A recent report by the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families highlighted a worrisome finding from the American Community Survey (ACS): After years of declines in children’s uninsurance, the uninsurance rate among children rose from 4.7 percent in 2016 to 5.0 percent in 2017, an increase of 276,000 uninsured children nationwide. This was the first observed increase in children’s uninsurance since 2008 and consistent with other survey data finding that children’s coverage gains had flattened or started to reverse in 2017. Coverage losses for children were concentrated in states that did not expand Medicaid coverage for adults under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), and uninsurance rose by a statistically significant margin in nine individual states, seven of which had not expanded Medicaid.

This paper investigates the impact of a major Social Security policy change on the labor force participation rates of elderly females, both married and single, and of various races and ethnicities. Historically, social security benefits were reduced if labor income exceeded a certain level. The employment tax ranged from a $1 reduction for each $1 earned to a $1 reduction for each $3 earned. Prior to 2000, the age at which this reduction was no longer applied, varied between 70 and 75. However, in 2000 the age was lowered to what the Social Security Administration calls the normal retirement age which ranges between 65 and 67 depending on the date the person was born. Such a major change provided fertile ground for economic research. Studies have proliferated on the impact of the regime change on the labor force participation rates of elderly males. However, little work has been conducted regarding the impact of this policy change on female labor force participation rates. This study shows that after the employment tax was eliminated for those reaching their normal retirement age, the labor-force participation rates of single, divorced, separated and widowed women in the targeted age range usually increased. The estimates indicate the labor-force participation rates of married women in the affected age range fell with the elimination of the employment tax.

If an economy should produce benefits for most of its people, America has failed for the past generation. In terms of wage growth and inequality, America has fallen far behind its peer nations in Europe. Why? Not due to the inevitable forces of globalization and technical change, which the Europeans must also contend with, but due to policy failure. Here’s how to correct that.

Approximately 41 percent of workers in Dallas lack paid sick time, and low-income and part-time workers are especially unlikely to be covered. Access to paid sick time promotes safe and healthy work environments by preventing the spread of illness (Kumar, et al. 2013; Drago and Miller, 2010) and reducing workplace injuries (Asfaw, Pana-Cryan, and Rosa 2012), reducing health care costs (Miller, Williams, and Yi 2011), allowing workers time to visit doctors, and helping working adults fulfill caregiving responsibilities by reducing work-family conflict (Allen, et al. 2014; DeRigne, Stoddard-Dare, and Quinn 2016). This briefing paper presents estimates of access to paid sick time in Dallas by sex, race and ethnicity, employment sector, occupation, part/full-time employment status, and earnings levels through analyses of government data sources, including the 2014–2016 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) and the 2016 American Community Survey (ACS).

The Survivor Bene t Plan (SBP) provides income security for the survivors of U.S. service members who perform in an authorized-duty status—whether active or inactive—and die in the line of duty, as well as for the survivors of retired members enrolled in SBP. is report responds to Congress’s request for an assessment of SBP. e assessment includes information about SBP participation and available bene ts, how SBP compares with similar plans in public organizations and private companies, and how large a contribution SBP makes to survivors’ incomes. Congress also requested that the assessment consider the feasibility and advisability of having SBP provided by commercial sources. This report should interest groups and individuals concerned with the adequacy of ben- e ts available to the survivors of service members. This research was sponsored by O ce of the Secretary of Defense and conducted within the Forces and Resources Policy Center of the RAND National Defense Research Institute, a federally funded research and development center sponsored by the O ce of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Sta , the Uni ed Combatant Commands, the Navy, the Marine Corps, the defense agencies, and the defense Intelligence Community. For more information on the RAND the Forces and Resources Policy Center, see www. rand.org/nsrd/ndri/centers/frp or contact the director (contact information is provided on the webpage).

The military has long been seen as an avenue for increasing racial equality for minorities, especially black Americans. In this article, we examine to what extent military veterans also experience residential integration by looking at neighborhood residential outcomes for black and white men utilizing the popular Veterans Affairs (VA) loan program to purchase a home. We draw on data from the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) to examine residential integration among white and black veteran homebuyers compared to homebuyers utilizing conventional loans over three major lending eras: 1990s, 2000–2007, and 2008–2015. By 2015, a quarter of all home purchase mortgages loans to black men were VA loans even though veterans made up only a tenth of the adult black male population. In our multivariate analyses, we uncover a sizeable combined swing toward neighborhood minority-white integration, 14.4% points, among black and white veterans who use VA loans. Compared to those with conventional loans, black veterans live in neighborhoods with % points fewer minorities and, white veterans, 4.4% points fewer whites. Our results illustrate how racial integration in the US military has the potential to foster lasting housing integration among veterans.

This dissertation studies the impacts of local labor market changes on the US family structures and disability benefit take-up. The dissertation uses unexpected time series changes in energy prices, together with the pre-existing county exposure to the unexpected time series changes, to identify causal links between the changes in county's economic conditions and changes in marriage outcomes, fertility outcomes, and disability benefit payments. The first chapter is motivated by the decline in marriage and the rise in out-of-wedlock births, which are among the most important changes in American lives over the last half century. A notable hypothesis to explain both trends, sometimes dubbed as the “unmarriageable men hypothesis,” attributes these changes to the disappearance of well-paying industrial jobs for the less-educated men. Exploiting county-level variation in oil-producing and coal-producing areas from the shocks to world oil and coal prices in the 1970s and 1980s, I find that a decrease in men's earnings leads to lower marriage prevalence, lower marital fertility rates, and higher non-marital fertility rates, confirming the hypothesis. When men's earnings increase, however, marriage outcomes and non-marital births respond differently across regions: while higher earnings lead to higher marriage prevalence and lower non-marital births in coal-producing counties, I find little marriage response and more non-marital births in oil-producing counties during the oil boom, which is inconsistent with the implications of the unmarriageable men hypothesis.

Rather than meaningfully involving representatives of environmental-justice communities in decisions about the hazards that disproportionately affect their health, public participation efforts initiated by federal and municipal agencies often perpetuate inequities. Rebekah Breitzer argues that the problem stems in part from the adoption of social diffusion theory, which conditions policymakers to think of low-income people as targets for behavior modification rather than as potential contributors to environmental policy creation. Predominantly poor communities and communities of color remain disproportionately impacted by environmental hazards. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is now focused on combating this inequality by increasing “meaningful public participation” in these “overburdened and vulnerable communities” (US EPA, 2016, p. 27). The EPA’s emphasis on public participation reflects a larger trend in environmental governance: officials increasingly view public participation as a normative good, as a right of citizens, and as a method of increasing government legitimacy and public support for new policy agendas (Rydin and Pennington 2010). Conversely, failure to fully include the impacted public in environmental policy creation is now often seen as an obstacle for new policy initiatives, particularly if one of the stated goals is increased environmental equity. For instance, in their review of New York City’s 2015 OneNYC plan, Bautista, Hernandez, Osorio, and Soto (2017) note that despite . . .

Labor's share of income in the United States has trended downward over the last 30 years. This paper develops a model that links automation to the labor share and pro- vides evidence on the extent to which the fall was due to automation. In the model, production requires completing a set of tasks that can be performed by either labor or capital. Aggregating over rms that operate capital with di ering degrees of au- tomation, total output of the economy can be represented as a Constant Elasticity of Substitution (CES) function with total factor productivity and share parameter (α) determined by the distribution of automation technology across rms. Using industry- level data, including a novel measure of aggregate task inputs into production, I nd evidence that automation was a signi cant driving force of the US labor share between 1972-2010. The proposed model of the aggregate production function can reconcile three important empirical ndings on US production and growth that the canonical CES model cannot: declining labor shares, aggregate capital-labor complementarity, and capital-biased technical progress.

Objective. Over the past decade, increased scrutiny has been given to health-related consequencesof participating in American football. This study considers whether the known risk has affectedindividuals’ willingness to play at the intercollegiate level. Methods. Drawing from a survey of 726adult males, t his study uses quantitative experimental vignette methodology to investigate factorsassociated with the self-conscious choice to risk brain damage in exchange for a football scholarship.Results. Respondents whose mothers’ highest level of education was high school or lower wereespecially willing to assume the known long-term risk associated with playing college football,as were African Americans. Conclusions. The findings may foreshadow a moral quandary shouldradical changes to football player safety not occur soon. If the sport’s physical risks are acceptablemainly to those from historically disadvantaged backgrounds, it could be difficult for presidents,faculty, and other stakeholders to allow young men to represent their universities in this capacity.

The United States has experienced a growing opi-oid epidemic over the past 20 years. This study characterizes the opioid epidemic in North Caro-lina along three axes: space, time, and drug type. County-level mortality rates were calculated for prescription opioids, methadone, synthetic opi-oids, and heroin from 1999 to 2015. Prescription opioid, synthetic opioid, and methadone mortality was highest in western counties. Heroin mortality was concentrated in urban counties. Mean center analysis by year showed prescription mortality rate centers were west of the unweighted center, while heroin was consistently to the east. Cluster analysis revealed intra-region variation including relatively high mortality counties within low mortality regional clusters. OLS regression models of prescription opioids and heroin produced R squared values of 0.61 and 0.28 respectively. A spatial error model for heroin improved the R squared to 0.38. Prescription opioid mortality was negatively correlated with percent Black and Hispanic and positively correlated with percent disability, a novel finding. Heroin was positively correlated with urbanization and percent with a college degree. This study highlights the importance of opioid mortality analysis stratified by drug type to inform targeted intervention efforts. En los Estados Unidos ha crecido una epidemia de opiadas en los últimos 20 años. El presente es-tudio caracteriza esta epidemia en Carolina del Norte en tres ejes: espacio, tiempo y tipo de droga. Tasas de mortalidad de nivel de condado fueron calculados por opioides recetadas, metadona, opioides sintéticas y heroína entre 1999 y 2015. Las mortalidades por opioides recetadas, opioides sintéticas y metadona fue más alto en los conda-dos del oeste. La mortalidad de heroína fue con-centrada en los condados urbanos. Un análisis de promedio por año resaltó que los promedios de mortalidad fueron al oeste del centro no ponder-ado, mientras que la heroína fue constantemente al este. El análisis de conglomerado reveló una variación intra-regional incluyendo unos con-dados de mortalidad alta dentro de conglomer-ados regionales de baja mortalidad. Modelos de regresión OLS de opioides recetadas y heroína me-joro R al cuadrado a 0.38. La mortalidad de opi-oides recetadas fue negativamente correlacionado con el porcentaje afro e hispano y relacionado pos-itivamente con discapacidad, un hallazgo nove-doso. La heroína fue relacionada positivamente con la urbanización y el porcentaje con carrera universitaria. Este estudio resalta la importancia de los análisis de mortalidad de opioides estratifi-cado por tipo de droga para informar los esfuer-zos de intervención estratégicos.

The economic impact of legalized marijuana has been massive, but does legal marijuana have the impact to create new types of urban spaces? The legalization of formerly illicit vices has created urban spaces thematically constructed around vice, such as The Strip in Las Vegas (gambling) or The Wallen in Amsterdam (prostitution). This paper suggests that legalized marijuana similarly has the potential to construct vice-themed urban spaces in a post-industrial economic paradigm defined by consumption. Using Denver’s South Broadway (an urban area that has been rebranded as “The Green Mile” due to the outgrowth of marijuana businesses in the area) as the foundation for the analysis, this paper uses qualitative methodologies including historical and content analysis and interviews to examine how marijuana becomes normalized through legalization and resituated for mass consumption, in turn creating the possibility for the construction of thematic urban spaces.

Housing is a local good and local risk could affect housing decisions. We develops a household intertemporal choice model to illustrate how local income risks affect household tenure choice and housing price through financial investment effect and consumption hedging effect. We decompose income dynamics into three components: idiosyncratic growth (local alpha), systematic risk (local beta) and idiosyncratic risk (local sigma). Using the Current Population Survey 1999-2014, we find that households have stronger incentives to purchase housing asset in a region with higher systematic risk and lower idiosyncratic risk, due to consumption hedging effect and financial investment effect respectively. Effects are stronger in the areas with low housing supply elasticity. Price-to-rent ratios also increases with local alpha and local beta, and decreases with local sigma.

This paper studies how offshoring-related layoff events change the mix of skills that are demanded by trade-affected firms. Our analysis relies on a novel data set which combines the universe of Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) petitions filed by US firms during 2010-2015 with detailed information on online job vacancies. TAA petitions allow us to precisely identify the timing of layoff events, the number of affected workers, and the type of offshoring resulting in the layoff (materials versus service). Utilizing within firm variation in the timing of filing a TAA petition, we find little evidence that TAA petitions lead to a change in the monthly number of vacancies a firm posts online. In contrast, we find that both materials and service offshoring events lead to an increase in the share of vacancies requiring soft skills (such as communication and teamwork). Service offshoring events are also associated with an increase in the demand for hard skills (such as math and problem solving).

The macroeconomic consequences of large-scale early childhood development policies depend on intergenerational dynamics, general equilibrium (GE) e ects on labor and capital markets, and the deadweight loss of raising taxes to nance the policies. To study these policies, this paper ex- tends a standard GE heterogeneous-agent overlapping-generations macro model with earnings risk and credit constraints to incorporate early childhood investments (parental time and money) and estimates it using US data. We validate the model by performing an RCT evaluation of a short-run small-scale government program that funds early childhood investments and showing that the ef- fects on children’s education and adult income in the model are similar to the empirical evidence. We then evaluate a permanent large-scale version of this early childhood program, taking into account GE and taxation e ects, and nd that it yields a 10% welfare increase (in consumption equivalence terms), reduces inequality by 7%, and increases intergenerational mobility of income by 30%—ap- proximately enough for the US to achieve Canadian or Australian levels of inequality and mobility. Welfare gains are twice the ones obtained by introducing the same early childhood program as a short-run partial-equilibrium policy—similar to an RCT. Although GE and taxation e ects reduce the gains by one-tenth each, the long-run change in the distribution of parental characteristics more than compensates for those reductions. Key to this welfare gain is that investing in a child not only improves her skills but also creates a be er parent for the next generation. Although earlier gen- erations gain less, welfare gains are positive for every new generation and grow rapidly during the transition.

This paper examines the effects of Asian students on the academic performance of their non-Asian peers in New York City public primary schools. We use plausibly exogenous variation in the share of Asian students across cohorts and schools stemming from a fertility shock among Asian population in the Chinese year of the Dragon, which is larger in neighborhoods with historically large Chinese population. We find that a one percentage point increase in the share of Asian students reduces math and ELA test scores of non-Asian students by around 0.03 and 0.05 standard deviations. The negative effects are largest for black and Hispanic students and in schools where non-Asian student population is ethnically/racially more heterogeneous. We find no evidence of changes in congestion, attrition, teaching resources, or class size generating these effects, leading us to conclude that peer influence between students and responses of teachers to the increasing share of Asian students are the most plausible mechanisms explaining our results.

This thesis discusses three topics in applied economics. The overarching theme of these essays are to conduct statistical analysis on publicly available data to provide guidance to policymakers in both the state of Nevada and across the United States. The first essay examines the price elasticity of demand and installation size for the state of Nevada. This paper measures how changes in installation price affect installation amounts and the size of installations. Using a new approach of an Instrumental Variable Tobit model, estimates indicate that the price elasticity of demand and installation size are inelastic at all significance levels. For a 10% increase in price, installation sizes decrease by -2.895%, and installation size decreases by -1.939%. It is possible that customers who install rooftop solar view it as a long term investment and value net metering excess generation credits more important than upfront rebates. Further research should be done on what factors are most important to individuals when making the decision to install rooftop solar.

Employees today report being too busy to talk with their friends and family, even though the number of hours that employees work has remained relatively constant over the last five decades. To explain this paradox, we explore the role of incentive systems in shaping how employees think about and allocate time to their social relationships. Across 4 studies (n = 132,139), we examine how exposure to performance incentives shape employees’ social interactions. Results from one archival dataset, one panel survey, and two experiments show that when employees’ pay is contingent on performance, they prioritize spending time with work ties at the sacrifice of spending time with personal ties. We also document a mechanism for these results: employees who are rewarded for their performance perceive work ties as more instrumental. These results are strongest when performance incentives are based on peer evaluations and administered to employees (vs. managers). These findings provide the first empirical evidence incentives shape employees’ social interactions both within and outside of the workplace, potentially providing a novel explanation for the dissolution of familial and close ties in North America.

Of great value for family historians are government documents such as census forms, records of legal disputes, medical files that document the lives of doctors as well as patients, and the great number and diversity of records from religious organizations, stored both in their archives and in public places such as old newspapers. Online commercial services such as Ancestry.com are a good starting point, as illustrated by a student-oriented project using the Gilbreth family publicized in the 1948 book and 1950 movie, Cheaper by the Dozen. Combining multiple records, from the 1915 Rhode Island census as well as from six decennial US censuses, provides a framework to organize the evolving structure of that family, as it moved geographically, and as members were born and died. Economists and sociologists make heavy use of the historical censuses, and in the period 1994–2003 the National Science Foundation helped set up several census data centers across the United States, but they are not open to ordinary citizens, because of privacy and cost issues. Legal records very in terms of how public versus private they are, and a private document dating from 1951 illustrates how online searches can place legal records in the context of a particular family’s turbulent history. Similarly, medical records are typically protected from public view, but two cases of temporary insanity reported in anonymize form in 1927 become more relevant historically when the real names of the patients are revealed, with connections to other data online about their lives. The chaotic life of a clergyman is documented by a series of newspaper articles dating from 1893, and internal records of a church dating from 1906. Each such example not only highlights the historical value of a different kind of official record, but also suggests interesting insights about the fundamental tensions in family life.

Small portion of text from section: A child's birth weight is a consequence of characteristics of the family and mother that are fixed prior to pregnancy, choices made by the mother during pregnancy, and other factors that cause variation even when other elements are the same. The prior literature has not explored which of these three elements best explain. . .