Both scholars and the public have been intrigued by the question of whether parents experience higher levels of emotional wellbeing than adults who are not raising children. Yet despite decades of research on the topic, the answer to this question remains unclear. Using a novel source of nationally representative data, the Wellbeing Module of the American Time Use Survey (2010, 2012, 2013), this dissertation aims to unpack and extend prior understanding of the parenting wellbeing gap by pursing two studies. The first investigates whether parenthood may have both positive and negative links to adults’ emotional wellbeing; whether the gap varies across certain contexts; and whether it is driven by women more so than men. I find that parents experienced more positive affect than adults who are not raising children, but also more negative affect. This pattern, however, only existed during nonmarket work, and leisure—not during paid labor. Interestingly, parenthood exacerbated positive emotions only during time when parents were in the presence of children, but it heightened negative emotions during all time, regardless of whether children were present or not. Patterns were generally the same for men as women. In the second study, I explore whether parenting is experienced differently by adults with higher or lower education levels. I find that raising children is associated with greater levels of positive emotions (happiness and meaning) across education groups, but it is also associated with greater levels of negative emotions (stress and fatigue) only for higher educated parents. When considering the role of gender, for high SES individuals, parenthood is associated with greater levels of positive and negative emotions for both men and women, while at the low SES level, parenthood makes no difference in negative emotions (for either men or women) and increases positive emotions only for men.

Obesity status, which is based on arbitrary cutoffs along the BMI distribution, is a salient feature of medical charts and may be used heuristically by physicians to decide whether to test their patients for obesity-related diseases. Using nationally representative datasets and a regression discontinuity design, I explore whether there are differences in diagnosis and treatment outcomes among individuals very close to the obesity cutoff at BMI=30, assuming no underlying differences in health. I find evidence that women above the obesity threshold are significantly less likely to be told they are diabetic, have high blood pressure, or have coronary heart disease. Men just above the obesity threshold are more likely to be told they have a heart condition, but are less likely to report being advised by their physicians to change their behaviors to reduce risk of developing heart disease. These results suggest physicians use the obesity threshold heuristically, which could have detrimental implications for subsequent health outcomes: individuals below the threshold could be under-treated, while individuals above it may be over-treated. The prevalence and effects of heuristics in medicine should be investigated more thoroughly to improve physician-patient interactions and subsequent health outcomes.

Despite the widespread and rapidly growing popularity of Big Data, researchers have yet to agree on what the concept entails, what tools are still needed to best interrogate these data, whether or not Big Data's emergence represents a new academic field or simply a set of tools, and how much confidence we can place on results derived from Big Data. Despite these ambiguities, most would agree that Big Data and the methods for analyzing it represent a remarkable potential for advancing social science knowledge. In my Presidential address to the Southern Demographic Association, I argue that demographers have long collected and analyzed Big Data in a small way, by parsing out the points of information that we can manipulate with familiar models and restricting analyses to what typical computing systems can handle or restricted-access data disseminators will allow. In order to better interrogate the data we already have, we need to change the culture of demography to treat demographic microdata as Big. This includes shaping the definition of Big Data, changing how we conceptualize models, and re-evaluating how we silo confidential data.

Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) was an immigration policy which allowed approximately 1.5-2 million undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children (also known as DREAMers) who met specific eligibility criteria to apply for and receive temporary deportation relief and work authorization. This paper seeks to quantify the effect that DACA had on the labor market outcomes of DREAMers, as well as its effects on schooling and healthcare. I utilize a two-stage difference-indifferences design using data from the American Community Survey and the Survey of Income and Program Participation, and find that DACA significantly increased the likelihood of working, moving about 10 percent of the DREAMer population into the labor force and employment, and decreasing unemployment by 3.8 percentage points. I also report that DACA increased incomes among DREAMers, as well as health insurance coverage, but had no effect on school attendance. Furthermore, I find that the effects of DACA are unequal, with DREAMers lower in the income distribution gaining the most from it. *

This study explores the extent to which local amenities are related to house price volatility, returns and risk‐adjusted returns across 238 MSAs. We find strong evidence that high amenity areas experience greater price volatility. In regards to returns, high amenity areas experience greater (lower) real returns in appreciating (depreciating) markets. However, high amenity areas experience little to no abnormal risk‐adjusted returns. Results from the study are robust to an endogenous treatment of amenities and land supply elasticity. Overall, we conclude that the desirability of a metropolitan area is a significant channel through which land values drive house price dynamics.

his study aims to examine the relations between the ethnic groups in the urban economic community and the restructuring of the global value chain due to the globalization of Los Angeles apparel industry through the theories and discussions of economic geography and cultural geography. The objectives of the study are as follows. First, from the historical geographical point of view, this dissertation tries to reconstruct the trajectory and occupation of the Los Angeles fashion district from its formation to the present and to clarify the process by which various immigrant groups became engaged in the apparel industry. Second, as the globalization of capitalism progresses in the 1970s, the process of restructuring the apparel industry through the California and Los Angeles apparel industries will be examined, and the global value chain of the Los Angeles apparel industry will be analyzed. Third, this study aims to find how the expansion and restructuring of the global network of the apparel industry have affected the regional change of the Los Angeles fashion district, as the expansion of the global network meets local. Fourth, this research intends to interpret the historical and spatial relationship that the migrant groups with different races and ethnicities coexist on the local scale through the reconstruction process of the relationship of conflict, competition, negotiation, and compromise, and clarify the dynamics of the urban economic community. This study is the result of the research using the quantitative and qualitative data on the global network and ethnic relations of the fashion district in downtown Los Angeles from March 2014 to November 2017...

This study presents empirical evidence that a health improvement program-privatization of municipal water services-in Argentina during the 1990s has a negative effect on long-term human capital accumulation. Exploiting variations across regions and cohorts, I find that early childhood exposure to the program reduces years of schooling by around 0.5 years. The negative effect is more pronounced for males. I further use the previous census to examine the identical cohorts when they were at their school age. I find that they are more likely to drop out of school and participate in the labor force after the program, and the effect is again more marked for boys. The finding is consistent with families prefer healthier children to go to work after improvements in health status.

Analysis of formal institutions in metropolitan governance has focused primarily on observable changes such as statewide property tax limitations and municipal incorporation. By contrast, scholars have devoted little attention to the ways in which changing environmental conditions and shifting interpretations can alter the impact of formally stable institutions. For example, accounts of the diffusion of tax increment–financed redevelopment in California have emphasized the impact of Proposition 13, a statewide tax limitation adopted in 1978. But this diffusion began roughly a decade earlier, as the novel data set in this article indicates, when redevelopment project areas began to proliferate in relatively small and affluent suburban jurisdictions. The data, in combination with a case study, illustrate mechanisms by which stable formal institutions, such as state laws authorizing redevelopment, can contribute to gradual changes in metropolitan governance.

In this paper we analyze the economic effects of changing immigration policies in a realistic institutional set-up, using a search model calibrated to the migrant flows between the US and the rest of the world. We explicitly differentiate among the most relevant channels of entry of immigrants to the US: family-based, employment-based and undocumented. Moreover we explicitly account for earning incentives to migrate and for the role of immigrant networks in generating job-related and family-related immigration opportunities. Hence, we can analyze the effect of policy changes in each channel, accounting for the response of immigrants in general equilibrium. We find that all types of immigrants generate higher surplus for US firms relative to natives, hence restricting their entry has a depressing effect on job creation and, in turn, on native labor markets. We also show that substituting a family-based entry with an employment-based entry system, and maintaining the total inflow of immigrants unchanged, job creation and natives' income increase.

A negative relationship between income and fertility has persisted for so long that its existence is often taken for granted. One economic theory builds on this relationship and argues that rising inequality leads to greater differential fertility between rich and poor. We show that the relationship between income and fertility has flattened between 1980 and 2010 in the US, a time of increasing inequality, as high income families increased their fertility. These facts challenge the standard theory. We propose that marketization of parental time costs can explain the changing relationship between income and fertility. We show this result both theoretically and quantitatively, after disciplining the model on US data. We explore implications of changing differential fertility for aggregate human capital. Additionally, policies, such as the minimum wage, that affect the cost of marke-tization, have a negative effect on the fertility and labor supply of high income women. We end by discussing the insights of this theory to the economics of marital sorting.

Este artículo explora el aumento de la migración femenina calificada de México a Estados Unidos en las últimas tres décadas. El objetivo es presentar un panorama general de la inserción laboral de las migrantes mexicanas calificadas en aquel país, desde una perspectiva comparada con sus connacionales varones, las nativas blancas no hispanas y otras inmigrantes. Se usa una metodología mixta que incluye por un lado, un análisis estadístico de los niveles de participación económica y los grupos de ocupación principal; y por otro, un estudio cualitativo que incluyó entrevistas en profundidad con la población estudiada. Se encontró que las diferencias en la inserción laboral de las mujeres migrantes se explican por su nivel educativo, su origen étnico y por las diferencias de género. Las mujeres mexicanas se están integrando laboralmente en situación de desventaja con respecto a las nativas y otras mujeres inmigrantes, como son las provenientes de Asia.

Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico at a time the island was encountering what had already been described as a humanitarian crisis brought upon by more than a decade of a severe economic crisis. In this manuscript, we provide an overview of the conditions that led to and resulted from La Crisis Boricua, including the record level of net outmigration that occurred even before Hurricane Maria. We also analyze the overrepresentation of non-Puerto-Rican migrants (based on self-identification) in the recent island-mainland migration flow. Moreover, we discuss interstate differences in the socioeconomic characteristics, including the rates of impoverishment, among recently arrived Puerto Ricans from the island in the largest receiving areas. This information can be used to inform policymakers, social workers, and social scientists about potential challenges incoming migrants may encounter as they settle into their mainland communities. Finally, we highlight some of the challenges and opportunities Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans will continue to face while rebuilding.

I utilize longitudinal individual-level information extracted from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) to explore how automation risk at the occupation level impacts subsequent income and employment, motivated by the contemporary surge in automation anxiety as well as by recent literature that documents the damaging aggregate employment trends attributable to the adoption of machine labor. I follow a task-based approach that explains the mechanism of automation and characterizes automation risk as a disproportionally high concentration of routine labor for a given occupation. I find counterintuitive evidence suggesting that automation risk is positively associated with income, and that a modestly elevated risk of involuntary job displacement appears to be the only meaningful negative impact of automation risk. Even after involuntarily displaced, individuals previously employed in highly automatable professions do not face negative income or employment shocks that are significantly different from those felt by workers displaced from other careers. I attempt to reconcile existing labor theory with the lack of major negative automation impacts estimated in this paper by citing the preference by employers to lay off workers rather than decrease wages, the skill substitution and complementation effects of automation, as well as the transferability of routine work experience due to the slow pace of automation. Finally, I find evidence of a reversal of the income effect of routine labor from positive in the 1980s and 1990s to a weakly negative association today, prompting additional research into the changing nature of automation.

How does higher education shape the American early childhood education workforce? Relying on the quantitative analysis of a nationally representative data set and the policy scan of state early childhood education center staffing requirements, this analysis establishes that the low levels of education in the early childhood education workforce are the confluence of historical and gendered norms surrounding early childhood education and policy trends of formalized education requirements for early childhood education teachers. Interviews with 15 early childhood education teachers reveal that these low levels of education both reflect and reproduce the lack of professionalization in the early childhood workforce. While degree programs of higher education often provide valuable experience and mentors to early childhood education teachers, policy trends of raising higher education requirements mandate individual teachers to take on the burden of professionalizing the workforce as a whole.

The Wisconsin Poverty Measure (WPM) poverty rate rose to 10.8 percent in 2016, a significant increase from 2015, despite expanded employment in the state during the period of this report. The official poverty rate in the state also rose significantly in 2016, to 11.8 percent. Market-income poverty, which reflects employment levels and is a gauge of economic health, also rose slightly, even as jobs expanded. Poverty rates rose for children and elders as well. Both the Wisconsin Poverty Measure and official rates for families with children also rose by significant amounts in 2016, as the child poverty rate for the WPM reached 12.0 percent, two points higher than in 2015. Yet, the WPM for children, which takes into account resources from tax credits and noncash benefits as well as earnings, was almost 5 percentage points below the official poverty rate for children of 16.9 percent. Between 2015 and 2016, elderly poverty in Wisconsin as measured by the WPM rose significantly from 7.8 to 9.0 percent. While benefits from the safety net (especially food support and refundable tax credits) played a large role in poverty reduction, changes in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP participation (called FoodShare in Wisconsin) reduced these positive effects in 2016 compared to earlier years. Other trends that decreased resources over the past two years include rising childcare and other work-related expenses for families with children, and increasing medical out-of-pocket expenses, especially for the elderly. The Wisconsin Poverty Measure is based on the Federal Supplemental Poverty Measure methodology, and reflects expenditures on food, clothing, shelter, and transportation by lower-income families nationwide, adjusted for cost of living differences between Wisconsin and the nation as a whole. Because expenditures on these staples increased nationally, the poverty line used in the WPM is now $2,200 a year above the official poverty line. This difference also contributed to slightly higher WPM numbers. Although the social safety net provided a buffer against poverty during the recession—and still makes a big difference in countering poverty—the effects are beginning to shrink because of changes in the SNAP program, payroll taxes, medical expenses, and work-related expenses. This has left the WPM poverty rate about the same as in earlier years, showing little or no effect of a slowly expanding Wisconsin economy through 2016. We also examine poverty rates across regions of the state, revealing high poverty rates in Milwaukee County, but with many more substate areas doing much better than the rest of Wisconsin. A full 26 of 72 total Wisconsin counties found their poverty rates below the state average by a significant amount. This pattern suggests an uneven recovery of jobs and incomes across regions within our state, but with poverty rates falling in many areas. Eastern parts of the state, the counties north and west of Milwaukee, and those in the west central region of the state are showing the way, all with poverty rates significantly below 10.8 percent. Poverty rates across subcounty regions show variations that are more dramatic within the largest counties than across the 28 county and multicounty areas in the state. For instance, in Milwaukee County, overall WPM poverty rates ranged from about 8 percent in one southern subcounty area to 38 percent in the central city of Milwaukee in 2016, suggesting a significant segregation of the poor and the rich. The variation in child poverty rates in Milwaukee County was even larger than the variation in the overall WPM rate for the county. Because we believe that the long-term solution to poverty for the able-bodied non-elderly is a secure job that pays well, not an indefinite income support program, these findings are discouraging. New problem areas, such as the rising costs of child care and medical care, are becoming more widespread and offsetting the economic and job recovery in our state. This report also underscores the importance of the safety net that is now doing less in Wisconsin than a few years ago to enhance low earnings for families with children, put food on the table, and encourage self-reliance. Under current conditions, work alone does not solve the poverty problem for adults and families with children.

este artículo hace el análisis de más largo plazo realizado sobre la migración colombiana a EE. UU. Para ello, se utilizaron todos los censos y versiones de la American Community Survey para los que existen microdatos, así como todos los informes anuales de registros migratorios de los EE. UU. Se presenta una periodización desde 1850 a 2015, en la cual se identifican dos grandes fases, además de una de transición, alrededor de la década de 1950. En la primera encontré una etapa iniciada antes de 1850 y que llega hasta la primera guerra mundial y otra que va dese el final de esta hasta, aproximadamente, 1950. En la segunda gran fase, a partir de 1960, se muestra la evolución de los flujos anuales de llegada y se identifican: tres etapas de crecimiento escalonado (olas), una etapa de retroceso y una última etapa, de evolución aún incierta. El análisis incluye la comparación de características y condiciones básicas de los stocks entre 1910 y 2016. También se entregan anotaciones metodológicas sobre el uso de los datos y se proponen métodos sencillos que pueden ser útiles para el estudio de otros colectivos.

This paper compares the determinants of integration in the US labor market –by job qualification level- of Mexican qualified migrants with respect to migrants from four other countries. The increase in the probability of employment is examined according to qualification level of the works, using five multi-logistic regressions. Our findings show remarkable differences between Mexico and the other countries. In relation to the effect of postgraduate studies and the field of specialization in hard sciences, the hypothesis of global competition for talents is confirmed, in which qualified Indian and Canadian migrants take the lead. It shows how English proficiency increases the chances of being employed in highly qualified occupations without taking into account the academic degree; while the lack of English increases the . . .

An overview of Euro-American internal migration in the United States between 1940 and 1980 explores the overall population movement away from rural areas to cities and suburban areas. Although focused on white Americans and their migrations, there are similarities to the Great Migration of African Americans, who continued to move out of the South during the mid-20th century. In the early period, the industrial areas in the North and West attracted most of the migrants. Mobilization for World War II loosened rural dwellers who were long kept in place by low wages, political disfranchisement, and low educational attainment. The war also attracted significant numbers of women to urban centers in the North and West. After the war, migration increased, enticing white Americans to become not just less rural but also increasingly suburban. The growth of suburbs throughout the country was prompted by racial segregation in housing that made many suburban areas white and earmarked many urban areas for people of color. The result was incredible growth in suburbia: from 22 million living in those areas in 1940 to triple that in 1970. Later in the period, as the Steelbelt rusted, the rise of the West as a migration magnet was spurred by development strategies, federal investment in infrastructure, and military bases. Sunbelt areas were making investments that stood ready to recruit industries and of course people, especially from Rustbelt areas in the North. By the dawn of the 21st century, half of the American population resided in suburbs.

What are the social bases of neighborhood formation in urban areas, and at what spatial scale are they most distinct from other neighborhoods? We address these questions in the case of St. Louis, Missouri, in 1930, where we can take advantage of unique geocoded census microdata on the whole population of the city that identifies who, with what background characteristics, lived where. Our analyses show that homophily by race and ethnicity was by far the strongest factor linking characteristics of persons to the composition of their neighbors. Measures of social class also were quite important, while the person’s nativity and family status were statistically significant but minor predictors. Yet while this hierarchy of social factors held for the population as a whole, their relative importance varied greatly across racial/ethnic groups. Similarity in social class to neighbors was most important for native whites, nativity counted as much or more than class for recently arriving immigrant groups including Russians, Italians, and Poles, and race/ethnicity was by far the key predictor for these groups and blacks. We also found that these patterns of homophily were clearest at the scale of individual street segment and first-order combinations of segments. They were similar but less distinct at a larger spatial scale.