We build a realistically calibrated life-cycle model of housing decisions under divorce risk. As observed in the data, our model predicts the recent increase in divorce rates leads to reduced homeownership rates. The event of a divorce negatively affects homeownership, and this effect is long-lasting. The risk of a divorce triggers a precautionary savings motive. However, this motive is weaker when individuals can invest in owner-occupied homes because homeowners' higher savings partially substitute for precautionary savings. When young, the larger asset accumulation due to divorce-risk induced precautionary savings enables households to buy homes earlier, whereas the presence of transaction costs leads to reduced homeownership for middle-aged and older households when divorce risk goes up.

Women have become increasingly economically self-reliant, depending more on paid employment for their positions in the income distribution than in the past. We know little about what happened to men, however, because most prior research restricts changes in self-reliance to be 'zero-sum,' with women's changes necessitating opposite and proportionate changes among men. We introduce a measure that allows asymmetric changes and also incorporates multiple population subgroups and income sources beyond couples' labor earnings. Using Current Population Survey data, we find that women's self-reliance increased dramatically, as expected, but men's declined only slightly. We decompose these trends into changes in family structure and redistribution, which increased and decreased self-reliance, respectively, for men and women, though more for women. Labor-market shifts, by contrast, were asymmetric and opposing, reducing men's self-reliance much less than they increased women's. Our approach opens opportunities for new insight into both gender inequality and the income attainment process.

We study how changes in the distribution of occupations have affected the aggregate non-pecuniary costs and benefits of working. The physical toll of work is smaller now than in 1950, with workers shifting away from occupations in which people report experiencing tiredness and pain. The emotional consequences of the changing occupation distribution vary substantially across demographic groups. Work has become happier and more meaningful for women, but more stressful and less meaningful for men. These changes appear to be concentrated at lower education levels.

Proposed outcomes for this meeting • Review study committee charge and proposed goals • Review Study Committee process • Receive follow up on research questions • Hear perspectives from a panel opposing a tip penalty • Discuss information received and confirm additional information needed • Agree on next steps 8:30 a.m.-8:50 a.m. Light breakfast served 1. Welcome B Kyle and Rick Varco, Co-Chairs a. Review committee charge and proposed goals for committee work • Understand current minimum wage policies • Evaluate and provide feedback on options for the following four ordinance components: a. Minimum Wage Rate and Indexing to Inflation b. Exemptions c. Tip penalty/credit d. Phase-in time • Make recommendations based on these findings and conclusions. b. Approval of minutes c. Debrief of previous meeting 8:50 a.m.-9:00 a.m.

During the Age of Mass Migration, 30 million Europeans left their home countries and emigrated to the United States. Sweden had one of the highest out-migration rates of the era. Between 1860 to 1920, around 1.3 million people—a quarter of the population—left Sweden to seek opportunity in the United States. This essay delves into one particular aspect of this historic migration episode. I study the socioeconomic outcomes of Swedish emigrants compared to those who chose to remain in Sweden. Starting with the 1880 Swedish population census, I locate the same individuals 20 years later in either the Swedish or U.S. censuses of 1900. For each year, I use their occupational information to assign each person a standardized socioeconomic status score using the HISCLASS scheme, after which I can compare the outcomes of emigrants and non-emigrants. In the initial results, I find a significant positive relationship between emigration and socioeconomic attainment, even after controlling for observable pre-emigration characteristics. Then, I use household fixed effects to compare migrants only to their non-migrating siblings. This eliminates the significance of the migration effect, suggest- ing that the positive socioeconomic outcomes of Swedish emigrants can be explained by their pre-emigration abilities and self-selection.

This report examines population change in six Great Lakes states: Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin.1 Our analysis relies on census and census-based data from 1990 to 2015 and on projections to 2040 using scenarios from the Urban Institute’s Mapping America’s Futures model. The Great Lakes states have recently grown in population (albeit more slowly than the US as a whole), with a slowly increasing proportion of the population in prime working age and a slowly diversifying racial and ethnic mix. But if current migration patterns persist and population aging proceeds as expected, by 2040, the region’s population will level off, the prime-working-age population will decrease both as an absolute number and as a share of the total population, and the pace of increasing racial and ethnic diversity will pick up slightly.

I study why some cities have strict housing supply regulation, how regulation affects the economy, and what policymakers can do to mitigate its effects. I develop and calibrate a spatial equilibrium model with heterogeneous workers, where local regulation is endogenously determined by voting. Cities with high productivity and scarce land vote for strict regulation. In a quantitative exercise, I find that regulation leads to spatial misallocation of labor and therefore reduces aggregate productivity. It also contributes to skill sorting, and wage and house price dispersion across cities. A federal policy that weakens incentives to regulate could raise productivity by 2.5%.

Housing is less affordable in Los Angeles than anywhere in the United States. So we are told, and local residents surely agree, but there must be better ways to measure that. More important to Angelenos is the trend in affordability. Living in Los Angeles has always been expensive, but how much less affordable has it become? And is the affordability problem growing worse in this area more rapidly than in other large metropolitan areas?

We study how changes in the distribution of occupations have affected the aggregate non-pecuniary costs and benefits of working. The physical toll of work is less now than in 1950, with workers shifting away from occupations in which people report experiencing tiredness and pain. The emotional consequences of the changing occupation distribution vary substantially across demographic groups. Work has become happier and more meaningful for women, but more stressful and less meaningful for men. These changes appear to be concentrated at lower education levels.

How did the Great Recession affect the college degree field choices? Utilizing the geographic variation in the severity of the recession in the US, I answer this question using the differences-indifferences and synthetic controls approaches. I find that the Great Recession affected Communication, Interdisciplinary Sciences, and Psychology fields positively whereas it impacted Science and Engineering Technologies field negatively. To explore whether these impacts were systematic, I categorize fields based on their sensitivity to the Great Recession. The results show that there was a shift from recession-sensitive majors towards recession-resistant majors, suggesting students' expectations about future labor market outcomes are affected by current shocks. JEL Codes: I23, I26, J24

Five studies tested the hypothesis that people living in more diverse neighborhoods would have more inclusive identities, and would thus be more prosocial. Study 1 found that people residing in more racially diverse metropolitan areas were more likely to tweet prosocial concepts in their everyday lives. Study 2 found that following the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings, people in more racially diverse neighborhoods were more likely to spontaneously offer help to individuals stranded by the bombings. Study 3 found that people living in more ethnically diverse countries were more likely to report having helped a stranger in the past month. Providing evidence of the underlying mechanism, Study 4 found that people living in more racially diverse neighborhoods were more likely to identify with all of humanity, which explained their greater likelihood of having helped a stranger in the past month. Finally, providing causal evidence for the relationship between neighborhood diversity and prosociality, Study 5 found that people asked to imagine that they were living in a more racially diverse neighborhood were more willing to help others in need, and this effect was mediated by a broader identity. The studies identify a novel mechanism through which exposure to diversity can influence people, and document a novel consequence of this mechanism.

As the size of human populations increases, so does the severity of the impacts of natural disasters. This is partly because more people are now occupying areas which are susceptible to hazardous natural events, hence, evacuation is needed when such events occur. Evacuation can be the most important action to minimise the impact of any disaster, but in many cases there are always people who are reluctant to leave. This paper describes an agent-based model (ABM) of evacuation decisions, focusing on the emergence of reluctant people in times of crisis and using Merapi, Indonesia as a case study. The individual evacuation decision model is influenced by several factors formulated from a literature review and survey. We categorised the factors influencing evacuation decisions into two opposing forces, namely, the driving factors to leave (evacuate) versus those to stay, to formulate the model. The evacuation decision (to stay/leave) of an agent is based on an evaluation of the strength of these driving factors using threshold-based rules. This ABM was utilised with a synthetic population from census microdata, in which everyone is characterised by the decision rule. Three scenarios with varying parameters are examined to calibrate the model. Validations were conducted using a retrodictive approach by performing spatial and temporal comparisons between the outputs of simulation and the real data. We present the results of the simulations and discuss the outcomes to conclude with the most plausible scenario.

The rising share of women in college with dependent children and growing emphasis on two‐generation policies for reducing socioeconomic inequality have galvanized research aimed at determining whether mothers' increased education can improve their and their children's well‐being. Yet as part of this effort, scholars have overlooked signs that mothers' college enrollment may not be unequivocally good for families. This research brief aims to bring greater attention to this side of the story. The authors analyze time diary (2003–2015) and well‐being data (2010, 2011, 2013) from the American Time Use Survey. The authors find that mothers in college experience a time squeeze that limits their time in caregiving, self‐care, and work, on one hand, and school‐related activities, on the other. This time squeeze may explain why mothers enrolled in college (compared with mothers who were not in school) also reported less happiness and more fatigue during activities with their children.

In this paper, we document the importance of high-skilled immigration for U.S. employment in STEM fields. To begin, we review patterns of U.S. employment in STEM occupations among workers with at least a college degree. These patterns mirror the cycle of boom and bust in the U.S. technology industry. Among younger workers, the share of hours worked in STEM jobs peaked around the year 2000, at the height of the dot-com bubble. STEM employment shares are just now approaching these previous highs. Next, we consider the importance of immigrant labor to STEM employment. Immigrants account for a disproportionate share of jobs in STEM occupations, in particular among younger workers and among workers with a master's degree or PhD. Foreign-born presence is most pronounced in computer-related occupations, such as software programming. The majority of foreign-born workers in STEM jobs arrived in the U.S. at age 21 or older. Although we do not know the visa history of these individuals, their age at arrival is consistent with the H-1B visa being an important mode of entry for highly trained STEM workers into the U.S. Finally, we examine wage differences between native and foreign-born labor. Whereas foreign-born workers earn substantially less than native-born workers in non-STEM occupations, the native-foreign born earnings difference in STEM jobs is much smaller. Further, foreign-born workers in STEM fields reach earnings parity with native workers much more quickly than they do in non-STEM fields. In non-STEM jobs, foreign-born workers require 20 years or more in the U.S. to reach earnings parity with natives; in STEM fields, they achieve parity in less than a decade.

This paper provides a model that can explain why women go to college at higher rates but have lower average incomes than men in the US and other countries. Differential fecundity and a general-equilibrium marriage-market effect form the basis of our explanation. The model can also explain the relationships between age at marriage and personal midlife income for men and for women as well as the relationship between age at marriage and spousal midlife income for women. Our explanations for these facts are supported by empirical evidence and calibration results.

Economists generally agree that more complete property rights lead to higher incomes, but rights are often constrained by other political and social goals. American Indian reservations provide a powerful example. Reservation poverty is often attributed to poor quality land as a result of expropriation and transfers to non-Indians, but a more complete explanation requires understanding how efforts to prevent further transfers shaped reservation land tenure. Under the Dawes Act of 1887, reservation lands were allotted to individual Indians, but held in trust by the federal government until allottees were deemed "competent" to hold fee-simple title. In 1934 the Indian Reorganization Act locked into trusteeship those lands that had not been released. We assess whether incomplete property rights resulting from trusteeship have affected reservation incomes using new panel data on income, land quality, and tenure. Our data reveal a U-shape between per capita income and the share of prime agricultural land on reservations. This is because reservations with relatively poor land were less likely to be allotted and, hence, remain under tribal control while reservations with high quality land were more likely to become fully privatized. Reservations with mid-quality land were allotted, but were less likely to be released from trusteeship. We conclude that incomplete property rights have stunted income growth for Native Americans, relative to local control, whether communal or private.

Previous studies give limited attention to the marital outcomes of Black immigrants in the United States. In this study, therefore, the main objective of the analysis is to examine the relationship between race-ethnicity, generational status, and first marriage among Black immigrants. Using data from the American Community Survey, the study tests two hypotheses. The first is that Black immigrants face greater constraints to first-marriage transition compared with non-Black immigrants. The second is that increasing generational status results in a convergence in the outcomes of Black immigrants with those of U.S.-born Blacks. The results show that Black immigrants enter first marriages at older ages compared with non-Black immigrants. With increasing generational status, however, Black immigrants are more likely to enter first marriages at younger ages compared with U.S.-born Blacks, suggesting that as assimilation increases, Black immigrants are less likely to have outcomes that are consistent with a retreat from marriage.

This article addresses the origins of the immigration restriction movement in the late 19th century United States, a movement that realized its aims in the early 20th. It critiques the dominant scholarly interpretation, which holds that the movement sprang from a racism that viewed the new immigrants of this period as biologically inferior. It argues first that activists did not have at hand a biological theory sufficient to this characterization and did not employ one. It argues second that the movement arose as an adroit political response to labor market competition. The Republican Party recognized the discontent of resident workers (including those of older immigrant origin) with competition from new immigrants. The Party discerned ethnic differences among new and old immigrants and capitalized on these conditions in order to win elections. Ethnocentrism and middle-class anxiety over mass immigrant added to a movement that depended on bringing working class voters into the Party.

The central role of partisanship in shaping political behavior and attitudes is wellestablished in research on political behavior in the United States. Partisan identification is highly stable, even in the face of changes to context and individual traits, after adolescence. But what shapes partisanship before it becomes stable? Can early life experiences produce enduring political affiliations? We examine the long-term determinants of partisan identification through an unprecedented individual-level dataset that links contemporary voterfiles to the 1940 U.S. Census. Linking these two datasets allows for novel analysis of the connection between early life experiences and presentday political behavior, providing new insights on classic questions about the nature of early-life socialization and partisanship. We investigate the effect of childhood exposure to people of different races and incomes, exploiting the ordering of households on the 1940 U.S. Census enumeration sheets to construct individual-level measures of racial and inequality exposure. We find that, among whites, early-life exposure to Black neighbors predicts Democratic partisanship over 70 years later. On the other hand, early life exposure to inequality, in the form of a neighbor of a greatly different income, has no long-term effect on partisanship. We discuss the implications of these findings and potential for the broader research paradigm to yield additional insights.

We analyze the role of labor mobility in cushioning labor demand shocks in the Euro Area. We find that foreign born workers’ mobility is strongly cyclical, while this is not the case for natives. Foreigners’ higher population to employment elasticity reduces the variation of overall employment rates over the business cycle: thanks to them, the impact of a one standard deviation change in employment on employment rates decreases by 6 per cent at the country level and by 7 per cent at the regional level. Additionally, we compare Euro Area mobility to that of another currency union, the US. We find that the population to employment elasticity estimated for foreign-born persons is similar in the Euro Area and the US, while EA natives are definitely less mobile across countries than US natives are across states in response to labor demand shocks. This last result confirms that in the Euro Area there is room for improving country specific shocks absorption through higher labor mobility. It also suggests that immigration helped labor market adjustments.