Background Characterizing electronic cigarette (e‐cigarette) use patterns is important for guiding tobacco regulatory policy and projecting the future burden of tobacco‐related diseases. Few studies have examined patterns of e‐cigarette use in individuals with cardiovascular disease (CVD). Methods and Results We examined e‐cigarette use in adults aged 18 to 89 years with a history of CVD, using data from the 2014 National Health Interview Survey. We investigated associations between ever and current e‐cigarette use and smoking with multivariable logistic regression. In a secondary analysis, we modeled the association between e‐cigarette use and a quit attempt over the past year. Former smokers with CVD who quit smoking within the past year showed 1.85 (95% confidence interval, 1.03, 3.33) times the odds of having ever used e‐cigarettes as compared with those who reported being “some days” current smokers. Current smokers who attempted to quit smoking within the past year showed significantly increased odds of ever having used e‐cigarettes (odds ratio, 1.70; 95% confidence interval, 1.25, 2.30) and currently using e‐cigarettes (odds ratio, 1.97; 95% confidence interval, 1.32, 2.95) as compared with smokers who had not attempted to quit over the past year. Conclusions Individuals with CVD who recently quit smoking or reported a recent quit attempt were significantly more likely to use e‐cigarettes than current smokers and those who did not report a quit attempt. Our findings may indicate that this population is using e‐cigarettes as an aid to smoking cessation. Characterizing emerging e‐cigarette use behaviors in adults with CVD may help to inform outreach activities aimed at this high‐risk population.

We document important shifts in occupational composition following merger and acquisition (M&A) activity as well as increases in median wages and wage inequality. We propose M&As act as a catalyst for skill-biased and routinebiased technological change. We argue that due to an increase in scale, improved efficiency or lower financial constraints, M&As facilitate technology adoption and automation, disproportionately increasing the productivity of high-skill workers and enabling the displacement of occupations involved in routine-tasks, typically mid-income occupations. An M&A event is associated with a 4.7% reduction in establishment routine task intensity and a 1.3% increase in the share of high skill workers at the target as compared to a matched sample of control establishments. We also observe higher hourly wages for the remaining workers in the establishment and an increase in wage polarization. Our results are generalized at the macro level as we are able to replicate similar patterns industry-wide.

A critical development goal involves reducing subsistence farming and encouraging entrepreneurship and formal sector employment. A growing number of studies examine cross-national variation in the rates of subsistence farming, marginal self-employment, formal employment, and prosperous entrepreneurship by level of development. However, despite significant regional disparities in development within most low-to-middle-income countries, little is known about how development at the local level is associated with labor market patterns. Using a pooled cross section containing four waves of data from the Mexican Census (1990–2015), this study investigates the relationship between social development and municipal workforce composition. In the 1980s, Mexico initiated an ambitious and multipronged development agenda intended to reduce extreme regional disparities in educational attainment, housing quality, access to utilities, and poverty. This study measures social development using a multi-dimensional measure that captures educational attainment, housing quality, access to utilities, and poverty. Laborers are separated into employed, own-account workers, and employers, with each category divided into agricultural and non-agricultural. In a second set of analyses, non-agricultural own-account workers are categorized as high and low growth potential and non-agricultural wage workers are separated into informal and formal sector. Results from fixed effects regression models indicate that local development significantly reduces the rate of own-account agricultural work and increases non-agricultural wage labor and employer self-employment. As less developed areas advance, the largest initial increase in non-agricultural work is in the informal sector. But, in more developed communities, social development increasingly predicts growth in formal sector employment and more selective entry into non-agricultural own-account work. The findings suggest that investment in community-level social development has the potential to reduce subsistence self-employment, encourage formal sector work, and promote entrepreneurship. Yet, the greatest gains occur in communities that already have mid to high levels of social development.

There is still considerable dispute about the magnitude of labor supply elasticities. While differences in estimates especially between micro and macro models are recently attributed to frictions and adjustment costs, we show that the variation in elasticities derived from structural labor supply models can also be explained by modeling assumptions. Specifically, we estimate 3,456 different models on the same data each representing a plausible combination of frequently made choices.While many modeling assumptions do not systematically affect labor supply elasticities, our controlled meta-analysis shows that results are very sensitive to the treatment of hourly wages in the estimation. For example, different (sensible) choices concerning the modeling of the underlying wage distribution and especially the imputation of (missing) wages lead to point estimates of elasticities between 0.2 and 0.65. We hence conclude that researchers should pay more attention to the robustness of their estimations with respect to the wage treatment.

This discussion piece is an extended review of the work on projecting the world's population and human capital by country conducted by the Wittgenstein Centre (WIC). The project was led by Wolfgang Lutz, and its outcomes were published by Oxford University Press in a book that appeared in 2014. Using statistics from the book and elsewhere, this article starts with an overview of the development of educational attainment. The role that education plays in the WIC2014 model is identified. Definitions of 'multi-dimensional', 'multi-state', and 'micro-simulation' are offered, and are used to characterise the model. A thumbnail sketch of the main methods used in the projections is given. The final section sets out a possible agenda for the future development of the WIC2014 model. This review is intended to help readers tackle the more than 1,000 pages of argument and analysis in the book, which represents a major contribution to demographic research in the 21st century.

This paper attempts to gain insight into the impact college cost has on graduation rates in secondary education. Both high school and college degree earners have significantly higher wage prospects and quality of life than their non-high school graduate counterparts, in addition to option value that is inherent to both enrollment in high school and college. College affordability has also been shown to incentivize higher college enrollment. I hypothesize that in spite of associated economic positives, the cost of college is a salient factor in individuals' evaluations of the option value of a high school degree, thus leading some students on the margins to miscalculate the value of completing their high school degree and ultimately lowering the graduation rate within their state. Using an ordinary least squares regression, primarily on ASEC and NCES data, I find mixed results with the exception that the hypothesized effect is much more likely to exist for two-year institutions.

Puerto Rican migration caught nationwide attention after Hurricane Maria impact-ed the island. It was a culmination of more than a decade of economic stagnation that led to Puerto Rico's declining population while stateside Puerto Ricans experienced a population growth. This study examines the impact of post-Hurricane Maria on the Puerto Rican exodus and Puerto Rican diaspora in the U.S. mainland. The purpose of this paper is to measure post-Hurricane Maria exodus and how settlement patterns have reinforced dispersion in the diaspora. The findings from this study shed light on the migration estimations using the School Enrollment Migration Index (SEMI) relative to other migration data sources and dispersed settlement patterns of Puerto Rican migrants data from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and Department of Education(s). More importantly, I argue that existing data sources on Puerto Rican migration are not sufficient to estimate Puerto Rican migration, especially during a time when migration estimates were immediately needed to determine where the migrants relocated to within the U.S. mainland post-Hurricane Maria and the dispersion of Puerto Rican settlement has been magnified as a result of post-Hurricane Maria migrants.

We investigate whether communities with improving population health will subsequently experience rising real estate prices. Home price indices (HPIs) for 371 MSAs from 1990 to 2010 are regressed against life-expectancy five years prior. HPIs come from the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Life expectancy estimates come from the Institute of Health Metrics. Our analysis uses random and fixed effect models with a comprehensive set of controls. Life expectancy predicted increases in the HPI controlling for potential confounders. We found that, this effect varied spatially. Communities that invest their revenue from property taxes in public health infrastructure could benefit from a virtuous cycle of better health leading to higher property values. Communities that do not invest in health could enter vicious cycles and this could widen geospatial health and wealth disparities.

In the digital era, “geographic information” has emerged as a primary intermediary in two-way communications between territories and maps. Correspondingly, we argue that the “territory as the source of the map” and the “map as the source of the territory” have become fundamental features of scientific study, spatial planning, and public communication. This shift to a communications perspective in map-territory relationships is tied to rapidly expanding abilities to link sources of increasingly diverse geographically referenced data, information, and resources across disciplinary boundaries through space and time. This chapter explores linkages between the map and reality, considers potentials for discord between the intentions of map makers and the perceptions and applications of map users, and gives special attention to changes in these relationships in response to the digitalization and spatialization of contemporary communication, information, and sensor technologies.

OBJECTIVES To investigate Black-White disparities in suboptimal sleep and cardiometabolic health by government-assisted rental housing status. DESIGN National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) pooled cross-sectional data (2004–2016). SETTING United States. PARTICIPANTS Black and White adult participants (n = 80,880). MEASUREMENTS Poisson regression with robust variance was used to estimate prevalence ratios (PRs) and 95% confidence intervals for self-reported unrecommended (<6 hours), short (≤6-<7 hours), and long (>9 hours) sleep duration (each separately vs recommended (≤7–9 hours)) and sleep difficulties (eg, trouble falling/staying asleep ≥3 days/week) (yes vs no) among Blacks compared to Whites within rental housing categories (government-assisted vs unassisted), separately, for men and women. Within sex/housing categories, we applied the same approach to compare cardiometabolic health outcomes (ie, overweight/obesity, hypertension, diabetes, heart disease, stroke) between Blacks with worse sleep and Whites with recommended sleep. Models were adjusted for age and other potential confounders. RESULTS Participants' mean age was 42 ± 18 years, 57% were female, and 30% Black. Blacks in unassisted housing had a higher prevalence of unrecommended and short sleep (PR = 1.22 [1.15–1.30] -men, PR = 1.14 [1.08–1.21] -women) compared to their White counterparts (phousing⁎race = 0.001 -men, phousing⁎race = 0.008 -women), but no Black-White differences (PR = 0.88 [0.73–1.07] -men, PR = 0.98 [0.89–1.09] -women) were observed among government-assisted renters. Generally, Blacks were less likely to report sleep difficulties than Whites. Cardiometabolic health disparities between Blacks with worse sleep and Whites with recommended sleep were generally smaller among government-assisted renters, but relationships varied by sex. CONCLUSIONS There were no racial disparities in short sleep duration, and cardiometabolic health disparities were generally attenuated when Blacks and Whites resided in government-assisted rental housing.

A varying number of work hours from week to week creates considerable hardships for workers and their families, like volatile earnings and work–family conflict. Yet little empirical work has focused on racial/ethnic differences in varying work hours, which may have increased substantially in the Great Recession of the late 2000s. We extend literatures on racial/ethnic stratification in recessions and occupational segregation to this topic. Analyses of the Survey of Income and Program Participation show varying weekly hours became significantly more common for White and Black, but especially Latino workers in the late 2000s. The growth of varying weekly hours among White and Latino workers was greatest in predominantly minority occupations. However, the growth among Black workers was greatest in predominantly White occupations. The chapter discusses implications for disparities in varying hours and the salience of occupational composition beyond earnings.

This paper argues that the unprecedented socioeconomic rise of African Ameri-cans at mid-century was causally related to the labor shortages induced by WWII. Combining novel military and Census data in a difference-indifferences setting, results show that counties with an average casualty rate among semiskilled whites experienced a 13 to 16% increase in the share of blacks in semiskilled jobs. The casualty rate also had a positive reduced form effect on wages, home ownership, house values, and education for blacks. Using Southern survey data, IV regression results indicate that individuals in affected counties had more interracial friendships and reduced preferences for segregation in 1961. This is an example for how better labor market opportunities can improve both economic and social outcomes of a disadvantaged minority group.

To understand the education-mortality association among U.S. adults, recent studies have documented its national functional form. However, the functional form of education-mortality relationship may vary across geographic contexts. The four U.S. Census regions differ considerably in their social and economic policies, employment opportunities, income levels, and other factors that may affect how education lowers the risk of mortality. Thus, we documented regional differences in the functional form of the education-mortality association and examined the role of employment and income in accounting for regional differences. We used data on nonHispanic white adults (2,981,672, person years) aged 45–84 in the 2000–2009 National Health Interview Survey, with Linked Mortality File through 2011 (37,598 deaths) and estimated discretetime hazard models. The functional form of education and adult mortality was best characterized by credentialism in the Midwest, Northeast, and for Western men. For Western women, the association was linear, consistent with the human capital model. In the South we observed a combination of mechanisms, with mortality risk declining with each year of schooling and a step change with high school graduation, followed by steeper decline thereafter. Our work adds to the increasing body of research that stresses the importance of contexts in shaping the education mortality relationship

We use American Time Use Survey data and a two-part econometric model to investigate the relationship of income and education to religiosity in the USA. We find some evidence that people are less likely to be religious as their income increases and that religious people spend less time performing religious activities as their incomes rise. The effect of additional education is ambiguous. We also find that while women are more likely to be religious than men and immigrants are more likely to be religious than natives, among religious people there is no significant difference in religiosity by gender or origin.

We estimate the effect of age at arrival for immigrant outcomes with a new dataset of arrivals linked to the 1940 United States Census. Using within-family variation, we find that arriving at an older age, or having more childhood exposure to the European environment, led to a more negative wage gap relative to the native born. Infant arrivals had a positive wage gap relative to natives, in contrast to a negative gap for teenage arrivals. Therefore, a key determinant of immigrant outcomes during the Age of Mass Migration was the country of residence during critical periods of childhood development.

Currently 6.6M children live in a three-generation household (in which a grandparent, parent and child coreside), a 68% increase since 1996. Yet we know little about longer-term trends in multigenerational coresidence; existing research has focused on the elderly, missing many multigenerational households. Using data from linked Censuses and the American Community Survey, we examine the share of children living in three-generation households between 1870 and 2016. We explore differences in the long-term trends by demographic characteristics and investigate economic, demographic, social, and policy factors that explain the observed trends. We find that three-generation coresidence peaked in 1950 when 10% of children lived in such a household, and declined to 5% by 1980. Since 1980 coresidence has been increasing; today 9.3% of children live in a three-generation household. By situating current patterns in children’s three-generational living arrangements in a larger historical context we can better understand future patterns in multigenerational coresidence.

During the 2017 Congressional debate over the future of the Affordable Care Act and the Medicaid program, there was growing awareness in both Connecticut and the nation of how many people rely on Medicaid for critical health care services. While it is widely understood that Medicaid provides health coverage to hundreds of thousands of low-income children, adults, seniors, and people with disabilities, what may be less understood is Medicaid’s role in Connecticut’s overall economy, health care system, and budget. In addition to providing health coverage to hundreds of thousands of state residents, Medicaid is deeply . . .

Black women have traditionally occupied a unique position in the American economic structure – at the very bottom. The year 1920 is a unique historical moment to examine how this came to be. Economic prosperity immediately following World War I, the first wave of Black migration, and accelerating industrialization created occupational opportunities that could have enabled Black women to escape working poverty, as the majority of Black men did, but they were actively constrained. Historical narratives have extensively described Black women’s occupational restriction across regions to dirty work, such as domestic service, but not often in conjunction with a comparison to the expanding opportunities of Black men and White women. While intersectionality studies have honed in on the unique place of Black women, little attention has been devoted to this from a historical vantage point. This chapter examines the role that race, gender, and place played in shaping the experience of working poverty and integrates a consideration of queuing theory and Black population size to examine how variations might shape racial outcomes in the labor market in 1920.

We examine hysteresis in employment-to-population ratios among less-educated men using state-level data. Results from dynamic panel regressions indicate a moderate degree of hysteresis: The effects of past employment rates on subsequent employment rates can be substantial but essentially dissipate within three years. This finding is robust to a number of variations. We find no substantial asymmetry in the persistence of high vs. low employment rates. The cumulative effect of hysteresis in the business cycle surrounding the 2001 recession was mildly positive, while the effect in the cycle surrounding the 2008–09 recession was, through 2016, decidedly negative. Additional simulations suggest that the employment benefits of temporarily running a “high-pressure” economy are small.

This thesis contains three chapters which empirically study how dynamic decision making affects the allocation of public resources. In the first chapter, I study the problem of allocating public housing. In the U.S., public housing authorities (PHAs) allocate apartments using a wide range of choice and priority rules. I evaluate how these allocation mechanisms affect the efficiency and redistribution achieved through assignments. Using waiting list data from Cambridge, MA, I estimate a structural model of public housing preferences, finding substantial heterogeneity in applicant outside options and preferred apartment types. Counterfactual simulations suggest that the range of mechanisms used by PHAs involves a significant trade-off between efficiency and redistribution. However, some commonly used mechanisms are never optimal. In the second chapter, joint with Nikhil Agarwal, Itai Ashlagi, Michael Rees, and Paulo Somaini, I study the allocation of deceased donor kidneys. In the U.S., patients on the kidney waiting list are offered organs in order of priority, and may decline an offer without penalty. This paper establishes an empirical framework for analyzing the design of these waiting lists. We model the decision to accept an organ as an optimal stopping problem and use waiting list data to estimate the value of accepting various kidneys. We then show how to solve for counterfactual equilibria under different priority rules, and search for mechanisms that improve the match quality of transplants and reduce organ waste. In the third paper, joint with Sydnee Caldwell and Scott Nelson, I investigate how beliefs about risky future income influence households' financial decisions. We quantify one contributor to income uncertainty by surveying low-income tax filers' expectations of and uncertainty about their tax refunds, and link the survey with administrative tax and credit report data. Households face substantial refund uncertainty, and both refund expectations and surprises influence financial behavior. Households borrow in anticipation of their tax refunds, and this pattern is less pronounced for more uncertain households, consistent with precautionary behavior. Surprisingly, positive refund surprises induce higher debt levels by relaxing down-payment collateral constraints.