Low-skilled prime-age men are less likely to be employed than high-skilled primeage men, and the differential has increased since the 1970s. I build a search model encompassing three explanations: (1) factors increasing the value of leisure, like welfare or recreational gaming/computer technology, reduced the supply of low-skilled workers; (2) automation and trade reduced the demand for low-skilled workers; and (3) factors affecting job search, like online job boards, reduced frictions for high-skilled workers. I find a demand shift away from low-skilled workers is the leading cause, while a supply shift had little effect, and search frictions actually reduced employment inequality.

Recent research has shown that concern about the apprehension and deportation of undocumented immigrants can affect how members of their households who are eligible for public benefits choose to participate in public programs. The extent to which this “chilling effect” broadly affects adults’ Medicaid enrollment nationally remains unclear, in part because of the difficulty of isolating undocumented immigrants in survey data. In this study we identified households that likely included undocumented immigrants and then examined whether gains in health care coverage due to the expansion of Medicaid eligibility under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) were dampened for eligible people living in households with mixed immigration status. We found no significant differences in coverage gains for people in mixed- relative to non-mixed-status households in expansion states. Coverage gains were significantly lower, however, for people in mixed-status households relative to those in non-mixed-status households in nonexpansion states. These findings suggest that household immigration status may have dampened the “woodwork effect,” whereby the ACA enhanced knowledge about program availability, in turn increasing Medicaid enrollment in nonexpansion states among people previously eligible for the program but not enrolled in it.

Using data from a variety of sources, this paper comprehensively documents the dramatic changes in the manufacturing sector and the large decline in employment rates and hours worked among prime-aged Americans since 2000. We use cross-region variation to explore the link between declining manufacturing employment and labor market outcomes. We find that manufacturing decline in a local area in the 2000s had large and persistent negative effects on local employment rates, hours worked and wages. We also show that declining local manufacturing employment is related to rising local opioid use and deaths. These results suggest that some of the recent opioid epidemic is driven by demand factors in addition to increased opioid supply. We conclude the paper with a discussion of potential mediating factors associated with declining manufacturing labor demand including public and private transfer receipt, sectoral switching, and inter-region mobility. Overall, we conclude that the decline in manufacturing employment was a substantial cause of the decline in employment rates during the 2000s particularly for less educated prime age workers. Given the trends in both capital and skill deepening within this sector, we further conclude that many policies currently being discussed to promote the manufacturing sector will have only a modest labor market impact for less educated individuals.

This article examines the impact of the Legal Arizona Workers Act (LAWA) on the farm occupation decisions of family labour in agricultural households. This question is studied at the individual level using the difference-in-differences model with the American Community Survey data from 2000 to 2010. We find that LAWA has significantly increased the probability of farm family labourers choosing agricultural occupations by 3–5.5 per cent and the impact is 11 per cent for non-Hispanic farms. This study suggests that stringent immigration laws could change the patterns of family labour use among US farm households.

In this paper, we explore the voting behavior of naturalized U.S. citizens in the 2016 presidential election. Naturalized citizens constitute an increasingly important segment of the American electorate, due to growth in their numbers and their changing racial and ethnic composition. Using data from the 2016 CCES survey, we document differences in partisanship and voting behavior between the foreign-born and U.S.-born electorate, examine potential explanations for these differences, and then examine differences between the two groups in the salience of a number of different factors in determining voting behavior.

Over the past few decades, changes in family patterns have increased the diversity of children’s living arrangements, including a gradual increase in children who are living in their grandparent’s household. This profile updates FP-13-03 to examine trends in the proportion of children living in a grandparent-headed household and whether those children have a parent present in the household (e.g., three-generation household). Focusing on the child’s perspective, this profile also examines the age distribution and poverty status of coresident grandchildren by the presence of a parent in 2015. Data for 1940-2000 are drawn from the Decennial Census, and data from 2010 and 2015 are based on the American Community Survey.

How do social interactions shape collective action, and how are they mediated by the availability of networked information technologies? To answer these questions, we study the Temperance Crusade, one of the earliest instances of organized political mobilization by women in the U.S. This wave of protest activity against liquor dealers spread between the winter of 1873 and the summer of 1874, covering more than 800 towns in 29 states. We first provide causal evidence of social interactions driving the diffusion of the protest wave, and estimate the roles played by information traveling along railroad and telegraph networks. We do this by relying on exogenous variation in the rail network links generated by railroad worker strikes and railroad accidents. We also develop an event-study methodology to estimate the complementarity between rail and telegraph networks in driving the spread of the Crusade. We find that railroad and telegraph-mediated information about neighboring protest activity were main drivers of the diffusion of the protest movement. We also find strong complementarities between both networks. Using variation in the types of protest activities of neighboring towns and in the aggregate patterns of the diffusion process, we also find suggestive evidence of social learning as a key mechanism behind the effect of information on protest adoption.

We construct a quantitative model to simulate the impacts of climate change on U.S. domestic migration patterns. The model combines a strategy for estimating household demand for climate amenities in the presence of migration frictions with a simple, equilibrium framework for modeling counterfactual migration responses and their implications for regional welfare, prices and populations. Our estimates suggest that migration frictions exert an important influence on equilibrium outcomes, limiting adaptation to climate through relocation and resulting in a regional pattern of winners and losers.

The literature on the relationship between age and entrepreneurship has been inconclusive. This study for the first time examines this relationship by extending the occupational choice literature to eight entrepreneur types and four generational modification effects in the USA. Multilevel mixed-effect logistic regression models are estimated to examine the age effects in entrepreneur type propensities. Generational modification effects are compared for the same ages across neighboring generations by hierarchical age-period-cohort (HAPC) models. We find that entrepreneurial propensity rises with age until around 80. The propensity of novice (versus non-novice) and unincorporated (versus incorporated) entrepreneurs has a U-shaped age trend dipping around age 60, while the propensity of full-time (versus part-time) declines since age 30s. The propensity of incorporated (versus unincorporated) entrepreneurs declines from ages 44 to 51 for Gen-Xers, but not for Boomers; this propensity also declines faster for Boomers than for Traditionalists from ages 63 to 70.

We investigate the potential channels that drive female labor force participation to rise in response to unbalanced sex ratios, in the presence of strong social norms against female employment. One such channel is women’s desired labor supply, operating through the marriage market, and the other is employers’ demand for female labor. If faced with a reduction in male workforce, do employers turn to women to fill in the gap? Do women enter traditionally male occupations and industries, so that segregation decreases? Does the gender pay gap decline? We exploit exogenous variation in sex ratios across cohorts and regions, by using instruments based on casualties from the Portuguese Colonial War and massive emigration in the 1960s combined with its historical regional patterns. We find that as the sex ratio declined, female participation increased, women entered traditionally male-dominated occupations and industries, and the gender pay gap declined. These findings are consistent with a demand shock. Our estimated impact of sex ratios on marriage market points to a muted supply channel. We complement the quantitative analysis with an archival case. Our findings help to explain an apparent puzzle, a decades-long high female participation in Portugal, as opposed to the other Southern European countries.

Emente identificables que se integran a Estados Unidos, eje de referencia continental, motor de la demanda de mano de obra regional y lugar privilegiado de destino. Por una parte, México como país receptor, emisor, de tránsito y de retorno; y por la otra, Centroamérica, que dista de ser homogénea entre sí. Por el otro, Guatemala, Honduras y El Salvador cuya dinámica migratoria ejemplifica en la década de 1970 por el exilio político; en los 1980s por el refugio; en los 1990s se caracterizó por la migración económica; en el cambio de siglo, la migración ambiental con el huracán Mitch en 1998; y en el siglo XXI, la confluencia de procesos de salida, tránsito y deportación y retorno, aunada a un nuevo tipo y modelo de migrante, el desarraigado que resulta de la articulación de pobreza, violencia y debilidad institucional. La gestión migratoria en este corredor muestra enormes insuficiencias para atender la problemática que viven los migrantes . . .

The subprime boom and subsequent foreclosure crisis highlighted risk associated with pursuit of the American Dream of homeownership. People of color and those living in segregated areas were particularly harmed by the dramatic rise and fall of the housing market. Almost a decade after the economy’s collapse, questions remain about racial and spatial disparities in access to mortgage credit. I leverage Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data to explore mortgage application outcomes in 2014. Well into the economy’s recovery, minority borrowers remained at a disadvantage in the mortgage approval process. Whereas 71% of White applicants were approved for home loans, approval rates were lower for Asians (68%), Latinos (63%), and Blacks (54%). Black and Latino borrowers were also significantly more likely to receive higher cost loans than Whites, a practice that has accelerated since the foreclosure crisis. Results suggest that segregation exacerbated racial disparities as lenders funneled expensive credit into isolated minority communities. Furthermore, the differences between White and minority outcomes were largest in census tracts where subprime lending was common in 2006 and foreclosures accumulated during the Great Recession. Together, these findings indicate how spatially organized markets have racialized consequences in a highly segregated society.

Disability benefit recipients in the United States have nearly doubled in the past two decades, growing substantially faster than the population. It is difficult to estimate how much of this increase is explained by changes in population health, as we often lack a valid counterfactual. We propose using undocumented immigrants as the counterfactual, as they cannot currently claim benefits. Using NHIS microdata, we estimate models of disability as a function of medical conditions for both the legal and undocumented populations. The relationship between health and disability is far stronger for those with legal status than it is for those who are undocumented. We find that almost all of the difference in disability trends between the two populations can be explained by different responses to underlying health impairments.

This paper examines trends in the college wage premium (CWP) by birth cohort across the five major household surveys in the United States: the Census/ACS, CPS, NLSY, PSID, and SIPP. We document a flattening in the CWP for birth cohorts 1978 and onward in each survey and even a decline for birth cohorts 1980–1985 in the NLSY and SIPP. We discuss potential reasons for this finding and show that the empirical discrepancy is not a function of differences in composition across surveys. Our results provide crucial context for the vast economic literatures that use these surveys to measure returns to skill, and intertemporal changes in those returns.

In der konventionellen bildungsökonomischen Literatur wird die staatliche Bereitstellung von Bildung insbesondere unter den Aspekten der Effizienz und Gerechtigkeit diskutiert. Gerade in der Diskussion um die Finanzierung von Bildung rückt die private Finanzierung von Bildung immer mehr in den Vordergrund. Effiziente private Finanzierungssysteme, die zumindest teilweise auch das Ziel der Chancengleichheit verfolgen, scheinen den staatlichen Bildungssektor aus theoretischer Sicht zu verdrängen.1 Eine ähnliche Prognose leitet sich aus der Migrationsliteratur ab. Höher qualifizierte Individuen weisen eine wesentlich höhere Mobilität auf.2 Fördert staatliche bereitgestellte Bildung das Bildungsniveau von Individuen, kann dies die Abwanderung höher Qualifizierter begünstigen („Brain Drain“). Dies führt dazu, dass staatliche Bildungsinvestitionen, die auf eine Erhöhung des lokalen Bildungsniveaus abzielen, unter Umständen scheitern. In letzter Konsequenz sollten daher staatliche Bildungsausgaben . . .

Scholars have documented economic gains for regions that promote manufacturing through co-location of innovation and production activities. But it is unclear whether the production jobs created in this new context remain inclusive of workers with limited formal education. This paper compares US states that specialize in biopharmaceuticals to understand who participates in a so-called working region. While some state policy-makers have privileged scientific and design occupations at the expense of the production workforce, regional actors in North Carolina have increased employment in design and development while growing their biopharmaceutical production base, aligning innovation and equity goals in the process.

We study the trajectory of maternal employment as children age and assess the factors underlying the smooth increase in mothers' employment as their youngest child ages. Our results indicate that the rising employment profile is largely not associated with falling child care costs, changes in nonlabor income, or marital dissolution as children age. Differences in educational attainment and wage opportunities are related to some of the increase in employment when children are under 4 years old but do not explain any after that age. We discuss explanations for the rising pattern of mothers' employment that might be consistent with our results.

This paper demonstrates that credit bureau data, such as the Federal Reserve Bank of New York Consumer Credit Panel/Equifax (CCP), can be used to study internal migration in the United States. It is comparable to, and in some ways superior to, the standard data used to study migration, including the American Community Survey (ACS), the Current Population Survey (CPS), and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) county-to-county migration data. CCP-based estimates of migration intensity, connectivity, and spatial focusing are similar to estimates derived from the ACS, CPS, and IRS data. The CCP can measure block-to-block migration and it is available at quarterly rather than annual frequencies. Migrants’ precise origins are not available in public versions of the ACS, CPS, or IRS data. We report measures of migration from the CCP data at fi ner geographies and time intervals. Finally, we disaggregate migration fl ows into fi rst-, second-, and higher-order moves. Individual-level panels in the CCP make this possible, giving the CCP an additional advantage over the ACS, CPS, or publicly available IRS data.

This dissertation offers three vignettes on the determinants of health and well-being over the life course. The first essay uses multiple Canadian census files to document the longterm effects of potential in utero exposure to the 1918 flu pandemic on educational attainment. This study finds that those who were in utero during the peak of the pandemic, particularly in their first or second trimesters, experienced long-term deficits in their educational attainment. The second study explores the potential impact of spousal institutionalization in nursing homes/residential care facilities on elderly financial security. It shows that the absence of fully funded universal long-term care insurance (like Canadian medicare) places married seniors at risk of significant losses in their material standards of living and low income status. The third paper examines the impact of online communication and social media use on subjective well-being (SWB). In one empirical approach, I find that those who communicate online or use social media report lower levels of SWB. This is especially true for older adults and social media. In a separate quasi-experimental analysis that exploits variation in access to and use of social media by time, age group, and access to personal computers, I find that social media may be responsible for increased political engagement and social trust.

Homeownership provides numerous benefits over renting, including predictable housing costs, secure tenure, and the potential to save money and build wealth. Nationally, over 70 percent of white non-Latino households in the US own their homes, but African Americans’ homeownership level now stands at 41 percent, nearly 10 percentage points below the level attained just before the housing crisis and lower even than before the passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968. Michigan was especially hard hit by the housing crisis because its manufacturing employment had already declined nearly 45 percent since 2000; African American homeownership slipped further in Michigan than in any other state over the past 18 years.