Hundreds of U.S. cities, termed shrinking cities, suffered notable population loss during the period of 1910-2010. The effects of such urban depopulation range from minor problems associated with a weakened tax base or housing market, to major problems associated with widespread abandonment and dereliction. A shrinking city literature that began in the mid-2000s has grown significantly in recent years, however, it still struggles with defining which cities belong in the shrinking city discussion, how urban systems unfold within a shrinking city, and what strategies are best to put forth to rectify their problems. The objective of this research is to understand how multidimensional urban processes unfold in shrinking U. S. cities across different scales. Specifically, this research aims to 1) develop a better understanding of the types of shrinking cities in the U.S., 2) examine the efficacy of right-sizing strategies in an iconic shrinking central city, and 3) understand how neighborhood change spatially manifests in a metropolitan area anchored by a large central city. To achieve those goals, this dissertation conducted studies on shrinking cities at different scales by 1) developing a . . .

Diabetes is a chronic disease with considerable demographic disparities. The prevalence of type II diabetes (DMII) is considerably higher for Hispanics at 12.8% compared to 9.3% for the general population. Additionally, Hispanic women are significantly more likely than non-Hispanic white women to experience co-morbidities including end-stage renal disease, cardiovascular disease, and death due to diabetes related complications. The purpose of this Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) scholarly project is to evaluate the outcomes of a culturally-tailored diabetes education program in a group of Hispanic female patients 50 years and older that have been diagnosed with DMII. Guided by the Health Belief Model, this project consisted of four sessions intended to improve diabetes knowledge and self-management skills among participants. Two forms of data were collected. Results indicated significant increases (statistically and clinically) in self-assessment survey score gradient from baseline to final in surveys. Kruskal-Wallis (p < 0.000) is well above 95% Confidence. Summary of questionnaire responses shows a dramatic shift in responses indicating improvement in diabetes self-management skills. A culturally-sensitive diabetes program has the potential of facilitating adaptation of cultural beliefs with traditional diabetes management, thereby promoting better outcomes and quality of life among a population of the underserved, low-literate, and financially limited population. The diabetes self-management project has demonstrated effectiveness in increased knowledge and behavior that will have a long-term effect on a healthy lifestyle and better disease outcomes among older Hispanic female.

We examine how the entry of gig-economy platforms influences local entrepreneurial activity. On the one hand, such platforms may reduce entrepreneurial activity by offering stable employment for the unemployed and underemployed. On the other hand, such platforms may enable entrepreneurial activity by offering work flexibility that allows the entrepreneur to redeploy resources strategically in order to pursue the nascent venture. To resolve this tension, we examine the entry of the ridesharing platform Uber X into local areas. We use two measures of entrepreneurial activity: crowdfunding campaign launches at Kickstarter, the world’s largest reward-based crowdfunding platform, and levels of self-employment from the Current Population Survey. Results indicate a negative and significant relationship between platform entry and both measures of entrepreneurial activity. Importantly, the effect manifests primarily amongst unsuccessful Kickstarter campaigns and unincorporated entrepreneurial ventures, suggesting that gig-economy platforms predominantly reduce lower quality entrepreneurial activity, seemingly by offering viable employment for the unemployed and underemployed. These relationships are corroborated with a first-hand survey conducted with gig-economy service providers.

The current study investigated the mediating effects of body mass index (BMI), physical activity, and emotional distress on the association between short sleep duration (<7 hours per 24-hour period) and cardiovascular disease (CVD) and risk factors. We used data from the National Health Interview Survey, an ongoing nationally representative cross-sectional study of noninstitutionalized US adults (≥18 years) from 2004 to 2013 (N = 206,049). Participants provided information about anthropometric features (height and weight), sociodemographic factors, health behaviors (smoking and physical activity), emotional distress, and physician-diagnosed health conditions, including hypertension, coronary heart disease, diabetes, heart attack, stroke, kidney disease, and cancer. Structural equation modeling was used to assess the mediating effects of physical activity, BMI, and emotional distress on the relationship between short sleep and CVDs and risk factors (coronary heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, chronic kidney disease, heart attack, and stroke). Of the sample, 54.7% were female, 60.1% identified as white, 17.7% as Hispanic, and 15.4% as black. The mean age of the respondents was 46.75 years (SE = 0.12), with a mean BMI of 27.11 kg/m2 (SE = 0.02) and approximately 32.5% reported short sleep duration. The main relationship between short sleep and CVD and risk factors was significant (β = 0.08, P < .001), as was the mediated effect via BMI (indirect effect = 0.047, P < .001), emotional distress (indirect effect = 0.022, P < .001), and physical activity (indirect effect = -0.022, P = .035), as well as after adjustment for covariates, including age, race, sex, marital status, and income: short sleep and CVD (B = 0.15; SE = 0.01; P < .001), BMI (B = 0.05; SE = 0.00; P < .001), emotional distress (B = 0.02; SE = 0.00; P < .001), and physical activity (B = 0.01; SE = 0.00; P < .001). Our findings indicate that short sleep is a risk factor for CVD and that the relationship between short sleep and CVD and risk factors may be mediated by emotional distress and obesity, and negatively mediated by physical activity.

Women and families in Tennessee currently face obstacles to achieving economic and health security. Lawmakers in Tennessee should prioritize policies that implement higher, livable wages; ensure that women can receive equal pay for equal work; and reduce barriers to reproductive health care. These policies will allow parents to maintain good jobs that enable them to work, raise their children, and lead healthy lives. Women need policies that reflect their roles as providers and caregivers. In Tennessee, mothers are the sole, primary, or co-breadwinners in 63.2 percent of families, and these numbers are higher for some women of color. 1 The following policy recommendations can help support the economic security of women and families in Tennessee. Promote equal pay for equal work Although federal law prohibits unequal pay for equal work, there is more that can be done to ensure that both women and men across Tennessee enjoy the fullest protec-tions against discrimination. • Tennessee women who are full-time, year-round workers earned about 82 cents for every dollar that Tennessee men earned in 2017; 2 if the wage gap continues to close at its current rate, women will not reach parity in the state until 2054. 3 The wage gap is even larger for black women and Latinas in Tennessee, who earned 67.6 cents and 53.3 cents, respectively, for every dollar that white men earned in 2016. 4 • Due to the gender wage gap, each woman in Tennessee will lose an average of $309,800 over the course of her lifetime. 5

The USGS National GAP Program is a biodiversity mapping program implemented at the state level via the Cooperative Fish & Wildlife Research Units (CFWRU). The New York CFWRU completed NY-GAP analysis in 2001, providing, for the first time, a statewide vertebrate species distribution dataset. A subsequent regional project, HR-GAP, documented 75% of the State’s terrestrial vertebrates as having a significant portion of their range within the Hudson River Valley region (HR). The presence of high biodiversity in conjunction with development pressures was the impetus for efforts to develop a regional residential growth prediction model, based on Block Group (BG) level Census data, with the purpose of identifying biodiversity regions at risk from future residential development. Initial efforts resulted in a regression model which predicted 77 of the 2,212 total BG in the study area to be prime candidates for a substantial percentage of the predicted new residential growth. These BGs, classified as intensive growth areas (IGA), were intersected with biodiversity data to quantify that 53% of the State’s vertebrate species are within and intensive growth BG, as well as 41% of the threatened, endangered, or special concern (TES) species. Additional model development provided a slight improvement to the predictability of the model while using only digitally available regional data. The second model explained 38% of the variance associated with the identification of IGAs and identified the top 5% of BGs showing substantial increases in residential housing units over the last decade. Of the BGs predicted to be areas of fast growth, 53% and 41% were IGAs as computed from 2000 and 2010 Census data, respectively. Of the IGAs predicted for 2000 and 2010, 16% and 8%, respectively, were also species-rich BGs. A third modeling effort was undertaken to improve upon the earlier residential housing prediction models based on regression analysis of Census-based BG data and physiographic variables aggregated to the BG level geography. It was hypothesized that increasing the spatial resolution through dasymetric mapping of the BG data would further improve model results and subsequently the identification of biodiversity areas at risk. The model results from the dasymetric mapping did not reveal significant improvement to earlier model results. Investigations of various alternative Census-based datasets yielded similar results. These efforts to model residential growth at the landscape scale support the hypothesis that the spatial distribution of residential housing growth can be modeled using Census Block Group (BG) level data and other publicly available data to provide a coarse filter for the identification of biodiversity areas at risk from projected residential growth.

The purpose of this chapter is to assess the importance of individual social capital characteristics in determining wages, both directly through their valuation by employers and indirectly through their impact on individual occupational choice. We find that a person's level of sociability and care for others works through both channels to explain wage differences between social and nonsocial occupations. Additionally, expected wages in each occupation type are found to be at least as important as a person's level of social capital in choosing a social occupation. We make use of restricted

Between 1907 and 1914, the "Galveston Movement," a philanthropic effort spearheaded by Jacob Schiff, fostered the immigration of approximately 10,000 Russian Jews through the Port of Galveston, Texas. Upon arrival, households were given train tickets to pre-selected locations west of the Mississippi River where a job awaited. Despite the program's stated purpose to locate new Russian Jewish immigrants to the Western part of the U.S., we find that almost 90 percent of the prime age male participants ultimately moved east of the Mississippi, typically to large Northeastern and Midwestern cities. We use a standard framework for modeling location decisions to show destination assignments made cities more desirable, but this effect was overwhelmed by the attraction of religious and country of origin enclaves. By contrast, there is no economically or statistically significant effect of a place having a larger base of immigrants from other areas of the world and economic conditions appear to be of secondary importance, especially for participants near the bottom of the skill distribution. Our paper also introduces two novel adjustments for matching historical data - using an objective measure of match quality to fine tune our match scores and a deferred acceptance algorithm to avoid multiple matching.

La devastación causada por el huracán María en Puerto Rico sin duda afecta de manera más aguda a los sectores más vulnerables: los pobres, los adultos mayores, los niños, las personas con condiciones de salud críticas, así como a otras poblaciones marginadas. Este trabajo relaciona la experiencia vivida en Puerto Rico con el paso de María con la literatura existente sobre los efectos de desastres naturales en poblaciones vulnerables. La vulnerabilidad pre-existente se evidencia con datos de la Encuesta de la Comunidad de Puerto Rico, evaluación que se complementa con la información recopilada por partes de prensa sobre los efectos del huracán en estas poblaciones. También se evalúa el rol del gobierno federal y del gobierno de Puerto Rico en su respuesta a la emergencia y las debilidades que ha mostrado el sistema federalista en su respuesta a los desastres naturales. Se finaliza con una serie de recomendaciones para reducir la vulnerabilidad ante los desastres naturales, haciendo hincapié en la importancia de desarrollar el capital social como amortiguador de los efectos de desastres naturales para la población en general, pero muy especialmente para aquellos que enfrentan mayores riesgos.

We revisit the celebrated relationship between supply constraints and home price growth. Augmenting existing models, we distinguish the roles of average versus marginal constraints in a dynamic monocentric city. In both theory and the panel of U.S. metropolitan areas, housing appreciates more where land availability decreases more with distance from downtown. Similarly, prices rise faster in cities with steeper rent gradients. Empirically, the parameter we estimate that governs marginal availability is not as strongly correlated with demand factors as average availability.

Based on observations that high-wage industries in 1980 experienced more evident job polarization between 1980 and 2009, we hypothesize that the persistent structure of interindustry wage differentials leads to heterogeneity in job polarization across industries; as the relative price of ICT capital declines, firms respond to exogenous wage differentials by replacing routine workers with capital. Our empirical analysis shows that, during the last three decades, the annualized growth rate of ICT capital per worker increased by 0.34 percent and that of routine employment decreased by 0.41 percent in the U.S. industries that paid 10 percent higher wages in 1980.

There is little national data about the need for early childhood and health services for American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) children. The American Indian and Alaska Native Early Childhood Needs Assessment project was initiated in 2015 to develop three designs for future studies to inform a national early childhood needs assessment for AI/AN children. The designs aim to (1) describe AI/AN children under 5 (not yet in kindergarten; hereafter referred to as “AI/AN young children”) and their families, (2) explore early childhood services organization and delivery for AI/AN children, and (3) assess communities’ capacity for conducting their own needs assessments.1

Since 2000, local governments, planning agencies, and private development firms have sought to revitalize aging spaces in Atlanta’s suburbs by experimenting with new urbanist (re)development projects. Proponents of this strategy have lauded the potential of these projects to enhance social integration between people of diverse ages, races, and incomes. However, critics argue that, in practice, new urbanism has often failed to substantially increase racial/ethnic and socioeconomic diversity and may even facilitate residential segregation and displacement. This research contributes to these debates by using linear regressions to analyze how new urbanist projects constructed between 2000 and 2013 in Atlanta’s suburban town centers have impacted racial change in the neighborhoods where they have been built. Results suggest that new urbanist project construction is significantly correlated with declining Hispanic populations and increasing White populations, supporting arguments that theorize new urbanism as a tool to effectively whiten select spaces.

Between 1921 and 1939, the border separating Detroit, Michigan, from Windsor, Canada, represented a key site for undocumented immigration on America’s northern border, and the migrants in question were European. This essay examines industrial urban America in the wake of 1921 and 1924 Immigration Acts to reveal the effects of restriction and policing on America’s emerging welfare state. It finds that in Detroit, after federal policies gave nativism the force of the law, local smuggling, policing, and enforcement practices branded foreign-born Europeans as illegal regardless of their legal status. During the New Deal Era, when the federal government built America’s welfare system, the stakes for belonging to the nation-state became higher than ever. In this moment of transition, local actors drew on rhetoric connecting foreigners to crime and dependence to urge federal policymakers to tie welfare benefits to citizenship. These local initiatives in Detroit and across the nation prompted the federal government to purge non-citizens from the Works Progress Administration, the new welfare program most associated with dependence and relief. Ultimately, this essay argues that a shift in national mood about foreignness in urban America took hold of the United States in the 1920s and shaped federal welfare policy by the 1930s.

Black entrepreneurs in the state of Texas reported that they did not achieve the same level of success as nonminority enterprises. Many Black entrepreneurs have obtained education from top tier institutions and have the managerial experiences, skills, and working knowledge that facilitate business success, but they are not able to sustain business growth. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore the lived experiences of Black Texan entrepreneurs. This research was established using the conceptual framework of human capital. The overarching research question concerned the lived experiences of Black Texas entrepreneurs who were not as successful in business as their counterparts. Data were collected in the form of semistructured face-to- face interviews with 14 Black participants, using the African American Chamber of Commerce to facilitate networking among Black entrepreneurs. NVivo 11 software was used for data codification and thematic reduction. Emergent themes included (a) feeling good about being in business, (b) resourcefulness in business, (c) network advertising systems, (d) education, (e) having alternative plans if business closes, (f) feeling independent, and (g) activeness in business. The implications for positive social change include the potential for advising researchers on barriers confronted by Black entrepreneurs and potential steps to overcome those barriers. Additionally, scholars have recognized the need for greater understanding of how businesses are structured and managed by Black business-owners because this knowledge is vital to creating business prosperity for Black entrepreneurs who have dreams of becoming business owners.

Background: Ethiopia houses the second largest population of female adolescents in Africa. Adolescent childbearing can have detrimental effect to the health and wellbeing of women and their offspring. This study examined trends, sub-national variations and determinants of early childbearing (i.e. childbearing before age 20) in Ethiopia. Methods: Data from the 2000-2011 Ethiopia Demographic and Health Surveys and from the 2014-2016 Performance Monitoring and Accountability surveys were pooled for this analysis. Based on the year the women reached puberty, five different cohorts were reconstructed that date back to the early 1970s. Kaplan-Meier methodology was used to estimate the cumulative probability of early childbearing and a Cox proportional hazard regression model to examine the associated factors. Results: The cumulative probability of early childbearing declined by approximately two-fifth in the past four decades, from 57.6 to 35.3%. The occurrence of early childbearing varies substantially by region. In the most recent period, it ranged from 9.6% in Addis Ababa to 59% in Benishangul-Gumuz. Early childbearing risk was reduced by 95% for women who did not marry before the age of 20years compared to those who married before the age of 18years. For adolescents who married at the age of 18 and 19years, early childbearing risk decreased by 60 and 78%, respectively. During the same period, there was a parallel decline in the cumulative probability of early marriage (i.e., before the legal age of 18years) from 55.3 to 28.7%. Compared with adolescents with no education, those with elementary and secondary or higher education had a 50 and 82% lower risk of early childbearing, respectively. Conclusions: Early childbearing declined in Ethiopia, largely driven by a parallel reduction in early marriage. However, a large portion of adolescents are still facing early childbearing, and the situation is more dismal in some regions than others. A further reduction in early childbearing is warranted by enforcing the law on the minimum marriage age and expanding secondary and higher education for females. These efforts should give greater emphasis to regions where early childbearing is markedly high.

The aim of this paper is to study the long-run effects of a longevity increase on individual decisions about education and retirement, taking macroeconomic repercussions through endogenous factor prices and the pension system into account. We build a model of a closed economy inhabited by overlapping generations of finitely-lived individuals whose labour productivity depends on their age through the build-up of labour market experience and the depreciation of human capital. We make two contributions to the literature on the macroeconomics of population ageing. First, we show that it is important to recognize that a longer life need not imply a more productive life and that this matters for the affordability of an unfunded pension system. Second, we find that factor prices could move in a direction opposite to the one accepted as conventional wisdom following an increase in longevity, if this increase is accompanied by a sufficient decline in the rate of human capital depreciation.

In what ways—and to what degree—have universities contributed to the long-run growth, health, economic mobility, and gender/ethnic equity of their students’ communities and home states? The University of California ClioMetric History Project (UCCHP), based at the Center for Studies in Higher Education, extends prior research on this question in two ways. First, we have developed a novel digitization protocol—formatted optical character recognition (fOCR)—which transforms scanned structured and semi-structured texts like university directories and catalogs into high-quality computer-readable databases. We use fOCR to produce annual databases of students (1890s to 1940s), faculty (1900 to present), course descriptions (1900 to present), and detailed budgets (1911-2012) for many California universities. Digitized student records, for example, illuminate the high proportion of 1900s university students who were female and from rural areas, as well as large family income differences between male and female students and between students at public and private universities. Second, UCCHP is working to photograph, process with fOCR, and analyze restricted student administrative records to construct a comprehensive database of California university students and their enrollment behavior. This paper describes UCCHP’s methodology and provides technical documentation for the project, while also presenting examples of the range of data the project is exploring and prospects for future research.

Coal mining operations in Appalachia generate massive quantities of sludge-like waste, often laced with unsafe levels of toxic chemicals. Coal companies primarily store this waste behind large dam structures—called coal impoundments—that can be hundreds of feet tall and store billions of gallons of sludge. Impoundment failures in Appalachia have accounted for some of the largest technological and environmental disasters in U.S. history. Further, residents have expressed concerns about coal waste contaminating local drinking water. Despite these environmental risks, little is known about the spatial distribution of coal impoundments—and whether the facilities disproportionately burden disadvantaged communities. This dissertation includes three articles that examine various questions about the distribution of coal impoundments across space and how residents perceive of the risks related to them. The first article, published in Rural Sociology, uses the methods of quantitative environmental inequality assessment to test whether neighborhood-level poverty and unemployment are significant predictors of impoundment proximity. The second paper, accepted for publication at Society and Natural Resources, tests whether impoundment proximity is associated with poverty changes from 1990 to 2000 in Central Appalachia. The third paper uses unique survey data to examine the public’s risk perceptions of coal impoundments in Southern West Virginia.