This dissertation consists of three essays on regional economics that deal with earnings inequality in cities, interstate migration and spatial competition in the retail market. Chapter 1 provides a theoretical framework to analyze the observation of rising earnings inequality with city size. Many papers have found a positive relation between income inequality and city size in the US and other countries. This literature has assumed that the relation is linear. Tests performed here find that it is concave, resembling the classic Kuznets curve. A theoretical model based on the Income Elasticity Hypothesis (IEH), explains that inequality is a concave function of housing prices that tend to increase with city size. Further tests confirm the concavity of the relation between Gini and housing costs that is predicted by the IEH. Although for most cities, inequality still rises with housing costs, if housing costs continue to grow in large cities, inequality should eventually fall, resembling the Kuznets Curve at the country level.

This paper uses administrative employment and conviction data to evaluate laws that restrict employers’ information about job seekers’ criminal records. I first show that convictions generate large employment declines, partly due to shifts towards lower- paying industries less likely to check criminal histories. However, I find that a 2013 Seattle law barring employers from examining job seekers’ records until after an initial screening had negligible impacts on ex-o↵enders’ employment and earnings. The results are consistent with employers deferring background checks until later in the interview process or ex-o↵enders continuing to only apply to jobs where clean records are not a prerequisite, a pattern supported by survey evidence and the post-conviction shifts in industry of employment.

This paper examines the long-run effects of the 1980-1982 recession on education and income. Using confidential Census data, I estimate difference-in-differences regressions that exploit variation across counties in recession severity and across cohorts in age at the time of the recession. For individuals age 0-10 in 1979, a 10 percent decrease in earnings per capita in their county of birth reduces four-year college degree attainment by 10 percent and income in adulthood by 3 percent. Simple calculations suggest that, in aggregate, the 1980-1982 recession led to 0.8-1.8 million fewer college graduates and $42-$87 billion less earned income per year.

We exploit the 2008 Oregon ban on non-compete agreements (NCAs) for hourly-paid workers to provide the first evidence on the impact of NCAs on low-wage workers. We find that banning NCAs for hourly workers increased hourly wages by 2-3% on average. Since only a subset of workers sign NCAs, scaling this estimate by the prevalence of NCA use in the hourly-paid population suggests that the effect on employees actually bound by NCAs may be as great as 14-21%, though the true effect is likely lower due to labor market spillovers onto those not bound by NCAs. While the positive wage effects are found across the age, education and wage distributions, they are stronger for female workers and in occupations where NCAs are more common. The Oregon low-wage NCA ban also improved average occupational status in Oregon, raised job-to-job mobility, and increased the proportion of salaried workers without affecting hours worked.

Family structure is usually believed to affect children's human capital. Is it possible that causality goes in the opposite direction? This paper shows that the behavior of family structure variables over the life cycle dramatically changes when women have babies in their forties. These data regularities align with a significant increase in the risk of having a child with health problems when women enter the last decade of their reproductive life. I present a simple theoretical model that provides a common underlying explanation for the data patterns and generates additional testable implications. I estimate the model predictions using ACS data.

Diversifying crop production has been proposed as a means of reducing food and nutrition insecurity in sub-Saharan Africa, but previous empirical studies yield mixed results. Much of this evidence has focused at the household level, but there are plausible reasons to expect that the presence of crop diversity at other scales affects human health. Utilizing data from 11 sub-Saharan African countries housed in the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS)-Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) system, this study assesses the association between village-level crop diversity and both dietary diversity and height-for-age among young children. Our findings indicate that, overall, village-level crop diversity contributes to higher dietary diversity and improved height-for-age and that functional diversity measures best account for nutritional outcomes. These findings provide an important basis for future research to explore the importance of crop diversity at scales beyond the household and to consider other contextual determinants of child health.

A method is presented for estimating the “underlying” infant mortality rates for areas with small populations. It is described and illustrated in a case study that estimates infant mortality rates for 2494 US counties that had less than 1000 births in 1970. The method’s validity is tested using a synthetic population in the form of a simulated data set generated from a model life table infant mortality rate, representing Level 23 of the West Family Model Life Table for both sexes. The test indicates that the method is capable of producing estimates that represent underlying rates. Although some judgment is needed with the method, it has sufficient transparency that estimates can be replicated. The results support the argument that the method can produce reasonable estimates of underlying infant mortality rates for small populations subject to high levels of stochastic variation.

Between 1835 and 1935, total fertility in the United States fell from 7.0 to 2.1. new IPUMS complete-count microdata databases of the 1850, 1880, 1910, and 1930 US censuses allow us to study the fertility decline in more detail than previously possible. We construct comprehensive models of couples' fertility incorporating a wide variety of economic, social, cultural and familial factors, including measures of parental religiosity and kin availability outside of the household. The results indicate that while shifts in the occupational structure and increasing urbanisation of the population provide the most consistent and substantive contribution to fertility decline over the period, cultural and religious attitudes - as proxied by parents' nativities and child naming practices - played a major role in couples' childbearing decisions.

The author examines bias and behavioral norms based on sex and sexual orientation in the labor market. Using an online laboratory setting, participants were asked to evaluate résumés that were manipulated on sex, perceived LGBT status, and use of traditionally masculine or feminine adjectives. Findings show that male participants penalized résumés that included an LGBT activity, and the penalty was slightly stronger for male résumés. Additionally, men evaluated non-LGBT women who used feminine adjectives more positively than when they used masculine adjectives. Résumés of women with the LGBT activity and men were both immune to this effect. This outcome suggests that perceived-heterosexual women are discouraged from masculine behavior that would be rewarded in the labor market, whereas perceived-LGBT women are not. Men who had the strongest reaction to perceived-heterosexual women using masculine adjectives also had the strongest negative reaction to résumés with an LGBT activity. This pattern suggests that male decision makers are biased in ways that harm LGBT men, LGBT women, and heterosexual women in the labor market.

The study of occupations has a long history in the social sciences. The United States Census Bureau creates and updates occupation codes based on the Standard Occupation Classification System to systematically identify similar jobs and classify them into occupations. Periodic updates to occupation codes are necessary for documenting emerging and disappearing occupations and appropriately reflecting the labor market. While these updates are important for capturing the changing jobs that are performed in the United States, occupation code changes make it more complicated for researchers to make appropriate comparisons over time. This paper presents the methodology used at IPUMS to harmonize 2010 and 2002 Census occupation codes. Our work builds upon the foundation of existing harmonized occupation data available through IPUMS (variables OCC1950 and OCC1990). Combining our contribution with existing IPUMS infrastructure creates a consistent measure of occupation for all seven coding schemes over the 1950-2019 period.

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.

In this paper, we study the impact of learning in foreign markets on firms' entry decision into new destinations. We propose local knowledge spillovers within spatial networks in third countries (i.e., prior destinations) as a channel through which firms learn about their destination of interest. In the context of cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&A), ac-quirers obtain knowledge on new destinations from their third-country targets through the neighborhood learning effect. We present a heterogeneous-firm model of cross-border M&A with learning. Firms sort as acquirers, non-participants of M&A, and targets. Expected profits and the probability of entry into a destination increase with acquirers' accumulated experience abroad and the strength of signals observed from their third-country targets. Using data on global cross-border M&A activity from 1995 to 2016, we find strong empirical support for the model at both the macro and micro levels. In particular, at the micro level, we examine over 2,800 non-US acquirers that invested in the US and subsequently in non-US foreign destinations. Controlling for accumulated experience in other third countries, we find that the cross-border M&A activity (purchases and sales) of the US targets' neighbors has a positive impact on the destination choice of the non-US acquirers. Moreover, learning effects are complementary across firms' sources of information.

In April 2014, Flint, Michigan switched its drinking water supply from the Detroit water system to the Flint River as a temporary means to save $5M. Over the course of eighteen months, it was revealed that the switch exposed residents to dangerous levels of lead, culminating in an emergency declaration in October 2015. In this paper, we examine economic impacts as this crisis unfolded. We estimate that averting expenditures since the switch have exceeded $20M and the value of the Flint housing stock has fallen by $345M to $500M. Over this same period, state and federal spending has exceeded $343M.

OBJECTIVES: Food insecurity is an important public health problem facing children in the United States. Although a number of previous studies suggest that food insecurity has negative impacts on health, these studies have not dealt thoroughly with issues of selection bias. We use propensity scoring techniques to approximate the causal effects of food insecurity on children’s health and health care use outcomes. METHODS: We use nationally representative data from the 2013–2016 waves of the National Health Interview Study (N = 29 341). Using inverse probability of treatment weighting, a propensity scoring method, we examine a broad range of child health outcomes and account for a comprehensive set of controls, focusing on a sample of children 2 to 17 years old. RESULTS: Household food insecurity was related to significantly worse general health, some acute and chronic health problems, and worse health care access, including forgone care and heightened emergency department use, for children. Compared to rates had they not been food insecure, children in food-insecure household had rates of lifetime asthma diagnosis and depressive symptoms that were 19.1% and 27.9% higher, rates of foregone medical care that were 179.8% higher, and rates of emergency department use that were 25.9% higher. No significant differences emerged for most communicable diseases, such as ear infections or chicken pox, or conditions that may develop more gradually, including anemia and diabetes. CONCLUSIONS: Policies used to reduce household food insecurity among children may also reduce children’s chronic and acute health problems and health care needs.

This paper investigates the role of intergenerational mobility in the internal migration decisions of families. The geographic variation in intergenerational mobility suggests that if parents value their children's human capital accumulation and future outcomes, they would have an incentive to move to areas with a higher upward mobility. To identify the effect of intergenerational mobility on family migration, we first use an instrumental variable approach, based on a heteroskedastic covariance restriction, which addresses measurement-error and omitted-variable biases. Then, we apply the semiparametric maximum score estimation method to our empirical model, which yields a consistent estimator when families' choice sets are partially observed. We find that highly educated families with school-aged children choose areas that favor upward mobility. Our welfare analysis indicates that a unit increase in the absolute upward mobility of a commuting zone is equivalent to approximately a $722 higher mean wage in the local labor market.

Neumark, Salas, and Wascher (2014) succinctly summarize the empirical challenges researchers of the minimum wage face: “the identification of minimum wage effects requires both a sufficiently sharp focus on potentially affected workers and the construction of a valid counterfactual control group for what would have happened absent increases in the minimum wage.” The difficulty of addressing these two challenges is evident in the variety of empirical approaches seen in the literature. In this paper, I address the latter of the issues in a manner nearly absent in the minimum wage literature by taking advantage of individual-level longitudinal data to observe the impacts of minimum wage changes on unemployment and labor force participation. Using within-individual variation and short 4-month panels, I control for heterogeneity at the individual level that determines unemployment and labor force participation. Specifically, the empirical strategy controls any fixed individual-specific idiosyncrasies and differential exposure to time-invariant economic shocks. This differs significantly from previous literature that exploits within-state variation. The short-run impacts of the minimum wage are assessed using monthly data, instead of yearly or quarterly data, which allows for the analysis of contemporaneous minimum wage effects. There is no evidence of an increase in unemployment immediately following a minimum wage increase. In addition, it does not appear that employers are substituting full-time workers with part-time workers. That said, there is robust evidence that immediately following a minimum wage increase, labor force participation decreases.

Antiretroviral therapies (ART) suppress HIV replication, thereby preventing HIV disease progression and potentially preventing HIV transmission. However, there remain significant health disparities among people living with HIV, particularly for women living in impoverished rural areas. A significant contributing factor to HIV-related disparities is a stigma. And yet, the relative contributions of stigma, gender, socio-economics, and geography in relation to health outcomes are understudied. We examined the associations of internalized stigma and enacted stigma with community-level income inequality and HIV viral suppression—the hallmark of successful ART—among 124 men and 74 women receiving care from a publicly funded HIV clinic serving rural areas with high-HIV prevalence in the southeastern US. Participants provided informed consent, completed computerized interviews, and provided access to their medical records. Gini index was collected at the census tract level to estimate community-level income inequality. Individual-level and multilevel models controlled for point distance that patients lived from the clinic and quality of life, and included participant gender as a moderator. We found that for women, income inequality, internalized stigma, and enacted stigma were significantly associated with HIV suppression. For men, there were no significant associations between viral suppression and model variables. The null findings for men are consistent with gender-based health disparities and suggest the need for gender-tailored prevention interventions to improve the health of people living with HIV in rural areas. Results confirm and help to explain previous research on the impact of HIV stigma and income inequality among people living with HIV in rural settings.

The cotton grown by Mississippi slaves, insured by New York and Boston financiers, and spun by Manchester wage laborers germinated in soil that had belonged, only a few months or years earlier, to Native Americans. For a brief five decades, the U.S. South dominated global cotton production, a result of the transformation of the region from indigenous farms to slave labor camps. Scholars have recently traced the network of financial capital that yoked mortgaged slaves and impoverished mill workers to planters, bankers, and consumers around the world. While it is evident that the global reach of the cotton empire—the millions of laborers and the vast sums of money at work—precipitated the dispossession of native peoples in the antebellum South, the precise link between financial capital and Indian expulsion has remained obscure. As a result, we speak in generalizations: Indian removal forced “60,000 of the cotton frontier's original inhabitants across the Mississippi,” opening the land “for speculation and cotton production”; it “transformed territory into property,” after which “capital flowed into the Lower Mississippi Valley”; and it belonged to “the project of continental consolidation,” driven by the “insatiable demand of cotton planters."

Abstract Background: One published study simultaneously reported the mortality associated with cigarette smoking and smokeless tobacco (ST) use in the USA. In this study, we focus only on men ages 40–79 years old and extend the follow-up by 4 years. Methods: We used selected years (1987–2010) of National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) Linked Mortality Files to classify 46,104 men age 40–79 years with respect to 7 categories of smoking and/or ST use. We used Cox proportional hazards models adjusted for age, race/ethnicity, marital status, education, income, health status, body mass index, and region to estimate hazard ratios (HRs; 95% confidence intervals, CI) for mortality from all causes, heart diseases, malignant neoplasms, and two mutually exclusive categories: smoking-related and other diseases. Results: There were 15,540 deaths from all causes, including 3476 never tobacco users, 4782 exclusive smokers, and 210 exclusive ST users. The latter had significant excess mortality from all causes (HR = 1.25, CI = 1.08–1.46), but not from heart diseases (HR = 1.16, CI = 0.85–1.59), malignant neoplasms (HR = 1.17, CI = 0.83–1.67), and all smokingrelated diseases (HR = 1.19, CI = 0.97–1.46). However, they had higher mortality for all other causes (1.39, CI = 1.10– 1.74), which was largely seen in age 40–59 years (HR = 1.68, CI = 1.11–2.54). Current smokers, with or without ST use, also had significantly elevated HRs for other causes (1.70 and 1.57, respectively), in addition to significant increases in mortality from heart diseases (1.98 and 2.00), malignant neoplasms (2.60 and 2.84), and all smoking-related diseases (2.32 and 2.47). Conclusions: This is the first simultaneous mortality follow-up study of older American male smokers and ST users. ST users did not have excess mortality from any smoking-related diseases, but younger users had an elevation in deaths from other causes. Keywords: Smoking, Smokeless tobacco, Mortality, National Health Interview Survey.

We examine how housing supply constraints affect housing affordability, which we define as the quality-adjusted price of housing services. Our dynamic model predicts that supply constraints will increase the price of housing services by only about half has much as the purchase price of a home, since the purchase price responds to expected future increases in rent as well as contemporaneous rent increases. In the model, households respond to changes in the price of housing services by altering their consumption and location choices, further reducing the implications of supply constraints for housing expenditures. Next, we estimate the effects of common measures of supply constraints on housing outcomes using data from US metropolitan areas from 1980 to 2016. We find sizeable effects of supply constraints on house prices, but modest-to-negligible effects on rent, unit size, lot size, location choice within metropolitan areas, sorting across metropolitan areas, and housing expenditures. We conclude that housing supply constraints distort housing consumption and affordability much less than their estimated effects on house prices would suggest. 1