This paper explores whether native-immigrant differences in mathematics test scores can be accounted for by a lack of English proficiency. To identify the causal effect of English proficiency on test scores, I use the fact that language proficiency is closely linked to age at arrival, and that migrant children arrive at different ages from different countries. Using US data from the New Immigrant Survey, I find that English proficiency has no effect on mathematics tests and therefore they can be used to assess students’ ability net of language effects.

. . . Although the census is indispensable for establishing long-run trends, it provides no evidence on short-run movements. For this purpose, the Current Population Survey (CPS) is taken every month. The CPS is a random sample with similar labor information to the census. The CPS began to be taken regularly after World War II. More recently, the Census Bureau has established the American Community Survey (ACS), which is taken on an annual basis, and is intended to supplement the decennial census. Other specialized surveys that are widely used to study labor force outcomes are the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) and the National Longitudinal Surveys (NLS). . .

Throughout the world, streams are degraded due to impaired water quality and erosion and sedimentation caused by hydrologic and sediment imbalances. These two issues are linked. Channel erosion not only damages stream habitat but can be a significant source of fine sediment and nutrient pollution in watersheds. Phosphorus in particular is common in streambanks and when these soils are mobilized — for example during amplified high flows in urban streams — they can contribute to eutrophication of downstream water bodies. Understanding these dynamics is important for reversing these impairments and sustainably managing our water resources. In this dissertation, I provide a new tool to quantify the magnitude of channel erosion as a pollutant source. First, I put this issue . . .

An OLAP analysis session is carried out as a sequence of OLAP operations applied to multidimensional cubes. At each step of a session, an operation is applied to the result of the previous step in an incremental fashion. Due to its simplicity and flexibility, OLAP is the most adopted paradigm used to explore the data stored in data warehouses. With the goal of expanding the fruition of OLAP analyses, in this thesis we touch several critical topics. We first present our contributions to deal with data extractions from service-oriented sources, which are nowadays used to provide access to many databases and analytic platforms. By addressing data extraction from these sources we make a step towards the integration of external databases into the data warehouse, thus providing richer data that can be analyzed through OLAP sessions. The second topic that we study is that of visualization of multidimensional data, which we exploit to enable OLAP on devices with limited screen and bandwidth capabilities (i.e., mobile devices). Finally, we propose solutions to obtain multidimensional schemata from unconventional sources (e.g., sensor networks), which are crucial to perform multidimensional analyses.

This paper examines the effects of reducing the supply of low-skilled immigrant workers on the labor market outcomes of domestic workers. We use temporal and geographic variation in the introduction of Secure Communities (SC), a county-based immigration enforcement policy, combined with data over 2005-2014 from the American Community Survey to estimate a difference-in-difference model with geographic and time fixed effects. We find evidence that SC had a negative impact on the employment of low-skilled noncitizen workers, who are likely to be directly affected by the policy. Importantly, we also find that SC negatively impacted the employment of citizens working in middle to high-skill occupations. This is the first paper to provide quasi- experimental evidence on the labor market effects of immigration enforcement policies on citizens across the occupational skill distribution, which is of paramount importance given the current immigration policy

We study the sources of racial and ethnic disparities in income using de-identified longitudinal data covering nearly the entire U.S. population from 1989-2015. We document three sets of results. First, the intergenerational persistence of disparities varies substantially across racial groups. For example, Hispanic Americans are moving up significantly in the income distribution across generations because they have relatively high rates of intergenerational income mobility. In contrast, black Americans have substantially lower rates of upward mobility and higher rates of downward mobility than whites, leading to large income disparities that persist across generations. Conditional on parent income, the black-white income gap is driven entirely by large differences in wages and employment rates between black and white men; there are no such differences between black and white women. Second, differences in family characteristics such as parental marital status, education, and wealth explain very little of the black-white income gap conditional on parent income. Differences in ability also do not explain the patterns of intergenerational mobility we document. Third, the black-white gap persists even among boys who grow up in the same neighborhood. Controlling for parental income, black boys have lower incomes in adulthood than white boys in 99% of Census tracts. Both black and white boys have better outcomes in low-poverty areas, but black-white gaps are larger on average for boys who grow up in such neighborhoods. The few areas in which black-white gaps are relatively small tend to be low-poverty neighborhoods with low levels of racial bias among whites and high rates of father presence among blacks. Black males who move to such neighborhoods earlier in childhood earn more and are less likely to be incarcerated. However, fewer than 5% of black children grow up in such environments. These findings suggest that reducing the black-white income gap will require efforts whose impacts cross neighborhood and class lines and increase upward mobility specifically for black men.

Self-employed immigrants and entrepreneurs play an important role in the U.S. economy and, yet, go virtually unrecognized since there is no direct way to differentiate entrepreneurs by immigration status. U.S. federal law purposefully allows any immigrant regardless of immigration status to generate income through entrepreneurship. Thus, creating a window of opportunity for undocumented immigrants to create, innovate and thrive in this country. While there is ample research on immigrant entrepreneurs and subgroups of immigrants, none has focused on undocumented immigrant entrepreneurship. This study used the 2015 U.S. Census American Community Survey (ACS) 1-year and 5-year estimates that consisted of 635,855 (3.9 percent of the total U.S. millennial population) weighted cases of Latino millennial entrepreneurs (self-employed in incorporated or unincorporated businesses). Of these, 200,565 (31.54 percent of the total self-employed Latino millennial population) are estimated to . . .

Family recreation contributes to positive family health and well-being and plays an important role in promoting healthy youth development. The Family Activity Model posits that families seek out novel activity environments for recreation. National parks are novel environments and create opportunities for engaging in family recreation activities such as hiking. Therefore, we evaluate the reach of the “Every Kid in a Park” initiative of the U.S. National Park Service, which offers free admission to children in fourth grade and their guests. Using a large, nationally representative data sample from the American Time Use Survey, we conduct difference-indifferences analysis to determine whether hiking patterns by family members of fourth-graders have changed following the policy implementation. We find that hiking patterns have increased overall for family members of fourth-graders following the implementation of the initiative. Moreover, we find no evidence of effects being concentrated among specific socioeconomic groups.

We document that job polarization—contrary to the consensus—has started as early as the 1950s in the United States: middle-wage workers have been losing both in terms of employment and average wage growth compared to low- and high-wage workers. Given that polarization is a long-run phenomenon and closely linked to the shift from manufacturing to services, we propose a structural change driven explanation, where we explicitly model the sectoral choice of workers. Our simple model does remarkably well not only in matching the evolution of sectoral employment, but also of relative wages over the past 50 years.

This study examines the long-term consequences of the U.S. temperance movement, one of the largest-scale policy changes impacting alcohol consumption in history. Using a sample of persons born between 1900 and 1925 drawn from nationally representative census microdata, the study investigates the effect of prenatal temperance environment on adult educational outcomes. The quantitative analysis uses proxies for temperance environment: the strength of temperance laws and the density of liquor retailers. In sum, the evidence suggests that men and women exposed to the temperance movement in utero had modestly higher education. The effect on eighth grade completion was weakly significant at best, while the effect on high school completion was robustly significant, though relatively small in magnitude. Estimates imply that the adoption of temperance laws increased the odds of high school completion by about 3–8%, and analogously that the reduction of retail liquor density, to the extent it changed from 1913 to 1921, increased the odds of high school completion by about 4–8%. The findings are consistent with several causal mechanisms including a reduction in fetal alcohol exposure and the adverse developmental outcomes with which it is associated.

In this paper, we present a quantified, GIS-based analysis of the relationship between urban morphologicalpatterns and racial, ethnic, and household characteristics. We want to understand how the built landscapes ofAmerican cities differ in sociological terms—for example, are some more prone to racial concentration or pre-valence of particular family types? Since many built landscape types are relatively recent and rapidly growing,this analysis can inform current debates about sprawl and inequality. We examined six diverse U.S. metropolitanregions: Boston, Atlanta, Chicago, Las Vegas, Portland, and Sacramento, joining census block data with builtlandscape patterns mapped in GIS through aerial imagery analysis. We find that a large portion of our sixmetropolitan regions consists of patterns that can be characterized as sprawl—patterns that are often manifes-tations of a desire for separation. This separation has significant equity implications because resources— services,amenities, schools, parks, tax base, etc.—are not evenly distributed. Further, two of our patterns (Rural Sprawland Upscale Enclave), which are growing rapidly and most often occur on the urban fringe, have the least diversedemographics across all six metro areas. These landscapes are also by far the least dense, leading to a range ofnegative environmental impacts. Older built landscape types (Urban Grids, Rectangular Block Grids, andDegenerate Grids) are denser and relatively diverse. These have lower rates of occupancy in most urban areas,indicating an opportunity to house additional residents in relatively well-located, well-connected, and diversecentral portions of metropolitan regions.

We study a partially identified linear contextual effect model for ecological inference, and describe how to perform inference on the district level parameter averaging over many precincts, in the presence of the unidentified parameter of the contextual effect. We derive various bounds for this unidentified parameter of contextual effect, from the tightest possible, to ones that are more convenient to use. This may be regarded as a first attempt to limit the scope of non-identifiability in linear contextual effect models. As an application, the linear contextual model implies a “regression bound” for the district level parameter of interest, which can intersect the model-free bound by Duncan and Davis (1953) and achieve a shorter length.

This paper analyzes whether moderate weight reduction improves subjective health perception in obese individuals. To cure possible endogeneity bias in the regression analysis, we use randomized monetary weight loss incentives as instrument for weight change. In contrast to related earlier work that also employed instrumental variables estimation, identification does not rely on long-term, between-individuals weight variation, but on short-term, within-individual weight variation. This allows for identifying short-term effects of moderate reductions in body weight on subjective health. In qualitative terms, our results are in line with previous findings pointing to weight loss in obese individuals resulting in improved subjective health. Yet, in contrast to these, we establish genuine short-term effects. This finding may encourage obese individuals in their weight loss attempts, since they are likely to be immediately rewarded for their efforts by subjective health improvements.

This paper calculates the distribution of an adjusted measure of income that deducts damages due to exposure to air pollution from reported market income in the United States from 2011 to 2014. The Gini coefficient for this measure of adjusted income is 0.682 in 2011, as compared to 0.482 for market income. By 2014, we estimate that the Gini for adjusted income fell to 0.646, while the market income Gini did not appreciably change. The inclusion of air pollution damage acts like a regressive tax: with air pollution, the bottom 20% of households lose roughly 10% of the share of income, while the top 20% of households gain 10%. We find that, unlike the case for market income, New England is not the most unequal division with respect to adjusted income. Further, the difference between adjusted income for white and Hispanics is smaller than expected. However, the gap in augmented income between whites and African-Americans is widening.

Limited data exist on differences in time spent on household activities and child care between male and female physicians, which may influence sex differences in hours worked professionally. We studied sex differences among married physicians in time spent on household activities (eg, cleaning and cooking) and child care (eg, bathing and homework) from 2003 through 2016 using the American Time Use Survey, a detailed time use survey administered by the US Census. Overall, we found that female physicians with children spent 100.2 minutes (95% CI, 67.0-133.3 minutes) more per day on household activities and child care than did male physicians, a finding that was qualitatively similar after adjustment for work hours outside the home of both spouses. These patterns may reflect societal norms that ultimately influence physician sex differences in hours worked professionally.

The American economy has been profoundly influenced by the evolution of educational institutions and the American human capital stock. From colonial times to the present, the schooling of Americans not only has helped shape the trajectory of the economy, but also has been shaped by that trajectory in what Goldin and Katz (2009) describe as a race between education and technology. The unique public, decentralized nature of school provision in the United States has set the country apart from other Western nations, allowing the country to be a leader in terms of education for much of its history, while leading to issues of inequality in schooling resources in recent decades. The history of school provision and attendance has taught us much about the sources of regional and racial gaps in socioeconomic outcomes and has highlighted the critical role that educational institutions play in either maintaining or eliminating those gaps. It has also offered evidence of the evolving nature of the household, the complex relationships between childhood health and adult outcomes, and even the nature of the American political process. While economic historians have exploited the rich educational history of the United States to yield unique insights related to the nature of technological change, political processes, discrimination, household resource allocation, and a variety of other topics, there remain many unanswered questions. New questions are generated from the results of each new study, and new data sources are consistently being unearthed and digitized, allowing economic historians to empirically study both questions about the evolution of the American economy and issues in the modern education, labor, and growth literatures that were previously deemed untestable.

The association between physical activity and health is well documented, yet prior research has largely ignored the context of physical activity, including its specific type and the emotions experienced while engaged in that activity. This study used interview-based time diary data on 24,016 individuals who participated in the American Time Use Survey well-being modules in 2010, 2012, and 2013 to examine the associations between sedentary and moderately vigorous activities and self-reported health, and the extent to which momentary well-being modifies that association. Respondents who engaged in housework, leisure, or play with children reported better health whereas those who engaged in sedentary activity reported worse self-rated health. Respondents who spent more time in housework reported better health, but this was not the case for leisure or playing with children. Greater positive mood and fewer somatic symptoms while engaged in activity were associated with better self-rated health, with more consistent associations for symptoms than mood. Respondent reports of momentary well-being did not explain the link between activities and perceived or actual health. Keywords

Substantial gaps in knowledge about the mechanisms that link gender and educational attainment with leisure inequalities remain. Using data from the American Time Use Survey, Metabolic Equivalent Values (METs), and O*NET, we investigate influences of a broad array of occupation and work environment measures on time spent in social, active, and passive leisure. Preliminary results indicate employment in a sales/service occupation, compared with professional occupations, is associated with increased sedentary leisure. Natural and transportation occupations, relative to professional, was not associated with leisure differences, despite the pervasive differences in the physical and social-psychological demands and rewards of these jobs. Professional and service occupations are both relatively sedentary, but the emotional labor is higher and autonomy, flexibility, and rewards of many sales & service jobs much lower. These factors may account for the difference in time spent in sedentary leisure, a possibility we explore with the merged O*NET data.

Objectives: Examining the immigration-crime nexus across neighborhoods in the Southern California metropolitan region, this study builds on existing literature by unpacking immigration and accounting for the rich diversity that exists between immigrant groups. Methods: Using data from a variety of sources, we capture this diversity with three different approaches, operationalizing immigrant groups by similar racial/ethnic categories, areas or regions of the world that immigrants emigrate from, and where immigrants co-locate once they settle in the U.S. We also account for the heterogeneity of immigrant populations by constructing measures of immigrant heterogeneity based on each of these classifications. We compare these novel approaches with the standard approach, which combines immigrants together through a single measure of percent foreign born. Results: The results reveal that considerable insights are gained by distinguishing between diverse groups of immigrants. In particular, we find that all three strategies explained neighborhood crime levels better than the traditional approach. Conclusion: The findings underscore the necessity of disaggregating immigrant groups when exploring the immigration-crime relationship.