Scholars often attribute the increases in the incidence of tick-borne diseases to anthropogenic factors such as climate change and shifting land use patterns. However, they tend to overlook the politics and economics underpinning such factors and, in turn, what is necessary to change them. To remedy these problems, I take a political ecological approach to understand why and when anthropogenic changes, such as sub- and ex-urban development, facilitate the emergence and spread of ticks, their hosts, and the diseases they carry. Examining the case of Lyme disease in Northern Virginia, I argue that the emergence and spread of Lyme disease to new locations is not only the result of climate change and sub- and ex-urbanization, but also the result of the adoption of liberal economic policies, specifically financial deregulation and the privatization of government services. To support this argument, I demonstrate how changing forms of housing finance and the rise in federal government subcontracting from the 1970s onward propelled the growth of large-lot suburbs south of Washington D.C. and resulted in the creation of a landscape in which tick-hosts, ticks, and tick-borne disease thrive.

In sociological studies of economic stratification and intergenerational mobility, occupation has long been presumed to reflect lifetime earnings better than do short-term earnings. However, few studies have actually tested this critical assumption. In this study, we investigate the cross-sectional determinants of 20-year accumulated earnings using data that match respondents in the Survey of Income and Program Participation to their longitudinal earnings records based on administrative tax information from 1990 to 2009. Fit statistics of regression models are estimated to assess the predictive power of various proxy variables, including occupation, education, and short-term earnings, on cumulative earnings over the 20-year time period. Contrary to the popular assumption in sociology, our results find that cross-sectional earnings have greater predictive power on long-term earnings than occupation-based class classifications, including three-digit detailed occupations for both men and women. The model based on educational attainment, including field of study, has slightly better fit than models based on one-digit occupation or the Erikson, Goldthorpe, and Portocarero class scheme. We discuss the theoretical implications of these findings for the sociology of stratification and intergenerational mobility.

Background: Based on single cross-sectional data, prior research finds evidence of “transportation assimilation” among U.S. immigrants: the length of stay in the U.S. is negatively correlated with public transit use. This paper revisits this question by using repeated cross-sectional data, and examines the trend of transportation assimilation over time. Methods and results: Using 1980, 1990, 2000 1% census and 2010 (1%) American Community Survey, I examine the relationship between the length of stay in the U.S. and public transit ridership among immigrants. I first run regressions separately in four data sets: I regress public transit ridership on the length of stay, controlling for other individual and geographic variables. I then compare the magnitudes of the relationship in four regressions. To study how the rate of transportation assimilation changes over time, I pool the data set and regress public transit ridership on the length of stay and its interactions with year dummies to compare the coefficients across surveys. Results confirm the conclusion of transportation assimilation: as the length of stay in the U.S. increases, an immigrant’s public transit use decreases. However, the repeated cross-section analysis suggests the assimilation rate has been decreasing in the past few decades. Conclusions: This paper finds evidence of transportation assimilation: immigrants become less likely to ride public transit as the length of stay in the U.S. increases. The assimilation rate, however, has been decreasing over time. This paper finds that the rate of public transit ridership among new immigrants upon arrival, the geographic distribution of immigrants, and the changing demographics of the U.S. immigrants play roles in affecting the trend of transportation assimilation.

The increase in the demand for more skilled labor is among the most important changes in the US economy of the last forty years (Katz and Autor 1999). In the narrative crafted by Goldin and Katz (2008), technological advances and rising educational attainment are in something of a race, with the premium for skilled labor rising during periods, as in the 1980s and 1990s, when growth in the supply of college graduates is insufficient to meet the expanding demand for qualified labor. High-skilled immigration changes the nature of the competition between education and technology. Whereas in 1980 the foreign born . . .

Prior research linking occupational sex composition (the proportion of women in an occupation) to housework has yielded conflicting results and relies exclusively on cross-sectional data. The present article extends scholarship on the gendered division of household labor by using longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) 1981–2013 to assess how changes in occupational sex composition alter heterosexual married couples’ housework performance over time. I find that either spouse’s gender-atypical employment (e.g., husband’s employment in a predominately female job) is associated with gender-atypical housework performance by both spouses (e.g., higher housework hours for the husband and fewer hours for the wife). The association of women’s occupational sex composition with housework is driven by changes in individual women’s occupations and both spouses’ housework over time. In contrast, the association of men’s occupational sex composition with housework is driven by differences between different couples, not by within-couple change over time. Thus, fundamentally different causal mechanisms link women’s and men’s occupational sex composition to couples’ housework performance, and only for women are longitudinal changes in occupational sex composition associated with changes in housework. These findings have important implications for understanding occupation and housework as domains of gender performance.

During the period of prison expansion from the late 1970s to the 1990s, public opinion generally supported stricter criminal justice measures. This support did not necessarily extend to building correctional facilities, however, encouraging some states to pursue cost-saving and privatization strategies. This paper explores the extent to which voters supported prison construction bond referenda, compared to other kinds of referenda. Evidence from fixed-effects models suggests that voters were less likely to support prison construction and that voter support for prison construction is linked with race. These results demonstrate the direct and sometimes contradictory ways that public opinion influences the criminal justice system.

L’article montre comment s’est opérée aux États-Unis une financiarisation de l’immobilier résidentiel et pourquoi ce système est entré en crise, avec des effets non seulement économiques mais aussi socio-spatiaux durables. À partir des années 1990, dans un contexte marqué par la déréglementation, les innovations financières et la volonté du gouvernement fédéral de faire accéder les populations modestes à la propriété, le marché du crédit hypothécaire a été inondé de prêts qui se révéleront toxiques pour les ménages emprunteurs et pour l’ensemble du système. L’essor des crédits subprime a été rendu possible par le développement du marché secondaire de la dette reposant sur la titrisation des crédits hypothécaires. À la suite de l’éclatement en 2006 de la bulle immobilière, des millions de foyers ont été expulsés de leur logement, en particulier dans les périphéries les plus éloignées investies par les acquéreurs modestes et dans les centres urbains où réside une large part des minorités ethno--raciales. Cette crise économique, sociale et urbaine sans précédent depuis 1929 conduit à s’interroger sur les contradictions de la financiarisation de la ville et de l’immobilier, et sur ses conséquences spatiales.

The tendency of immigrants to have lower mortality than natives is one of the most widely replicated findings in demography, but there is still no agreed-upon explanation. In this paper, the new CenSoc data set, linking millions of males in 1940 census records to old-age social security deaths, is used to show that this immigrant advantage persists into the second generation. This finding suggests that selective immigration (and return migration) of the first generation is not, as some have hypothesized, the driving force behind immigrant mortality advantages. Instead, health behaviors that can be passed on intergenerationally appear more likely to be the underlying cause. Preliminary results suggest that more than half of the immigrant advantage persists into the second generation.

Using the marital events data from the American Community Survey for the first time, we examine the association between the quantity and characteristics of unmarried men and first marriage for Black and White women ages 20-45. We incorporate both unmarried sex ratios and the economic status of unmarried men within each racial group, using multilevel logistic models. We find higher marriage odds in markets with more (same-race) unmarried men, holding constant women’s own characteristics. In addition, for White women only, local men’s education and employment rates also predict higher odds of women’s first marriage. The findings imply that if White and Black women experienced similar unmarried sex ratios in their local markets, the gap in first marriage rates would be much smaller. We conclude that marriage promotion policies may be ineffective in part because they are targeting women who face structural barriers to marriage in their local marriage markets.

An increasingly high proportion of the scientists and engineers in the United States were born abroad. At a very general level, the issues that come up in the discussion of high skilled immigration mirror the discussion of low-skilled immigration. The most basic economic arguments suggest that both high-skilled and low-skilled immigrants (a) impart benefits to employers, to owners of other inputs used in production such as capital, and to consumers; and (b) potentially, impose some costs on workers who are close substitutes (Borjas 1999). Evidence suggests, however, that the magnitude of these costs may be substantially mitigated if US high-skilled workers have good alternatives to working in sectors most affected by immigrants . . .

Researchers tend to represent election policies, such as the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), in regression models with a simple binary variable: either the state has the policy or it does not. However, the complexity of the NVRA and widespread compliance problems with it question the validity of such specifications. Moreover, parts of the NVRA should only affect subgroups of the population, such as households visiting government assistance agencies mandated to offer voter registration services. To better specify these models we used information on compliance and enforcement efforts over the past dozen years combined with the November Current Population Survey (CPS) which is frequently used to study voter registration and voting. Moreover, using a method developed at the Minnesota Population Center, we match households and individuals in the November and December CPS supplements. This matching provides additional demographic data that can enhance models using the CPS. We then examine state voter registration program performance and its effect on voter registration among low-income adult citizens in our more nuanced model.

This report analyzes the tipped workforce and restaurant industry in Washington, D.C., and compares findings for D.C. with two prominent one-fair-wage cities that, like D.C., have enacted $15 minimum wages: San Francisco and Seattle. Tipped workers in San Francisco receive the regular minimum wage as a base wage, regardless of any tips. Tipped workers at large employers in Seattle also receive the regular minimum wage as a base wage regardless of tips, and tipped workers at small employers in Seattle must be paid a base wage no less than $1.00 below than the regular minimum wage. That means tipped workers in both cities were paid much higher minimum wages than D.C. tipped workers during the period of our analysis (even though the $15 minimum wage had not yet been fully phased in in either city during the study period).

We harmonize the results of three dozen historical studies stretching back to the early 20th century to construct a time series of college attendance patterns. We find an important reversal around the time of World War II: before that, family characteristics such as income were the better predictor of college attendance; after, academic ability was the better predictor. We construct a model of college choice that can explain this reversal as a consequence of the post-War surge in the demand for college, explained by the rise in the college wage premium and declining real tuition. Although these factors affected college demand for all types of students equally, they set off a chain reaction in the model: colleges hit capacity constraints; colleges institute selective admissions; colleges become more dispersed in quality; and students apply to a broader set of colleges. High-ability students become more likely to attend college because their options become more attractive, but the opposite is true of high-income students. The driving forces and mechanisms are consistent with changes in higher education after the war, documented here and elsewhere.

Anecdotes that Millennials are fundamentally different from prior generations are prevalent in the American media. One claim often repeated is that Millennials, happy to rely on public transit or ride-hailing, will not purchase personal vehicles. This claim has the potential to both upset the economy and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) from transportation. This work explores Millennials' preferences for personal vehicles from a quantitative approach utilizing data from the US National Household Travel Survey, Census, and American Community Survey to determine whether observed decreases in vehicle ownership and use by Millennials are due to shifts in preferences, or if demographic changes have altered Millennials' consumer behaviors. I employ econometric techniques to explicitly compare Millennials' vehicle ownership and use to prior generations without the confounding effect of demographic variables using linear regressions, Oaxaca decomposition, and nearest neighbor matching estimators. Additionally, the underlying demographic differences between generations are explored with econometric approaches. The findings from these analyses indicate no significant difference in preferences for vehicle ownership between Millennials and prior generations when confounding variables are controlled, and a preference for higher use in terms of vehicle miles traveled (VMT) by Millennials. The difference in observed vehicle ownership and use arises from both age effects and different underlying demographics. Millennials may be saving the planet with their changing demographics, not because they are fundamentally rejecting personal vehicle ownership and use.

Since the 2016 presidential election, Americans have witnessed countless stories about Appalachia: its changing political leanings, its opioid crisis, its increasing joblessness, and its declining population. These stories, however, largely ignore black Appalachian lives. Karida L. Brown’s Gone Home offers a much-needed corrective to the current whitewashing of Appalachia. In telling the stories of African Americans living and working in Appalachian coal towns, Brown offers a sweeping look at race, identity, changes in politics and policy, and black migration in the region and beyond. Drawn from over 150 original oral history interviews with former and current residents of Harlan County, Kentucky, Brown shows that as the nation experienced enormous transformation from the pre- to the post-civil rights era, so too did black Americans. In reconstructing the life histories of black coal miners, Brown shows the mutable and shifting nature of collective identity, the struggles of labor and representation, and that Appalachia is far more diverse than you think.

We provide evidence on the patterns of household production in 43 developing and developed countries. Household hours account on average for nearly half of the total hours worked in the household and the market. The vast majority of household hours produce services. As GDP per capita increases, average total hours worked and average household hours per working–age population decrease while average market hours increase (“marketization”); hours producing services increase their share in total hours (“structural transformation”). The decrease in household hours is mostly due to changes in housework (cleaning, cooking etc.) and marketization is mostly due to changes in women's hours. Within countries, more educated people work more in the market and less in the household. We also impute the labor productivity of household production for 34 countries of our sample. We find that it is positively correlated with and much lower than that in the market.

New York City is witnessing a housing crisis marked by displacement and the dissolution of communities. This study examines the relative success the Hasidic community has had with the development of affordable housing in the Bedford Avenue Corridor of Bedford Stuyvesant just south of Williamsburg (which is largely Hasidic). The Corridor has experienced tremendous housing development since 2000, with the bulk of this development occurring in the northern portion, where the Hasidic community is most present. Development on the southern and mostly Black populated portion is much less, and what has been developed is generally marketed for a luxury-seeking clientele and do not necessarily benefit the existing community living in the neighborhood. Using data, mapping, and interviews, the methods carved out four mechanisms that have shown successes in the Hasidic community on the Corridor. The study explores ways in which these mechanisms and successes can be learned from to benefit the Black community on the corridor

We study the role of foreign-born workers in the growth of employment in STEM occupations since 1980. Given the importance of employment in these fields for research and innovation, we consider their role in a model featuring endogenous routine-biased technical change. We use this model to quantify the impact of high-skilled immigration, and the increasing tendency of immigrants to work in innovation, for the pace of routine-biased technical change, the polarization of employment opportunities, and the evolution of wage inequality since 1980.

Nearly 25 years ago, Preston and Taubman (1994) summarized major observations from demographic research on socioeconomic difference in adult mortality and health in a National Research Council volume on the Demography of Aging. By then, the associations between socioeconomic status (SES) and health and mortality were widely reported, although the measurement of these phenomena was not firmly established nor were the causal relationships between them. Most notable among the findings they reported was the widening of educational differences in mortality for men over the previous three decades, evident especially in the magnitude of educational differences in heart-disease death rates among White men. Mortality caused by cardiovascular disease . . .

For women working in science, technology, engineering or math (STEM) jobs, the workplace is a different, sometimes more hostile environment than the one their male coworkers experience. Discrimination and sexual harassment are seen as more frequent, and gender is perceived as more of an impediment than an advantage to career success. Three groups of women in STEM jobs stand out as more likely to see workplace inequities: women employed in STEM settings where men outnumber women, women working in computer jobs (only some of whom work in the technology industry), and women in STEM who hold postgraduate degrees. Indeed, a majority of each of these groups of STEM women have experienced gender discrimination at work, according to a nationally representative Pew Research Center survey with an oversample of people working in STEM jobs