Fine particulate matter (PM2.5) air pollution exposure is the largest environmental health risk factor in the United States. Here, we link PM2.5 exposure to the human activities responsible for PM2.5 pollution. We use these results to explore "pollution inequity": the difference between the environmental health damage caused by a racial-ethnic group and the damage that group experiences. We show that, in the United States, PM2.5 exposure is disproportionately caused by consumption of goods and services mainly by the non-Hispanic white majority, but disproportionately inhaled by black and Hispanic minorities. On average, non-Hispanic whites experience a "pollution advantage": They experience ∼17% less air pollution exposure than is caused by their consumption. Blacks and Hispanics on average bear a "pollution burden" of 56% and 63% excess exposure, respectively, relative to the exposure caused by their consumption. The total disparity is caused as much by how much people consume as by how much pollution they breathe. Differences in the types of goods and services consumed by each group are less important. PM2.5 exposures declined ∼50% during 2002-2015 for all three racial-ethnic groups, but pollution inequity has remained high.

After the financial crisis in 2008, risk management for financial institutions has become an extremely important issue. Especially for large banks which are “Too Big Too Fail.” In this paper, we examined the influence of the Volcker Rule over the U.S. banks’ risk management conditions. With the implementation of the Volcker Rule in 2014, financial institutions in the U.S. are no longer permitted to engage in proprietary trading. As a result, their profitability has decreased gradually. We argue that this decreasing profitability will make banks lend to riskier borrowers as a compensation. Moreover, in areas where interbank competition is high, banks are more likely to do this.

This study investigates the relationship between maternal employment and state-to-state differences in childcare cost and mean school day length. Pairing state-level measures with an individual-level sample of prime working-age mothers from the American Time Use Survey (2005–2014; n = 37,993), we assess the multilevel and time-varying effects of childcare costs and school day length on maternal full-time and part-time employment and childcare time. We find mothers’ odds of full-time employment are lower and part-time employment higher in states with expensive childcare and shorter school days. Mothers spend more time caring for children in states where childcare is more expensive and as childcare costs increase. Our results suggest that expensive childcare and short school days are important barriers to maternal employment and, for childcare costs, result in greater investments in childcare time. Politicians engaged in national debates about federal childcare policies should look to existing state childcare structures for policy guidance.

Fibromyalgia (FM) is a medical condition characterized by chronic pain and tenderness. Individuals with FM may experience burdensome symptoms, which impact their health-related quality of life. Treatment for FM includes pharmacological and nonpharmacological practices. Non-pharmacological treatments for FM include dietary management, routine exercise, and physical and mind-body therapies. There is growing evidence that the utilization of mind-body practices is increasing in the United States, but there have been limited investigations done to observe the use of mind-body practices in the FM population. The purpose of this study is to identify predictors of the use of meditation and/or meditative movement in individuals with FM. The secondary aims are to describe the percentage of adults with and without FM that use mind-body practices and compare the demographic traits of people with FM who use meditation versus meditative movement. Using data from the 2017 National Health Interview Survey, descriptive statistics were used to determine the percentage of adults that use mind-body practices between those with FM and those without FM. To compare demographic and medical characteristics of individuals with FM that use meditation, meditative movement, both or neither practices, ? 2 tests were performed. Lastly, a multinomial logistic regression model was used to examine predictors of using meditation, meditative movement, neither or both practices. The analyses revealed that people without FM were significantly more likely to use mantra and spiritual meditation, yoga, and tai chi compared to people with FM. Predictors of using mind-body practices include being young, female, and college educated.

When researchers undertake the discussion on health disparities among Latinos2 in the U.S., they encounter two relevant and related concepts: the Hispanic Paradox (HP) and the Healthy Immigrant Effect (HIE). The HP relates to the higher life expectancy among adult Latinos compared to other racial and ethnic groups, especially non-Hispanic whites, despite Latinos’ economic disadvantages, and the fact that Latinos face barriers to access and utilization of healthcare. Meanwhile, the HIE explores the advantages in terms of health outcomes among recent immigrants due to either healthy people being more likely to migrate, while sick people are more likely to return to their country of origin (also known as the “Salmon Bias Hypothesis”). Because a meaningful proportion of Latinos are either first or second-generation immigrants, many researchers have been trying to understand the Paradox through the HIE. However, the evidence is mixed, leaving inconclusive the answer explaining the Hispanic Paradox.

This research examines the long-run relationship between slavery and the local economy in the US South. Exploiting climate-based variations in crop production, I show that where slavery was more prevalent, freed blacks began to accumulate human capital at a slower rate. I propose a mechanism in three steps. First, the local prevalence of slavery reduced the return to human capital. Evidence from the 1940 census data suggests that blacks in a region with a greater slave-to-population ratio in 1860 experienced more difficulty in converting their human capital into earnings. Second, as a channel for the reduction in the return to human capital, I argue that counties with greater dependence on slavery experienced slower integration of black workers into the post-slavery labor market. Black workers in those regions were more likely to be locked in low-skill occupations, even conditional on their human capital. Third, the labor market integration was hindered through the selective application of laws and regulations. Border-county analyses indicate that labor market laws separated black workers more effectively in proportion to the previous extent of slavery.

This paper studies the effects of state minimum wage increases on establishment-level information technology (IT) investment. We find that establishments in states experiencing significant minimum wage increases allocate $28,000 more to their IT budgets. The effects are heterogeneous across establishment or state characteristics. Further evidence also suggests that state minimum wage increases lead to a lower employment growth rate at the establishment level. Our results suggest that establishments automate low-wage jobs as a response to an increase in the wage floor.

Los inmigrantes se perciben como emprendedores, contribuyendo al crecimiento económico y la innovación; entre ellos, el autoempleo se considera a menudo una forma de mejorar la integración en el mercado laboral y el éxito. En consecuencia, muchos países han establecido requisitos de entrada y visados especiales para atraer a inmigrantes emprendedores. Los estudios respaldan esta postura, pero las expectativas pueden ser demasiado altas. No hay datos contundentes que indiquen que el autoempleo es una herramienta eficaz de movilidad económica ascendente entre los inmigrantes poco cualificados. En términos más amplios, dar prioridad a los inmigrantes cualificados podría ser mejor que centrarse en el emprendimiento.

With the increase in amount of remote sensing data, there have been efforts to efficiently process it to help ecologists and geographers answer queries. However, they often need to process this data in combination with vector data, for example, city boundaries. Existing efforts require one dataset to be converted to the other representation, which is extremely inefficient for large datasets. In this demonstration, we focus on the zonal statistics problem, which computes the statistics over a raster layer for each polygon in a vector layer. We demonstrate three approaches, vector-based, raster-based, and raptor-based approaches. The latter is a recent effort of combining raster and vector data without a need of any conversion. This demo will allow users to run their own queries in any of the three methods and observe the differences in their performance depending on different raster and vector dataset sizes.

Despite media coverage of isolated incidents of violent crime perpetuated by undocumented immigrants in cities with sanctuary policies, there is scant systematic research on the relationships between the adoption of sanctuary policies, unauthorized immigration, and crime. We compile city-level data from official sources and use fixed-effects negative binomial regression to examine whether the adoption of city-level sanctuary policies and the concentration of unauthorized Mexican immigrants are associated with homicide and robbery incidents in 107 U.S. cities, across three decades. We find evidence that the adoption of sanctuary policies is associated with a reduction in robberies but not homicide. In contrast, an increase in the relative size of a city’s unauthorized Mexican immigrant population corresponds with a reduction in homicide; however, only in sanctuary cities. Lastly, shifts in violence during our study period are consistently related to social structural characteristics of cities, which are findings consistent with social disorganization theory.

Inequalities between native-born and foreign-born individuals in screening rates for a variety of conditions have been well-documented in literature on immigrant health. A preponderance of this research focuses on the Latin American case and on cancer-specific screening. This study seeks to expand knowledge of such preventative-health screening differences by analyzing screening rates for blood sugar, blood pressure, and serum cholesterol among nine groups overall and (for immigrants) at various stages of US residency. Using nationally representative data from the National Health Interview Survey, we find that immigrants from eight geographic regions receive preventative care at lower rates than US-born Whites and that preventative screening is generally higher after 15 years than during the first 4 years of residency in the United States. Importantly, our data also show that screening patterns and trends vary based on region of origin and outcome. These findings improve our understanding of immigrant health and health care use in the United States.

If you stand on a bustling street corner or in the middle of a strawberry field, look up at a California skyscraper or march with allies to the halls of Sacramento, it is impossible to ignore a very simple fact: immigrants are the heart of our state’s economic and social fabric. For generations, California has been able to succeed because of the participation, dedication, and struggle of working class immigrants, refugees, and people of color. California has been the country’s leader in passing bold initiatives to protect immigrant communities.1 But as the world’s fifth largest economy grapples with growing economic inequality, we need to do more. A critical test of the state’s leadership will be the extent to which we invest in all workers, including immigrants, to participate and thrive in our economy. This discussion comes as California faces a crossroads. In many ways the economy is strong, with record low unemployment and significant budget reserves. Yet, wages have not recovered from the Great Recession.2 Meanwhile, employers have a record number of open jobs to be filled . . .

The aim of this paper is to investigate the role that the marital status of children has in shaping the living arrangements of their widowed mothers and themselves and to explain the increase in the proportion of elderly widows living alone, which grew by 23.2% in the USA between 1970 and 1990. We propose a model where living arrangements are determined as the outcome of a game between the mother and her child, and where the fundamentals of the model depend on children's marital status. We estimate the model using 1970 data. We calculate the accuracy of the estimation and we obtain an excellent fit. Using the same measure of accuracy, the estimated model predicts that changes in the incomes of both the widow and her offspring and changes in the children's marital status generate more than the 83% of the increase in the number of widows living alone.

Population aging in the United States (U.S.) has reached an inflection point. The population who are aged 65 and above increased by 19.7 percent between 2010 and 2016, compared with a 4.8 percent increase among the total population. There is a lack of research about how population aging impacts local housing markets at the county level in the United States. My thesis aims to address this research gap. I use fixed effects models to study the causal relationship between the increasing size of the elderly population and housing prices from 1990 to 2010. The results suggest that population aging has no effect on housing prices in general nor any effect on the price of smaller homes (those with two bedrooms or less). However, there is modest evidence that the increase of the elderly population may contribute significant declines in the price of larger houses (with three bedrooms or more). The findings potentially have important implications for urban planning and housing policy. Identifying the need of housing units inhabited by the elderly population helps planners facilitate the appropriate allocation of permitted newly built housing units (for example, smaller homes for the elderly). It will benefit the well-being of the elderly as population aging becomes an imperative issue.

The rise in dual-earning couples in the United States has generated competing interpretations about the impact on couples’ relationship experiences. We know that dual-earner couples spend slightly less time together and that time with a partner is associated with enhanced well-being. Research also shows that men and women have different interpretations of their relationships. What is unclear is whether well-being benefits of shared time are similar across couples with different work arrangements and by gender. Using data from the American Time Use Surveys (2010, 2012, 2013), we compare individual assessments of happiness, meaning, stress, fatigue, and sadness during activities conducted with their partner and how these experiences vary by key demographic factors: couple-level work arrangements and gender. We go beyond prior work on time availability and relationship satisfaction to document how couple-level work arrangements and interactions with gender contribute to subjective experiences of time spent with a partner.

Our earlier analysis showed large gains in coverage for women of reproductive age from 2013 to 2016, including among women of all ages, family structures, races and ethnicities, citizenship statuses, educational attainment, employment statuses, incomes, and locations. Between 2016 and 2017, however, the uninsurance rate remained relatively stable for all women of reproductive age, and only a few subgroups experienced significant changes in coverage (table A.1). White women, native-born citizens, women with a college degree, and those with incomes above 138 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL) saw increases in uninsurance, and Hispanic women and noncitizen women saw declines in uninsurance.

College plays a critical role in providing opportunities for economic mobility, yet degree attainment by race is inequitable. Currently, more than half of young white adults hold at least a two-year college degree, compared to 37 percent of Black young adults. Less than a third of Hispanic, American Indian, and Hawaiian or Pacific Islander young adults have at least a two-year college degree.1 Underrepresented students of color disproportionately attend public colleges and universities that have less money to spend supporting them, and where success rates are low. Community colleges serve the highest shares of underrepresented students of color and have just a fraction of the state support and tuition revenue available to other colleges.2 This report examines how changes in core education revenue (state and local appropriations, and tuition) between 2006 and 2016 — the years during and following the Great Recession — impact disparities in resources across public colleges and universities and the underrepresented students of color who enroll in them.

This thesis seeks to expand on existing research on wage implications brought on by immigration into the United States, looking particularly at Korean immigration and its effects on wages of native-born workers across the United States. Although other studies have investigated labor market and wage impacts as a result of immigration, there has been limited research on Korean-born immigrants’ direct impacts on native workers and the overall economy. This paper use IPUMS USA as the primary dataset to evaluate specific characteristics of individuals across the country, including the annual income wages for individuals of each working group. After investigating wage trends of different states and counties with varying populations of Korean immigrants, we find statistically significant but marginal wage effects on the annual incomes of native-born workers. We focus on particular regions within the U.S. with differing populations and concentrations of Korean immigrant workers and find a very small correlation that ultimately suggests little to no wage impact as a result of Korean immigrants.

South Africa was the first and is the only country in Africa to legalize same-sex marriage. Unlike other Demographic and Health Surveys for Africa, the 2016 South African survey asked about same-sex partnerships, using the question wording shown below.

Migration has long been considered one of the key mechanisms through which labor markets adjust to economic shocks. In this paper, we analyze the migration response of American workers to two of the most important shocks that have hit Western economies since the late 1990s – import competition from China and the introduction of industrial robots. Exploiting plausibly exogenous variation in exposure across US local labor markets over time, we first verify that both shocks led to a steep reduction in manufacturing employment. Next, we present our main results, and show that, on average, robots caused a sizable reduction in population size, whereas trade with China did not. The decline in population size due to robots resulted from reduced in-migration into rather than increased out-migration away from affected areas. In the second part of the paper, we explore the mechanisms behind these results. We show that the two labor market shocks differ in their propagation across industries within local labor markets: while robots caused negative spillovers to service industries, Chinese imports, if anything, favored employment growth outside of manufacturing. We provide suggestive evidence that these propagation patterns are responsible for the differential migration response.