Domestic violence is a serious under-reported crime in the United States, especially among immigrant women. While the Violence against Women Act (VAWA) allows battered immigrants to petition for legal status without relying on abusive U.S. citizen or legal permanent resident spouses, we find that intensified interior immigration enforcement has curbed the VAWA self-petition rate. In contrast, sanctuary policies limiting the cooperation of police with immigration authorities have helped counteract that impact. The results, which prove robust to alternative measures of the policies, support the hypothesized changes in victims’ reporting in response to the policies. Understanding survivors’ responses to immigration policy is crucial given growing police mistrust and vulnerability to crime among immigrants.

This dissertation consists of three chapters studying the effects of public goods and public infrastructure investments on urban growth and local government finances. The first chapter estimates, first, how local governments finance federal mandates and, second, how much value local residents place on mandated local spending using a change in federal rules on municipal infrastructure following the 1972 Clean Water Act (CWA). I leverage the role of river networks in distributing pollutants across cities, combined with pre-CWA state regulatory intensity, to account for the endogeneity of municipal infrastructure adoption decisions, and to predict ex ante compliance with the CWA infrastructure mandate. Cities that were under the burden of compliance experienced substantial improvements to local ambient water quality as well as a three-fold increase in resident fees. Public spending on non-mandated items did not change, indicating that mandates are unlikely to displace local funding of other goods and services. The simultaneous increases to water quality and local costs resulted in taste-based sorting. However, I find that resident value of the mandated infrastructure depends upon the complementarity of surface water quality to pre-existing local features, as well as exposure to upstream polluters. These results imply that mandates may reduce inefficiencies to local public goods provision and provide positive benefits that are valued no less than their costs to local residents. The second chapter, joint with Matthew E. Kahn and Shanjun Li, considers the efficiency of local public service provision. A key challenge in quantifying the efficiency of the public sector stems from limited “apples to apples” comparisons of service functions offered by both public and private sectors, as well as the high correlation between local demand, demographic composition, and the local government’s ability to deliver quality services. This paper posits a solution to this empirical challenge in two ways. First, we focus on public bus transit which is a relatively undifferentiated service across US municipalities. Second, we apply a regression discontinuity design using local mayoral elections as a source of random variation that predicts privatization levels in order to estimate causal effects of privatization on service efficiency. We find that privately operated firms provide bus transit at significantly lower costs per mile, largely due to their ability to circumvent public sector unions. We estimate that privatizing bus transit - a service used disproportionately by lower income groups - would lower the average bus fare by $1 per trip and create over 26,000 bus operator jobs nationally. However, these cost savings do not necessarily outweigh benefits of providing high-paying public sector employment opportunities. The third chapter, joint with Panle Barwick, Shanjun Li, and Jing Wu, applies predictions of the Alonso-Muth-Mills model of urban land use to the context of Beijing’s 2008 road rationing policy to identify how such policy instruments impact the spatial distribution of wealth within cities. We find that Beijing's rationing policy significantly increased the demand for housing near subway stations as well as central business districts. Further, we find the composition of individuals living proximate to subway stations as well as proximate to Beijing's central business districts shifted toward wealthier households. Our findings are consistent with theoretical predictions of the monocentric city model with income-stratified transit modes. These results provide suggestive evidence that city-wide road rationing policies can have the unintended consequence of limiting access to public transit for lower income individuals.

We analyze sectoral labor reallocation and the reversal of urbanization in the U.S. during the Great Depression. The widespread movement to farms, which serves as a form of migratory insurance during the crisis, is largely towards farms with low levels of mechanization. In contrast, the mechanized agricultural sector sheds workers, many of whom reallocate into low-productivity or subsistence farming. The crisis perverts the normal process of structural change in which workers displaced by farm equipment are released into more productive occupations. These findings complicate the view that the historical experience of U.S. agriculture offers reassuring evidence regarding the labor market consequences of technological change.

This paper studies the effect of credit supply in the home mortgage market on households' investment in housing quality and the resulting effect on neighborhood development. I construct shocks to refinancing credit supply and credit standards, and demonstrate using difference-in-differences and instrumental variables approaches with Chicago administrative data that negative shocks depress housing investment and spillover to nearby tracts. I then present a dynamic model that rationalizes these results through investment incentives of profit-maximizing and credit-constrained building managers catering to consumers whose housing demand depends on house and neighborhood quality. The model best fits the data when households place equal weight on house and neighborhood quality - suggesting an important role for neighborhood effects in investment incentives - and matches growth rates from 2010-2016 in model-implied housing quality with a correlation of 0.53, and in annual rental prices with a correlation of 0.48. I use the model to simulate the impact of Chicago's selected ``opportunity zones'' on city-wide house prices, and construct counterfactual opportunity zones that have a larger impact both on the city as a whole and on distressed tracts in the city.

Objective: To examine the influence of nativity and residential characteristics on productive activity among Hispanics at 1 year after traumatic brain injury (TBI). Setting: Acute rehabilitation facilities and community follow-up. Participants: A total of 706 Hispanic individuals in the TBI Model Systems National Database. Design: Secondary data analysis from a multicenter longitudinal cohort study. Main Measures: Nativity (foreign born or US native), productive activity derived from interview questions regarding employment status, and other demographic information. Census data were extracted by zip code to represent residential characteristics of aggregate household income and proportion of foreign language speakers (FLS). Results: Among foreign-born individuals with TBI, those living in an area with a higher proportion of FLS were 2.8 times more likely to be productive than those living in areas with a lower proportion of FLS. Among individuals living in an area with a lower proportion of FLS, US-born Hispanics were 2.7 times more likely to be productive compared with Hispanic immigrants. Conclusion: The relationship between nativity and productive activity at 1 year post-TBI was moderated by the residential proportion of FLS. Findings underscore the importance of considering environmental factors when designing vocational rehabilitation interventions for Hispanics after TBI.

We develop a new method to identify and control for selection when estimating the productivity effects of city size. Selecting out low-performing agents has no effect on modal productivity but reduces the CDF evaluated at the mode. Agglomeration economies have the reverse effect. Estimates based on these principles confirm that selection contributes to productivity among full-time skilled workers but is largely absent for low-skilled workers. Doubling city size causes skilled and low-skilled worker productivity to increase by roughly 2.4 and 4 percent, respectively. Our approach can be applied to other settings provided necessary conditions formalized in the paper are satisfied.

Was there a tradeoff between family size and education during the demographic transition in the United States? Exploiting the occurrence of twin births as a source of exogenous variation in family size, I find that an additional sibling reduces the likelihood of attending school by 1 to 2 percentage points. To evaluate the persistence of family size effects, I create a linked sample of boys between 1920–1940. Individuals raised in larger families accumulate less human capital by adulthood. However, the impact of family size is quantitatively small relative to the average level of education in the population.

Previous research has provided estimates of the cumulative risk of felony conviction and imprisonment in the United States. These experiences are, however, also the rarest; most of what happens in the criminal justice system occurs at the level of the misdemeanor rather than the felony. This article addresses our limited understanding of the scope of subfelony justice by providing estimates of the cumulative risk of several lower-level arrest outcomes for one jurisdiction: New York City. Because of excess life table events contributed by nonresidents of New York City, estimates are likely upwardly biased relative to the true values. Nonetheless, they allow us to (1) assess the cumulative risk of misdemeanor conviction and jail sentences and (2) determine to what extent those who enter the world of subfelony justice are distinct from those with felony or imprisonment records.

In resource poor settings, many households are dependent on the local environment for their livelihoods. To the extent that studies have connected environmental conditions to fertility outcomes, most have focused on situations of persistent environmental degradation, such as deforestation, biodiversity loss, declining land quality, and land availability. Rainfall variation, however, may have different consequences than persistent environmental degradation. For societies on the cusp of the fertility transition, exposure to rainfall shocks may prompt short-run fertility declines. Increased educational attainment and access to contraception may facilitate this process. However, if these shocks are perceived as becoming more frequent, or rainy seasons are perceived as becoming increasingly less predictable, longer-run disruptions in fertility and family processes may result. We will use data from the IPUMS-DHS for Malawi with integrated rainfall measures to examine how sub-national changes in fertility are associated with rainfall variation over time.

Reconstruction provides fertile ground for examining the impact of failed policies on their intended recipients. The Sothern Homestead Act provided a route to land ownership for former slaves and is largely regarded as a failure. The Freedmen’s Bank provided banking services to former slaves before its collapse in 1874. The state of Florida provides a unique opportunity to evaluate the impact of these failed policies. I have collected records for all successful SHA homesteaders, a relatively complete sample of failed homesteaders, the depositor records for the Freedmen’s Bank in Tallahassee, the index to depositors in Jacksonville, and the entirety of 1880 agricultural census for the state. I have linked these to the pre-existing 100 percent IPUMS sample of Florida in 1880. With these records, the African-American population can be divided into five categories: successful homesteaders, failed homesteaders, those who never homesteaded, Freedmen’s bank account holders, and non-bank account holders

This paper examines the effect of high-skilled immigration on the occupational structure of native-born workers in U.S. cities. The estimates from an instrumental variable approach indicate that increases in foreign talent in math-intensive tasks, where they hold a comparative advantage over native-born workers, increase the specialization of college-educated natives in social-intensive tasks. Evidence suggests that this labor reallocation occurs within occupations at the top of the task distribution. The productivity gains from task specialization accrue to both college and non-college natives, where they experience significant positive wage gains. The findings provide suggestive evidence that cities not only benefit from the inflow of high-skilled immigrants through their direct contribution to the local economy (e.g., innovation) but also from the increased task specialization of its workforce.

We develop an urban growth model where human capital spillovers foster entrepreneurship and learning in heterogenous cities. Incumbent residents limit city expansion through planning regulations so that commuting and housing costs do not outweigh productivity gains. The model builds on strong microfoundations, matches key regularities at the city and economy-wide levels, and generates novel predictions for which we provide evidence. It can be quantified relying on few parameters, provides a basis to estimate the main ones, and remains transparent regarding its mechanisms. We examine various counterfactuals to assess quantitatively the effect of cities on economic growth and aggregate income.

Este estudo objetiva compreender as alterações que ocorrem no interior do Estado e na Universidade Pública para a produção de um novo pesquisador em tecnologia para o setor petrolífero. Constitui-se em uma investigação quali-quantitativa que fez uso da análise documental, bem como questionários e entrevistas semiestruturadas aplicadas a diversos atores envolvidos em três convênios da Agência Nacional de Petróleo (ANP) com a Universidade Federal da Bahia (UFBA) no âmbito do Programa de Formação de Recursos Humanos (PRH), entre os anos de 2000 e 2017. Parte-se da hipótese de que há um processo de conformação da Universidade e da pesquisa tecnológica a uma nova ordem de cunho neoliberal cuja marca maior nos jovens pesquisadores é a flexibilidade. Concluiu-se que a ordem neoliberal interfere em várias esferas da vida e, principalmente, do Estado. Vários órgãos públicos traduzem essa ordem ao estabelecerem as empresas como a expressão máxima da sociedade. São elas o fim último da pesquisa, que geram empregos, garantem o progresso científico e tecnológico e induzem a competitividade que se traduz em crescimento e desenvolvimento econômico. Essa expressão encontra eco dentro de alguns setores de pesquisa da Universidade por causa das profundas mudanças pela qual o capitalismo passou a partir dos anos 70. Tem-se a difusão de uma nova linguagem, de termos econômicos próximos da economia ortodoxa e da constituição de uma rede em que o público e o privado se imiscuem e passam a falar uma linguagem quase comum: competição, competitividade, parcerias, inovação etc., e uma visão quase idílica da tecnologia, que se denomina, quando falamos da Universidade, Capitalismo Acadêmico. O PRH é uma faceta desta expressão, que encontra eco nos próprios alunos. Por conta de todo esse processo, essa flexibilidade já está incorporada e naturalizada. Em alguns casos, é tentar obter patentes, em outros, abrir uma empresa startup, ou, ainda, voltar para os bancos escolares para fazer um mestrado ou doutorado até que surja uma oportunidade de emprego.

Poor families have more children and transfer less resources to them. This suggests that family decisions about fertility and transfers dampen intergenerational mobility. To evalu- ate the quantitative importance of this mechanism, we extend the standard heterogeneous- agent life cycle model with earnings risk and credit constraints to allow for endogenous fertility, family transfers, and education. The model, estimated to the US in the 2000s, implies that a counterfactual flat income-fertility profile would—through the equaliza- tion of initial conditions—increase intergenerational mobility by 6%. The impact of a counterfactual constant transfer per child is twice as large.

Stratification and inequality are among the most central concepts in sociology, and although related, they are fundamentally distinct: inequality refers to the extent to which resources are distributed unevenly across individuals or between population subgroups, whereas stratification refers to the extent to which population subgroups occupy distinct hierarchical layers within an overall resource distribution. Despite the centrality of stratification in theories of class structure, prior empirical studies have focused exclusively on measures of inequality, which do not accurately capture the degree of class stratification and suffer from a variety of methodological limitations. In this paper, we employ a novel rank-based index of stratification to measure the degree to which occupational classes inhabit distinct layers in the distribution of personal market income. The stratification index is nonparametric, both scale and translation invariant, and independent of the level of inequality. Based on this index, our results show that the U.S. income distribution is highly stratified by occupational class and that the degree of class stratification increased substantially from 1980 to 2016. Moreover, we find that this trend is almost entirely due to growing stratification among aggregate occupational classes rather than among the disaggregate occupations nested within them. Finally, a set of counterfactual analyses indicate that the rise of occupational class stratification is driven in part by increases in the income returns to education, deunionization, and deindustrialization, although the relative importance of these factors varies by gender.

Poverty is a widely researched topic in economics. However, despite growing research on the economic lives of lesbians and gay men in the United States since the mid 1990s, very little is known about poverty in same-sex couple households. This study uses American Community Survey data from 2010 to 2014 to calculate poverty rates for households headed by different-sex versus same-sex couples. Comparing households with similar characteristics, the results show that those headed by same-sex couples are more likely to be in poverty than those headed by different-sex married couples. Despite that overall disadvantage, a decomposition of the poverty risk shows that same-sex couples are protected from poverty by their higher levels of education and labor force participation, and their lower probability of having a child in the home. Lastly, the role of gender – above and beyond sexual orientation – is clear in the greater vulnerability to poverty for lesbian couples.

This research explores how the socioeconomic and health profiles of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals differ from those of otherwise similar straight cisgender individuals, as well as how those profiles are affected by LGBT related policies. Studying this population is important because, despite being the subject of intense policy debate across the United States, relatively little work has rigorously described the LGBT community or how its members are impacted by policy.

The South of 2018 is vastly different than it was fifty years ago. The major reason is the region's explosive population growth, which has, in turn, elevated its clout on the national political stage, most notably in presidential and congressional elections. Former goverors Bill Clinton of Arkansas (1993-2001) and George W. Bush of Texas (2001-2009) both served two terms as president, for example, and U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-Florida), remains a potential presidential candidate despite his failed run in 2016...

This document details Limited English Proficiency and languages spoken at home by counties in North Carolina. It is intended to be a resource for those looking to expand language access services for vulnerable populations.

We focus on the household’s racial-ethnic homogeneity and diversity as a bridge between society-level forces and person-level experiences. We use 2010 U.S. Census data and focus on groups who fall under the general label “Asian American” to explore the relationships between household context and histories (e.g. immigration, intermarriage, settlement patterns). We provide fine-grain descriptive information into the contextual experience for Asian American subgroups. Specific Asian group histories work together with household composition to influence individuals’ ethnic-racial identification. Our results provide important contextual information using household diversity, homogeneity, and size to better understand an important location where ethnic-racial development occurs.