Social science researchers have benefited enormously from access to survey and census data collected and disseminated by the federal statistical agencies. The research made possible by this access has generated invaluable insights. An important factor in the government’s ability to collect data from individuals and businesses is the promise it gives to data subjects that their information will be kept private. The statistical agencies are vigilant in their efforts to honor this promise. Given the explosion of data from numerous sources that increasingly are available in electronic form, however, the risk that information contained in data products released by federal agencies could compromise the privacy of data subjects has grown. I view it as an unavoidable conclusion that, in order to honor the promises of privacy made to data subjects, current modes for disseminating information based on survey and census data will need to be rethought. Tiered access seems certain to be a central feature of any new model for data access, with the needs of many data users met through tabulations or other data products that safely can be made public and behind-the-firewall access to more sensitive information provided to the smaller number of data users who truly require it. A similar mix of approaches can be used to increase access to administrative records for research purposes. While the broad outlines of what a new system will look like seem relatively clear, important practical questions about its implementation will need to be addressed.

This paper provides empirical estimates of the short-run impacts of immigration on the employment opportunities of US-bornworkers based on a novel sectoral approach. We focus on six economic sectors with low skill requirements and high shares of immigrant workers. Our inference is based on panel data at the metropolitan areayear level of aggregation. We instrument for the sectoral share of immigrants using the share of immigrants in all other sectors of the economy. Our strategy yields conservative estimates of the effects of immigration on native labor outcomes because (i)movement of capital and native labor across metropolitan areas reduces the extent to which intercity comparisons can account for shocks to native employment conditions, and (ii) our instrument for the immigrant share likely remains correlated with sectoral native labor demand shocks, albeit less so than the sectoral immigrant share itself. We find evidence of negative short-run effects of immigration on native earnings in the construction, food service, and personal service sectors. Upper bounds on the annual earnings impact of a 10 percentage point increase in the share of immigrant workers range from -2.9% to -6.6%. Earnings impact estimates in other sectors are generally negative but not always statistically significant. Effects on the native employment rate are negative and significant across all six sectors.

Crop yields are projected to decrease under future climate conditions, and recent research suggests that yields have already been impacted. However, current impacts on a diversity of crops subnationally and implications for food security remains unclear. Here, we con- structed linear regression relationships using weather and reported crop data to assess the potential impact of observed climate change on the yields of the top ten global crops–barley, cassava, maize, oil palm, rapeseed, rice, sorghum, soybean, sugarcane and wheat at ~20,000 political units. We find that the impact of global climate change on yields of different crops from climate trends ranged from -13.4% (oil palm) to 3.5% (soybean). Our results show that impacts are mostly negative in Europe, Southern Africa and Australia but gener- ally positive in Latin America. Impacts in Asia and Northern and Central America are mixed. This has likely led to ~1% average reduction (-3.5 X 1013 kcal/year) in consumable food cal- ories in these ten crops. In nearly half of food insecure countries, estimated caloric availabil- ity decreased. Our results suggest that climate change has already affected global food production.

Emigrants from Italy and Ireland contributed disproportionately to the Age of Mass Migration. That their departure improved the living standards of those they left behind is hardly in doubt. Nevertheless, a voluminous literature on the selectivity of migrant flows— both from sending and receiving country perspectives—has given rise to claims that migration generates both ‘brain drains’ and ‘brain gains’. On the one hand, positive or negative selection among emigrants may affect the level of human capital in sending countries. On the other hand, the prospect of emigration and return migration may both spur investment in schooling in source countries. This essay describes the history of emigration from Italy and Ireland during the Age of Mass Migration from these perspectives.

This paper provides new evidence that federal provision of the low-income preschool program, Head Start, leads to increased labor force attachment among never married mothers. There has been a sustained interest in understanding how the low-income preschool program Head Start affects participating children. However, the scope of the program is likely to influence the decisions of other family members. For a low-income mother, access to Head Start likely provides a massive childcare cost subsidy, which might influence her labor supply decisions. Any impacts on maternal labor supply might prove an additional channel through which Head Start affects children's outcomes. To identify the impact of Head Start on the work decisions of never married mothers, we will exploit variation from three natural experiments. First, using the Head Start Impact Study randomized control trial between 2002 and 2008, we examine the impact of Head Start on the labor supply of unmarried mothers. Access to Head Start allows never married mothers to increase their labor supply, and these effects appear to be largest when the woman does not have younger children or when Head Start offers full day programing. To strengthen the external validity of our findings, we examine two additional natural experiments: the expansion of Head Start funding and enrollment in the 1990s and the initial, staggered roll-out of Head Start in the 1960s. In both cases, we use the Current Population Survey to compare mothers with age-eligible children to mothers with children below the age threshold in the same locality, to see if increases in funding affect the employment decisions of mothers with age-eligible children. The 1990s Head Start expansions are associated with an increase in the employment and income of unmarried mothers, with similar, but less consistent evidence from the 1960s. Our findings suggesting that viewing publicly provided early childhood education programs like Head Start as a bundle of family-level treatments can perhaps shed new light on the short run impacts, mid run fade out, and long-run improvements associated with Head Start.

Household water insecurity is a global threat to human health and development, yet existing metrics lack a systematic consideration of geographic inequality and spatial variation. In this article, we introduce the notion of plumbing poverty as a conceptual and methodological heuristic to examine the intersectional nature of infrastructure, space, and social inequality. Plumbing poverty is understood in a dual sense: first, as a material and infrastructural condition produced by social relations that fundamentally vary through space and, second, as a methodology that operationalizes the spatial exploration of social inequality. Drawing on millions of census records, we strip household water security down to a single vital measure—the presence of complete household plumbing—to assess its spatial and sociodemographic trends. We identify distinct hot spots (geographic clusters of higher than average values) of plumbing poverty, track its social and spatial variance, and expose its fundamentally racialized nature. Our study finds that plumbing poverty is neither spatially nor socially random in the United States. Rather, plumbing incompleteness is spatially clustered in certain regions of the country and is clearly racialized: Living in an American Indian or Alaskan Native, black, or Hispanic household increases the odds of being plumbing poor, and these predictors warp and woof through space. In considering who experiences the slow violence of infrastructural dysfunction, a geography that is simultaneously ignored and unevenly expressed in the United States, we argue that analyses of space and social difference are central to understanding household water insecurity and must be prioritized in the development of cross-comparable metrics and global measurement tools.

Importance Although nearly 1 in 5 persons in the United States has a physical or mental disability, little is known about the association of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) with health insurance coverage among persons with a disability. Objective To determine the association of Medicaid expansion with health insurance coverage among persons with a disability. Design, Setting, and Participants Cross-sectional analysis of adults eligible for Medicaid expansion (aged 26-64 years with incomes up to 138% of the federal poverty level), using a triple-differences (difference-in-difference-in-difference) approach to compare the pre-ACA with post-ACA trend in health insurance rates by disability status between expansion and nonexpansion states using nationally representative, repeated cross-sectional sample data obtained from the American Community Survey in the United States from January 1, 2010, to December 31, 2016. Time was defined as either pre-ACA (January 1, 2010, to December 31, 2013) or post-ACA (January 1, 2014, to December 31, 2016). Treatment status was defined as whether a state implemented Medicaid expansion after January 1, 2014. States that expanded Medicaid between January 1, 2014, to December 31, 2016, were classified as the treatment group, and states that did not expand Medicaid during the study period were classified as the control group. Data were analyzed from December 12, 2018, to May 21, 2019. Main Outcomes and Measures Self-reported health insurance coverage (uninsured, Medicaid, private) and self-reported disability status (≥1 condition limiting activity, including cognitive, ambulatory, self-care, independent living, and sensory difficulties). Results Of 2 549 376 Medicaid-eligible adults, 1 348 620 (52.9%) were female; 1 218 602 (47.8%) were non-Hispanic white, 497 128 (19.5%) were non-Hispanic black, 211 598 (8.3%) were Hispanic, and 206 499 (8.1%) were of other race/ethnicity; and 619 498 (24.3%) reported at least 1 disability. The percentage of persons without health insurance was greatest for persons without a disability who lived in a nonexpansion state before the ACA’s Medicaid expansion provision went into effect (236 645 of 426 387 [55.5%]), and the smallest proportion of persons without health insurance was reported for persons with a disability living in an expansion state after the ACA went into effect (19 552 of 176 145 [11.1%]). Triple-differences analysis suggested that Medicaid expansion was associated with a decrease in the uninsured rate for both persons with a disability (7.1% − 16.2% = −9.1%) and without a disability (21.2% − 34.9% = −13.7%) and that Medicaid expansion was associated with a 4.6% decrease in the uninsurance rate for persons without a disability and a 2.6% decrease in persons with a disability (P < .001). Although Medicaid expansion was associated with an increase in Medicaid coverage for both persons with a disability (49.3% pre-ACA to 62.3% post-ACA; change, 13.0%) and persons without a disability (21.6% pre-ACA to 40.3% post-ACA; change, 17.7%), the triple difference–estimated Medicaid coverage was −4.7% for persons with a disability and 0.4% for persons without a disability, a difference of 5.1% (P < .001). Medicaid expansion was associated with a 3% higher private insurance rate for persons with a disability than for persons without a disability. Conclusions and Relevance Medicaid expansion appeared to be associated with lower uninsurance rates and higher Medicaid and private insurance coverage for persons with a disability. This study’s findings suggest that the reduction in the uninsured rate and gains in Medicaid coverage were greater for persons without a disability than for persons with a disability.

Using data from the US Census Bureau's American Community Survey, we found how common various ancestries are in all 50 states. For instance, Irish ancestry is most concentrated in the Northeast, while Mexican and Mexican-American ancestry is most common in the states that share a border with Mexico. Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

In this paper we estimate the effect of monetary policy on the US labor market using disaggregated data based on large scale micro surveys. By employing a Bayesian factor-augmented vector autoregression framework, we investigate the impact of an unanticipated interest rate change on the unemployment rate in 32 occupation groups. Our results on the aggregate level are in line with the literature and point towards a strong influence of monetary policy on economic activity, overall unemployment and investment. A closer look on the disaggregated level reveals heterogeneous impacts across occupation groups. This heterogeneity can partially be explained by the amount of routine tasks and the degree of offshorability of an particular occupation group. These results suggest that workers who are highly vulnerable to medium-term and long-term developments such as automatization and offshoring are also hit disproportionately hard by short-term economic fluctuations.

Under the common‐law system of coverture in the United States, a married woman relinquished control of property and wages to her husband. Many U.S. states passed acts between 1850 and 1920 that expanded a married woman's right to keep her market earnings and to own separate property. The former were called married women's earnings acts (MWEAs) and the latter married women's property acts (MWPAs). Scholarly interest in the acts’ effects is growing, with researchers examining how the acts affected outcomes such as women's wealth holding and educational attainment. The acts’ impact on women's nonmarital birth decisions remains unexamined, however. We postulate that the acts caused women to anticipate greater benefits from having children within rather than outside of marriage. We thus expect the passage of MWPAs and MWEAs to reduce the likelihood that single women become mothers of young children. We use probit regression to analyze individual data from the U.S. Census for the years 1860 to 1920. We find that the property acts in fact reduced the likelihood that single women have young children. We also find that the “de‐coverture” acts’ effects were stronger for literate women, for U.S.‐born women, in states with higher female labor‐force participation, and in more rural states, consistent with predictions.

Objectives: migration has become a key concern all over the worlds. It is necessary to identify and understand the relationship between climate change, migration and contextual factors: social, economic, political, demographic and environmental. Methods: this paper attempts to address these very complex issues by identifying the drivers of migration in the context of climate change. A interdisciplinary approach to migration is emphasized in view of the use of such understandings in policy decision. In particular it aims at underlining the importance of this approach in view of the interventions to manage migration phenomenon and public health policy. Results: some preliminary results of a bibliographic survey are presented. They will allow to apply parameters and criteria for a mathematical model to represents and forecasts migratory movements at local level and in vast areas.

National health surveillance instruments are intended to monitor important health issues and health status of all populations in the United States. Several population subgroups present with disparities in health conditions and health care. To effectively create programs and policies to address these issues requires accurate identification of key population subgroups. Among the subgroups with the highest rates of poor health outcomes is the American Indian/Alaska Native (AIAN) population, which is also at significant risk of misidentification in national surveillance instruments. Selection of data sets for study inclusion was based on significant use of data sets in the literature, collection of AIAN designation, and availability of key health indicators. Thus, the Behavior Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), the National Survey of Children’s Health (NSCH), the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), the National Survey of Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH), and the Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey (MCBS) were selected. Additionally, the research team reviewed the California Health Interview Survey (CHIS), due to its inclusion of a large AIAN population.

The tragic killing of Michael Brown at the hand of Darren Wilson, a Ferguson, Missouri, police officer, further highlighted the long-standing disparities in health, education, employment, and overall well-being disproportionately burdening Black boys and young men in the St. Louis region. Since that event and the associated developments, actions have centered on attending to structural determinants, racism, and equity. However, less attention has been devoted to the overall well-being of Black boys and young men ages 18–29 in the St. Louis region and to the paucity of available economic opportunities. This brief report seeks to shift the focus by documenting regional trends in three economic social mobility indicators and crime rates. The analysis substantiates an urgent need for regional interventions to remedy the stagnant social mobility levels of Black males.

We derive a sufficient statistics optimal income tax formula in a general model that incorporates unemployment and endogenous wages, to study the shape of the tax and transfer system at the bottom of the income distribution. Key sufficient statistics are the macro employment response to taxation, the micro and macro participation response to taxation and the wage-moderating effect of tax progressivity. We empirically implement the tax formula by estimating the micro and macro elasticities using policy variation from the U.S. tax and transfer system. Our results suggest that the optimal tax more closely resembles a Negative Income Tax than an Earned Income Tax Credit relative to the case where unemployment and wage responses are not taken into account.

The U.S. social safety net helps to lift millions of people out of poverty through programs like the Earned Income Tax Credit, Social Security, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. These programs target benefits to individuals and families using factors like income (means-testing), parenthood, and employment status. For many anti-poverty programs, age is also an important factor for eligibility – either implicitly or explicitly. The Social Security Retirement Insurance Benefit program is explicitly designed around senior income security. Likewise, the Earned Income Tax Credit focuses expenditures on families with children – implicitly deprioritizing many working-age adults who have not yet had children. We accept that a social safety net is necessary for the youngest and the oldest in our society because, historically, poverty has been highest among these groups – those not in the workforce and most vulnerable. But the shape of poverty in this country has changed: what if the social safety net is missing a key age group?

The decline of employment in middle-wage, routine task intensive jobs has been well documented for the United States. Increased offshoring towards lower income countries such as Mexico has been proposed as a potential driver of this decline. We compare the evolution of employment across 181 detailed occupational categories in the U.S. and Mexico and find that, with few exceptions, the occupations that decline in the U.S. have also declined in Mexico. There is therefore little evidence that U.S. jobs are moving South. It is more likely that common shocks are responsible for the decline of middle-wage jobs in both countries.

Exploiting geological variation and timing in the initiation of hydraulic fracturing, we find that fracking leads to sharp increases in oil and gas recovery and improvements in a wide set of economic indicators. There is also evidence of deterioration in local amenities, which may include increases in crime, noise, and traffic and declines in health. Using a Rosen-Roback-style spatial equilibrium model to infer the net welfare impacts, we estimate that willingness-to-pay (WTP) for allowing fracking equals about $2,500 per household annually (4.9 percent of household income), although WTP is heterogeneous, ranging from more than $10,000 to roughly 0 across 10 shale regions.

Under the common-law system of coverture in the United States, a married woman relinquished control of property and wages to her husband. Many U.S. states passed acts between 1850 and 1920 that expanded a married woman’s right to keep her market earnings and to own separate property. The former were called married women’s earnings acts (MWEAs) and the latter married women’s property acts (MWPAs). Scholarly interest in the acts’ effects is growing. Researchers have examined how the acts affected outcomes such as women's wealth-holding and educational attainment. The acts' impact on women’s non-marital birth decisions remains unexamined, however. We postulate that the acts caused women to anticipate greater benefits from having children within rather than outside of marriage. We thus expect passage of MWPAs and MWEAs to reduce the likelihood that single women become mothers of young children. We use probit regression to analyze individual data from the U.S. Census for the years 1860 to 1920. We find that the property acts in fact reduced the likelihood that single women have young children. We also find that the “de-coverture” acts’ effects were stronger for literate women, U.S.-born women, in states with higher female labor-force participation, and in more rural states, consistent with predictions.

This study provides a comprehensive assessment of access to mental health and substance use disorder (SUD) treatment in Michigan. It identifies current challenges and provides a baseline against which progress can be tracked. Behavioral health care in this study includes services to treat mild to moderate mental illness, serious mental illness, SUD, and co-occurring conditions. Intellectual or developmental disabilities are outside the scope of the study. The analysis considers behavioral health care provided in outpatient, intensive outpatient, and residential care settings. We do not focus on inpatient psychiatric care, chronic pain treatment, and medication assisted treatment, as these types of treatment are examined in detail in other studies.

This Bulletin provides a preview of 2020 Census results— identified through data from surveys, population estimates, and projections—and an overview of key population and housing trends that will shape the United States in 2020 and beyond. Among the key findings: • The U.S. population is on track to grow at the slowest rate since the 1930s, which could have wide-ranging impacts on the labor supply and the demand for goods and services, including new homes, over the coming years. • As the U.S. population continues to shift to the South and West, states in those regions are expected to gain congressional seats at the expense of states in the Northeast and Midwest. • More than half of U.S. counties have experienced net population loss since 2010, with more than 550 counties losing at least 5 percent of their residents. • The percentage of U.S. residents ages 65 and older is increasing at the fastest pace in U.S. history, with significant implications for public spending on programs for older adults. • Children are at the forefront of racial/ethnic change in the United States, creating a diversity gap among generations. • Fewer households are being established, due in part to the growing share of young adults who still live with their parents. • A growing divide in home-ownership rates between whites and blacks is increasing the wealth gap between racial/ethnic groups. Many of these trends will have immediate implications for public spending, nonprofit planning, and business decision making. Other trends are reshaping the composition of our population and households in ways that will continue to unfold for decades to come. The census is our best—and only—source of accurate population and housing counts for the nation, states, and small geographic areas, enabling communities, government, businesses, and nonprofit organizations to adapt to the challenges ahead.