks to childrens development, the prevalence of those risks among disconnected families, and the potential consequences for children. We also describe potential interventions to help disconnected families by increasing and stabilizing family income, enhancing parenting skills, supporting children directly, and reaching out to disconnected mothers who are not citizens. Finally, we offer directions for future research.

Homeownership plays an important role in the socioeconomic well-being of Americans. Despite recent major losses in wealth due to the subprime market crash, home equity remains the largest source of wealth for the average American family. A marker of class status, owning one's home provides access to neighborhoods with the best schools, quality public services, and lowest crime. This article demonstrates that minorities have not had the same access to homeownership that Whites have, and this contributes to continuing socioeconomic disparities between Whites and minorities. This article explores the homeownership experience of Blacks including African-Americans, Caribbeans, and Africans Hispanics, and Asians in the United States relative to non-Hispanic Whites. Minorities rely heavily on homeownership and home equity as the key component of their wealth and remain less likely than Whites to hold alternative forms of investment such as stocks. The role that homeownership plays in perpetuating intergenerational wealth disparities between Whites and minorities is discussed as are challenges to minority homeownership such as the pervasiveness of risky mortgage products. Exploring the racial gap in homeownership is fundamental to understanding racial inequalities and formulating strategies and policies to help close such disparities. This article concludes with suggestions for future research.

The family is a core social institution that occupies a central place in the lives of men, women, and children around the world: It is a source of support, and sometimes an obstacle, to individual and collective achievements; a unit of economic production and consumption; an emotional haven that can sometimes be a source of emotional strain; and a vehicle for extending caregiving and culture across the generations, for better and for worse. Traditionally, the family has been defined as a group of people linked through blood, marriage, or adoption, typically centered on a married couple and their dependents and relatives. However, nontraditional families made up of people linked neither by blood nor by marriage have often existed, and are now found in growing numbers in many regions around the world. Given the centrality of the family to child and adult well-being and the changing dynamics and structure of families today, an urgent need exists to map trends in family life across the globe, with a special focus on the consequences of these trends for children. Enter The World Family Map Project, a new, nonpartisan, nonsectarian initiative from Child Trends, acting in partnership with a number of foundations, nongovernmental organizations, and universities, including the Annie E. Casey Foundation, Focus Global, and the Social Trends Institute.

The family is a core social institution that occupies a central place in the lives of men, women, and children around the world: It is • a source of support, and sometimes an obstacle, to individual and collective achievements; • a unit of economic production and consumption; • an emotional haven that can sometimes be a source of emotional strain; and • a vehicle for extending caregiving and culture across the generations, for better and for worse. Traditionally, the family has been defined as a group of people linked through blood, marriage, or adoption, typically centered on a married couple and their dependents and relatives. However, nontraditional families made up of people linked neither by blood nor by marriage have often existed, and are now found in growing numbers in many regions around the world. Given the centrality of the family to child and adult well-being and the changing dynamics and structure of families today, an urgent need exists to map trends in family life across the globe, with a special focus on the consequences of these trends for children. Enter The World Family Map Project, a new, nonpartisan, nonsectarian initiative from Child Trends, acting in partnership with a number of foundations, nongovernmental organizations, and universities, including the Annie E. Casey Foundation, Focus Global, and the Social Trends . . .

Immigration is reshaping the US population. The US Census Bureau estimates that immigrants accounted for 32 percent of population growth between 2000 and 2010. In 2011, the most recent available year of the American Community Survey (ACS), 24 percent of children under the age of 18 had at least one immigrant parent. What do these changes mean for the health and well-being of children in the United States? Past research consistently finds differences in health and health risks between the children of immigrants and the children of natives. However, it is difficult to accurately characterize the health of children of immigrants across their extremely diverse background and circumstances. While children in some national-origin groups appear to be adjusting well to the United State and may even enjoy better health outcomes than children of natives, children in other origin groups face poorer socioeconomic circumstances, have more limited access to public benefits and services, and therefor face greater challenges in the course of their health and development.

With nearly half of U.S. births occurring out of wedlock, understanding how parents navigate their relationship options is important. This paper examines the consequences of lowering the cost of paternity establishment - a contract granting unmarried fathers partial parental rights and responsibilities - within a framework where parents trade off joint child investment against interaction with each other. My empirical results show that increases in paternity establishment are partially driven by reductions in parental marriage. Although unmarried fathers invest more in their children along some dimensions, the overall effects on father involvement and child welfare are either negative or zero.

This dissertation encompasses three essays that examine the extent to which parental loss and social programs affect the health, education and time allocation of children in developing countries. The first chapter asks the question of whether early life public health interventions have lasting or long term impact on children’s human capital development. In order to answer this question, this chapter investigates the long term impact of the safe motherhood program in Indonesia on later cognition and schooling outcomes of children when they are age 11 to 17 years. The paper further investigates this question by examining the impact of the program based on exposure that began during a particular year. The findings suggest that the safe motherhood program had an impact on adolescent cognition and schooling. In particular, the program impact is relatively large and significant for those children who began exposure to the program at age 2 or younger, or not yet conceived. These estimates are robust to a series of robustness and specification checks. The results are also in general consistent with the findings in biological literature that suggest the importance of the first two years of life in shaping outcomes later in life. The second chapter examines the question of how parental loss or absence affects child well-being. While the strategy of many papers in the literature is to use parental death due to HIV/Aids to examine this question, this chapter uses the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami as a plausibly exogenous source of variation in parental death. In addition, the paper uses a unique longitudinal dataset that has baseline information on the same sample of individuals interviewed after the tsunami. Also, given rich data, the paper is able to look at various dimensions of child well-being which include school attendance, post-secondary aspirations, time allocation as well as educational attainment and marriage decisions for older children. The paper provides an in-depth analysis by examining the impact of parental death by age and gender of the child as well as looking at the impact in the short term and longer term. The results suggest that death of both parents, which has been little explored in the literature, has a large, negative impact on the human capital accumulation of both males and females. The loss of father alone led older males (aged 15 to 17 at the time of tsunami) to acquire less education compared to same age males whose both parents survived, while no effect is found on younger males aged 9 to 14. Furthermore, the results suggest that maternal death has little impact on schooling outcomes but does affect time allocation of children. Finally, the third chapter examines the impact of a unique bilateral grant-aid program which provided typhoon-resistant schools and instructional equipment to the Philippines. The results suggest that the presence of both the typhoon-resistant schools and instructional equipment programs had a positive impact on the educational attainment of both men and women. The availability of instructional equipment program alone also increased the educational attainment of men but it does not seem to have had substantive effect on women. On the other hand, the availability of typhoon- resistant schools without the instructional equipment package did not have any impact on schooling outcomes of either the males or females. Except for the falsification exercise which suggests that there could be other underlying trends which may not be fully captured by the specifications, the estimates are in general robust to the inclusion of individual level characteristics, accounting of other concurrent national government’s programs, restricting to municipalities in the typhoon belt region and accounting for municipality-specific trends. The findings suggest the importance of not only expanding access to schooling through increased availability of schools or classrooms (particularly, those that are resistant to natural disasters) but also the importance of improving the quality of learning through the availability of school resources that aide in students’ learning in developing countries.

From 1980 to 2000, the substantial rise in the U.S. college-high school graduate wage gap coincided with an increase in geographic sorting as college graduates increasingly concentrated in high wage, high rent metropolitan areas, relative to lower skill workers. The increase in wage inequality may not reflect a similar increase in well-being inequality because high and low skill workers increasingly paid different housing costs and consumed different local amenities. This paper examines the determinants and welfare implications of the increased geographic skill sorting. I estimate a structural spatial equilibrium model of local labor demand, housing supply, labor supply, and amenity levels. The model allows local amenity and productivity levels to endogenously respond to a citys skill-mix. I identify the model parameters using local labor demand changes driven by variation in cities industry mixes and interactions of these labor demand shocks with determinants of housing supply (land use regulations and land availability). The GMM estimates indicate that cross-city changes in firms' demands for high and low skill labor were the underlying forces of the increase in geographic skill sorting. An increase in labor demand for college relative to non-college workers increases a citys college employment share, which then endogenously raises the local productivity of all workers and improves local amenities. Local wage and amenity growth generates in-migration, driving up rents. My estimates show that low skill workers are less willing to pay high housing costs to live in high-amenity cities, leading them to elect more affordable, low-amenity cities. I find that the combined effects of changes in citieswages, rents, and endogenous amenities increased well-being inequality between high school and college graduates by a significantly larger amount than would be suggested by the increase in the college wage gap alone.

Research on coresidence between parents and their adult children in the United States has challenged the myth that elders are the primary beneficiaries, and instead has shownthat inter-generationally extended households generally benefit the younger generation more than their parents. Nevertheless, the economic fortunes of those at the older and younger ends of the adult life course have shifted in the second half of the twentieth century, with increasing financial well-being among older adults and greater financial strain among younger adults. This paper uses U.S. Census data to examine the extent to which changes in generational financial well-being over the late 20th century have been reflected in the likelihood of coresidence and financial dependency in parent-adult childhouseholds between 1960 and 2000. We find that younger adults have become more financially dependent on their parents and older adults have become more independentof their adult children. We also find that the effect of economic considerations in decisions about coresidence became increasingly salient for younger adults, butdecreasingly so for older adults.

Recent military engagements in Iraq (OIF) and Afghanistan (OEF) raise questions about the effects on service members of overseas deployment, which can include service in a combat or war zone, exposure to casualties, or both. The 2010 National Survey of Veterans, which asked a broad cross section of living veteran cohorts about deployment to OEF/OIF and combat exposure, provides some new insights into short and long-term relationships between characteristics of military service and outcomes. Analysis of these data suggests that the impacts of deployment and combat on the current socioeconomic well-being of returning OEF/OIF veterans may be relatively small, but the effects of combat exposure on self-reported health and other nonpecuniary indicators of their well-being appear to be negative. Among older veteran cohorts, where there is clearer sorting into treatment and control groups because of strong variation in combat exposure by year of birth, patterns are broadly similar. These results are consistent with a veterans compensation system that replaces lost earnings but does not necessarily compensate for other harms associated with combat exposure such as mental health trauma.

We use the Levy Institute Measure of Economic Well-being (LIMEW), the most comprehensive income measure available to date, to compare economic well-being in Canada and the United States in the first decade of the 21st century. This study represents the first international comparison based on LIMEW, which differs from the standard measure of gross money income(MI) in that it includes noncash government transfers, public consumption, income from wealth, and household production, and nets out all personal taxes. We find that, relative to the United States, median equivalent LIMEW was 11 percent lower in Canada in 2000. By 2005, this gap had narrowed to 7 percent, while the difference in median equivalent MI was only 3 percent. Inequality was notably lower in Canada, with a Gini coefficient of 0.285 for equivalent LIMEW in 2005, compared to a US coefficient of 0.376a gap that primarily reflects the greater importance of income from wealth in the States. However, the difference in Gini coefficients declined between 2000 and 2005. We also find that the elderly were better off relative to the nonelderly in the United States, but that high school graduates did better relative to college graduates in Canada.

The well-being and productivity of immigrant youth has become one of the most important global issues of our times as a result of mass migration and resettlement. In this unique volume, leading scholars from multiple nations and disciplines provide a state-of-the-art overview of contemporary research on immigrant youth and delineate the most promising future directions for research on their success, suggesting implications for policy and interventions that will benefit host societies as well as immigrant youth. The contributors to Realizing the Potential of Immigrant Youth include many of the leading international experts on migration, acculturation, intergroup issues, and immigrant youth development, with contributions from the fields of child development, demography, economics, education, immigrant mental health, social psychology, and sociology.

This dissertation consists of three essays in the areas of labor economics and economic demography. The first essay builds on previous research, which has analyzed the economic impacts of divorce using various methods and outcomes, and from this research it is clear that divorce has economic consequences for women. One consequence of divorce that has not been explored is changes time allocation. Time allocation, specifically time spent in leisure, is directly related to the well-being of individuals, and it is expected to change with divorce when time-use gains from joint household production are no longer realized. The results show that divorced women spend more time in market work, and less time in housework than their married counterparts. Divorced women with children are found to have less leisure time than married women, and divorced women are found to spend the same amount of time in primary childcare yet significantly less time with children while doing other activities. The second essay is on the decision to enter the labor force for women with children. This decision is based on a variety of factors that includes characteristics of spouses. Husbands work schedules, work hours, and flexibility of work time will play an important role in this decision to enter the labor force, and additionally, in the decision to work part-time or a set number of hours. This paper uses detailed time-dairy and work schedules data to investigate the relationship between husbands work schedules and maternal employment. The results show married women with children are less likely to participate in the labor force when their husbands finish work after 6:00pm when compared to husbands that finish work before 6:00pm, even while controlling for simultaneous relationship between husbands work stopping time and wifes labor force participation. Finally, the third essay of this dissertation analyzes the effect of state-level changes in divorce law on the time allocation of married men and women. The results show that married mens time allocation is not impacted by the change in divorce law, yet women are found to be spending more time in leisure and less time in household production in states with unilateral divorce law.