Local Differential Privacy (LDP) protocols enable an untrusted data collector to perform privacy-preserving data analytics. In particular, each user locally perturbs his/her data to preserve privacy before sending it to the data collector, who aggregates the perturbed data to obtain statistics of interest. Over the past several years, researchers from multiple communities–such as security, database, and theoretical computer science– have proposed many LDP protocols. These studies mainly focused on improving the utility of the LDP protocols. However, the security of LDP protocols is largely unexplored. In this work, we aim to bridge this gap. We focus on LDP protocols for frequency estimation and heavy hitter identification, which are two basic data analytics tasks. Specifically, we show that an attacker can inject fake users into an LDP protocol and the fake users send carefully crafted data to the data collector such that the LDP protocol estimates high frequencies for certain target items or identifies them as heavy hitters. We call our attacks data poisoning attacks. We theoretically and/or empirically show the effectiveness of our attacks. We also explore two countermeasures against our attacks. Our experimental results show that they can effectively defend against our attacks in some scenarios but have limited effectiveness in others, highlighting the needs for new defenses against our attacks.

How does the racial composition of local constituencies affect voters’ preferences and politicians’ behavior? We study the effects of one of the largest episodes of internal migration in US history, the 1940-1970 Great Migration of African Americans, on both demand for racial equality and supply of civil rights legislation. We predict black inflows by interacting historical settlements of southern born blacks across northern counties with differential emigration rates from different southern states after 1940. We find that black in-migration increased support for the Democratic Party and encouraged grassroots activism. Data on pro-civil rights demonstrations and historical surveys reveal that segments of the white electorate, such as Democrats and union members, supported blacks’ struggle for racial equality. At the same time, backlash against civil rights erupted among Republicans and whites more exposed to racial mixing of their neighborhoods. Mirroring the responses of the electorate, Congress members representing areas more exposed to black in-migration became more supportive of civil rights legislation. Such average effects, however, mask substantial heterogeneity, as Democratic and Republican legislators became, respectively, more liberal and more conservative on racial issues. Taken together, our findings suggest that, under certain conditions, cross-race coalitions can emerge, but also that changes in the composition of the electorate can polarize both voters and politicians.

This research explores how public transportation along 7th Street, West, in Washington DC has evolved since the Capitalist Civil War until 1960 and the impacts of this evolution on economic activity in the corridor. The 7th Street corridor is a narrow strip which is both a commercial and residential neighborhood. The research addresses two basic questions. First, what was the relation between mass transit and economic activity? Second, what was the impact of qualitative changes to mass transit on the share of different types of business activities? The research uses a database consisting of a list of businesses in the 7th Street corridor from 1865 to1960. This database was created from primary sources which are available from various government and quasi-government websites and archives such as U.S. Census Bureau, Boyd’s Business Directory of DC, The DC Online Historical directory, and National Historical Geographic Information Systems (NHGIS). The findings are that mass transit supported economic activity and created transit nodes which persisted. The service industry in modern Washington DC is relatively concentrated in the 7th Street corridor. The overall results suggest that policymakers may prioritize efficient mass transit to boost the economy of the City.

I compare rates of intergenerational occupational mobility across four countries in the late 19th century: (There was a sharp divide between areas of recent European settlement and Europe in terms of social mobility: Argentina and the US had similar levels of intergen-erational mobility, and these levels were above those of Britain and Norway. These findings suggest that the high levels of mobility in 19th-century US were not a reflection of "American exceptionalism", but rather a more general phenomenon of some recently settled economies.

The twenty‐first century has been marked by a retreat of the collective bargaining rights of public employees throughout the United States. This study exploits the variation in legal environments resulting from these reforms to estimate the causal impact of different collective bargaining policies on public employee compensation. Using data from the American Community Survey, results show a modest wage penalty at the aggregate level for employees covered by constraints on collective bargaining. However, this wage penalty is differential and is concentrated on women in all but one case—a legal environment in which collective bargaining over wages has either been prohibited or directly constricted, allowing governments to periodically institute wage freezes and caps on raises for public employees. In this case, a pre‐existing wage gap in which men earned more than women is disappearing as male and female earnings converge at a lower wage. The paper suggests that the long‐term effects of restricting collective bargaining occur through the individualization of the labor contract and should be examined along individual‐level characteristics, such as gender.

This chartbook illustrates the characteristics of the county’s 65-plus population in 2015*, and changes that have occurred since 2000. It also includes population characteristics, such as education, income level, and marital status, that are shown to be associated with the need for long-term services and supports. There are charts that compare the older population of the county to the state as a whole, and charts that illustrate change over time within the county. The data presented in this chartbook are intended to assist planners, decisions makers, and service providers to understand the growth in numbers and proportion of older adults, particularly those who will likely need assistance. An online interactive data center is available for you to define your own topic, county, and population of interest to see current figures and change over time. Please visit www.ohio-population.org.

Objective: To describe survey methods used to examine reported experiences of dis- crimination against African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, women, and LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer) adults. Data Source and Study Design: Data came from a nationally representative, prob- ability-based telephone survey of 3453 US adults, conducted January-April 2017. Methods: We examined the survey instrument, sampling design, and weighting of the survey, and present selected survey findings. Principal Findings: Examining reported discrimination experienced by multiple groups in a telephone survey requires attention to details of sampling and weighting. In health care settings, 32 percent of African Americans reported discrimination, as did 23 percent of Native Americans, 20 percent of Latinos, 18 percent of women, 16 percent of LGBTQ adults, and 13 percent of Asian Americans. Also, 51 percent of LGBTQ adults, 42 percent of African Americans, and 38 percent of Native Americans reported identity-based violence against themselves or family members; 57 percent of African Americans and 41 percent of women reported discrimination in pay or pro- motions; 50 percent of African Americans, 29 percent of Native Americans, and 27 percent of Latinos reported being discriminated against in interactions with police. Conclusions: Even the small selection of results presented in this article as examples of survey measures show a pattern of substantial reported discrimination against all six groups studied.

This article reviews current federal housing assistance policies and briefly summarizes research evidence about the efficacy of the different programs. We identify three key challenges that these programs face in meeting their stated objectives and suggest strategies for addressing them. The first challenge is the large variation in market conditions across the country, which makes it difficult to design assistance programs that are universally appropriate. We call for adjusting the type of assistance across markets, allowing for a greater match between subsidies and needs. The second set of challenges concerns subsidy generosity, structure, and targeting. The current system provides large subsidies to a small number of low-income households while providing nothing to most. Assuming limited government resources, we call for exploring the impact of more modest or time-limited subsidies to serve more people with more attention to targeting. The third challenge is the relatively poor location of housing in current assistance programs. We suggest strategies to help more assisted families reach high-opportunity areas.

In a December 2013 speech, President Obama stressed that government pro­grams such as Social Security, the minimum wage, Medicare, and Medicaid, have enabled the United States to build the "largest middle class the world has ever known." Despite this achievement, former President Barack Obama highlighted what he believes is "the defining challenge of our time;' namely, income inequality that has been on the rise since the late 1970s. Not everyone has benefited equally from these and other programs. He observed that racial discrimination has "locked millions out of opportunity;' and that women "were too often confined to a handful of poorly paid professions:, President Obama went on to note that "it was only through painstaking struggle that more women and minorities . . . began to win the right to more fairly and fully participate in the economy" (Obama, 2013). Ironically, victories in these equality struggles occurred in the late 1970s and early 1980s, just as the political and economic forces fueling polarization were gathering steam. New York City is a case in point. The postwar era of broadly shared prosperity in New York City and elsewhere ended in the 1980s when economic gains began concentrating at the top. Initially, income polarization did not preclude rising real incomes for those in the middle.

In the last two decades from different fields of the humanities, efforts have been made towards a spatial approximation of the contents of each of these disciplines. This approach has materialized in the development of GIS and web viewers in which both historical events and cultural works are mapped. The aim of this article is, first of all, to contextualize the emergence of these works both in the humanities and in the field of geography. A second purpose consist on carrying out an analysis, for each one of the disciplines, of the most relevant projects, pointing out the most outstanding common aspects. Finally, the conclusions offer a proposal, related to the urban area, in which initiatives that have previously been developed separately are integrated.

Using the staggered exogenous adoption of US state-level labor protection laws and longitudinal survey data, I provide novel findings on the effect of employment protection laws on households' portfolio choices. I find that households increase the share of risky assets in financial wealth by 8.9% following the adoption of these laws. Stock market participation accounting for indirect investment also increases one year after the adoption. These effects are stronger for households with a higher unemployment risk, associated with young and low-income households. The exact opposite risk-taking behaviors are observed when the law is reversed. I also find that already discharged households at the time of the adoption reduce their stock holding and participation after the adoption. The adoption of the law contributes to wealth accumulation: purchases of stocks following the laws lead to 7% increase in the total equity value five years after trades. Finally, households are more likely to invest in out-of-state stocks than in-state stocks after the adoption, reducing investors' local-bias. Overall, the findings imply the economic and statistical significance of employment protection laws in effectively inducing households to take more financial risk, thereby improving wealth accumulation. This is an indirect social benefit of the employment protection law.

Background Children are sensitive to the health impacts of environmental contaminants, but research assessing outdoor environmental exposures for children and schools is underdeveloped. There are no national-level studies examining geographical and social disparities in air pollution exposure for children in school districts. Focusing on school districts is important because they are meaningful decision-making entities for schools. Methods Using data from the National Air Toxics Assessment, we spatially reallocated lifetime cancer risk (LCR) from hazardous air pollutants (HAPs) within US school district boundaries, and paired those estimates with school district level sociodemographic measures obtained through the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series National Historic Geographic Information System. We employed local Moran’s I to identify district-level hotpots and generalised estimating equations (GEEs) to quantify risk disparities. Results We identified hotspots of elevated LCR from all sources of HAPs (called ‘total’). A regional hotspot extends throughout the southeastern USA and smaller regional hotspots are present in southern Arizona, southern California and in California’s central valley. School districts with higher proportions of children, children with disabilities, foreign-born children, black children and multiracial/other race children, and lower proportions of Native American children, had greater total LCR (p<0.001). The effect of poverty on total LCR (p<0.001) was nonlinear; the lowest and highest poverty districts had lower total LCR. Conclusions Geographical and social disparities in LCR across US school districts may be affecting children’s health and future potential. This new knowledge can inform policy changes, as school districts can advocate for the environmental health of children.

The current study used dyadic data to compare self-reported health concordance among different-sex married, different-sex cohabiting and same-sex unions. Data were pooled from the National Health Interview Survey, 1997-2017. A total of 441,528 couples were identified (394,199 different-sex marriages, 43,556 different-sex cohabiting unions and 3,773 same-sex partnerships). Results from the actor-partner interdependence models showed significant difference in health concordance by union types. Consistent with the theoretical expectations, same-sex and different-sex cohabiting unions showed significantly weaker interpartner health concordance than different-sex marriages, but this difference primarily existed among men. There was no significant difference in health concordance between women in different-sex marriages and those in lesbian unions while women in different-sex cohabiting unions showed a stronger health concordance than their counterparts in different-sex marriages. Findings from this study challenge the heteronormative assumption of gender role specialization underpinning the relationship between heterosexual marriages and health.

Higher Ground is a data-driven design project that addresses flooding, increased resiliency to climate change, and economic redevelopment to provide social and racial integration in Baltimore, Maryland, a highly segregated American city. Our group has been studying the potential flooding risks that Baltimore City faces from storm surge and increased rain events. These findings allow us to envision a strategic plan that accommodates anticipated increased water volume through landscape intervention with a method for re-centring work hubs and communities on higher ground that is the current site of swaths of decaying, nearly abandoned factories, industrial spaces, apartment buildings, and homes (fig. 8). By building resiliency to climate change, our plan will simultaneously revitalise these decaying areas with mixed use, mixed income, accessible, desirable, resilient neighbourhoods, rediscovering the city whose work centres and neighbourhoods have been shifting away from the commercial centre and accessible public transportation for decades.

What was the return to education in the United States at mid-century? In 1940, the correlation between years of schooling and earnings was relatively low, less than it had been in 1915 or than it would be in later decades. In this paper, we estimate the causal return to schooling in 1940, constructing a large linked sample of twin brothers to account for differences in unobserved ability and family background. Though imperfect, the twins identification strategy allows us to compare the return to education to recent studies implemented similarly. We find that the return to education was relatively low in 1940, with each additional year of schooling increasing labor earnings by approximately 4%. Returns to education were evident both within and across occupations and were higher for sons born to lower SES families.

Changes in family formation and dissolution as evidenced by changes in the marriage rate, divorce rate, and cohabitation experiences have shaped American households over the past several decades (Cherlin, 2010). Furthermore, family formation patterns differ across demographic subgroups, suggesting changes in household characteristics are not the same for all U. S. households (Manning, Brown, Payne, 2014; Raley, Sweeney, & Wondra, 2015). This Family Profile uses three years of the Current Population Survey to explore changes in the shares of single, cohabiting, and married-couple households between 1995 and 2019. Households are examined by age, race-ethnicity, and educational attainment of the household-head to consider how changes in household types vary across demographic subgroups.

The discriminatory power of Stochastic Dominance analysis is enhanced using side information about the ranking of external prospects. Restricting risk preferences to be consistent with known rankings strengthens the stochastic order by uncovering latent dominance relations and reducing the number of undominated alternatives. To oper-ationalize the proposed approach, a tractable formulation is derived in terms of linear constraints on the Lower Partial Moments of the distribution functions. Representative applications to wellbeing analysis and portfolio optimization show substantial gains in ordering strength from using plausible side information about the ranking of simple prospects.

This study analyzes the potential effect of certain electoral systems – more specifically, ranked-choice voting – on the proportion of racial minority candidates on a mayoral ballot. In particular, I am focusing my analysis on two cities in California – San Francisco and Oakland – that have implemented the ranked-choice voting system into their local elections during the early 21st century. I seek to answer the question: Comparing the various systems, how do different electoral systems explain the varying levels of racial minority descriptive representation? I am looking to investigate whether the evidence supports the FairVote campaign’s claim that ranked-choice voting will inherently lead to a larger proportion of minority candidates on the ballot, subsequently motivating more voters to turn out. While the study is directly measuring the proportion of minorities on the ballot as the dependent variable, my goal is to further discuss implications on voter behavior if significant conclusions from my study were to come to fruition. To answer the research question, I conduct a comparative study in which I match both San Francisco and Oakland to a city that utilizes a two-round system in order to demonstrate the expected outcome of proportion of minority candidates had San Francisco and Oakland not adopted ranked-choice voting. I then conduct two longitudinal studies: one for San Francisco and one for Oakland. The purpose of these longitudinal studies is to develop a trend in the increase or decrease of the proportion of minority candidates before and after implementation of ranked-choice voting. The chief finding of my study is relatively inconclusive; while San Francisco supported my hypothesis, Oakland contradicted my hypothesis.

Watershed planning is a pivotal exercise for all jurisdictions irrespective of size, landscape complexity, or other nuances. As a result of the intricate relationship between land use/land cover (LULC) and water resources, it becomes prudent to not only develop historical and contemporary LULC data for watershed planning purposes, but more importantly, the production of future LULC datasets has the potential to better inform watershed planners. This study explored an optimal workflow that can be adopted for the production of baseline LULC input images from a moderate spatial resolution sensor such as Landsat, and the identification, translation, and configuration of land change drivers and regional comprehensive plan prescriptions in the creation of future LULC data for a regional watershed. The study conducted in the Lower Chippewa River Watershed, Wisconsin, USA demonstrated that an object-based hybrid classification approach resulted in the generation of improved projected images with a 15% increase in area under the curve (AUC) value compared to a pixel-based hybrid classification method even though both methods displayed comparable overall image classification accuracies (≤ 1.8%). Results further displayed that configuring anthropogenic drivers in a trend format rather than individual year values can result in a more efficient training of a multi-layer perceptron neural network – Markov Chain model. The calibrated and validated model demonstrated that on average, residential, commercial, institutional, green vegetation/shrub, and industrial LULC are expected to grow through 2050, though at a slower rate (12%) compared to contemporary period (39%), while forest and agricultural lands are slated to decline (−2%).

This article investigates the role of labor market institutions for social inequalities in employment. To distinguish institutional impacts for men and women, age groups and educational levels the analysis draws on data from 21 countries using the European Union Labor Force Survey and the Current Population Survey 1992–2012. The analysis demonstrates that there is significant heterogeneity in the relationship between institutions and employment across social groups. In line with the literature on dualization, institutions that arguably protect labor market insiders, i.e. employment protection, unionization and unemployment benefits, are frequently associated with greater inequality between typically disadvantaged groups and their insider peers. By contrast, institutions that discriminate less between insiders and outsiders, i.e. active labor market policies, minimum income benefits and centralized wage bargaining at times boost social equality on the labor market. The insider/outsider argument provides a valuable heuristic for assessing heterogeneity in institutional impacts, yet in several instances the results deviate from the expectations.