I study the effect of taste-based discrimination on the assimilation decisions of immigrant minorities. Do discriminated minority groups increase their assimilation efforts in order to avoid discrimination and public harassment or do they become alienated and retreat in their own communities? I exploit an exogenous shock to native attitudes, anti-Germanism in the United States during World War I, to empirically identify the reactions of German immigrants to increased native hostility. I use two measures of assimilation efforts: naming patterns and petitions for naturalization. In the face of increased discrimination, Germans increase their assimilation investments by Americanizing their own and their children’s names and filing more petitions for US citizenship. These responses are stronger in states that registered higher levels of anti-German hostility, as measured by voting patterns and incidents of violence against Germans.

Talent is the most precious resource for today’s knowledge-based economy, and a significant share of the U.S. skilled workforce in technology fields is foreign born. The United States has long held a leading position in attracting global talent, but the gap to other countries is weakening. Immigration policies like the H-1B visa program shape the admissions of foreign workers to the country and grant a particularly strong gatekeeping role to sponsoring firms and universities. This chapter explores the data around global talent flows and some of the economic implications of an employer-driven immigration approach.

International migrations are tied to various discriminatory social structures, charac- terized by social class, ethnicity, age, nationality; this article addresses women who are also affected by conditions of gender inequality. The aim in contributing to the debate is to question the androcentric and sexist social perception that, empirically or theoretically, masks their pre- sence or places women in a subsidiary position and under the domination of men. The femini- zation of international labor migration is an essential characteristic of the singularities that are found in migration dynamics, through the capitalist restructuring that developed in the last two decades of the 20th Century and that in the contemporary period stems from the 2008 crisis, the hardening of anti-migratory policies and populist xenophobia, which exhibit no alleviation. This is the context of today's broad migratory system that encompasses the United States and Latin American men and women.

Changing landscape heterogeneity can influence connectivity and alter genetic variation in local populations, but there can be a lag between ecological change and evolutionary responses. Temporal lag effects might be acute in agroecosystems, where land cover has changed substantially in the last two centuries. Here, we evaluate how patterns of an insect pest’s genetic differentiation are related to past and present agricultural land cover change over a 150‐year period. We quantified change in the amount of potato, Solanum tuberosum L., land cover since 1850 using county‐level agricultural census reports, obtained allele frequency data from 7,408 single‐nucleotide polymorphism loci, and compared effects of historic and contemporary landscape connectivity on genetic differentiation of Colorado potato beetle, Leptinotarsa decemlineata Say, in two agricultural landscapes in the United States. We found that potato land cover peaked in Wisconsin in the early 1900s, followed by rapid decline and spatial concentration, whereas it increased in amount and extent in the Columbia Basin of Oregon and Washington beginning in the 1960s. In both landscapes, we found small effect sizes of landscape resistance on genetic differentiation, but a 20× to 1,000× larger effect of contemporary relative to historic landscape resistances. Demographic analyses suggest population size trajectories were largely consistent among regions and therefore are not likely to have differentially impacted the observed patterns of population structure in each region. Weak landscape genetic associations might instead be related to the coarse resolution of our historical land cover data. Despite rapid changes in agricultural landscapes over the last two centuries, genetic differentiation among L. decemlineata populations appears to reflect ongoing landscape change. The historical landscape genetic framework employed in this study is broadly applicable to other agricultural pests and might reveal general responses of pests to agricultural land‐use change.

The mapping and spatial analysis of crime covers a broad range of techniques and has been used to explore a variety of topics. In its most basic form, crime mapping is the use of Geographic Information System (GIS) to visualize and organize spatial data for more formal statistical analysis. Spatial analysis can be employed in both an exploratory and well as a more confirmatory manner with the primary purpose of identifying how certain community or ecological factors (such as population characteristics or the built environment) influence the spatial patterns of crime. Two topics of particular interest include examining for evidence of the diffusion of crime and in evaluating the effectiveness of geographically targeted crime reduction strategies. Crime mapping can also be used to visualize and analyze the movement or target selection patterns of criminals. Mapping software allows for the creation of electronic pin-maps and by spatially organizing the data, GIS increases the analytical value of these maps. Crime mapping allows researchers and practitioners to explore crime patterns, offender mobility, and serial offenses over time and space. Within the context of local policing, crime mapping provides the visualization of crime clusters by types of crimes, thereby validating the street knowledge of patrol officers. Crime mapping can be used for allocating resources (patrol, specialized enforcement) and also to inform how the concerns of local citizens are being addressed. The citations listed below highlight the interdisciplinary nature of both the study of crime and the development of the methods used in spatial analysis. They exemplify the growing prominence that spatial analysis has in understanding where crime occurs.

Sleep is affected by social relationships and institutions, but much research has studied sleep within an individualized framework. In this dissertation, I analyze sleep in a series of specific social contexts to examine how these contexts shape gender and socioeconomic differences in sleep. Given prior findings suggesting the importance of employment schedules for sleep, I pay particular attention to variation in employment and employment policy contexts. My first empirical chapter uses data from the Statistics Canada General Social Survey to test whether gender differences in parents’ sleep narrowed after a change in macro-level employment policy—specifically, after introduction of dedicated paternity leave in the Canadian province of Quebec. My second analysis situates sleep at the intersection of work and family, using Multinational Time Use Study data to examine gender differences in how the time people start working, the time their partners start working, and the time their children start school associate with when they wake up in the morning. Finally, my third study focuses on life course context, examining whether educational differences in sleep duration vary over age and by retirement status in samples from the American Time Use Survey. In each of these studies I construct sleep measures from time diary data and carry out analysis using descriptive statistics and multivariate regression. Findings reinforce the idea that employment is an important determinant of sleep duration and that employment context shapes several gender and socioeconomic differences in sleep. More broadly, this research highlights the importance of not only examining how social structures, relationships, and inequalities impact sleep, but also of considering what sleep as a social activity reveals about our social lives.

It was good news for supporters of criminal justice reform this past spring when the Louisiana Department of Corrections announced a signifcant drop in the state’s prison population as a result of 2017 sentencing reform bills. At a press conference on June 13, state offcials touted a 20 percent decrease of persons incarcerated for nonviolent crimes and a 42 percent decrease in the number of persons sent to prison for drug possession since the reforms were implemented. The total number of persons imprisoned in Louisiana at the end of 2018 was 32,397, almost 19 percent lower than its peak in 2012. The governor told reporters that Louisiana was no longer the “incarceration capital” of the nation, and that “shedding that title is just the beginning.”

Coastal zones are more densely populated than any other landscape on Earth. These regions are also dynamic places that naturally change shape and position, especially in response to sea-level rise, leaving the infrastructure that sustains high coastal populations exposed to natural coastal hazards. Therefore, to make exposed infrastructure less vulnerable to damage, shorelines are deliberately altered with hazard protections. Some developed coasts have been altered on such spatial scales that they no longer act like natural coastlines. Instead, they function as coupled human-landscape systems, where shoreline dynamics reflect interactions and feedbacks between human alterations and natural coastal processes. The Atlantic Coast of the USA has over 2500 km of developed coastline, and is arguably the largest coastal coupled human-landscape system in the world, and is dominated by beach nourishment: a type of coastal hazard protection that involves widening an eroding beach with imported sand. Beach nourishment buffers exposed infrastructure from coastal hazards, and also serves as a stock of natural capital for tourism economies. However, despite ubiquitous nourishment along the US Atlantic since the 1960s, coastal risk continues to increase. This dynamic is an expression of the “safe development paradox”, in which exposure to hazard continues to rise, despite increased efforts to protect against hazard impacts. This thesis explores unintended feedbacks between coastal hazard, exposure, and vulnerability evident along the US Atlantic Coast. My work examines why beach nourishment might have the counter-productive consequence of increasing risk. This thesis also presents a conceptual framework that may enable future models of coastal risk to incorporate “big data” approaches to illuminate and explore the “safe development paradox”, and to test whether prospective management strategies might mediate coastal risk or exacerbate it.

Conventional political economy models predict taxation will increase after franchise expansion to low-income voters. We argue that in societies where social status is a cleavage, franchise extension to low-status groups may lead to both redistribution and social integration. Therefore, elites can use the threat of desegregation to unite wealthy and poor members of high-status groups against taxation and the bureaucratic capacity required to collect taxes. We study the effects of extending voting rights to African Americans after the Civil War. During Reconstruction, under federal supervision , per capita taxation was higher in counties with more preWar slaveholdings. After Reconstruction, taxes fell and bureaucratic capacity was weaker where slavery was widespread. Moreover, higher intrawhite economic inequality was associated with lower taxes and capacity post-Reconstruction in counties with more slavehold-ings. These results suggest that elites built cross-class coalitions against taxation where whites were threatened by desegregation and sought to protect their racial status.

We analyze the effects of two automation technologies, industrial robots and computing equipment, on the gender wage gap in US local labor markets between 1990 and 2015. We find distinct impact of robot and computer capital: an increase in robots decreases male wage more than female wage, whereas an increase in computers reduces female wage more than male wage. According to our estimates, one additional unit of robot per thousand workers reduces gender wage gap by 0.3 log points, and by contrast an increase in computer capital by one million dollars per thousand workers increases gender wage gap by 3.7 log points.

Objective To examine how the effect of race (Black versus White) on meeting physical activity (PA) guidelines varies by sex, income, education, and region of residence. Methods We pooled data from 10 consecutive years (2008 to 2017) of the National Health Interview Survey. We used logistic regression to assess the extent to which the effect of race on meeting the U.S. federal guidelines for PA varies by sex, income, education, and region, after controlling for several health-related variables. The analysis sample size was 225,600 (102,348 men and 123,252 women). Results Race and most of the other covariates interacted with sex in their effect on meeting PA guidelines; therefore, separate models for men and women were estimated. In each model, race interacted with income and region, but not with education. Among men, Blacks were more likely to meet PA guidelines than Whites in nearly all income categories and regions. The race effect was weakest among the poor and in the Northeast region. Among women, Blacks were generally less likely than Whites to meet the guidelines and the race effect was largest among the poor and in the Northeast region. Conclusion This study showed that the difference between Blacks and Whites in the extent to which they adhere to federal PA guidelines varies by sex, income, and region of residence. Black women whole live below the poverty threshold are less likely than other demographic groups to meet the PA guidelines. Targeted interventions to promote PA among this population group are warranted.

This data supports the LRT/BRT/SCT/CRT Development Outcomes FINAL PHASE. The FINAL PHASE will allow us to use factor/cluster analysis to create typologies of station areas to assess the extent to which types of stations (as opposed to transit systems as a whole) make a difference in economic development (based on LEHD data), and people (census data) during the periods before, during and after the Great Recession as appropriate for each system and mode. It will also allow us to refine hedonic regression analysis.

Close to 400,000 adults across Virginia now have access to comprehensive health coverage due to the state’s decision in 2018 to expand Medicaid. This marked an important step towards providing a health insurance option to families with low incomes throughout Virginia. However,the federal government could very well come to an agreement with state officials any day now that will lead to between 26,800 and 74,000 people losing health coverage in Virginia. The program, known as “Creating Opportunities for Medicaid Participants to Achieve Self-Sufficiency” (COMPASS), will negatively impact families with low incomes, especially those newly eligible for Medicaid. That is because, as part of the program, the state will soon be able to take away health coverage from people who do not meet the state’s work reporting requirement, including those who get caught up in the red tape of reporting their hours...

Sports participation is a sex typed extracurricular activity cited as a source of the male advantage in some spatial skills. We exploit the large increase in females’ high school sports participation due to Title IX, which prohibited discrimination in federally assisted educational programs, to test this hypothesis. We relate Title IX induced increases in females’ sport participation to a test of three dimensional spatial rotation and the spatial content of their occupational employment as captured by Dictionary of Occupational Titles codes. We find little evidence that this increase in sports participation had an impact on either of these measures.

Objective Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) provide health insurance to 38% of all children in the United States. Uninsured rates continued to fall over the past decade, and citizen children in immigrant families experienced the most dramatic gains. Our objective is to test whether states have managed to close Medicaid enrollment gaps between U.S. citizen children in native and immigrant families. Methods We use the 2008-2015 American Community Surveys to compare uninsured rates for 2.4 million Medicaid-eligible citizen children in immigrant and native families. State fixed-effects probit models estimate the probability of children remaining uninsured when eligible for public coverage, excluding children covered by private insurance. We compare the states with the largest enrollment gains across differences in policies relevant to CHIP/Medicaid participation for all children, including CHIP Reauthorization Act (CHIPRA) enrollment simplification, Immigrant Children's Health Improvement Act (ICHIA), and Affordable Care Act (ACA) Medicaid expansion. Results Most states reduced their enrollment disparities by half or even completely eliminated their enrollment differentials. However, the states with the largest gains did not adopt ACA and CHIPRA policy options that would have improved CHIP/Medicaid participation for children in their states – or implemented the policies long before the observed gains. Conclusions Rather than policy anchoring the gains, the improvements may be rooted in operational changes and outreach efforts during CHIPRA and ACA implementation. Absent a policy anchor, the large enrollment differentials of a decade ago may reappear for children in immigrant families, affect the wellbeing of children and their communities.

The Civil War radically changed the role of the federal government in the macroeconomy. It also cost a lot: per capita federal debt in 1859 was less than two dollars but rose to over seventy-six dollars by 1865. Once the war ended, so did government payouts for men and materiel. That withdrawal, coupled with the need to repay government creditors, might seem to set the stage for recession. IN fact, real per capital GDP grew faster after the war than before, with only a small downturn during the financial panic of 1873. . .

We analyze the sources of changes in the distribution of hourly wages in the United States using CPS data for the survey years 1976 to 2016. We account for the selection bias from the employment decision by modeling the distribution of annual hours of work and estimating a nonseparable model of wages which uses a control function to account for selection. This allows the inclusion of all individuals working positive hours and thus provides a fuller description of the wage distribution. We decompose changes in the distribution of wages into composition, structural and selection effects. Composition effects have increased wages at all quantiles but the patterns of change are generally determined by the structural effects. Evidence of changes in the selection effects only appear at the lower quantiles of the female wage distribution. These various components combine to produce a substantial increase in wage inequality.

Many local jurisdictions offer property tax exemptions or similar concessions to older citizens. Such exemptions represent substantial intergenerational transfers and may have important implications for local public finances. The consequences of age-based property tax exemptions depend upon the extent to which they influence households' location decisions, housing tenure decisions, and housing consumption. We provide the first evidence on (long-term) changes in household composition and housing consumption attributable to local, age-based property tax exemptions. We construct a unique database of local property tax exemptions in Georgia covering 100 years of county, school district, and selected city property tax laws. We use these data to estimate the effect of age-based property tax exemptions on the number of older home-owners from 1970-2010 attributable to the exemption. Using a "quadruple-difference" estimation strategy, we find a significant increase in older homeowners attributable to the combined effect of age-based property tax exemptions on location decisions and housing tenure. We also find evidence that age-based property tax exemptions increase housing consumption among older households. Finally, we estimate a sorting model to estimate the equilibrium effects of different tax policies.

This article highlights the usefulness of family trees for visualizing and understanding changing patterns of kin dispersion over time. Such spatial patterns are important in gauging how families influence outcomes such as health and social mobility. The article describes how rapidly growing families, originally from England, dispersed over the US North and established hubs where they originally settled that lasted hundreds of years, even as they repeated the process moving West. Fathers lived much closer to their adult sons in 1850 than they do today and many more had an adult son within a radius of 30 miles. Big Data from genealogical websites is now available to map large numbers of families. Comparing one such data set with the US Census of 1880 shows that the native-born population is well represented, but there are not as many foreign born or African Americans in these data sets. Pedigrees become less and less representative the further back in time they go because they only include lines that have survived into the present. Despite these and other limitations, Big Data make it possible to study family spatial dispersion going back many generations and to map past spatial connections in a wider variety of historical contexts and at a scale never before possible.

Part I of this report, Automation and a Changing Economy: The Case for Action, explores how automation has impacted and will continue to impact the economic security and opportunity of the American worker. But technology is not destiny. The impact of innovation on the American worker is mediated by policies and institutions. We can choose to create an economy that: » promotes technological progress; » prepares workers to take advantage of the opportunities technology presents; » supports those who are negatively impacted by automation return to stable work; and » shares technology’s gains more broadly. These goals are achievable with the right support, but the policy structures currently in place are inadequate. This part of the report, Automation and a Changing Economy: Policies for Shared Prosperity, outlines a policy agenda for addressing these challenges and opportunities. Doing so requires an all-of-the-above approach, from targeted, specialized interventions . . .