The Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC) and several partners within the Pennsylvania Highlands Trail Network (PHTN) are working to expand accessibility of trails, parks, and open spaces to accommodate users with varying sets of abilities. As part of their mission, the Appalachian Mountain Club and the network of organizations that make up the Highlands Trail in Pennsylvania, envision a world where the outdoors occupies a place of central importance in every person’s life and believe that the outdoors is for everyone, especially in recognizing the numerous health benefits related to outdoor recreation for physical and mental well-being. Equity and accessibility are the integral components to advance this work, recognizing that the outdoor recreation and conservation industries have more work to do in expanding access to create holistic community integration in the engagement process. To make nature accessible is to protect it. When the outdoors is made as accessible and inclusive as possible, all individuals regardless of their race, color, national origin, age, ability level, religion, gender, or sex are provided a shared sense of belonging and community.

While the ill luck of graduating during a recession is understood to potentially result in job mismatch, less is known about the drivers of underemployment outside of business cycles. This paper shows that the college subsidy investments undertaken as part of the WWII, Vietnam War, and Post-9/11 G.I. Bills led to persistent and sizable increases in the underemployment rate among bachelor’s degree holders. In turn, underemployment explains approximately a quarter of the earnings penalty experienced by recent college educated veterans, over and above lost labor market experience, lower rates of graduate school completion and combat exposure effects.

This paper shows how different housing submarkets are linked by residential vacancy chains-the series of moves across housing units initiated by the construction of new housing. Using administrative data on the residential histories of the U.S. population, we compare the characteristics of vacancies created by new suburban single-family homes to those created by new urban multifamily housing. We find that vacancy chains are short, with 90% ending within three rounds of moves; and, consequently, that each new suburban home leads to only .015 moves in low-income urban neighborhoods. We then conduct a simulation exercise to understand what the observed patterns of vacancy chains imply about the welfare and price effects of new housing supply. We show that the geographic distribution of moves created by vacancy chains is correlated with the geographic distribution of welfare and price effects, and that the number of vacancies created in a neighborhood is as strong a predictor of price effects as are model-derived cross-neighborhood substitution effects. Our results imply that new suburban housing supply has little effect on urban housing affordability or on the welfare of low-income urban households.

The proportion of U.S. children living in doubled-up households, in which a child lives with a parent plus adult kin or nonkin, has increased in the last 40 years. Although shared living arrangements are often understood as a strategy to cope with crises, no research to date has examined changes in children’s living arrangements dur­ing the first year of the COVID-19 pan­demic. We use the Amer­i­can Community Survey and the Current Population Survey to exam­ine chil­dren’s dou­bled-up liv­ing arrange ments dur ing 2020 and the extent to which chil dren may have expe ri enced “excess” dou­bling up rel­a­tive to ear­lier years. We con­sider trends by house­hold type (multigenerational, extended with other relatives, and nonrelative households) and differences by demographic characteristics (marital status, race and ethnicity, work status, edu­ca­tion, age, and num­ber of cores­i­dent chil­dren). We find evi­dence that more than half a mil­lion (509,600) chil­dren expe­ri­enced “excess” dou­bling up in 2020. Greater than expected increases in doubled-up arrangements were driven by increases in multigenerational households, in particular among Black and Hispanic children, young children (under age six), those whose mothers never married, and those whose mothers were not work­ing. Correlates of coresidence remained largely unchanged over time, although having a mother who had never married became a stronger correlate in 2020. Our find­ings sug­gest that both eco­nomic and instru­men­tal needs likely explained the rise in multigenerational coresidence in 2020.

IMPORTANCE Racial, ethnic, and geographic differences in multiple sclerosis (MS) are important factors to assess when determining the disease burden and allocating health care resources. OBJECTIVE To calculate the US prevalence of MS in Hispanic, non-Hispanic Black (hereafter referred to as Black), and non-Hispanic White individuals (hereafter referred to as White) stratified by age, sex, and region. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS A validated algorithm was applied to private, military, and public (Medicaid and Medicare) administrative health claims data sets to identify adult cases of MS between 2008 and 2010. Data analysis took place between 2019 and 2022. The 3-year cumulative prevalence overall was determined in each data set and stratified by age, sex, race, ethnicity, and geography. The insurance pools included 96 million persons from 2008 to 2010. Insurance and stratum-specific estimates were applied to the 2010 US Census data and the findings combined to calculate the 2010 prevalence of MS cumulated over 10 years. No exclusions were made if a person met the algorithm criteria. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASUREMENTS Prevalence of MS per 100 000 US adults stratified by demographic group and geography. The 95% CIs were approximated using a binomial distribution. RESULTS A total of 744 781 persons 18 years and older were identified with MS with 564 426 cases (76%) in females and 180 355 (24%) in males. The median age group was 45 to 54 years, which included 229 216 individuals (31%), with 101 271 aged 18 to 24 years (14%), 158 997 aged 35 to 44 years (21%), 186 758 aged 55 to 64 years (25%), and 68 539 individuals (9%) who were 65 years or older. White individuals were the largest group, comprising 577 725 cases (77%), with 80 276 Black individuals (10%), 53 456 Hispanic individuals (7%), and 33 324 individuals (4%) in the non-Hispanic other category. The estimated 2010 prevalence of MS per 100 000 US adults cumulated over 10 years was 161.2 (95% CI, 159.8-162.5) for Hispanic individuals (regardless of race), 298.4 (95% CI, 296.4-300.5) for Black individuals, 374.8 (95% CI, 373.8-375.8) for White individuals, and 197.7 (95% CI, 195.6-199.9) for individuals from non-Hispanic other racial and ethnic groups. During the same time period, the female to male ratio was 2.9 overall. Age stratification in each of the racial and ethnic groups revealed the highest prevalence of MS in the 45- to 64-year-old age group, regardless of racial and ethnic classification. With each degree of latitude, MS prevalence increased by 16.3 cases per 100 000 (95% CI, 12.7-19.8; P < .001) in the unadjusted prevalence estimates, and 11.7 cases per 100 000 (95% CI, 7.4-16.1; P < .001) in the direct adjusted estimates. The association of latitude with prevalence was strongest in women, Black individuals, and older individuals. CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE This study found that White individuals had the highest MS prevalence followed by Black individuals, individuals from other non-Hispanic racial and ethnic groups, and Hispanic individuals. Inconsistent racial and ethnic classifications created heterogeneity within groups. In the United States, MS affects diverse racial and ethnic groups. Prevalence of MS increases significantly and nonuniformly with latitude in the United States, even when adjusted for race, ethnicity, age, and sex. These findings are important for clinicians, researchers, and policy makers.

More schooling predicts better cardiovascular disease (CVD) outcomes, but a causal relationship between education and later-life blood pressure (BP) outcomes is less clear. Most prior work also evaluates the effect of education at the mean of BP, giving little insight into effects across the whole outcome distribution. We leveraged natural experiments, variation in compulsory schooling laws (CSLs) affecting K-12 education in the US as well as variation in the availability of colleges by state in the US, to evaluate how increased education impacted later-life BP. We also evaluate the intention-to-treat (ITT) association of college availability with later-life BP. We used quantile regression to evaluate the effects of education along the distribution of BP. We performed two-sample instrumental variable (IV) analyses using data from the US Census and from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to evaluate how variation in CSLs and college availability impacted later-life BP. In these analyses, we used linear regression in the first stage and both linear and quantile regression in the second stage. In the ITT analysis, we used linear and quantile regression. All models were adjusted for individual- and state-level covariates. To evaluate whether the effects of education varied by race and sex, we also generated results with race by sex interaction terms. v We found no evidence of an effect of education on BP in the overall study population for the CSL IV analysis. In the college IV analysis, we found that increasing the number of colleges in a state decreased SBP, although confidence intervals included the null in CQR models. In the overall ITT analysis, we found no evidence of an association for 2-year colleges, but a small decrease in SBP associated with each additional 4-year college. In subgroup analyses, however, we found important differences in the effect of education. In the CSL IV analysis, among White women, each additional year of K-12 education consistently lowered SBP across the SBP distribution, while among Black men, education consistently elevated SBP across the SBP distribution. In the college IV analysis, among White women, each additional 2- or 4-year college consistently lowered SBP across the SBP distribution while effect estimates in other subgroups all included the null. In ITT analyses, we found that women had decreased SBP at the upper end of the SBP distribution while men had increased SBP over the same range. Black women consistently had decreased SBP associated with additional 2- and 4-year colleges, although estimates were imprecise. Quantile regression identified differential relationships between education and blood pressure distribution that mean regression is unable to estimate. Race by sex subgroup analyses showed differential impacts of education on later-life BP. Future research should determine if these results are consistent and to understand why the expected education and blood pressure gradient is reversed for Black men.

Federal administrative data, such as tax data, are invaluable for research, but because of privacy concerns, access to these data is typically limited to select agencies and a few individuals. An alternative to sharing microlevel data is to allow individuals to query statistics without directly accessing the confidential data. This paper studies the feasibility of using differentially private (DP) methods to make certain queries while preserving privacy. We also include new methodological adaptations to existing DP regression methods for using new data types and returning standard error estimates. We define feasibility as the impact of DP methods on analyses for making public policy decisions and the queries accuracy according to several utility metrics. We evaluate the methods using Internal Revenue Service data and public-use Current Population Survey data and identify how specific data features might challenge some of these methods. Our findings show that DP methods are feasible for simple, univariate statistics but struggle to produce accurate regression estimates and confidence intervals. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first comprehensive statistical study of DP regression methodology on real, complex datasets, and the findings have significant implications for the direction of a growing research field and public policy.

More than 8.1 million Americans with disabilities qualify for Supplemental Security Income (SSI) or Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI). Individuals with disabilities were particularly vulnerable to COVID-19, which may have altered individual and household behavior. Research on the impact of COVID-19 on individuals with disabilities and their families remains limited. Authors analyzed 2020 National Health Interview Survey data. Logistic regression models were applied, controlling for the effects of age, race, sex, income, education, employment, and health status. Households with SSI/SSDI beneficiaries with disabilities were associated with significantly greater odds of delaying or forgoing medical care and receiving needed personal and household care at home due to COVID-19 compared with households without beneficiaries. The health and well-being of households with individuals with disabilities may require more robust and inclusive social work initiatives that aim to reduce adverse pandemic impacts.

Over the past 60 years, we have witnessed a relocation of gender wage inequality. Whereas the largest wage gaps were once concentrated among lower-paid, lower-educated workers, today these wage gaps sit among the highest-paid, highly-educated workers. Given this reordering of gender wage inequality and the centrality of college graduates to total inequality trends, in this article, we assess the contribution of higher education mechanisms to top-end gender inequality. Specifically, we use Census and ACS data along with unique decomposition models to assess the extent to which two mechanisms rooted in higher education—bachelor's-level fields of study and the attainment of advanced degrees—can account for the gender wage gap across the wage distribution. Results from these decomposition models show that while these explanatory mechanisms fare well among bottom and middle wages, their explanatory power breaks down among the highest-paid college workers. We conclude that women's attainment of “different” education (via fields of study) or “more” education (via advanced degrees) would do little to close the gender wage gaps that are contributing most to contemporary wage inequality trends. We suggest some directions for future research, and we also take seriously the role of discriminatory pay-setting at the top of the wage distribution.

Understanding how outcomes for biracial individuals compare with those for their monoracial peers is critical for understanding how patterns of racial inequality in the contemporary United States might be shifting. Yet, we know very little about the life chances of biracial individuals because of limitations in most available data sources. In this article, I utilize American Community Survey data from 2010 to 2019 to examine the risk of being clearly behind expected grade among biracial and monoracial K-12 students, helping to fill a gap in our understanding. With large sample sizes for most biracial groups, I am able to estimate grade retention risk for biracial students with enough precision to differentiate even modest differences in risk relative to monoracial groups. The results indicate that for most biracial groups, biracial students have risk similar to their lower-risk monoracial constituent group. Although biracial students tend to have favorable family resource characteristics, controlling for these characteristics does little to change the overall placement of their outcomes.

We offer a new analysis of a large-scale trial of an early-childhood education program that targeted premature, low-birthweight children. This targeting heavily oversampled twins, whose outcomes differed significantly from singletons’. Singletons’ gains in short-term cognition and age-18 non-cognitive skills were comparable to those of the Perry Preschool and Carolina Abecedarian Projects, supporting those programs’ scalability. For twins, however, the program generated smaller positive short-term gains and negative age-18 impacts. These outcome differences arise from differences in parents’ response to the program. A household production model suggests that the possibility of jointly supplying parenting to twins helps explain those differences.

The gender wage gap is a global economic issue that has an impact on women worldwide. The most recent statistics show that women earn 16% less than men do globally, while this disparity can be significantly higher in specific areas. Despite the progress made in gender equality, the wage gap still exists because it is a product of deeply rooted inequities in society and the economy (Action Aid, 2023). This thesis conducts a thorough analysis of the strategies utilized to reduce the gender wage gap in three different geographic areas: California in the United States, Luxembourg in Western Europe, and the Philippines in South-East Asia. The goal of the study was to identify the key "actors" driving gender pay gap policies. It also examined the specific legislative measures taken to address the problem and compared regional variations in policy frameworks and implementation techniques. This is accomplished by employing the Advocacy Coalition Framework as a conceptual framework.The interviews' thematic analysis identifies recurring topics for practical ways to reduce the gender pay gap in each region. Despite the geographical and cultural variations between California, Luxembourg, and the Philippines, the study uncovers shared challenges, triumphs, and techniques that have been used there.Based on ongoing work in these areas, the thesis makes policy recommendations for policy makers as well as future research to close the gender wage gap. The study's findings encourage equity for all by guiding evidence-based policy reforms and supporting global efforts to achieve gender equality.

College-educated workers in jobs unrelated to their degree generally receive lower wages compared to well-matched workers. Our analysis of data from the National Survey of College Graduates shows that although the rate of this mismatch declined only slightly (19% to 17%), the wage penalty increased by 51% between 1993 and 2019. Changes in the composition of field of study over time, as well as declining returns to "excess" education above what is required for the occupation both help to explain the increasing penalty, especially for women. Mismatch has become more closely associated with lower-return occupations for men but not women. Abstract College-educated workers in jobs unrelated to their degree generally receive lower wages compared to well-matched workers. Our analysis of data from the National Survey of College Graduates shows that although the rate of this mismatch declined only slightly (19% to 17%), the wage penalty increased by 51% between 1993 and 2019. Changes in the composition of field of study over time, as well as declining returns to "excess" education above what is required for the occupation both help to explain the increasing penalty, especially for women. Mismatch has become more closely associated with lower-return occupations for men but not women.

Many factors influence the economic opportunities for Hispanic women. In particular, their gender and ethnicity shape employment paths, as does their immigration status. Hispanic entrepreneurship is seeing rapid growth, but the heterogeneity of that group remains understudied. Using 2015–2019 ACS data, we investigate formal (incorporated) and informal (unincorporated) self-employment across three key factors—namely gender, Hispanic ethnicity, and immigration status—guided by an intersectional theoretical framework and quantitative data analysis. With our intersectional approach, we analyze how categories of marginalization overlap and compound to shape socioeconomic outcomes. We find self-employment propensities across social dimensions are not merely additive, nor should they be considered in isolation. Overlaying disadvantaged statuses has a greater effect than each alone, highlighting the need for policies tailored to help those who face multiple barriers to economic prosperity.

Since 1960, the share of never married U.S. adults has doubled from 15% to 31% (Marino, 2023a). Likewise, the median age of never married adults has risen since 1970 (Marino, 2023b), and the percentage of never married middle-aged adults has increased drastically since 1970 (NCFMR analysis of 2021 American Community Survey 1-year estimates). These trends all point to a general pattern of an aging never married population. Using data from the 2021 American Community Survey 1-year estimates, this Family Profile details the percentage of midlife never married adults (ages 30-49) in the United States and how these percentages vary across states.

The relationship between English and Puerto Rico has been tumultuous since 1898. Despite years of educational and political initiatives to create a bilingual island, the majority of island- born Puerto Ricans do not describe themselves as fluent in English. This quantitative research sought to understand the factors influencing English proficiency in Puerto Rico. Utilizing a curated dataset from the IPUMS database (N = 11,456) with information from the 2019 Puerto Rican Community Survey, this study investigated if there were differences or relationships among English proficiency levels and generational schooling period, gender, socioeconomic status, particularly income, education, and occupational industry, and region of inhabitance. Kruskal-Wallis statistical tests demonstrated that there were statistically significant differences in English proficiency level among generations, H(4) = 490.13, p < .001, E’r = .04, between genders, H(1) = 16.68,p < .001, E’r= .001, occupational industries, H(14) = 512.99,p < .001, E’r = .04, and region of inhabitance, H(1) = 71.96,p < .001, E’x = .006. Spearman’s correlations showed that there were statistically significant relationships between English proficiency levels and income, 7(11,454) = .105, p <.001, as well as between English proficiency and educational attainment, 7(11,454) = .348, p < .001. Effect sizes across all variables were very small. The results demonstrate that Puerto Ricans with higher socioeconomic status, in terms of educational attainment and occupational industry, are more likely to have higher levels of English proficiency, while Puerto Ricans with lower socioeconomic status are more likely to have lower English proficiency. Further, certain industries, such as the military,media-oriented fields, professional services, or education and health care are more likely to have higher English proficiency levels as compared to industries such as farming and construction. Additionally, the results indicated that Puerto Ricans living in central cities, such as the capital, on average have higher English proficiency levels compared to their suburban or rural counterparts. The analysis also concluded that specific generations, particularly those born between 1994-2004, have higher levels of English proficiency as compared to other generations. However, the impact of gender and income on English proficiency requires future analysis.

Historically, people with mental illnesses or with intellectual and/or developmental disabilities (MI|IDD) have been subjected to appalling examples of abuse and cruelty while residing in large congregant institutional settings. Despite deinstitutionalization in the United States, problems persist, such as the criminalization of mental illness, treatment gaps in mental health care, and lack of community integration among people with developmental disabilities. Using a three-manuscript dissertation model, I leverage observational datasets generated from census statistics, crime reporting, administrative databases, hospital records, and population-based surveys. I present results from quasi-experimental analyses used to determine which policy approaches led to improved outcomes for people with MI|IDD, their families, and communities. In the concluding chapter, I summarize recommendations to support policy that bolsters investments in community mental health centers, integrates primary and behavioral health care, and partners with families and communities in facilitating access to health care and supportive services.

This article analyzes institutional changes in local governance structures as determinants of wage premium and innovation capacity of urban areas. By combining individual and metropolitan area data for the US, we study the role of institutional fragmentation, related to the number of local governments operating in an area, and institutional coordination, stemming from the creation of authorities fostering the collaboration of local governments. Our findings suggest that more fragmented institutional landmarks do not benefit the wage competitiveness and innovativeness of urban areas. If anything, they harm them. Conversely, stronger coordination among local governments boosts the productivity of functional regions by increasing their wage premium and improving their capacity to innovate. Coordination agreements between different counties or municipalities are especially relevant in the case of urban areas modifying their functional borders over time. These findings provide key insights into the economic effects of reforming the governance structure of metropolitan areas.

This paper examines the impact of employee firing costs on auditors’ going-concern (GC) reporting decisions by exploiting the wrongful discharge laws (WDLs) adopted by U.S. states. We find that auditors are more likely to issue GC opinions to financially-distressed clients headquartered in states that have adopted the laws, in particular the good faith exception, than to clients in states that have not. This finding is robust to controlling for the state-level economics, the strictness of legal liability rules, audit office fixed effects, as well as alternative definitions of financial distress and estimation methods. The impact is concentrated in labor-intensive clients and clients in industries with a higher proportion of nonunionized or permanent employees. We further find that the increased propensity to issue GC opinions is attenuated when the auditor is economically dependent on the client, and is driven by auditors who possess labor-specific expertise. Overall, these findings are consistent with higher firing costs increasing auditors’ propensity to issue GC opinions.

IPUMs provides nine separate collections of harmonized data gathered from US and international sources. Harmonization makes it possible to directly compare different data sets, often from different countries or time periods, such as the first US Census in 1790 and the most recent in 2020. It is an open access resource developed and maintained at the University of Minnesota with funding from the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and several private donors.