This paper analyzes the determinants behind the spatial distribution of the LGBT population in the U.S. We relate the size of the present-day LGBT population to the discovery of gold mines during the 19th century gold rushes. Comparing the surroundings of these gold mines to other current and former mining counties, we find that there are currently 10-15% more same-sex couples in counties in which gold discoveries were made during the gold rushes. We also provide empirical evidence that residents of gold rush counties still have more favorable attitudes toward homosexuality nowadays. Our findings are consistent with two mechanisms. First, gold rushes led to a large (temporary) increase in the male-to-female ratio. Second, we show that gold rush counties were less likely to house a notable place of worship at the time of the discovery (and in the following decades) and are currently less religious, suggesting a role of institutions in shaping attitudes and norms.

Operating in individual cities, US clearinghouses were the closest thing to a central bank before 1914, but they only assisted banks that chose to join the association. Using an annual bank-level database for seven states between 1880 and 1910, this paper shows that after the entry of a clearinghouse member banks were less likely and nonmember banks in the same city were more likely to close. The results are driven by the fact that the presence of clearinghouses led all banks to become more exposed to systemic liquidity risk, yet provided liquidity only to member banks during panics.

The decline of employment-based health plans is commonly attributed to rising premium costs. Using restricted data and a matched sample from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey–Insurance Component, the authors extend previous studies by testing the relationships among premium costs, employment relationships, and the provision of health benefits between 1999 and 2012. The authors report that both establishment- and state-level union densities are associated with a higher likelihood of employers’ providing health plans, whereas right-to-work legislation is associated with lower provision. These factors combined rival rising premium cost in predicting offering. This finding indicates that the declining provision of health benefits could be in part driven by the transformation of the employment relationship in the United States and that labor unions may remain a critical force in sustaining employment-based coverage in the twenty-first century.

Aum et al. (2018) quantify the impact of production complementarities and differential productivity growth across occupations and sectors on the slowdown of aggregate productivity growth. This note expands their work to study substitutability between new computer equipment and labor in individual occupations as opposed to all occupations combined. Preliminary empirical evidence suggests (1) significantly different elasticities of substitution between computers and labor across occupations and (2) a strong correlation between productivity growth of computers and labor in occupations where these two inputs are complementary. When they are substitutes, however, their productivity growth rates appear uncorrelated. These findings have the potential to amplify or weaken the magnitude of the aggregate productivity slowdown explained by Aum et al. (2018) making their approach a promising avenue for future research.

Background: Overweight and obesity have been linked with several objective and subjective measures of health. However, results are mixed and this relationship seems to vary across populations, genders and age categories. This paper investigates the relationship between categories of the Body Mass Index (underweight, normal weight, overweight, obesity and severe obesity) and satisfaction with health. Methods: Data come from eleven waves of the Swiss Household Panel (2004–2014). Analyses are based on 7151 men and 8142 women aged between 18 and 75. Satisfaction with health was measured on a ten-point scale. Pooled OLS, random and fixed effects were estimated. Results: Overall, departures from the normal weight range seemed to decrease the individual satisfaction with health. Obesity and severe obesity appeared to have the strongest impact on satisfaction with health and this is particularly so in the case of women.

Upon arrival in the United States, refugees suffer from a substantial disadvantage in the US labor market when compared to non-refugee immigrants and natives. However, over time, labor market assimilation occurs for refugees as their employment outcomes improve, but the degrees and rates of assimilation vary greatly among refugee groups. This paper aims to analyze why some refugee groups perform worse than others in the US labor market do when human capital differences have been accounted for. This paper has two foci; firstly, it looks at how source country-specific characteristics as measured by the source country’s GDP per capita impact the labor market performance among refugee groups. The second focus broadens the scope to identify non-human capital factors that affect wage gaps between refugees and non-refugee immigrants with similar backgrounds. Using the 2011-2015 American Community Survey data, I conducted both descriptive statistics and Ordinary Least Squares regression analyses to compare labor market outcomes of refugees from Vietnam, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Romania, Russia and other USSR states, Laos, Iraq, and Somalia.

Introduction: Although infrequently recorded in electronic health records (EHRs), measures of SES are essential to describe health inequalities and account for confounding in epidemiologic research. Medical Assistance (i.e., Medicaid) is often used as a surrogate for SES, but correspondence between conventional SES and Medical Assistance has been insufficiently studied. Methods: Geisinger Clinic EHR data from 2001 to 2014 and a 2014 questionnaire were used to create six SES measures: EHR-derived Medical Assistance and proportion of time under observation on Medical Assistance; educational attainment, income, and marital status; and area-level poverty. Analyzed in 2016–2017, associations of SES measures with obesity, hypertension, type 2 diabetes, chronic rhinosinusitis, fatigue, and migraine headache were assessed using weighted age- and sex-adjusted logistic regression. Results: Among 5,550 participants (interquartile range, 39.6–57.5 years, 65.9% female), 83% never used Medical Assistance. All SES measures were correlated (Spearman’s p≤0.4). Medical Assistance was significantly associated with all six health outcomes in adjusted models. For example, the OR for prevalent type 2 diabetes associated with Medical Assistance was 1.7 (95% CI=1.3, 2.2); the OR for high school versus college graduates was 1.7 (95% CI=1.2, 2.5). Medical Assistance was an imperfect proxy for SES: associations between conventional SES measures and health were attenuated <20% after adjustment for Medical Assistance. Conclusions: Because systematically collected SES measures are rarely available in EHRs and are unlikely to appear soon, researchers can use EHR-based Medical Assistance to describe inequalities. As SES has many domains, researchers who use Medical Assistance to evaluate the association of SES with health should expect substantial unmeasured confounding.

This study introduces a new sample that links people and families across 1860, 1880, and 1900 census data to explore the intergenerational impact of slavery on black families in the United States. Slaveholding—the number of slaves owned by a single farmer or planter—is used as a proxy for experiences during slavery. Slave family structures varied systematically with slaveholding sizes. Enslaved children on smaller holdings were more likely to be members of single-parent or divided families. On larger holdings, however, children tended to reside in nuclear families. In 1880, a child whose mother had been on a farm with five slaves was 49 % more likely to live in a single-parent household than a child whose mother had been on a farm with 15 slaves. By 1900, slaveholding no longer had an impact. However, children whose parents lived in single-parent households were themselves more likely to live in single-parent households and to have been born outside marriage.

In 2016, more than three-quarters of lowincome older Californians whose head of household is age 65 or over are “rent burdened,” and more than half are “severely rent burdened” (Exhibit 1). The shortage of affordable housing is a pressing issue in California. For most older adult renters who are retired and on fixed incomes, rising rents create a particular challenge. These tenants have often lived in the same unit for many years, have established ties with their health care providers and community services, and have support networks of friends nearby. If rents rise too high, they can be forced to leave their support networks for distant but less expensive housing. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) defines housing costs that are over 30 percent of the pretax family income as a burden, and costs of over 50 percent as a severe burden.1 Older adults who are moderately or severely rent burdened face overall financial stress and have limited resources to pay for food, medicine, and other necessities. Housing is the largest part of the cost of living for older adults, which is a factor in why many older Californians do not have enough income to make ends meet for a minimally decent standard of living.

With the increasing number of cultural districts as place-based policies, one of the first questions that arise is: why do some states adopt cultural district laws but not others? Exploring the difference in timing of adoption by each state, I examine the determinants of cultural district laws. The results suggest the presence of geographical and industry competition, as well as an imitation and learning mechanism. In addition, the existence of tax incentives in neighboring laws have opposite effects of laws with no tax incentives on explaining the adoption of new laws by state governments.

Claims that environn1ental and climate change (ECC) may lead to mass migration and popu­lation displacement (MPD) have helped to motivate research on the ECC-MPD relationship (Myers 2002; Stern 2007). In this chapter, we summarize an important part of these efforts by providing a brief, but targeted review of the motivations for and uses of multilevel event his­tory models. Our work builds on earlier reviews that highlighted the in1portance of multilevel approaches (Hunter et al. 2015; Kniveton et al. 2008; Mcleman 2013; Piguet 2010), including some of the tools (e.g., event history models) that demographers use to study migration (Fussell et al. 2014). One tool that received only limited attention in these reviews is that of multilevel event history models.As we later discuss, these models are characterized by several hallmarks that are particularly important in research on the ECC-MPD relationship. This chapter is organized as follows. First, in an effort to accommodate readers from different training and disciplinary backgrounds, we (re)introduce event history models. We then describe two problems that complicate efforts to use event history models to study the ECC-MPD relationship. Following a discussion of three overlapping approaches chat are commonly used to mitigate these problems, we detail their use in current empirical research. Specifically, we inven­tory and assess 20 studies published since the early 2000s in which the author(s) used multilevel event history models to study the ECC-MPD relationship. Particular attention is paid to the levels of analysis considered, the measure(s) ofECC used, and model specificacion(s). Given the targeted nature of this chapter, interested readers are encouraged to pursue more extended and advanced treatments of event history models (Allison 1982, 1984; Cox 1972; Singer and Wil­let 2003;Yamaguchi 1991), multilevel models (Gelman 2006; Kreft and De Leeuw 1998; Luke 2004; Rabe-Hesketh and Skrondol 2012; Raudenbush and Bryk 2002; Snijders and Bosker 2011), and multilevel event history models (Barber et al. 2000; Duchateau and Janssen 2010).

Using a two-stage decomposition technique, this paper analyzes the role of occupational segregation in explaining the probability of women vis-`a-vis men of finding high-paying jobs over the life-cycle. Jobs are classified as highly-remunerated if their compensation exceeds a threshold, which is set at different values to span the entire wage distribution. Results obtained from pooled CPS surveys indicate that the importance of occupational segregation remains vir- tually unchanged over the life-cycle for low- and middle-wage workers. However, women’s access to high-paying occupations becomes significantly more restricted as workers age, suggesting a previously undocumented type of ‘glass ceiling’ in the U.S.

I establish a new stylised fact showing that less educated workers are not only less mobile, they are also significantly less likely to move with a job in hand. Using evidence based on US panel data, I argue that a large portion of the observed differences in migration behaviour is driven by the differences in workers' employment options in other regions. Compared to college graduates, less educated workers find job search in more distant regions much more difficult. This limits their options to move for guaranteed employment, forcing them to move speculatively, and thereby reducing their overall mobility. I develop these results in two stages. First, I adapt the recent literature from empirical IO on discrete choice models with heteregeneous option sets to isolate the impact of differences in employment opportunities on migration decisions. Second, I extend the standard model of job search (McCall (1970)) to multiple residential locations. I estimate this model to quantify the size of cross-regional job search frictions, finding that they can explain approximately half of the migration propensity gap between the more and the less educated. This result opens a new policy channel in addressing regional differences and those left behind: the importance of the ability to find a job before moving suggests a large social return to improving regional search and matching for less educated groups.

Sibling interactions play important roles in socialization; however, little is known about sibling caretaking in contemporary families. This study examined the prevalence of adolescents providing care for younger siblings and the quality of care as associated with a broad spectrum of individual, microsystem, and macrosystem factors. Relying on nationally representative time diary data from the American Time Use Survey, we found that factors at multiple levels (individual, microsystem, and macrosystem) were associated with sibling caretaking. Gendered patterns in caretaking emerged. The caretaker’s sex and the ages and sexes of younger siblings correlated with the incidence and quality of sibling care. Boys more often cared for younger brothers, and girls more often cared for younger sisters. In addition, boys more often played with younger siblings while girls more often provided physical care and talked with younger siblings, mirroring gendered patterns seen in parents.

Hurricane Sandy hit New York City on October 29, 2012 and greatly disrupted transportation systems, power systems, work, and schools. This research used survey data from 397 respondents in the NYC Metropolitan Area to develop an agent-based model for capturing commuter behavior and adaptation after the disruption. Six different recovery scenarios were tested to find which systems are more critical to recover first to promote a faster return to productivity. Important factors in the restoration timelines depends on the normal commuting pattern of people in that area. In the NYC Metropolitan Area, transit is one of the common modes of transportation; therefore, it was found that the subway/rail system recovery is the top factor in returning to productivity. When the subway/rail system recovers earlier (with the associated power), more people are able to travel to work and be productive. The second important factor is school and daycare closure (with the associated power and water systems). Parents cannot travel unless they can find a caregiver for their children, even if the transportation system is functional. Therefore, policy makers should consider daycare and school condition as one of the important factors in recovery planning. The next most effective scenario is power restoration. Telework is a good substitute for the physical movement of people to work. By teleworking, people are productive while they skip using the disrupted transportation system. To telework, people need power and communication systems. Therefore, accelerating power restoration and encouraging companies to let their employees' telework can promote a faster return to productivity. Finally, the restoration of major crossings like bridges and tunnels is effective in the recovery process.

New Hampshire residents value the state's centurieslong commitment to promoting freedom and equality, 1 but this promise has not been realized for women and their families. Moving forward, New Hampshire's women need policies that ensure economic security, prosperity, and workplace equality. Women need policies that reflect their roles as providers and caregivers. In New Hampshire, mothers are the sole, primary, or co-breadwinners in 65.6 percent of families, and these numbers are higher for some women of color. 2 The following policy recommendations can help support the economic security of women and families in New Hampshire. 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 New Hampshire enjoy the fullest protections against discrimination. • New Hampshire women who are full-time, year-round workers earned about 79 cents for every dollar that New Hampshire men earned in 2017; 3 if the wage gap continues to close at its current rate, women will not reach parity in the state until 2079. 4 The wage gap is even larger for black women and Latinas in New Hampshire, who earned 65.2 cents and 63.2 cents, respectively, for every dollar that white men earned in 2016. 5 • Due to the gender wage gap, each woman in New Hampshire will lose an average of $361,240 over the course of her lifetime. 6

Oil and gas pipelines are one of widely used modes of transport of oil and gas products. They often traverse through vast geographical areas and can carry toxic and flammable commodity. Therefore, their mishaps cannot be neglected as they pose inherent hazard to surrounding population and environment. Local land use and development decisions can have huge impact on the pipeline safety. Given the importance and complexity of these infrastructure, they haven’t received enough attention from planners and planning scholars. There are several researches that look into the effectiveness of land use planning in coping with various types of hazards but there is lack of literature that look into pipeline related hazards. On the other side of spectrum, there are research that investigate pipeline safety in terms of complex risk assessment models without including socioeconomics and land use elements in theirevaluation. Thus, the primary research purpose of my research was to fill the gap by formulating a straightforward method that connects the land use planning and pipeline safety. Land use planning was evaluated in terms of physical land use and socioeconomic characteristics around the pipeline accidents. Pipeline safety was evaluated in terms of economic costs of pipeline accidents. Onshore hazardous liquid pipeline accidents that occurred in Texas from 2002 to 2016 were the basis of the analysis. I explored the impact of land use planning on pipeline safety by assessing the relationship between various economic costs of pipeline accidents with accidents characteristics, different types of existing land use and socioeconomic characteristics surrounding pipeline accidents in the state of Texas using series of multiple linear regression. The result showed that the physical land use and population characteristics around pipeline accidents can impact the economic costs of accidents. The secondary research purpose of my research was to compare the land use types and population characteristics at several distances of pipeline accidents using t-test. The result suggested that the intensity of development around the pipeline accidents is relatively higher and the age of residential housing near pipeline accidents are newer suggesting the area around the pipeline are growing.

In November of 2016, Los Angeles County voters decided to invest in infrastructure in order to improve the sustainability, connectivity, and livability of our region. Measure M is estimated to raise $860 million annually in perpetuity for transportation improvements. Measure A is estimated to raise $94.5 million annually for parks, beaches, and open space. These major investments in Los Angeles County are making history but are also making our future: together they secure sorelyneeded, long-term funding for infrastructure, and can be the foundation for building a more sustainable, equitable region for decades to come....

Most people in California take for granted the water and sanitation in their homes. They turn the tap and clean, relatively inexpensive, abundant water flows out. They flush the toilet, and waste vanishes. Yet there are communities in California who do not have these basic necessities in their homes. In January 2018, over half a million Californians were served by water utilities that were out of compliance with the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA). The worst outbreak of Hepatitis A in recent memory occurred in 2016-2018 due to open defecation and lack of handwashing facilities for persons experiencing homelessness. California’s tribes continue to face problems of poor housing and water and sanitation service, with two-thirds of tribal communities reporting inadequate home plumbing in 2015.1 And the cost of water has increased for many, particularly among small and medium size systems, with 39 community water systems in the state charging more than $100 a . . .