Regions with high population agglomeration have always been important centers of growth throughout history. However, little is known about the economic spillovers an agglomerated region produces on its neighboring areas. In this paper, I look at the effect of growth of an agglomerated county on its surrounding non-agglomerated counties, by using the methods outlined in Qu and Lee (2015) and Qu, Wang and Lee (2016). I use the US county as the geographic unit of analysis. The results show that the impact of is inverted U-shaped – at low levels of per capita income of an agglomerated county, growth has a positive impact on the neighboring non-agglomerated counties, relative to non-agglomerated counties that do not have any agglomerated counties nearby. However, as the agglomerated county gets richer, its relationship with the neighboring non-agglomerated county becomes negative, relative to the growth rate of a non-agglomerated county that has no agglomerated county nearby.

The central theme of this paper is the relationships between the occupational destination of university graduates and their incomes. This occupational destination includes the occupation and the status in employment. The general hypothesis is that, more than the area of training and occupational categories, the most important factor for a higher position in the income hierarchy is the association with management or command occupations. This occurs both in terms of occupation, with the group for legislators, senior officials and managers systematically at the top, and in terms of status in employment, with employers or equivalent always in the highest position. Thus, in addition to the differences in income between the occupational categories, when correlating them with their status in employment, a second hierarchy emerges in conformity with the relationships with their categories. Seven countries were analysed and the results were systematically recurrent, with only minor variations.

This paper documents the persistence of the Southern slave owning elite in political power after the end of the American Civil War. We draw on a database of Texan state legislators between 1860 and 1900 and link them to their or their ancestors’ slaveholdings in 1860. We then show that former slave owners made up more than half of each legislature’s members until the late 1890s. Legislators with slave owning backgrounds differ systemat- ically from those without, being more likely to represent the Democratic party and more likely to work in an agricultural occupation. Regional characteristics matter for this persis- tence: Counties with more black residents and a higher soil suitability for growing cotton on average elect more former slave owners, whereas counties with more immigrants elect fewer of them.

My dissertation focuses on assessing environmental equity in neighborhoods hosting hazardous waste lands known as Superfund sites. I define environmental equity as equal and timely removal of Superfund sites regardless of demographic profile of hosting communities. In the first chapter I introduce the Superfund program and various steps that need to be taken by the EPA in order to remove a hazardous site from a neighborhood. The second chapter discusses theoretical frameworks that motivate the empirical analysis by visualizing the Superfund enforcement and cleanup process. The third chapter objectives are twofold. First, I investigate the factors that may affect the enforcement and litigation process of Superfund sites. The enforcement time could become lengthy due to the formal process of finding and negotiating with all the responsible parties, making Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) methods such as mediation and arbitration more efficient. I investigate whether Superfund sites located in communities with higher level of education are more likely to benefit from the use of ADR and hence experience faster enforcement duration. Second, I investigate the impact of the socioeconomic characteristics of communities close to the Superfund sites, as well as site’s specific characteristics, on the duration of Superfund cleanup. The results of this chapter demonstrate...

In this study, I utilize close readings of the periodically published works of three women writers – Kate Chopin, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, and Elia Peattie –through the lenses of historical/biographical, affective, and biosocial theories. Examining these works against the backdrop of America’s mythologized mother exposes the social ubiquity of the myth and the realities of motherhood nineteenth-century women experienced. Chapter one examines the mythological nature of American motherhood as it evolved from a politically and socially nuanced Republican Mother and the role of American periodicals as a medium of perpetuating that myth. Historically, American motherhood was an extended function of the biological reality women experienced, but colonial mothers soon accepted the higher calling of political guardianship, a calling that demanded piety, purity, and domesticity. The systematic layering of these motherly expectations through domestic literacy practices, female education, and reinforcement in the pages of America’s ever-growing periodical press immortalized this mythological mother as the standard bearer for American women...

Using U.S. Census data from 1960 to 2000 and American Community Survey data from 2010, this paper estimates the relationship between the husband’s educational attainment and his wife’s annual labor earnings. For full-time working wives, each additional year of completed schooling by the husband was associated with a 2% increase in his wife’s earnings. The returns to spousal education were larger when the couple worked in the same occupation. The estimated relationship has increased slightly since 1970. This increase was larger for younger wives. These results are consistent with cross-productivity and documented increases in educational homogamy.

DC’s population growth has slowed since the 2009 boom 10 years ago, but the population still continues to climb. In December, the US Census Bureau announced that DC’s population reached 702,455, officially passing the 700,000 mark.

In many parts of the U.S., rents and housing prices are rising faster than household incomes. Low-income families have always been stretched to pay for housing without sacrificing other necessities. In recent years, housing costs have become a larger source of financial stress for middle-income families. While homeownership has been the primary channel for wealth building in the U.S., two recent trends raise questions about whether this is a viable strategy. First, many homeowners suffered severe financial losses due to housing price declines during the Great Recession (2007-2009). Second, homeownership rates for Black and Latino families lag those of white and Asian families – a challenge as the nation’s population becomes increasingly diverse. The Las Vegas metropolitan area is at the forefront of both of these trends. In this paper, I explore recent trends in housing affordability and homeownership in Las Vegas and discuss implications for financial security and wealth-building.

This dissertation focuses on how changes in public policies have the ability to affect the consumption and nutrition of consumers through changes in product prices and quality. In the first chapter, I examine price pass-through and changes in quality at restaurants in response to an increase in minimum wage. In the second chapter, I examine changes in prices among retailers and restaurants in response to the largest tax on sugar sweetened beverages in the U.S. In the third chapter, I examine changes in nutrition and the labor market effects on the aging population in response to bans on trans fatty acids in food away from home establishments. In the first chapter, I investigate the responses of the restaurant industry to increases in the minimum wage. I construct a novel panel dataset based on online restaurant menus that allows me to analyze a full suite of potential margins of response including prices, quality, the number and types of items offered, hours of operation, and exit. I find that prices rise 0.3% to 0.8% in response to a 10% increase in the minimum wage. These re- sults are consistent with previous estimates in the literature, as well as what is predicted by the textbook model of competitive factor markets and monopolistically competitive firms. Building on this, I then extend the literature to more broadly understand the price pass- through as well as provide the first estimates of responses on quality. I find heterogeneity in pass through across restaurant characteristics, with higher pass-through among small firms, and lower pass-through for restaurants near the border of a minimum wage policy region. At the menu item level, pass-through is higher for specific types of items, such as sandwiches, and options with organic or gluten-free ingredients. In contrast, I find no evidence of higher pass-through for popular items. Further, I find significant changes in restaurant quality due to an increase in minimum wage. Specifically, I find that for low quality restaurants, quality decreases after an increase in minimum wage, but that quality increases for high quality restaurants. These quality results are driven more so by changes in service quality than by changes in food quality. Finally, I find no evidence that restau- rants systematically change the number or types of items offered, nor hours of business in response to an increase in the minimum wage. Restaurants are, however, significantly more likely to exit due to an increase in minimum wage. In Chapter 2, we estimate the incidence of a relatively new type of excise tax, a tax on sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs). We examine the largest such tax to date, which is two cents per ounce, implemented in Boulder, CO on July 1, 2017. As in other communi- ties, Boulder levies this tax on distributors. This paper estimates the extent to which this tax on distributors is passed through to consumers in the form of higher retail prices. To do so, we examine how the retail prices of SSBs changed after the tax in Boulder relative to a control community, using hand-collected data from retailers and internet data of restaurant menus. We find that 50.9 % of the tax was passed through to retail prices 5-7 weeks after the implementation of the tax. Some retailers add the tax only at the register, indicating that estimates solely from posted prices would result in an underestimate of pass-through. Including the taxes that were charged at the register, we find that 78.9 % of the tax was passed through to consumers. In Chapter 3, I add to the growing literature on the relationship between health status and labor market outcomes by providing estimates of how a ban on the use of trans fatty acids in food away from home establishments, a nutrition based health shock, affected labor market outcomes for the aging population. I estimate that four and more years after implementation of a trans fat ban, the percent of those employed increases by 3.4 percent- age points, and that average hours worked per week increases by 1.5 hours. In addition, I find that these increases are driven by a decrease in the percent of people unable to work, not by a decrease in retirement. Further, I find evidence that a decrease in cardiovascular disease incidences is the driving health mechanism behind these labor market effects.

We investigate whether technological change predicts tax policy changes in 34 OECD countries from 1996 to 2016. To examine tax policy reactions, we construct two new country-level indexes, one capturing tax-related investment incentives and one capturing anti-tax avoidance rules in a country. We document a decreasing trend in statutory tax rates, stable capital investment incentives, and a trend toward stricter anti-tax avoidance rules across countries over the last two decades. Our main finding is that country-specific exposure to technological change predicts variation in these trends. We find that, following technological changes, countries tighten their anti-tax avoidance rules. Cross-sectional tests show that smaller countries deviate from this general trend and use less stringent anti-tax avoidance rules. In the competition for firms' mobile capital, smaller countries thus appear to create indirect investment incentives by opting for less salient tax policy tools (i.e., anti-tax avoidance rules).

Evidence supports perinatal education as an intervention with potential to improve the health of pregnant individuals and their children, and our analysis suggests that the current landscape of perinatal education providers in Los Angeles is insufficient for a variety of reasons. In particular, we observed that transportation, cost, and a notable lack of courses taught in Spanish are among the factors most likely to affect a pregnant individual’s access to perinatal education...Finally, LOOM’s long-term business plan should include developing a bilingual digital platform and training trusted, LOOMcertified community educators who can host bilingual perinatal education courses in areas where they are needed most — two strategies that effectively address barriers of cost, transportation, and language at once.

American working conditions have deteriorated over the last 30 years. One commonly-noted change is the rise of nonstandard and unstable work schedules. Such schedules, especially when held by mothers, negatively affect family functioning and the well-being and development of children and bear implications for the intergenerational transmission of disadvantage. This paper describes and compares the working schedules—in terms of type, duration, and variability—of American mothers in 1990 and 2012 in an attempt to assess whether nonstandard and unstable schedules are growing more common. Analyses demonstrate that evening work has increased in prevalence for single mothers but not for their partnered peers. Mothers in both single-mother and two-partner households experienced considerably greater within-week schedule variability and higher likelihood of weekend work in 2012 than they did in 1990. These changes resulted from widespread shifts in the nature of work, especially affecting less-educated mothers.

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

The national crisis of housing shortage is a worsening legacy of the Great Recession, and its worst case may be Los Angeles. As the number of homeowners plummeted after 2007, the number of renters increased, which elevated rental competition and drove up rents. In the same time period, by coincidence, the large Millennial generation reached their middle 20s, moving them into the stage of life when household formation is typical, concentrated in the rental sector. However, at the same time the financial crisis that triggered the Great Recession also disrupted housing construction, thereby preventing supply from rising to meet this growing demand. Political resistance to new construction was a further complication aggravating the imbalance between supply and demand. A diagram to summarize these interacting elements that spawned the housing crisis is shown in Exhibit 1.

This book investigates the strategic use of America’s historical crime control, counterterrorism, national security and immigration policies as a mechanism in the modern-day Trump administration to restrict migration and refugee settlement with a view of promoting national security and preservation. National Security and Policy in America critically explores how American culture, neocolonial aspirations, and indifference towards others negatively impact long-term global security. This book examines immigration and security policies and their origins, purpose, impact, and evolution vis-à-vis the recently imposed ‘travel ban’ and proposed border wall across the Southern border, as well as how foreign policy influenced many of the migration flows that are often labeled as security risks. The book also seeks to understand why immigration has been falsely associated with crime, terrorism, and national insecurity, giving rise to counterproductive policies, despite evidence that immigrants face intolerance and turmoil due to the powerful distinctions between them and the native-born. This book uses an interdisciplinary framework in examining the U.S.’ current response to immigration and security and will thus appeal to undergraduate and graduate students of law, social justice, criminology, critical theory, neo-colonialism, security studies, policing, migration, and political science, as well as those interested in the practical questions of public administration.

The finding that offenders tend to commit crime within relative proximity to their own residence has been well established in nearly 80 years of research. The usefulness of this area of research extends not only to the validation of environmental crime theories, but also offers to improve crime analysis capabilities, police investigative practice, and ultimately crime case clearances. Despite the considerable attention this area of study has received, much remains to be known about the factors which might influence variation in residence-to-crime (RTC) distances. One somewhat recently formalized idea is that offenders might be limited by the time that they have in which to commit crimes (such as by employment or family demands) and that this will constrict the geographic mobility of offenders as they operate within those time constraints. This study tested this time-constraint hypothesis on a sample of sex offense incidents (N = 157) from the state of New Jersey. Findings revealed limited support for the time-constraint thesis, before and after controlling for offender, situational and geographic characteristics. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

Abstract In the years since the Great Recession, social scientists have anticipated that economic recovery in the United States, characterized by gains in employment and median household income, would augur a reversal of declining fertility trends. However, the expected post-recession rebound in fertility rates has yet to materialize. In this study, I propose an economic explanation for why fertility rates have continued to decline regardless of improvements in conventional economic indicators. I argue that ongoing structural changes in U.S. labor markets have prolonged the financial uncertainty that leads women and couples to delay or forgo childbearing. Combining statistical and survey data with restricted-use vital registration records, I examine how cyclical and structural changes in metropolitan-area labor markets were associated with changes in total fertility rates (TFRs) across racial/ethnic groups from the early 1990s to the present day, with a particular focus on the 2006–2014 period. The findings suggest that changes in industry composition—specifically, the loss of manufacturing and other goods-producing businesses—have a larger effect on TFRs than changes in the unemployment rate for all racial/ethnic groups. Because structural changes in labor markets are more likely to be sustained over time—in contrast to unemployment rates, which fluctuate with economic cycles—further reductions in unemployment are unlikely to reverse declining fertility trends.

This paper constructs distributions of individual workers' year-over-year changes in nominal hourly wages across time and across US states from two nationally representative household surveys, the Current Population Survey (1979-2017) and the Survey of Income and Program Participation (1984-2013). The novel result is that the share of workers with no wage changes, which accounts for the large spike at zero in the wage change distribution, is more countercyclical than the share of workers with wage cuts. A strand of related literature interpreted the empirical finding that US states with larger decreases in employment are also the states with lower average wage increases as a sign of wage flexibility. This paper overturns this interpretation by showing that the states with larger employment declines are also the states with greater increases in the share of workers with a zero wage change, suggesting wage rigidity instead. The paper then analyzes heterogeneous agent models with five alternative wage-setting schemes-perfectly flexible, Calvo, long-term contracts, menu costs, and downward nominal wage rigidity-and shows that only the model with downward nominal wage rigidity is consistent with the empirical findings regarding the shape and cyclicality of the wage change distribution documented in this paper.

A proposal to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 by 2024 would increase the relative minimum wage – the ratio to the national median wage-- to about .68. In Alabama and Mississippi, our two lowest-wage states, the relative minimum wage would rise to .77 and .85, respectively. Yet research on state-level minimum wage policies does not extend beyond $10; the highest studied state-level relative minimum wage is .59. To close this gap we study minimum wage effects in counties and PUMAs where relative minimum wage ratios already reach as high as .82. Using ACS data since 2005 and 51 events, we sort counties and PUMAs according to their relative minimum wages and bites. We report average results for all the events in our sample, and separately for those with lower and higher impacts. We find positive wage effects but do not detect adverse effects on employment, weekly hours or annual weeks worked. We do not find negative employment effects among women, blacks and/or Hispanics. We do find substantial declines in household and child poverty

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