For the last decades, regions in the United States have been diverging. More skillintensive regions have experienced a higher wage and skill premium growth and had become even more skill-intensive. In this paper, I show that this may be driven in part by trade with China. One of the main ndings of this paper is that the consequences on local labor markets of higher import competition are highly heterogeneous. In particular, I focus on how consequences of imports from Chinese manufacturers are dierent depending on the share of college-educated workforce in the regions. Conditional to be exposed to the same level of import competition, eects in terms of wages and growth of college-educated population growth are especially negative for less educated regions. However, this nding does not mean just an attenuation of negative eects for more educated areas. Instead, I nd that import competition has net positive eects among more college-educated regions. Indeed, among more skill-intensive regions, a greater exposure to import competition attracts college-educated workers and increases collegewages and skill premium; whereas it has the opposite eect among less skill-intensive regions

Women's participation in paid employment has increased substantially in the United States over the past fifty years, particularly among married women and mothers of young children. This occurred without a substantial reorganization of work or family life. Although men perform more housework and child care than in the past, they still spend on average far less time engaged in these activities than women do, leaving the gendered nature of family life and childrearing essentially intact. The nature of paid work also remains fundamentally unchanged. Despite the expansion of maternity leave policies and flexible work schedules, the organization of most workplaces is still predicated on a concept of workers as "male" and free of personal responsibilities (Acker 1990). Many working women with children consequently experience significant difficulties because of the competing demands of work and family life. This has prompted questions about the sustainability of high employment rates for women. In this chapter I consider whether recent cohorts of women in professional and managerial occupations are increasing or maintaining high employment rates or are "opting out" of professional employment to stay at home with children. Whether US women will maintain high employment levels has sparked interest outside of academia. Mainly relying on anecdotal evidence, many media outlets in the United States have run stories either predicting or claiming an exodus of women from professional work (Williams, Manvell, and Bornstein, 2006). One of these articles made a particularly controversial claim: a New York Times Magazine article by Belkin (2003) describes an "opt-out revolution" among highly educated professional women and asserts that women's voluntary employment exits to accommodate childrearing account for persistent gender inequalities in employment. Media attention to "opting out" centers on highly educated women in professional and managerial occupations, and perhaps for good reason. The expansion of women's educational opportunities has yielded more women qualified for historically male-dominated jobs that require advanced schooling. Because professional and managerial occupations confer prestige, social influence, and economic rewards, women's success in these fields may be particularly

Both scholars and the public have been intrigued by the question of whether parents experience higher levels of emotional wellbeing than adults who are not raising children. Yet despite decades of research on the topic, the answer to this question remains unclear. Using a novel source of nationally representative data, the Wellbeing Module of the American Time Use Survey (2010, 2012, 2013), this dissertation aims to unpack and extend prior understanding of the parenting wellbeing gap by pursing two studies. The first investigates whether parenthood may have both positive and negative links to adults’ emotional wellbeing; whether the gap varies across certain contexts; and whether it is driven by women more so than men. I find that parents experienced more positive affect than adults who are not raising children, but also more negative affect. This pattern, however, only existed during nonmarket work, and leisure—not during paid labor. Interestingly, parenthood exacerbated positive emotions only during time when parents were in the presence of children, but it heightened negative emotions during all time, regardless of whether children were present or not. Patterns were generally the same for men as women. In the second study, I explore whether parenting is experienced differently by adults with higher or lower education levels. I find that raising children is associated with greater levels of positive emotions (happiness and meaning) across education groups, but it is also associated with greater levels of negative emotions (stress and fatigue) only for higher educated parents. When considering the role of gender, for high SES individuals, parenthood is associated with greater levels of positive and negative emotions for both men and women, while at the low SES level, parenthood makes no difference in negative emotions (for either men or women) and increases positive emotions only for men.

Tax data suggest that the population of adult dependents-adults relying on the support of others for the majority of their financial needs-has more than doubled over the last decade. However, little is known about how taxes affect the labor supply decisions of this population. This paper provides an initial investigation, studying the impact of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) expansions of the early 1990s on the labor supply of adult dependents living with their relatives. I find that dependent individuals who were not a part of the nuclear family responded to the EITC expansions, increasing labor force participation by about 5 percentage points. For adult children, I show that the absence of a net response is likely due to an unexpected consequence of the EITC: expanded family credits led to a decrease in their labor force participation.

The first professional societies in the United States, from the 1880s to the 1910s, understood history to be closely associated with the other social sciences. Even in the mid-twentieth century, history was still grouped with the other social sciences, along with economics, sociology, political science, and anthropology. But in the past few decades, history and anthropology in the United States (though not necessarily in other countries) have moved away from the social sciences to ally themselves with the humanities—paradoxically, just when the other social sciences are becoming more committed to historical research.

This paper uses the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to explore the decisions of black and white young adults to remain in their parents' home or to form their own household during the tumultuous 2001-2013 period. We use MSA fixed effects to capture geographic heterogeneity and develop exogenous measures of housing and labor market contexts using Census and ACS PUMS data. We then run a Oaxaca-Blinder style decomposition analysis to explain the race gap in household formation over this 13-year period, and conduct several robustness checks. We find strong support for the influence of economic context, with strikingly different results by race. Blacks were most sensitive to rents, which increased more dramatically for black young adults over most of the 2001-2013 period compared with whites' rents. The results also suggest that blacks were operating in strongly segmented housing markets throughout this period. In contrast, whites were most sensitive to employment rates, which decreased for white young adults over this period from 75 percent in 2001 to 70 percent in 2013. Despite their unrestricted access to the entire labor market, falling employment proved a significant deterrent to new household formation for white young adults.

Through its NSF Advance institutional transformation program, the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) has implemented a series of initiatives to support the recruitment, retention, and advancement of women, particularly Latinas, in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) academic careers, with the ultimate goal of providing an inclusive and supportive climate for all faculty. This chapter first provides an overview of the importance of supporting Latina faculty. The authors then discuss the opportunities and challenges . . .

Historic increases in income inequality have coincided with widening class divides in parental investments of money and time in children. These widening class gaps are significant because parental investment is one pathway by which advantage is transmitted across generations. Using over three decades of micro-data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey and the American Heritage Time Use Survey linked to state-year measures of income inequality, we test the relationship between income inequality and class gaps in parental investment. We find robust evidence of wider class gaps in parental financial investments in children—but not parental time investments in children—when state-level income inequality is higher. We explore mechanisms that may drive the relationship between rising income inequality and widening class gaps in parental financial investments in children. This relationship is partially explained by the increasing concentration of income at the top of the income distribution in state-years with higher inequality, which gives higher-earning households more money to spend on financial investments in children. In addition, we find evidence for contextual effects of higher income inequality that reshape parental preferences toward financial investment in children differentially by class.

The nonprofit Urban Institute is a leading research organization dedicated to developing evidence-based insights that improve people's lives and strengthen communities. For 50 years, Urban has been the trusted source for rigorous analysis of complex social and economic issues; strategic advice to policymakers, philanthropists, and practitioners; and new, promising ideas that expand opportunities for all. Our work inspires effective decisions that advance fairness and enhance the well-being of people and places.

Much of the literature on sexual orientation discrimination reports earnings differentials for gay, lesbian, and bisexual individuals when compared with heterosexuals. The General Social Survey (GSS) has previously been used due to its extensive coverage of demographic variables and sexual behavior in the United States. This study uses updated GSS data to investigate whether the income differentials found in earlier work have persisted and how estimates based on categorizing respondents according to the reported sex of their sex partners compare to estimates based on the respondents’ self-reported sexual orientation. Results for the years 2008–14 indicate that self-identification as an LGB individual and/or same-sex sexual behavior are correlated with a lower income; however, not all the results are statistically significant. In addition, there is a statistically significant negative income differential of 32 percent for men who report having had a same-sex partner at some point, but identify as straight/heterosexual. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Feminist Economics is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This dissertation consists of three essays on industrial organization and environmental economics. The first essay models the efficient pricing structure when consumers respond to average price rather than marginal price. Regulators have been using increasing block tariffs to regulate important markets such as water and electricity, although such tariffs are not shown to be efficient in the standard literature of industrial organization. In light of recent evidence regarding how consumers respond to complex price schedules, this essay re-examines the regulated non-linear pricing. Results show that increasing per-unit prices (hence increasing block tariffs) may be optimal when consumers respond to changes in average price rather than marginal price. This suggests the equity-efficiency trade-off associated with increasing block tariffs may be less severe than previously believed. The second and the third chapters study the garbage industry. In the United States, waste has been transported across county lines and state borders. Several states and counties have attempted to legalize transboundary waste flow controls in several Congress sessions after their ordinances were overturned by Supreme Court. Using data on intercounty waste flows in California and a random utility model of haulers' decisions about where to deposit waste from each county, the second essay studies the effects of not-in-my-backyard policies and fuel taxes on the spatial and demographic distribution of solid waste. I find that waste is currently more likely to be hauled to disposal facilities in communities with higher percentages of blacks and Hispanics, even after controlling for income, disposal fees, and transport distances. Counterfactual policy experiments show that policies that seek to limit waste flows would reduce intercounty waste transport. However, these policies tend to lead to substitution of waste away from facilities near white residents and toward facilities near . . .

How can local actors manage the regional-level impacts of trade liberalization? Most scholarship focuses on how given endowments, such as geographic location and existing industries, affect the local economic impacts of these contentious policies. This study considers local actors’ room for maneuver by focusing on a controlled case comparison of two city pairs along the Texas–Mexico border. These city pairs possessed very similar resource endowments and formal institutions prior to the enactment of the North American Free Trade Agreement, but diverged dramatically afterward in their economic growth patterns. A detailed comparison of policy implementation reveals that distinct local informal institutions were a key source of their economic divergence. The identification of the role of these “repertoires” of unwritten local habits and practices underscores the potential impact of collaborative efforts on long-term economic outcomes while adding to our understanding of the basis on which such collaborations are built.

An important question aside from outright discrimination is whether poor underlying race relations in an area might create a chilling effect on homeownership for minorities. From 2012 onward, there were a series of high-profile events in the U.S. related to police brutality which highlighted racial tension. Using Google Trends, we characterize a locality's underlying racial climate based on search interest in these charged events. We use data from the American Community Survey prior to any of these flare-ups and show that the ownership decision for blacks is responsive to the racial climate; black homeownership in localities with the most charged racial climates is 5.6 percentage points lower than in the least charged racial climates based on a sample of movers.

This paper shows that brief social interactions can have a large impact on economic outcomes when they occur in high-stakes decision contexts. I study this question using a high frequency and detailed geolocalized dataset of matched immigrants-ships from the age of mass migration. Individuals exogenously travelling with (previously unrelated) higher quality shipmates end up being employed in higher quality jobs at destination. Several findings suggest that shipmates provide access and/or information about employment opportunities. Firstly, immigrants’ sector of employment and place of residence are affected by those of their shipmates’ contacts. Secondly, the baseline effects are stronger for individuals travelling alone and with fewer connections at destination. Thirdly, immigrants are affected more strongly by shipmates who share their language. These findings underline the sizeable effects of even brief social connections, provided that they occur during critical life junctures.

Since the 1970s, market restructuring has shifted many workers into workplaces heavily reliant on sales to outside corporate buyers. These outside buyers wield substantial power over working conditions among their suppliers. During the same period, wage growth for middle-income workers stagnated. By extending organizational theories of wage-setting to incorporate interactions between organizations, I predict that wage stagnation resulted in part from production workers’ heightened exposure to buyer power. Panel data on publicly traded companies shows that dependence on large buyers lowers suppliers’ wages and accounts for 10 percent of wage stagnation in nonfinancial firms since the 1970s. These results are robust to a series of supplementary measures of buyer power; instrumental variable analysis using mergers between buyers; corrections for selection and missing data; and controls for individual worker characteristics like education and occupation. The results show how product market restructuring and new forms of economic segmentation affect workers’ wages. The spread of unequal bargaining relations between corporate buyers and their suppliers has slowed wage growth for workers.

We present a Bayesian model for estimating the joint distribution of multivariate categorical data when units are nested within groups. Such data arise frequently in social science settings, for example, people living in households. The model assumes that (i) each group is a member of a group-level latent class, and (ii) each unit is a member of a unit-level latent class nested within its grouplevel latent class. This structure allows the model to capture dependence among units in the same group. It also facilitates simultaneous modeling of variables at both group and unit levels. We develop a version of the model that assigns zero probability to groups and units with physically impossible combinations of variables. We apply the model to estimate multivariate relationships in a subset of the American Community Survey. Using the estimated model, we generate synthetic household data that could be disseminated as redacted public use files. Supplementary materials (Hu et al., 2017) for this article are available online.

The psychological aftereffects of war are not just a modern-day plight. Following the Civil War, numerous soldiers returned with damaged bodies or damaged minds. Drawing on archival materials including digitized records for more than 70,000 white and African-American Union army recruits, newspaper reports, and census returns, Larry M. Logue and Peter Blanck uncover the diversity and severity of Civil War veterans' psychological distress. Their findings concerning the recognition of veterans' post-traumatic stress disorders, treatment programs, and suicide rates will inform current studies on how to effectively cope with this enduring disability in former soldiers. This compelling book brings to light the continued sacrifices of men who went to war.