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.

This study assesses the decade-long influence of adverse work experiences on husbands’ and wives’ problem-solvingbehaviors and marital quality through self-esteem using structural equation modeling with a sample of 308 dual-earningcouples. Analyses controlled for earlier marital quality, allowing for assessment of the residual change in marital qualityover 10 years. Adverse work experiences directly affected marital quality and indirectly affected decreases in maritalquality through lower self-esteem; lastly, individuals’ self-esteem was positively related to increased problem-solvingbehaviors. In addition, there was a crossover association, with wives’ and husbands’ self-esteem influencing oneanother’s problem-solving behaviors. These results contribute to a deeper understanding about the processes responsiblefor the detrimental impact of adverse work experiences.

Transportation infrastructures play an essential role in influencing population and employment change. While railroads, highways, and airports were constructed in different time periods, now they complement each other in terms of providing accessibility. This study uses county-level data to examine the impacts of the three forms of transportation infrastructure on population and employment change in the continental United States from 1970 to 2010. The findings suggest that transportation infrastructures play evolving but complementary roles in affecting population and employment change during the study period: railroads act as a distributive factor, highways take a facilitator role, and airports behave like growth poles. Diversification of the roles indicates that transportation infrastructures have evolved from a pure growth factor to an essential multifaceted development element of human society.

En años recientes, los inmigrantes mexicanos residentes en Arizona han tenido que afrontar diversos desafíos derivados de la reciente crisis económica y de las políticas anti-inmigrantes de ese estado. En este trabajo, analizamos las estrategias de adaptación que las familias inmigrantes mexicanas desarrollaron para optimizar sus recursos económicos y no económicos con la finalidad de asegurar su permanencia en Arizona. A partir de 20 entrevistas realizadas en Phoenix en el año 2015, examinamos tres aspectos: la reorganización de la división del trabajo por sexo en las familias, la invisibilización pública de las familias con el propósito de sortear las deportaciones, y la “capitalización” de sus miembros con documentados. . . .

Purpose: Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) with oral emtricitibine/tenofovir disoproxil fumarate (TDF/ FTC) reduces the risk of HIV infection by >90% when taken as prescribed. Trends in prevalence of PrEP use, which account for persons who have stopped PrEP, increased through 2016, but have not been described since. Methods: Annual prevalence estimates of unique, TDF/FTC PrEP users (individuals with
1 day of a filled PrEP prescription in a given year) in the United States (US) were generated for 2012e2017 from a national prescription database. A validated algorithm was used to distinguish users of TDF/FTC for HIV or chronic Hepatitis B treatment or postexposure prophylaxis from PrEP users. We calculated annual prevalence of PrEP use overall and by age, sex, and region. We used log-transformation to calculate estimated annual percent change (EAPC) in the prevalence of PrEP use. Results: Annual prevalence of PrEP use increased from 3.3/100,000 population in 2012 to 36.7 in 2017 ea 56% annual increase from 2012 to 2017 (EAPC: þ56%). Annual prevalence of PrEP use increased faster among men than among women (EAPC: þ68% and þ5%, respectively). By age group, annual prevalence of PrEP use increased fastest among 25- to 34-year olds (EAPC: þ61%) and slowest among
55-year olds (EAPC: þ52%) and 24-year olds (EAPC: þ51%). In 2017, PrEP use was lowest in the South (29.8/100,000) and highest in the Northeast (62.3/100,000). Conclusions: Despite overall increases in the annual number of TDF/FTC PrEP users in the US from 2012 to 2017, the growth of PrEP coverage is inconsistent across groups. Efforts to optimize PrEP access are especially needed for women and for those living in the South.

In 1958, the Charlotte City Council voted to demolish the community of Brooklyn for the purpose of creating a better environment for its residents and attracting business opportunities to the city. Over a ten-year period, over 9,000 residents would be forced to move to the outskirts of the city as the history of Brooklyn was erased. The history of urban renewal in Charlotte has been reported from the perspective of politicians, city planners, and businessmen who have touted the benefit of the city’s efforts. The historical literature has neglected to tell the story of those who were directly affected by the city’s initiative, and this work seeks to reveal the history of urban renewal from the perspective of those who were directly affected by its implementation. The city’s foray into urban renewal began with the community of Brooklyn, and the community’s history is intertwined with the development of the Downtown area. This work is informed by government reports, city council meeting minutes, oral histories, memoirs, and personal interviews, and establishes the history of urban renewal in three chapters. The first chapter explores the historical background of Brooklyn and the support systems that allowed the community to thrive under Jim Crow and racial segregation. The second chapter explores the local policies and community issues that caused concern for government officials and Brooklyn’s residents ultimately resulting in the community’s demolishment. The third chapter draws conclusions about why the community was demolished and how the state of the community was perceived from multiple perspectives.

Widespread introduction of methods that ensure anonymity of information about individual groups (teams) of respondents in the field of official statistics is restrained by the lack of relevant industrial information technologies and systems. A three-level client-server architecture of an information technology providing data group anonymity was provided in which clients, application servers and databases are united into a local network to enhance security of primary data. A conceptual data model covering all key components of group anonymity was described. Implementation of the technology based on the Java Enterprise Edition 8 platform, Oracle GlassFish Server application server, MySQL database server and SciLab engineering calculations system wase considered. The information technology enables provision of group anonymity of data in the event of a threat of its violation by analyzing data of an auxiliary microfile. The technology provides operations for constructing fuzzy group models using a genetic algorithm and modification of a microfile with the help of a mimetic algorithm which enables effective provision of anonymity by introducing minor insignificant distortions into data. Application of the technology was illustrated by solution of the task of providing anonymity of a military group based on real data of American Society Survey, 2013. It was shown that solving the problem by a team of five specialists has enabled at least two and a half times faster the process of preparation of a microfile than by the use of an existing technology.

This poster on Regional Variations in Manumission of Slaves in New Jersey, 1790-1860 by Guy Weston and Eric Rhodes won in the Graduate and Professional Category at the 2018 New Jersey History and Historic Preservation Conference. The conference was held June 7-8 at Passaic County Community College in Paterson, NJ.

During the last two decades, interest towards sampling survey on gender roles perceived by the population has significantly grown in developed as well as in developing countries. The micro-perspective of research improves the knowledge of gender discrimination dynamics even among subgroups. At the same time, it stands as a methodological challenge, as this approach needs an adequate statistical method for the analysis of individual data. This contribute aims firstly at offering the opportunity of increasing the knowledge about gender disparities through individual opinions and perceptions. Secondly, it aims at enlightening the pertinence of the poset methodology for the analysis of ordinal variables and response profiles. To this purpose, we collected data about 16 African countries included in Health Demographic Survey and we analysed a battery of questions about decision-making dimension by means of a poset methodology. We summarized the results of the poset analysis by means of descriptive indicators and we investigated their relation with the Global Gender Gap index (GGGI), an official index released every year by the World Economic Forum.

Introduction: Evidence-based cessation methods including nicotine replacement therapy (NRT), non-NRT medications, quitlines, and behavioral treatments are underutilized by smokers attempting to quit. Although a number of studies have demonstrated a relationship between state-level tobacco policies (eg, taxation, appropriations) and cessation, whether such state-level factors influence likelihood of using an evidence-based treatment is unclear. Accordingly, the aims of the present study were: (1) to describe evidence-based cessation method utilization by state and (2) to examine the effect of state-level factors on cessation method utilization above and beyond individual-level predictors. Methods: Data were utilized from the 2010–2011 Tobacco Use Supplement to the Current Population Survey (TUS-CPS). Participants included 9232 smokers who reported a past-year quit attempt. Data on 11 state-level predictors were collated from national datasets. Analyses were based on: (1) descriptive characterization of quit method usage, (2) logistic regression models to determine state-level factors as predictors of quit method utilization, controlling for individual-level predictors, (3) cluster analyses grouping states with similar state-level factors, and (4) examination of cluster as a predictor of cessation method. Results: Tobacco control appropriations significantly predicted NRT, quitline, and behavioral treatment utilization. Additional state-level factors that demonstrated significant relationships included Medicaid coverage of non-NRT medications and behavioral treatment, tobacco tax rate, smoking prevalence, and percentage of population uninsured. State clustering significantly predicted quit method across all four methods. Conclusions: State-level factors influence the likelihood of residents utilizing evidence-based quit methods. Results are discussed in terms of implications for tobacco policy at the state level. Implications: Results from the present study highlight state tobacco control appropriations as a robust predictor of evidence-based cessation method utilization. Other significant state-level predictors of evidence-based cessation method utilization included Medicaid coverage of non-NRT medications and behavioral treatment, tobacco tax rate, smoking prevalence, and percentage of population uninsured. Moreover, state-level predictors clustered together to significantly predict evidence-based cessation method utilization. Thus, increasing tobacco control appropriations, extending health insurance coverage, maximizing revenue from tobacco taxation and tobacco settlements, and ultimately decreasing smoking prevalence are important targets for individual states to promote utilization of evidence-based cessation methods.

This study estimates changes in sexually transmitted disease rates for young adults in the United States following the Affordable Care Act's dependent coverage mandate; a provision that allows dependents to remain covered under their parents' health insurance plans until the age of 26. This study is the first to analyze changes in reported chlamydia and gonorrhea rates resulting from the dependent coverage mandate. Utilizing a differencein-differences framework coupled with administrative data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, I find that reported chlamydia rates increased for males and females ages 20–24 relative to comparison groups of males and females ages 15–19 and 25–29 following the mandate. I also find evidence of an increase in gonorrhea rates for females in this age group. I find no evidence that the mandate induced ex ante moral hazard.

Mindfulness, emotional intelligence and resilience are the “must have skills” for modern leaders—yet many professionals are too stressed to know where to start. Creating Mindful Leaders provides deep insights and easy practices based in neuroscience, brain training and positive psychology to help professionals thrive in the “age of disruption.” Written by a global COO turned successful tech entrepreneur, the book provides a roadmap to greater health, happiness and performance. It speaks to every professional wanting to reduce stress, achieve greater success and enjoy life more. Offers immediately actionable techniques for professionals at all skill levels Provides relatable, real-world advice Helps build resilience while changing your relationship to stress Shares a roadmap for sustainable performance in the face of ongoing change Creating Mindful Leaders provides an informed, humorous and expert peak into the sources of stress caused by the modern pace of living and offers practical, actionable tools and techniques as the antidote to manage stress, increase resilience, and improve your wellbeing, performance, relationships, sleep and physical health.

More than four million Caribbean immigrants live in the United States and the great majority comes from Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica and Trinidad & Tobago. Since the 1960s, they have been migrating to the US in search of better economic opportunities. This begs the question, do Caribbean immigrants integrate into the US labor market? Integration on the labor market is defined as becoming more similar to the population. In other words, I am interested in the change in immigrant labor outcomes as they gain more experience in the host country. To answer this, I combine quantitative results from econometric analysis using microdata from the US Census Bureau with qualitative information from my fieldwork with the Caribbean Diaspora living in the US. Overall, I find that integration does happen but that human capital, ethnicity and cultural gender norms are the best predictors of immigrant labor outcomes. After discussing the literature in Chapter 1, I study the earnings gap between Caribbean female immigrants and All Other Women in the US to see after how many years there is a convergence point (Chapter 2). I propose a framework where immigrants are divided into cohorts that arrived in the 1970s, 1980, 1990s and 2000s. Results indicate that it takes Caribbean immigrant women on average 13 years to integrate. At the exception of the Dominican Republic, immigrants who arrived in the 1970s and 1980s all earn significantly more than the reference group. Considering the intersectionality of education, race, ethnicity and culture, I conclude that Anglophones and higher-educated immigrants generally do better. Ethnicity is also a good predictor of outcomes: Black immigrant women integrate faster than Latinas. I also assess variation in quality for successive cohorts and find a definite slowdown in the performance of immigrants who arrived in the decade of the Great Recession. The only exception is for Jamaican women who have maintained a high level of growth in their earnings profile since the 1970s. In contrast, the last wave of Haitian immigrants (2000s) has a clearly negative performance compared to the three previous cohorts. In Chapter 3, I examine the role of cultural gender norms in explaining the gender gap in labor force participation (LFP) in Caribbean immigrant communities. Using the Female labor force participation rate (LFPR) and the Gender Gap in LFPR from the home countries, I find that there is a small but statistically meaningful impact on the probability that Caribbean immigrant women will join the US labor force, less so for men. Generally, the results indicate that coming from a country where female labor force participation is high also encourages women from that country to adopt a similar behavior in the US. Interestingly, there is also a residual effect of the country of ancestry and of cultural gender norms on US born generations of Caribbean descent. In Chapter 4, I present descriptive statistics from surveys and qualitative interviews collected during the fieldwork I conducted between March 2016 and April 2017. The objective is to understand how social capital contributes to the integration patterns found in Chapters 2 and 3. Moreover, interviews with Caribbean immigrants living in New York, Miami and Washington, DC allowed for an in-depth discussion on: 1) the push and pull factors of migration, 2) their experience on the labor market 3) their views on cultural gender norms, and 4) the importance of social capital and cultural assimilation in the US. Overall, the data collected confirms trends from earlier chapters: education, ethnicity and cultural gender norms are relevant predictors of the labor outcomes for Caribbean immigrants. PREVIEW iv To conclude, in Chapter 5, I present arguments in support of quantitative-qualitative research in economics. By triangulating all the information gathered in previous chapters, I summarize the main conclusions on Caribbean immigrant integration and discuss the complementarity between the econometric analysis and my fieldwork. There are many benefits to conducting fieldwork and collecting qualitative data: it provides deeper explanations on realworld situations to support the quantitative analysis. Many of the findings in this dissertation are consistent with existing literature but by adopting a quantitative-qualitative analytical lens, I produce new estimates on Caribbean immigrants communities, while also analyzing the intersectionality of gender, education, race, ethnicity and culture. While the pace and levels of integration vary, it can be said that Caribbean immigrants, especially women, are successful in integrating the US labor market.

While certain neighborhoods stand out above others for improving future outcomes for low-income children, little is known about how neighborhood effects are transmitted or what day-today mechanisms are at play. Do neighborhoods primarily influence children through exposure to quality community programs, mentors, and resources, or do they influence children through improved parenting practices and family processes? This research addresses this question by combining data from the American Time Use Survey and the Equality of Opportunity Project to compare daily time use in areas with high and low economic mobility. I find differences in parenting practices; parents living in areas of high intergenerational mobility more often spend time obtaining government services, spend more time at home, more time with household members, and more time in high quality care of children. This suggests that social norms governing parenting practices may contribute to improved opportunity for children more than previously realized. In contrast, I find no differences between areas with high and low economic mobility in the amount of community exposure time among adolescents, suggesting that community exposure may be operating through undetected differences in the quality of interactions.

Within this dissertation, I examine how behaviors are affected by and affect education decisions. Within the first chapter, I examine how infectious disease impacted school enrollment behaviors in a historical context. Both the second and third chapters focus on college financing decisions. The second chapter explores how student loan uptake impacts the retirement behaviors of parents of students. The third chapter examines if and how large-scale merit aid scholarships affect student loan uptake.In the first chapter, I analyze the effect of poliomyelitis outbreaks on school enrollment choices. This chapter adds to a growing literature on avoidance behavior within health economics, which focuses on how the fear of a disease changes behavior and creates additional costs. I find support for the idea that polio outbreaks resulted in lower likelihood of school enrollment for kindergarten-aged children and particularly for kindergarten-aged children with stay-at-home mothers. This result implies the channel for avoidance behavior is the ability to change behavior, here as a result either of a child’s age or a family’s income structure.In the second chapter, coauthored with Celeste Carruthers, we look at an unstudied topic within the student loan literature: how student loans influence parents of students. We examine the effect of student loan presence on several dimensions of retirement behaviors. We find that student loan presence results in significantly fewer dollars in retirement savings, later expected retirement age, and a higher likelihood of being employed and in the labor force in some specifications. However, there is evidence these results are driven by unobservables.In the third chapter, I examine the effect of large-scale merit aid programs on a broad measure of household debt. This debt measure includes student loan debt, credit card debt, medical bills, legal bills, and loans from relatives. Previous literature found large-scale merit aid programs result in lower a likelihood of student loan uptake and lower amounts of student loan debt. I employ a difference-in-difference strategy to exploit differences over time and states in the introduction of the programs. I do not find that these programs result in changes in student loan uptake or amount.

Many government programs transfer resources to older people and implicitly or explicitly tax their labor. We shed new light on the labor supply and welfare effects of such programs by investigating the Old Age Assistance Program (OAA). Exploiting the large differences in OAA programs across states and Census data on the entire US population in 1940, we find that OAA reduced the labor force participation rate among men aged 65–74 by 8.5 percentage points, more than one-half of its 1930–1940 decline, but that OAA’s implicit taxation of earnings imposed only small welfare costs on recipients.

The relationship between insurance coverage and use of specialty substance use disorder (SUD) treatment is not well understood. In this study, we add to the literature by examining changes in admissions to SUD treatment following the implementation of a 2010 Affordable Care Act provision requiring health insurers to offer dependent coverage to young adult children of their beneficiaries under age 26. We use national administrative data on admissions to specialty SUD treatment and apply a difference-in-differences design to study effects of the expansion on the rate of treatment utilization among young adults and, among those in treatment, changes in insurance status and payment source. We find that admissions to treatment declined by 11% after the expansion. However, the share of young adults covered by private insurance increased by 5.4 percentage points and the share with private insurance as the payment source increased by 3.7 percentage points. This increase was largely offset by decreased payment from government sources.

It remains unclear to what extent shifts in gender attitudes are products of changes in micro-level characteristics, macro-level social transformations, or net cohort and period transitions. We test these questions on 20 waves of data from the General Social Survey, 1977–2016 (N = 45,125). Compositional change in individual characteristics accounts for almost 78 percent of the cohort variation in gender attitudes, but only 32 percent of the historical transformations. Macro dynamics are responsible for an additional 60 percent of the historical change in gender attitudes. Two structural forces are associated with historical transitions in American gender attitudes: gender equality in the labor force and the rise of men’s overwork. Each of these factors accounts for a significant proportion of the period variation in gender attitudes in our analysis, and the rise of men’s overwork appears to account for the puzzle of the “stalled revolution” in the 1990s and its “restart” in the mid-2000s. The conservative swing in 1994–2004 correlates with the rise of overwork, as the proportion of men who overwork soared during this period when traditional gender roles were reinforced.

Over the last 20 years, policymaking related to immigrant populations has increasingly been conducted at the state-level. State immigrant polices may influence immigrant poverty by determining immigrants’ level of access to social, economic, political, and health resources and by shaping the social environment. Further, these immigrant policies may shape the stratification between citizens and noncitizens, potentially contributing to distinct patterns of disparities in poverty by both citizenship and race/ethnicity. To assess the relationship between immigrant policy and socioeconomic stratification of immigrants across citizenship status and race/ethnicity in the U.S., we combined data from the 2014 American Community Survey and a measure of level of inclusion of state immigrant policies. We estimated fixed-effects logistic regressions to test the associations between poverty and the interaction of level of inclusiveness, citizenship, and race/ethnicity, controlling for state- and individual-level characteristics. Results showed that there are significant disparities in poverty by citizenship status and race/ethnicity. Asian/Pacific Islander (API) noncitizens experienced lower levels of poverty in states with higher levels of inclusion. Both Latino and API citizens experienced lower levels of poverty in states with higher versus lower levels of inclusion. Among Latinos, the gap in poverty rates between noncitizens and citizens is larger in more inclusive than less inclusive ones, suggesting that the potential positive impact of more inclusive environments does not necessarily translate to the most vulnerable Latino group. The level of inclusion was not associated with differences among Whites and Blacks. Findings suggest that states with more inclusive immigrant policies may foster environments that advance the economic well-being of API noncitizens, as well as API and Latino citizens.

The minimum wage needs to be understood as a reference point for the larger low-wage labor market. By constructing ten wage contours on data from the CPS, it becomes clear that there are welfare effects for the middle class from raising the minimum wage. In years when there were increases in the statutory minimum wage, there were also increases in the median wages of each contour. And in years when there were no increases in the statutory minimum wage, the median wages in each contour remained the same. As those earning at the top of the tenth contour in 2015 were earning the equivalent of $125,000, it would appear that the minimum wage may have positive welfare effects. A policy that places upward pressure on wages can also reduce income inequality. To the extent that the minimum wage does reduce income inequality it again serves as a tool to bolster the middle class. Institutions, in other words, do matter. The argument that the minimum wage is beneficial rests on the assumption that the welfare effects are broader than simply raising incomes of the poor. In this chapter, I present data addressing three related issues: the data on the first demonstrates that there are wage contour effects to increases in the minimum wage, and that through these contour effects, a larger segment of the population will derive benefit from increases in the minimum wage. And the data on the second shows the demographics of what can be referred to as the “effective” minimum wage population—those earning in wage contours around the statutory minimum. Therefore, if the minimum wage labor market is constructed in terms of who earns around the minimum wage because we are viewing the minimum wage through the prism of contours, and if because of those contour effects the benefits accrue to a population larger than the “effective” minimum wage population, it then stands to reason that the minimum wage is indeed a middle-class issue. The data on the third, then, shows the effect of the minimum wage on income inequality, which is also related to the health of the middle class. The biggest problem with the minimum wage debate to date is that it has been limited in scope. Much of the research, as we saw in the last chapter, has focused on a limited sub-segment of the labor market: those specifically earning the statutory minimum wage. And yet, if the statutory minimum wage can be viewed as a main reference point for wage setting in the larger low-wage labor market, the minimum wage assumes a larger dimension. The minimum wage then becomes about the “effective” minimum wage population, which is now comprised of low-wage workers who earn around the statutory minimum. But this can only be understood if we examine the minimum wage through the prism of wage contours: the intervals workers are earning in above the statutory minimum wage. Small businesses often claim that increases in the minimum wage will hurt them (Haarlander and Tan 2004). In other words, the genuinely political opposition would appear to be alluding to the effects of wage contours. The 2014 CBO report appeared to allude to wage contour effects when it suggested that as many as 16 million Americans were going to see their pay, despite the fact that no more than 3.6 million hourly wage earners were getting paid at or below the statutory minimum wage. Clearly if only 3.6 million hourly workers were paid the statutory minimum, then the benefits were accruing to more than those earning the statutory minimum. It then had to follow that more than 12 million of these workers were earning wages in contours above the minimum. The implication appeared to be clear: an increase in the statutory minimum wage would force employers to raise the wages of their workers who weren’t earning the statutory minimum, but who were earning around the minimum. Although the CBO report did not address itself to the issue of rising income inequality, much of the literature touting the possible welfare benefits of the minimum wage note that one benefit would at least be a decline in the rise in income inequality. Why is income inequality so critical to the discussion of larger benefits to the middle class? Because the growing gap between those at the bottom, mostly low-paid and low-skilled workers, and those at the top, mostly highly paid and highly skilled workers, speaks to a significant issue: the disappearance of the middle.