Occupational licensing currently affects more than 1,000 occupations in the United States. I use confidential US Census Bureau business micro-data to shed light on the effect of occupational licensing in cosmetology on key market outcomes and study its effect on the providers of occupational training. Occupational licensing regulation does not seem to affect the equilibrium number of practitioners or prices of services to consumers, but is associated with significantly lower practitioner entry and exit rates. I further find states with more stringent licensing requirements to have more instructors and a larger median size of training facilities, suggesting possible barriers to entry for the training schools. Instructors, however, do not earn more in such states.

A key challenge for research on many questions in the social sciences is that it is difficult to link historical records in a way that allows investigators to observe people at different points in their life or across generations. In this paper, we develop a new approach that relies on millions of record links created by individual contributors to a large, public, wiki-style family tree. First, we use these “true” links to inform the decisions one needs to make when using traditional linking methods. Second, we use the links to construct a training data set for use in supervised machine learning methods. We describe the procedure we use and illustrate the potential of our approach by linking individuals across the 100% samples of the US decennial censuses from 1900, 1910, and 1920. We obtain an overall match rate of about 70 percent, with a false positive rate of about 12 percent. This combination of high match rate and accuracy represents a point beyond the current frontier for record linking methods.

As an embodiment of collaborative governance model, metropolitan planning organizations in the United States allocate federal, state, and local funds to member municipalities for transportation projects across their regions. To examine how institutional rules and power shape where public investment goes, we examine the extent to which the allocation of local voting power in regional governing policy boards influences the spatial allocation of transportation investments. Our analysis shows that the power structure of regional policy boards is consistently a major factor associated with the observed geographic distribution of investments. Moreover, the results suggest that the degree of power concentration of the dominant city in the region influences whether the remaining cities’ power matters. These results were far different than what was predicted by the policymakers we interviewed, suggesting that institutional governance rules may be more important than previously recognized.

Objective In societies with a cultural preference for sons over daughters, women who do not bear sons may be at increased risk for spousal violence. This study examined whether women with daughters only are at an elevated risk for spousal sexual violence compared to women with sons only in Sub-Saharan Africa. The study tested the hypothesis that the association between sex composition of children and spousal sexual violence would be observed only in large families. Methods Data were from the most recent (as at February, 2016) Demographic and Health Surveys conducted in 22 Sub-Saharan African countries for 37,915 women. Odds ratios comparing experience of spousal sexual violence of women with sons only to those with daughters only were estimated, separately for women with three or fewer children and those with four or more children, controlling for age, age at first cohabitation, age at first birth, educational attainment, urban residence, and household wealth. Results Having daughters only was associated with a greater likelihood of spousal sexual violence among women with many children (adjusted odds ratio [AOR] = 1.53; 95% CI 1.02–2.30) but not among those with few children (AOR = 0.92; 95% CI 0.82–1.04). Conclusions for Practice A higher risk of sexual violence for women without sons suggests that son preference may have implications on women’s health and wellbeing. Efforts to further understand and address increased risk of sexual violence for women without sons should consider son preference and intra-couple conflict concerning fertility intentions.

In the United States, interstate moves can knock women out of the labor market. Married women often become “trailing spouses,” relocating for their husbands’ career opportunities and reducing their own attachment to the labor force. Here, we ask whether moving to a state with higher rates of gender empowerment and lower childcare costs mitigates some of the negative effects of interstate moves. We combine data from the 2011-2015 American Community Survey, state-level childcare costs, and an index of state characteristics to assess women’s employment following an interstate move. We find moving to a state that ranks higher on gender empowerment is associated with higher employment rates among women. In addition, mothers are more likely to remain employed if they move to a state with lower childcare costs. Although interstate mobility has negative consequences for women’s employment, states’ levels of gender empowerment and childcare costs have important ameliorating effects.

The earnings difference between black and white workers fell dramatically in the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This paper shows that the extension of the minimum wage played a critical role in this decline. The 1966 Fair Labor Standards Act extended federal minimum wage coverage to agriculture, restaurants, nursing homes, and other services which were previously uncovered and where nearly a third of black workers were employed. We digitize over 1,000 hourly wage distributions from Bureau of Labor Statistics industry wage reports and use CPS micro-data to investigate the effects of this reform on wages, employment, and racial inequality. Using a cross-industry difference-indifferences design, we show that wages rose sharply for workers in the newly covered industries. The impact was nearly twice as large for black workers as for white. Within treated industries, the racial gap adjusted for observables fell from 25 log points pre-reform to zero afterwards. Using a bunching design, we find no effect of the reform on employment. We can rule out significant dis-employment effects for black workers. The 1966 extension of the minimum wage can explain more than 20% of the reduction in the racial earnings and income gap during the Civil Rights Era. Our findings shed new light on the dynamics of labor market inequality in the United States and suggest that minimum wage policy can play a critical role in reducing racial economic disparities.

This paper uses the framework of Roy’s (1951) model of occupational choice to characterize teachers’ relative ability over time. In particular, I examine the way teachers would have performed in the non-teaching sector had they joined it. The results show that teachers would earn less than those of non-teachers if both groups faced the same price of skills. Interpreting these results in the context of Borjas’s (1987) theoretical framework, I conclude that teachers are negatively selected, in that they are, on average, less skilled or productive than are non-teachers. In explaining this negative selection, I find that teachers are not compensated adequately for their skills, as measured by college major and advanced degrees in their early careers.

Since the 1980s, Chief Executive Officers’ (CEO) pay has exploded, largely in the form of equity-based incentive compensation such as stock awards and options. Using a two-tiered principal-agent model, we show that aligning managers’ incentives with shareholder interests through equity-based pay can lower workers’ wages. Analyzing a sample that matches firm, manager, and worker information in the U.S. economy over the period 1992-2016, we show that higher equity-based pay is associated with lower average wages across various measures of pays and model settings. Using a novel instrumentalvariable strategy based on a tax policy change, we provide evidence that an increase in the CEO’s equity-to-salary ratio by one unit, say, from 1:1 to 2:1, leads to a 4% decline in the average wage. We also find that while firms under all degrees of competition raise equity pay in response to the policy change, the negative impact on wages is stronger when the degree of competition is high, suggesting that competition does not substitute for executive compensation but amplifies its effect.

Objective: To measure discordance between aggregate estimates of means-tested coverage from the American Community Survey (ACS) and administrative counts and examine the association of discordance with ACA Medicaid expansion. Data Sources: 2010-2016 ACS and counts of Medicaid and Children's Health Insurance Program enrollment from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Study Design: State-by-year counts of means-tested coverage from the ACS were compared to administrative counts using percentage differences. Discordance was compared for states that did and did not adopt expansion using difference-in-differences. We then contrasted the effect of expansion on means-tested coverage estimated from the ACS with results from administrative data. Data Collection/Extraction: Survey and administrative data. Principal Findings: One year before expansion there was a 0.8 and 4 percent overcount in expansion and nonexpansion states, respectively. By 2016, there was a 10.64 percent undercount in expansion states vs a 0.02 percent undercount in nonexpansion states. The ACS suggests that expansion increased means-tested coverage in the full population by three percentage points, relative to five percentage points suggested by administrative records. Conclusions: Discordance between the ACS and administrative records has increased over time. The ACS underestimates the impact of Medicaid expansion, relative to administrative counts.

Although teen pregnancy has been on the decline in the United States, it remains among the highest within developed countries. Hispanics, who are more likely to be undocumented immigrants, lead this trend, yet the role of legal status has yet to be considered. To investigate this question, we examine teenage fertility responses to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which provides temporary legal status to undocumented youth. We find that DACA reduced the likelihood of having a teenage birth by 1.6 percentage points and eliminated roughly half of the gap in teenage childbearing between documented and undocumented women.

Policymakers and the public are concerned about the road safety implications of legalizing marijuana. Despite the more than two decades of data since California became the first state to legalize marijuana for medical use, there has been surprisingly little research on this question. This study seeks to address this gap in the literature. Specifically, this research combines twenty-three years of state traffic data with information on the contemporaneous legal status of marijuana, for both medical and recreational use, to estimate two models of road safety. First, while treating both the state and the year as fixed effects, the resulting panel regression model estimates that the legalization of medical or recreational marijuana is not a predictor of the number of fatalities per 100,000 vehicle-miles traveled. Second, due to limitations in the regression model, a difference-in-difference analysis was conducted over the same period and found no relationship between legalization of medical marijuana and the number of fatalities per 100,000 vehicle-miles traveled. These findings suggest that concerns of policy makers and the public that legalizing marijuana will worsen road safety are not ungrounded at this time. According to the models, the recent upward trend of traffic fatality rates nationwide is not a result of medical marijuana legalization. In fact, the legalization of marijuana is not found to be a predictor of traffic fatalities.

Although the spatial distribution of wealth in the D.C. area has remained relatively constant over the past 40 years, with the richest neighborhoods stretching to the northwest on both banks of the Potomac and the poorest neighborhoods inside the Beltway east of 16th Street NW, the number of very rich and very poor neighborhoods has increased.

Currently, there are about 2.5 million Korean-Americans living in the United States, and this year marks 116 years in the history of Korean immigrants to the United States. Until now, 'Korean American' has been used as a term to refer to Korean-Americans, but the generational crossover of Korean American society, the increase in the number of mixed-race children due to first- and second-generation marriages with other races/ethnicities, For reasons such as increase, 'Korean American' is becoming more diversified racially/ethnically and generationally. Therefore, in this study, it was necessary to consider the definition and connotation of the term 'Korean American', so the definition and connotation of the term was explored inductively using interviews and questionnaires targeting them. It is thought that the definition of this concept can be used as basic data not only for studies related to Korean Americans but also for overseas Koreans policy.

In the aftermath of the Civil War, contemporary narratives about the American South pointed to the perceived lack of industrial development in the region to explain why the Confederacy succumbed to the Union. Even after the cliometric revolution of the 1970s, when historians first began applying statistical analysis to reexamine antebellum manufacturing output, the pervasive belief in the region’s backward-ness prompted many scholars to view slavery, not industry, as the economic engine of the South.

Minority Depository Institutions (MDIs), including Native American Banks (NatBs), play an integral role in providing financial services to the under-served. NatBs are split between those that are Tribal owned and those owned by individual Native Americans as private banks. This research explores differences between the two, other MDIs and comparable mainstream banks, using data from 2001 to 2016. Tribal NatBs are hypothesized to emphasize community development for the under-served over profit maximization, and to take on high levels of risk. Testing uses comparisons of population means and regressions, and the overall pattern of results and limited regression findings support those possibilities.

Previous research to understand socioeconomic well-being of immigrants finds the type of living arrangement is significantly correlated with household-level earnings. Present study employing 2009-2011 American Community Survey data explores the above relationship for the six major foreign-born Asian groups and native-born non-Hispanic Whites. The results indicate relative to Whites, household extension is more beneficial for Asian households. Furthermore, householders’ labor market advantages as measured by their human capital and English language proficiency are positively associated with nuclear living arrangement. However, diminishing gains in household earnings for the not so recent foreign-born immigrants living in vertically extended households displays a cultural inclination for collective living. Also, there are significant intergroup differences. While Japanese households appear to “rely” the least on household extension to enhance household earnings, the advantage of residing in extended households for the Filipinos and Koreans and especially so for the recent entrants is substantial.

Municipalities throughout the country have adopted nuisance ordinances to recruit landlords in assisting with crime control. Nuisance ordinances are municipality-level policies that sanction landlords if police are frequently called to respond to a landlord’s tenants. To avoid a fine, landlords must abate tenants whose conduct was considered a nuisance under the municipality’s ordinance; most often, this abatement process involves evicting the tenant. Little research has evaluated the impact of nuisance ordinances on innocent tenants – particularly, female victims of domestic violence. Because domestic violence is seldom excluded from the list of nuisance activities considered under the ordinances, legal advocates have warned that the threat of eviction associated with nuisance ordinances could discourage domestic violence victims from reporting their abuse to the police. This thesis contributes the first econometric analysis of the effect of nuisance ordinances on domestic violence reporting and incidence. The variation in nuisance ordinance enactment across municipalities and over time provides the framework to identify the causal effect of nuisance ordinances on domestic violence using a difference-in-differences strategy. I find that nuisance ordinance enactment leads to a 16.5-23.2 percent reduction in domestic violence-related 911 calls for assistance and a 0.4-0.7 percentage point increase in self reported domestic violence incidence in California. Nationwide, I also find nuisance ordinance enactment is associated with a statistically significant increase in online search activity related to domestic violence as a proxy for domestic violence incidence. These results suggest that nuisance ordinances have the unintended consequence of discouraging domestic violence victims from reporting their abuse, thereby allowing the incidence of domestic violence to persist.

Given problems with data on internal migration in the United States, we introduce and provide the first comparative assessment of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York Consumer Credit Panel (hereafter, CCP) to demonstrate the utility of these data for research on internal migration. The CCP permits detailed analyses of migration, both temporally and spatially. After introducing these data, we compare period and cohort estimates of internal migration from the CCP to similar estimates derived from the Internal Revenue Service, the American Community Survey, the Current Population Survey, the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, the Survey of Income and Program Participation, and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. We then proceed to demonstrate some of the unique advantages of the CCP. Our results establish the utility of the CCP for research on internal migration in the United States, and we conclude by identifying some profitable directions for future research.

If one writes "news about migrants in Mexico" in any search engine on the web immediately will not be very pleasant news. I did this exercise on November 7 of this year and they stopped a cargo truck on a highway in the state of Veracruz, where 100 Central American migrantstraveled undocumnetedly. If one continues searching one does not stop finding notes, which are not part of the front pages of the newspapers.

The historical fertility transition is one of the most important events in economic history. This study provides new evidence on the role of information and social norms in this transition. We begin by documenting a causal relationship between the public release of information on the morality of engaging in family planning that resulted from the famous Bradlaugh-Besant trial of 1877 and Britain's subsequent fertility decline. We then show that the release of this information had nearly simultaneous effects among British-origin populations abroad, in Canada, South Africa, Australia and the United States. These findings highlight the importance of information and changing social norms in the historical fertility transition, as well as the role that cultural and linguistic ties played in transmitting these changes around the world.