Recent research has identified fertility preferences as a “moving target,” sensitive to dynamic multi-level factors in a woman’s life. Qualitative research has explored the effect that food insecurity and resource constraints have on fertility preferences, revealing conflicting evidence. This study quantitatively analyzes the effects of food insecurity on fertility preferences in Tanzania. Using data from Tanzania DHS 2016, we model fertility preferences on the individual woman level as a function of two measures of food insecurity: perceptions of household hunger and anthropomorphic indicators of chronic food deprivation. Multinomial generalized logit models reveal that 1) household hunger is associated with a decreased likelihood of wanting more children, and 2) having one or more child under the age of five experiencing stunting is associated with a decreased likelihood of wanting more children; however, once the number of living children is controlled for, the direction of effect is reversed.

Young firm employment shares have been declining in the U.S. and the decline has been particularly pronounced in the high-tech sector post-2000. Do labor market frictions play a role in declining young firm activities and the associated slower productivity growth? Using a longitudinal worker-firm matched dataset from the U.S. Census Bureau, I document that declining young firm activities are accompanied by: 1) a decline in the growth rate of the demand for skills in the high-tech sector, and 2) a flattening of the life cycle of skilled labor accumulation of high-tech firms. By developing an endogenous growth firm dynamics model that is consistent with the micro-level skilled labor accumulation over the firm life cycle, I show that rising frictions in skilled labor adjustment can explain the joint evolution of young firm employment shares and demand for skills. These frictions influence productivity growth through affecting the stock of human capital firms possess. A calibrated model shows that a rise in skilled labor adjustment costs lowers productivity growth by 75 basis points in the high-tech sector. A rise in entry costs, on the other hand, is not likely the main driver for declining young firm activities, as it implies an increase in demand for skills.

It has been widely acknowledged that the measurement of labor supply in the Current Population Survey (CPS) and other conventional microeconomic surveys has nonclassical measurement error, which will bias the estimates of crucial parameters in labor economics, such as labor supply elasticity. Time diary studies, such as the American Time Use Survey (ATUS), only have accurate measurement of hours worked on a single day, hence the weekly hours worked are unobserved. Despite the missing data problem, we provide several consistent estimators of the parameters in weekly labor supply equation using the information in the time use surveys. The consistency of our estimators does not require more conditions beyond those for a usual two stage least square (2SLS) estimator when the true weekly hours worked are observed. We also show that it is impossible to recover the weekly number of hours worked or its distribution function from time use surveys like the ATUS. In our empirical application we find considerable evidence of nonclassical measurement error in the hours worked in the CPS, and illustrate the consequences of using mismeasured weekly hours worked in empirical studies.

Cities in the United States dramatically expanded spending on public education in the years following World War I, with the average urban school district increasing per pupil expenditures by over 70 percent between 1916 and 1924. We provide the first evaluation of these historically unprecedented investments in public education by compiling a new dataset that links individuals to both the quality of the city school district they attended as a child and their adult outcomes. Using plausibly exogenous growth in school spending generated by anti-German sentiment, we find that school resources significantly increased educational attainment and wages later in life, particularly for the children of unskilled workers. Increases in expenditures can explain about 50 percent of the sizable increase in educational attainment of cohorts born between 1895 and 1915. However, increased spending did not close the gap in educational attainment between the children of skilled and unskilled workers, which remained constant over the period

In this brief, we examine the aggregate dollar amounts potentially flowing to low-wage workers in Massachusetts neighborhoods and communities as a result of mandated increases in the state minimum wage. We draw from census data to estimate income and develop various impact scenarios. Disagreements abound about the employment effect of increased minimum wages on the local workforce. Our analysis lays out several scenarios illustrating how communities may be affected, depending on employers’ responses and the concentration of low-wage workers in each community.

Government officials, health professionals, and other decision makers are tasked with characterizing vulnerability and understanding how populations experience risks associated with exposure to climate-related hazards. Spatial analyses of vulnerable locations have given rise to climate change vulnerability mapping. While not a new concept, the spatial analyses of specific health outcomes remain limited. This review explores different methodologies and data that are used to assess vulnerability and map population health impacts to climate hazards. The review retrieved scholarly articles and governmental reports concerning vulnerability mapping of human health to the impacts of climate change in the United States, published in the last decade. After review, 37 studies were selected for inclusion. Climate-related exposures were distributed across four main categories, including: high ambient temperatures; flood hazards; vector-borne diseases; and wildfires. A number of different methodologies and measures were used to assess health vulnerability to climate-related hazards, including heat vulnerability indices and regression analyses. Vulnerability maps should exemplify how variables measuring the sensitivity and adaptive capacity of different populations help to determine the potential for climate-related hazards to have an effect on human health. Recommendations address methodologies, data gaps, and communication to assist researchers and stakeholders in directing adaptations to their most efficient and effective use.

The study of intergenerational mobility was once viewed as a quintessentially sociological topic that was widely investigated using occupational mobility tables. However, the popularity of occupational mobility tables seems to be rapidly dwindling. This change is associated with the increasing popularity of the economic approach to modeling intergenerational mobility which is not encumbered by the shortcomings of occupational mobility tables. The first limitation of the latter is the contextual nature of occupation which provides an increasingly imprecise indicator of the individual’s earnings or other socioeconomic outcomes. The second limitation is the lack of focus on long-term earnings and the continued reliance on cross-sectional data in an era of increased labor market volatility. The third limitation is the dubious practice of partitioning mobility into structural-mobility versus circulation-mobility and focusing on primarily the latter to make generalizations about the level of social fluidity in society. The fourth limitation is the failure of occupational models to discern important empirical trends (such as rising earnings inequality and the Great Gatsby Curve). The fifth limitation is that, defined as categories of primary job duties, occupation is an inaccurate indicator of non-pecuniary job rewards and compensating differentials. Younger sociologists are abandoning occupational mobility tables—despite their once great popularity—in favor of economic models which are not significantly compromised by these limitations.

We document gender gaps in the magnitude (20 percent) and incidence (5.6 percentage points) of variable pay that explain more than one-quarter of the gender gap within occupations. These variable-pay gaps are persistent and not driven by traditional determinants of the gender pay gap, such as disparities in income growth or latent ability. Instead, women avoid competitive and higher-paying positions and experience lower job satisfaction while working in variable-pay-intensive jobs. As a result, women work in variable pay jobs less often. While policies aimed at closing the gender gap appear successful with base pay, they are ineffective with variable pay.

In this paper, I examine the relationship between unionisation and total output in an economy with a dual labour market, heterogeneous agents, and human capital investment. My primary focus is the skill acquisition channel, through which unionization affects total output. I theoretically demonstrate that the skill premium, and thus human capital investment, is determined by the prevalence of unions in high‐ or low‐skill‐intensive sectors. In particular, if a low (high)‐skill sector is unionised, then the skill premium is higher (lower), ensuring a larger (smaller) high‐skill sector, irrespective of the unions bargaining power. To test this hypothesis, I also empirically investigate the effects of unionisation on total productivity. The results indicate that through the reallocation of labour, unionisation induces an expansion of high‐skill‐intensive sectors, while low‐skill‐intensive sectors contract.

In September 2018, the Census Bureau announced a new set of methods for disclosure control in public use data products, including aggregate-level tabular data and microdata derived from the decennial census and the American Community Survey (ACS) (US Census Bureau 2018a). The new approach, known as differential privacy, “marks a sea change for the way that official statistics are produced and published” (Garfinkel, Abowd, and Powazek 2018). In accordance with census law, for the past six decades the Census Bureau has ensured that no census publications allow specific census responses to be linked to specific people. Differential privacy requires protections that go well beyond this standard; under the new approach, responses of individuals cannot be divulged even if the identity of those individuals is unknown and cannot be determined. In its pure form, differential privacy techniques could make the release of scientifically useful . . .

Diarrheal diseases are the second leading cause of childhood mortality world-wide and are among the top three leading causes of childhood mortality in Uganda. Prior research suggests a relationship between weather and diarrheal incidence. This thesis attempts to distinguish how short-term temperature and precipitation anomalies in 2016 impacted diarrheal incidence in Uganda. I combined household-level data from the 2016 Uganda Demographic Health Survey with gridded meteorological data obtained from the International Research Institute Data Library. I then performed logistic regressions over various temporal ranges in order to assess the association between diarrheal disease incidence and temperature and precipitation anomalies in Uganda in 2016. Confounding variables including wealth quintile, toilet type, drinking water type, rural versus urban status, presence of electricity, and floor type were used in my regression analysis to adjust the relationship between meteorological anomalies and diarrheal incidence for household and geographic characteristics that could also influence diarrhea. My results indicate a borderline statistically significant positive relationship between higher temperatures during Uganda’s rainy season and diarrheal incidence in the following months (OR = 1.66). The relationship between precipitation and diarrheal incidence was not statistically significant in this study. I also found that household variables played a significant role in diarrheal contraction and may explain some of the disparities in diarrheal incidence between rural and urban communities. These results could be used to inform policymakers about when to implement advanced measures for dealing with predicted weather events and subsequent peaks in diarrhea. The results could also facilitate improvements in sanitation facilities and can raise further questions about the relationship between climate and diarrhea.

I examine the causal impact of oil and gas extraction from new wells on entry and exit of self-employed business owners. I classify self-employed individuals into entrepreneurs and other business owners. I find that fracking induces more wage and salary workers to become entrepreneurs, but does not have any significant effects on the exit rate of entrepreneurs. In addition, fracking lowers the entry rate of other business owners, but has no effect on their exit rate. Extending my analysis to industry-level reveals that the positive impact on the entry to en-trepreneurship occurs primarily in the service sector, and the negative effect on entry to unincorporated self-employment in the agricultural sector. JEL Classification: J24, L26, M13, Q33, Q35

This paper studies the effect of racially-restrictive covenants prevalent during the early-to-mid 20th century on present-day socioeconomic outcomes such as house prices and racial segregation. Racial covenants were clauses in property deeds that prohibited the sale or renting of a property to specific religious and ethnic minorities. Using a newly created geographic data set of over 30,000 historical property deeds (1910-1955) from Hennepin County in Minnesota, we exploit the unanticipated 1948 Supreme Court ruling that made racially-restrictive covenants unenforceable. We employ a fuzzy regression discontinuity around the ruling to document that racial covenants have had time-persistent effects and have significantly affected the socioeconomic geography of Minneapolis and adjoining areas. In particular, we document that houses that were covenanted have on average 4-15% higher present-day prices compared to properties which were not covenanted. We also find that census blocks with larger share of covenanted lots have smaller black population and lower black home ownership rates.

This paper investigates returns to women’s education by applying an optimal IV selection approach, post-Lasso IV estimation, which improves the first-stage predictive relationship between an endogenous regressor and instruments. Using the 2010 American Community Survey, we find that an extra year of education increases married women’s own income by $4,480 and spouse income by $8,822. Our findings indicate that 53% of the increase in women’s consumption by education is attributed to the marriage market, and thus, we conclude that the marriage market is the primary channel through which education improves women’s well-being. The results demonstrate the advantages of the post-Lasso approach: The resulting two-stage least squares estimator maintains efficiency without increasing finite sample bias and is less subject to the inconsistency problem when some instruments are invalid; This differs from the results using the instrument of birth quarters only, which is mostly applied in studies on returns to education.

This paper provides estimates of the impact of an unanticipated child during adolescence on labor supply and earnings using data for women who gave birth between 1976 and 2015 drawn from 1990 and 2000 censuses and the American Community Surveys. Twins at first birth are used as an instrument to avoid the problems of fertility endogeneity. Estimates from our instrumental variable models indicate that the arrival of a second‐born twin had severe economic consequences for adolescent women over most of our data.

Research is divided as to whether children living in same-sex parent families achieve different outcomes compared with their peers. In this article, we improve on earlier estimates of such differences and subsequently study whether and why the association between parental union sex composition and children’s school progress changed over time. Data from the American Community Survey waves 2008–2015 (N = 1,952,490 including 7,792 children living with a same-sex couple) indicate that children living with same-sex couples were historically more likely to be behind in school but that this association disappeared over time. Changes in socioeconomic characteristics of same-sex couples played a minor role. In 2008, it was only in areas with unfavorable laws and attitudes toward same-sex couples that children living with same-sex couples were more likely to be behind in school. This was especially the case for adopted children. In more recent periods, no effect of parental union sex composition on school progress is observed within any area or among any group studied. Based on where and when these changes took place, it is suggested that changing attitudes toward same-sex couples might have played an important role in equalizing school progress across groups.

...]in each of these regressions, the coefficients of the independent variables describe how much a one-unit increase in the independent variable affects the amount of scholarship money one receives (the money being measured as a percent of one's total costs of attending law school). [...]in Model 1 the .0026 coefficient on zLSAT tells us that a one standard deviation increase in one's LSAT score (about 10 points on the current LSAT) produces (on average) a .26-point increase in the percentage of one's law school expenses covered by a need-based scholarship for the "average" student (for example, an increase from 2% to 2.26%.) [...]this shift is dwarfed by the dramatic expansion of non-need-based aid-recruitment-based discounts-to reach two-thirds of all law students. Since we cannot quantify aid amounts in the LSSSE data, we cannot do an OLS regression (as in Table 4) predicting the amount of aid students receive. The number of lawyers nearly quintupled between 1960 and 2000 - a growth rate of about 50% per decade - and the share of national income classified as based in legal services more than tripled. Since 2000, the lawyer population has grown only about 15% per decade, and the share of the economy going to legal services has been flat.41 The reasons for the slowdown deserve . . .

Objectives. To compare access to care between US-born and foreign-born US adults by mental health status. Methods. We analyzed data on nonelderly adults (n = 100 428) from the 2013–2016 National Health Interview Survey. We used prevalence estimates and multivariable logistic regression models to compare issues of affordability and accessibility between US-born and foreign-born individuals. Results. Approximately 22.2% of US-born adults and 18.1% of foreign-born adults had symptoms of moderate to severe psychological distress. Compared with US-born adults with no psychological distress, and after adjustment for sociodemographic characteristics, US-born and foreign-born adults with psychological distress were much more likely to report multiple emergency room visits and unmet medical care, mental health care, and prescription medications because of cost Conclusions. Our study found that adults with moderate to severe psychological distress, regardless of their immigration status, were at greater risk for reporting issues of affordability when accessing health care compared with US-born adults with no psychological distress. Public Health Implications. Health care and mental health reforms should focus on reducing health care costs and establishing innovative efforts to broaden access to care to diverse populations.

This paper empirically investigates the impact of willingness to take risks on the likelihood of being an entrepreneur. We use a quarter century of data on second-generation Americans from Current Population Surveys in conjunction with country level measures of willingness to take risks from the Global Preference Survey. The average level of risk taking in the country of origin is found to have a positive and significant impact on the likelihood of being an entrepreneur. A one-standard deviation increase in risk taking increases the probability of being an entrepreneur by 15 percent. We also examine other preferences and cultural measures including trust, patience, and individualism. We find that these do not have an impact on entrepreneurship, while risk taking continues to be significant.

Moving beyond occupational aspirations to actual selection of occupations, the current research considers the impact of individual gender beliefs on selection of occupations for men who work in male-dominated occupations compared to men who work in mixed-sex or female-dominated occupations and for women who work in female-dominated occupations compared to women who work in mixed-sex or male-dominated occupations. Using a nationally representative sample from the General Social Survey, I compare the sex composition of occupations and responses to survey questions regarding gender beliefs for analyzing the impact of gender beliefs on the occupations people choose. I examine gender beliefs involving women’s roles outside the home and beliefs regarding homosexuality, political views, and religiosity. I find that compared to other men, men who have traditional gender beliefs regarding the role of women in the private sphere are more likely to have male-dominated occupations than mixed-sex or female-dominated occupations. As men’s level of education increases, however, the relationship between these variables no longer reaches statistical significance and the likelihood of men working in male-dominated occupations decreases. I also find that compared to other men, men who believe that homosexual relations are wrong are more likely to work in male-dominated occupations than in mixed-sex or female-dominated occupations. For women, however, the impact of gender beliefs on selection of occupations is not statistically significant. These findings have implications for determining methods for eliminating occupational sex segregation.