Building on the idea that members of religious communities insure each other against some idiosyncratic risks, we argue that religious communities should be more widespread where populations face greater common risk. Our theoretical argument builds on idiosyncratic and common risks aggravating each other. When this is the case, individuals have a greater incentive to mutually insure against idiosyncratic risk when greater common risk makes the worst case scenario of bad realizations of common and idiosyncratic risks more likely. Our empirical analysis exploits common rainfall risk as a source of common county-level agricultural risk in the 19th-century United States. We find that a greater share of the population was organized in religious communities in counties with greater common agricultural risk, holding expected agricultural output constant. The link between rainfall risk and membership in religious communities is stronger among more agricultural counties and counties exposed to greater rainfall risk during the growing season. We also find that among the historically more agricultural counties, more than 1/3 of 19th-century differences in religious membership associated with rainfall risk persist to the turn of the 21st century.

Since we assume that larger corporations will have more influence in public policy than smaller corporations, we narrow our focus to the largest 500 corporations (by revenue) for all corporate fiscal years 2012 to 2016.1 In selecting our population of corporations, we rely upon the Standard & Poor’s Compustat database. We only include corporations headquartered in the U.S. that are traded on a major stock exchange.2 We then drop any company that was never in the S&P 1500. This leaves us with 553 corporations that were among the largest 500 corporations for at least one year . . .

We analyze the geographic dimension of innovation. Innovation is the critical com- ponent of long term prosperity and it is unevenly distributed across US. Using data on 1.8 million US patents and their citation properties, we map the innovation network of all major US cities over the last three decades. We find that the innovation gap among cities, which was shrinking until 1980, has recently started growing, generating divergence. We develop a network model of cities that captures knowledge spillovers within and across industries as well as within and across cities, and calibrate it using information on the patterns of patents citations. We show that the IT revolution, by reducing the cost of information exchange across cities, induced an endogenous response of the network structure of cities. This change in network structure can explain a large part of the recent divergence in innovation patterns, and is consistent with a number of stylized facts about the evolution of US cities over the past thirty years.

Reducing residential segregation is the best way to reduce racial inequality in the United States. African American employment rates, earnings, test scores, even longevity all improve sharply as residential integration increases. Yet far too many participants in our policy and political conversations have come to believe that the battle to integrate America’s cities cannot be won. Richard Sander, Yana Kucheva, and Jonathan Zasloff write that the pessimism surrounding desegregation in housing arises from an inadequate understanding of how segregation has evolved and how policy interventions have already set many metropolitan areas on the path to integration. Scholars have debated for decades whether America’s fair housing laws are effective. Moving toward Integration provides the most definitive account to date of how those laws were shaped and implemented and why they had a much larger impact in some parts of the country than others. It uses fresh evidence and better analytic tools to show when factors like exclusionary zoning and income differences between blacks and whites pose substantial obstacles to broad integration, and when they do not. Through its interdisciplinary approach and use of rich new data sources, Moving toward Integration offers the first comprehensive analysis of American housing segregation. It explains why racial segregation has been resilient even in an increasingly diverse and tolerant society, and it demonstrates how public policy can align with demographic trends to achieve broad housing integration within a generation.

Performing longitudinal analysis of socio‐economic change in small‐area spatial units such as census tracts presents several methodological complications and requires significant data preparation. Unit boundaries are revised each census year because of changes in population and delineation methodologies. This limits cross‐year comparison since data are not representative of the same spatial units. To address these problems, we have developed an innovative procedure to reduce error when comparing tract‐level data across census years by apportioning data to the same areal units. This paper describes the methods used to create the Canadian Longitudinal Tract Database. Our procedure is a combination of map‐matching techniques, dasymetric overlays, and population‐weighted areal interpolation. The output is a set of tables with apportionment weights pertaining to pairs of unique boundary identifiers across census years, which can be linked with census data or other data with census identifiers that require longitudinal comparison.

Background: Analyses of cancer patterns by detailed racial/ethnic groups in the Northeastern United States are outdated.Methods: Using 2008-2014 death data from the populous and diverse New York State, mortality rates and regression-derived ratios with corresponding 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were computed to compare Hispanic, non-Hispanic white (NHW), non-Hispanic black (NHB), Asian populations, and specific Hispanic and NHB subgroups: Puerto Rican, Dominican, South American, Central American, U.S.-born black, and Caribbean-born black. Special analyses on liver cancer mortality, given the higher prevalence of hepatitis C infection among the 1945-1965 birth cohort, were performed.Results: A total of 244,238 cancer-related deaths were analyzed. Mortality rates were highest for U.S.-born blacks and lowest for South Americans and Asians. Minority groups had higher mortality from liver and stomach cancer than NHWs; Hispanics and NHBs also had higher mortality from cervical and prostate cancers. Excess liver cancer mortality among Puerto Rican and U.S.-born black men was observed, particularly for the 1945-1965 birth cohort, with mortality rate ratios of 4.27 (95% CI, 3.82-4.78) and 3.81 (95% CI, 3.45-4.20), respectively.Conclusions: U.S.-born blacks and Puerto Ricans, who share a common disadvantaged socioeconomic profile, bear a disproportionate burden for many cancers, including liver cancer among baby boomers. The relatively favorable cancer profile for Caribbean-born blacks contrasts with their U.S.-born black counterparts, implying that race per se is not an inevitable determinant of higher mortality among NHBs.Impact: Disaggregation by detailed Hispanic and black subgroups in U.S. cancer studies enlightens our understanding of the epidemiology of cancer and is fundamental for cancer prevention and control efforts. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev; 27(8); 917-27. ©2018 AACR.

Using three generational cohorts, this paper compares the effects of generational status on earnings among seven Asian ethnic groups: Indian, Chinese, Filipino, Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese, and multi-race. Data from the 2014, 2016, and 2018 Current Population Survey were used to investigate income differences between first, second, and third and higher generations of Asian Americans. Total personal incomes of a sample of 16,521 individuals were analyzed. The findings showed that only Chinese, Filipino, and Korean individuals demonstrate income differences between first and second generations, where those who are second generation have higher incomes on the average than those who are first generation. Education has the strongest effect on income for all ethnic groups. In addition, results indicate that Asian women have lower personal incomes than Asian men on average. Among older respondents, all but one of the six Asian ethnic groups have higher personal incomes than those of younger respondents. The straight-line assimilation theory is partially confirmed by the first and second generations of Chinese, Filipino, and Korean. The study also indicates that the paths towards economic assimilation vary for different Asian ethnic groups.

Employees today report being too busy to talk to their friends and family, even though the number of hours they work has remained relatively constant over the last five decades. We highlight incentive systems as one underappreciated factor contributing to this phenomenon and explore the role of incentives in shaping how employees think about their different social relationships. Results from one archival dataset, one panel survey, and two experiments (n = 132,139) show that when employees are paid for performance, they prioritize spending time socializing with work colleagues at the sacrifice of spending time with friends and family. We further document goal instrumentality as a mechanism for these results: employees who receive performance incentives perceive their work ties as highly instrumental in achieving their goals. These findings provide the first empirical evidence that incentives shape employees’ social interactions within and outside of work, potentially providing a novel explanation for the dissolution of familial and personal ties in many developed countries.

We present evidence that managers consider employee turnover likelihood in their accounting choices. Our tests exploit U.S. state courts' staggered recognition of the inevitable disclosure doctrine (IDD), which reduces employees' ability to switch employers. We find a significant decrease in upward earnings management for firms headquartered in states that recognize the IDD, relative to firms headquartered elsewhere. The effect of the IDD is stronger for firms relying more on human capital and for firms whose employees have higher ex-ante turnover likelihood, confirming the employee retention channel. Overall, our results support the view that retaining employees is an important motive for corporate earnings management.

This paper documents that much of the decline in labor force participation of U.S. prime age men comes from “in-and-outs”—who I define as men who temporarily leave the labor force. Individuals moving in and out of the labor force have been an understudied margin of labor supply but account for roughly one third of the decline in participation between 1977 and 2015. Most in-and-outs take an occasional short break in between jobs but are otherwise attached to the labor force. Examining explanations for the rise of in-and-outs, I find that half of the rise has come from married or cohabiting men, and I show that this portion of the increase can be explained by a wealth effect from their partners’ growing earnings, using variation in the growth of female wages across demographic groups. Additionally, I find that changes in household structure, particularly from young men increasingly living with their parents, account for much of the rest of the rise of in-and-outs. To examine both effects within a unified framework, I construct and estimate a dynamic model of labor supply and household formation. The model estimates imply that labor supply factors are responsible for nearly the entire rise of in-and-outs, while changes in labor demand have contributed little.

Big data is an exciting prospect for the field of economic history, which has long depended on the acquisition, keying, and cleaning of scarce numerical information about the past. This article examines two areas in which economic historians are already using big data – population and environment – discussing ways in which increased frequency of observation, denser samples, and smaller geographic units allow us to analyze the past with greater precision and often to track individuals, places, and phenomena across time. We also explore promising new sources of big data: organically created economic data, high resolution images, and textual corpora.

Gentrification has taken place in New York City over the past decades. However, little is known about the effects of gentrification on health. An influx of affluent middle class could create positive spillovers such as more health care providers and resources for incumbent residents. Health outcomes for incumbent residents may improve with gentrification, as crime decreases and access to healthy food, transportation, and quality schools improve. On the other hand, if these amenities are restricted to only wealthy in-movers, low-income residents in gentrifying neighborhoods might bear the adverse effects of gentrification. Incumbent residents’ socioeconomic status (SES) is less likely to change along with gentrification, but the increasing living costs such as rents might cause displacement or discourage low-income residents from utilizing health care. A substantial research body on “neighborhood effects” documents the links between disadvantaged neighborhoods and a variety of health outcomes, but studies on the associations between neighborhood gentrification and access to health care are lacking. The effects seem to be mixed, particularly for residents who are not displaced by gentrification.

The past several decades have witnessed growing disparities in life expectancy within the US, yet the mortality experience of US cities has received little attention. We examine changes in life expectancy at birth for the 25 largest US cities since 1990, using a combination of public-use and restricted-use mortality data. We reveal remarkable increases in life expectancy for several US cities. Men’s life expectancy increased by 13.7 years in Washington, DC and San Francisco and by 11.8 years in New York between 1990 and 2015, during which overall US life expectancy increased by just 4.8 years. A significant fraction of excess gains in the top performing cities is explained by extraordinary reductions in HIV/AIDS and homicide during the 1990s and 2000s. However, selective in-migration and out-migration also contributed to these trends. This reflects concerns that not all population subgroups have shared in improving urban conditions in the United States.

The boll weevil spread across the Southern United States from 1892 to 1922 having a devastating impact on cotton cultivation. The resulting shift away from this child labor–intensive crop lowered the opportunity cost of attending school, and thus the pest increased school enrollment and attendance. We investigate the insect’s long run affect on educational attainment using a sample of adults in 1940 linked back to themselves in childhood in the county in which they were likely educated. Both whites and blacks who were young (ages 4 to 9) when the boll weevil arrived saw increased educational attainment by 0.25 to 0.35 years. These findings are not driven by concurrent shocks and are not sensitive to linking method or sample selection. Our results demonstrate the potential for conflict between child labor in agriculture and educational attainment.

People across Colorado are perplexed by the mixed signals of today’s economy. On one hand, we hear that the economy is booming with robust job growth, historically low unemployment rates, rapidly rising home values, and unprecedented increases in stock values. And yet far too many Coloradans struggle to find affordable housing, pay medical bills, meet their child care cost, and save for retirement. Financial insecurity is an increasingly common problem households are facing in Colorado and across the nation. For generations, a tangible measure of the American dream has been whether . . .

Whether the effect of a risk factor on mortality rises or falls with age has important relevancies to life-course theory and public health policy. Many studies report that the hazard ratio of dying associated with a risk factor declines over age. Risk factors found to conform to this pattern include those that are socioeconomic, behavioral, and physiological in nature. In this paper, we show that the putative declining effect of a risk factor over age is a function of interpreting an interaction between a risk factor and age on a multiplicative scale. Drawing from well-known principles on statistical interaction, we show that interpretations on the additive scale often lead to different set of conclusions about the nature of the interaction. Namely, we show that on an additive scale the excess death risks posed by many major risk factors tends to increase with age. Studies have not generally recognized this additive interpretation. We discuss how the prevailing pattern of increasing susceptibilities by age has critical underpinnings for cumulative disadvantage processes and public health interventions. Data from the U.S. National Health Interview Survey were used to provide empirical support.

The dissertation analyzes multilevel models to predict mortgage origination and the allocation of subprime credit pre-and-post Great Recession. With representative samples from two full years of mortgage applications filed in the top 100 U.S. metropolitan areas, the dissertation uncovers evidence of persistent disparities by race and neighborhood minority concentration despite controls for socioeconomic, demographic, assimilation and housing variables. Mortgage outcomes varied by applicant race, neighborhood racial composition and neighborhood racial change. Findings suggest evidence of Fair Housing Act violations and disparate impacts towards minority homebuyers and minority neighborhoods. Results lend support for spatial assimilation theories in explaining much of the gap white-Asian gap and non-Hispanic white-Hispanic gap. Notable gaps remain between blacks and whites that are better explained by the place stratification model. In both 2004 and 2010 black, Asian and Hispanic prospective homebuyers were less likely to originate their mortgage relative to whites. In the earlier 2004 mortgage sample, black and Hispanic borrowers were much more likely to take out subprime loans relative to whites and Asians less likely. In 2010, the results held that black homebuyers were more likely than whites to take on subprime mortgages and Asian homebuyers less likely. The applicant coefficient for Hispanic was not a significant predictor of subprime in 2010. Asian homebuyers were indeed at a disadvantage relative to white homebuyers, both before and after the Great Recession and the disparity did not change significantly over time. Women were more likely than men to be denied mortgages and also to obtain subprime mortgages. Black neighborhoods were disadvantaged in 2004 and 2010, and increasing numbers of black neighbors reduced the likelihood of mortgage origination in 2004, but not in 2010. In 2004 and 2010, the presence of Asian and Hispanic neighbors increased the likelihood of mortgage origination but neighborhood racial ethnic change was less well received—with negative impacts for increasing numbers of Asian neighbors in both years and reduced mortgage odds for increasingly Hispanic neighborhoods in 2010. Neighborhoods with concentrated single mother households experienced disinvestment including denied mortgages and higher likelihood of subprime status when lenders infuse mortgage capital, though the effect size was very small. The research overcomes limitations of previous studies by employing advanced methods which account for neighborhood effects and by incorporating dynamic measures such as house-price-to-income ratios and regional credit score averages. The primary novel contribution of the dissertation is that this is the first study to examine the effect of neighborhood racial ethnic change on mortgage outcomes and the allocation of subprime mortgage credit. Explicit Fair Housing Act violations spur recommendations for reducing unequal disbursement of mortgage credit by race and gender, most importantly, by urging American schools to provide compulsory primary school coursework in financial literacy.

The years from 1840 to 1893 in the Unites States were ones of overall growth interspersed with periods of severe economic distress. The era began in depression, the aftermath of the dual panics of 1837 and 1839. An economic revival followed in the mid-1840s and lasted more than a decade. There was another financial panic in 1859, but the aftereffects were overwhelmed by the outbreak of the American Civil War. After the war, the country experienced a long period of deflation. During these years, it endured two additional financial panics, in 1873 and 1893, so the era ended as it had begun, in an environment of economic distress. These conditions would hardly seem conducive to attract immigrants to the United States, but the country also was on a dynamic growth path and opportunities to get ahead abounded.

Data show that the average male worker earns a higher wage than the average female worker. Figure 1 illustrates this: It plots the wage and salary income of men and women, by age. The sample represented here includes all men and women employed in 2016 with at least a high school diploma.

An ex post quasi-experiment was conducted to compare the quality of life in counties where community colleges were established to the quality of life in similar counties where no colleges had been established. Twenty-eight pairs of rural counties were studied. The first county in each pair was chosen such that the only institution of higher education there between 1960 and 2010 was a community college that was founded in the 1960s. The second county in each pair was chosen as a control from the same geographic region, with similar population and similar per capita income in 1960 and no institution of higher education between 1960 and 2010. In the decades after the community colleges were established, the counties with a community college evolved differently than the counties with no college. The population grew much faster, subbaccalaureate educational attainment rates were higher and, for a time, per capita income was significantly higher. Mortality rates diverged in the last two decades; however, neither mortality nor baccalaureate attainment rates were significantly different for any of the five decades studied.