This paper studies neighborhood effects using a dynamic general equilibrium model. Households choose where to live and how much to invest in their child's human capital. The return on parents' investment is determined in part by their child's ability and in part by a neighborhood externality. We calibrate the model using data from Chicago in 1960, assuming that in previous decades households were randomly allocated to, and then could not move from, neighborhoods with different total factor productivity (TFP). This restriction on neighborhood choice allows us to overcome the fundamental problem of endogenous neighborhood selection. We use the calibrated model to study Wilson's (1987) hypothesis that racial equality under the law need not ensure equality of opportunity due to neighborhood dynamics. We examine the consequences of allowing for mobility, equalizing TFP, or both. In line with Wilson, 1987, sorting can lead to persistent inequality of opportunity across locations if initial conditions are unequal. Our results highlight the importance of forward-looking agents.

Computerized data collection is constantly increasing. With technological progress more data is becoming available at any time on public databases. Also, private companies are collecting more data. Having thousands of observations in data sets makes it impossible for human to grasp trends and patterns. This raises a need for data mining and visualization for business intelligence. In order to optimize the use of sales territories and support companies growth it is important to understand the underlying patterns and associations between sales results and demographics. This thesis aims to accomplish three main objectives. Firstly, develop a web service to visualize demographic and sales data. Secondly, analyze demographics and sales data obtained, from company to get insight if success in sales is determined by placing representatives in “good” areas, or are there other factors that might predict success. The third aim is to create a predictive model that could predict sales results.

Objective: This brief report presents contemporary national estimates of the spatial distance between residences of parents and adult children in the United States, including distances to nearest and to all such kin. Background: The most recent national estimates of family spatial proximity come from data for the early 1990s. Moreover, research has rarely assessed full-family spatial clustering. Method: Data are from the 2013 Panel Study of Income Dynamics on residential locations of adults 25 and older and each of their parents and adult children. Two measures of spatial proximity are estimated: distance to nearest parent or adult child, and the share of adults who have all such kin living nearby. Sociodemographic and geographic differences are examined for both measures. Results: Among adults with at least one living parent or adult child, a significant majority (75%) have their nearest such kin within 30 miles, while a minority (36%) have all such kin living that close. Spatial proximity differs substantially among sociodemographic groups, with those who are disadvantaged more likely to have kin nearby. In most cases, sociodemographic disparities are much higher when spatial proximity is measured by proximity to all kin instead of nearest kin. Conclusion: Disparities in having all kin nearby may be a result of family solidarity and also may affect family solidarity. This report sets the stage for new investigations of the spatial dimension of family cohesion.

We use American Community Survey public use micro data to document the significant extent of assortative mating among US college graduates by college major group. We also show that this sorting process increases income dispersion, since high-income majors tend to marry each other, as do low-income majors.

There was a big drop in the U.S. fertility rate in 2017. As measured by the total fertility rate (TFR), which is a projection of lifetime births for the average woman based on one year’s data, the drop was 3.1%, from 1.82 projected births per woman to 1.76. (See this measure explained, and learn how to calculate it yourself, in my blockbuster video, “Total Fertility Rate.”) To put that change in perspective, here is the trend in TFR back to 1940, followed by a plot of the annual changes since 1971.

Using a Bayesian approach we estimate a stochastic frontier model to measure the productivity effects of state-level exports and immigration to each of the 50 US states. The results show that state productivity is affected positively by both state exports and immigrants arriving with embodied human capital. The efficiency model also reveals that the interaction of incoming immigrants with previously accumulated human capital in the host state improves state efficiency.

Purpose The goals of this study were to identify geographic and racial/ethnic variation in breast cancer mortality, and evaluate whether observed geographic differences are explained by county-level characteristics. Methods We analyzed data on breast cancer deaths among women in 3,108 contiguous United States (US) counties from years 2000 through 2015. We applied novel geospatial methods and identified hot spot counties based on breast cancer mortality rates. We assessed differences in county-level characteristics between hot spot and other counties using Wilcoxon rank-sum test and Spearman correlation, and stratified all analysis by race/ethnicity. Results Among all women, 80 of 3,108 (2.57%) contiguous US counties were deemed hot spots for breast cancer mortality with the majority located in the southern region of the US (72.50%, p value < 0.001). In race/ethnicity-specific analyses, 119 (3.83%) hot spot counties were identified for NH-Black women, with the majority being located in southern states (98.32%, p value < 0.001). Among Hispanic women, there were 83 (2.67%) hot spot counties and the majority was located in the southwest region of the US (southern = 61.45%, western = 33.73%, p value < 0.001). We did not observe definitive geographic patterns in breast cancer mortality for NH-White women. Hot spot counties were more likely to have residents with lower education, lower household income, higher unemployment rates, higher uninsured population, and higher proportion indicating cost as a barrier to medical care. Conclusions We observed geographic and racial/ethnic disparities in breast cancer mortality: NH-Black and Hispanic breast cancer deaths were more concentrated in southern, lower SES counties.

The present study examines inner and outer suburban ring attainment outcomes among racial and ethnic groups residing in the nation’s metropolitan areas. The main objective is to evaluate the extent to which the relationship between racial and ethnic group’s socioeconomic status characteristics and residence between inner and outer suburban rings conforms to the tenets of the spatial assimilation model. Using micro-level data from the 5-year 2012-2016 American Community Survey, the author calculates multinomial logistic regression models to determine the effects of SES and other relevant predictors on residence within the nation’s metropolitan area’s suburban inner and outer rings. The results both confirm and contradict the main tenets of the spatial assimilation model. To the extent that income, education, and homeownership are positively related to residence in both suburban rings, the findings also suggest that access to inner and outer rings is hierarchically stratified by race and ethnicity.

The number of fatal, intentional workplace shootings rose 15% in 2015 from 2014. Workplace homicides remain a leading cause of occupational death, fourth among males and second among females. Workplaces that allow employees to carry a firearm are at 5-times greater odds of having a workplace homicide compared to workplaces that do not. Prevention efforts largely focus on preventing robbery-motivated crimes, which constitute between 55% to 60% of deaths each year. Workplace homicides are largely a firearms issue, as perpetrators use firearms in nearly 80% of all deaths. There is a need to understand firearm exposure at work, laws that restrict employers’ ability to govern firearm exposure at work, and how state laws designed to affect firearm exposure impact firearm-related workplace homicides. This dissertation contains six chapters. Chapter one provides an introduction to . . .

During the Great Recession, work requirements for various safety net programs were relaxed, and it has been argued that these contributed to high unemployment rates and long unemployment durations. One work requirement in the SNAP program applies to "able-bodied adults without dependents," and is lifted when participants reach age 50. Using a regression discontinuity approach that removes bias from age rounding, this article finds no evidence the requirement affects the probability of compliant employment when the requirement is in place.

My dissertation contains three applied essays. The first essay examines how proximity to higher-tiered centers in the urban hierarchy affects the population growth. The massive population growth in India is not driven by amenities. I find a negative and statistically significant effect of the nearest city distance variable on the growth rates of towns. In terms of distance penalty for towns, it is approximately 6.1% less population growth given the mean distance to its nearest city averaged at 53.57 km. Thus, my findings lend support to the hypothesis of urban hierarchical effects as evident in other countries like United States, Canada and China. The second essay document assimilation patterns of broad race and Asian immigrants groups on attaining a STEM major by different ages of arrival. Among the child immigrants, the early arrivals (0-5 years) are less likely to specialize in STEM major compared to the late arrivals for white and Asians. The assimilation pattern in terms of attainment of STEM majors for the immigrant groups depends on the length of stay in the . . .

The employment rate among non-elderly adults in the US remains low by historical standards and in comparison with other rich countries. This column reviews the evidence on the main causes of the secular decline in employment since the turn of the century. Labour demand factors – notably import competition from China and the rise of industrial robots – emerge as the key drivers. Some labour supply and institutional factors also have contributed to the decline, but to a lesser extent.

Almond (2006) argues that in utero exposure to the 1918 influenza pandemic lowered socioeconomic status in adulthood, whereas Brown and Thomas (2016) find that the effect disappears after controlling for parental characteristics of the 1919 birth cohort. We link microdata from the 1920 and 1930 censuses to WWII enlistment records and city-level influenza data. The result is a data set with much more precisely measured influenza exposure and parental characteristics. Results indicate that in the absence of the pandemic, the 1919 birth cohort would have been more likely to graduate from high school and would have obtained more years of schooling. The impact on high school graduation is largely unaffected by including parental controls and city-specific time trends. Adding household fixed effects (and thus exploiting variation among brothers) yields similar but somewhat larger results.

For more than a century, the American welfare state required working-age adults to obtain social welfare benefits through their linkages to employers, spouses, or children. Recent changes to U.S. healthcare policy prompted by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), however, provide adults with new pathways for accessing a key form of social welfare—health insurance—decoupled from employers, spouses, and children. Taking advantage of this fundamental shift in the country’s system of social welfare provision, I use data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) to explore patterns of health insurance coverage from before and after the ACA became active in 2014. The results show that the salience of labor market, marriage, and family attachments as pathways to coverage significantly declined in the first three years following passage of the ACA. By providing adults with a new route to coverage decoupled from their institutional attachments, the ACA helped narrow health insurance i...

Chapter I: The Impact of Occupation on Health Participation in meaningful occupations contributes to good health and well-being. Workers are more likely to derive satisfaction from participating in occupations well-suited to their skills and training. This project provides causal evidence of the impact of occupation on health among college graduates. In particular, I estimate the health effect of participation in occupations well-suited to their education level, that is, occupations that value college education. Valuation of college education in an occupation is measured by occupation-specific college earning premium: the adjusted percentage difference in earnings between workers with and without college degrees in this given occupation. The causal inference relies on estimation with instrumental variables, which are constructed in the spirit of Hausman’s price instrumental variables. The result suggests that college educated individuals participating in occupations with higher college earning premiums have better self-reported health, even after accounting for income, occupational . . .

Criminality has always been part of human social interactions, shaping the way peoples have constructed states and legislation. As social order became a greater concern for the public authorities, interest in investigating incentives pushing individuals towards engaging in illegal activities has become a central issue of the political agenda. Building on the existing literature, this paper proposes to focus on a few primary determinants of crime, whose effect is investigated using a Responsiveness Scores (RS) approach performed over 50 US states during the period 2000-2012. The RS approach allows us to account for unit heterogeneous response to each single determinant, thus paving the way to a more in-depth analysis of the relation between crime and its drivers. We attempt to overcome the limitations posed by standard regression methods, which assume a single coefficient for all determinants, thus contributing to the literature in the field with stronger evidence on determinants' effects and the geographical patterns of responsiveness scores.

The aim of this study was to investigate the association between postnatal depression (PND) symptoms severity and structural neighborhood characteristics among women enrolled in a home visiting program. The sample included 295 mothers who were at risk for developing PND, observed as 3-month Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) scores ≥ 10. Two neighborhood predictor components (residential stability and social disadvantage) were analyzed as predictors of PND symptom severity using a generalized estimating equation. Residential stability was negatively associated with PND symptom severity. Social disadvantage was not found to be statistically significantly. The findings suggest that residential stability is associated with a reduction in PND symptom severity for women enrolled in home visiting program.

1. Alabama’s proposed work requirement and subsequent coverage losses would disproportionately affect mothers, African Americans and families living in rural communities. Many of these women will likely become uninsured as employersponsored insurance for lowwage workers is sparse. 2. The proposal creates a Catch-22: Any parent working the 20 to 35 hours required would make too much money to qualify for Medicaid—but likely not enough to afford private insurance. An analysis of the state’s estimates finds that 8,700 parents would be removed from Medicaid in the first year alone. 3. When their parents lose health coverage, children suffer. The families face increased debt, and children are less likely to visit the doctor regularly and more likely to become uninsured themselves. Children in these families are already disproportionately uninsured.

The economic convergence of American regions has greatly slowed, and rates of long-term non-employment have even been diverging. Simultaneously, the rate of non-employment for working age men has nearly tripled over the last 50 years, generating a terrible social problem that is disproportionately centered in the eastern parts of the American heartland. Should more permanent economic divisions across space lead American economists to rethink their traditional skepticism about place-based policies? We document that increases in labor demand appear to have greater impacts on employment in areas where not working has been historically high, suggesting that subsidizing employment in such places could particularly reduce the not working rate. Pro-employment policies, such as a ramped up Earned Income Tax Credit, that are targeted towards regions with more elastic employment responses, however financed, could plausibly reduce suffering and materially improve economic performance.

Medical Transnationalism examines Korean immigrants’ distinctive healthcare behaviors, contributing factors to their medical tourism, and their experiences and evaluations of medical tourism. Analyzing survey data of 507 Korean immigrants and in-depth interviews with 120 Korean immigrants in the New York–New Jersey area, this book finds that there are three distinctive types of healthcare behaviors that Korean immigrants employ to deal with their barriers (e.g., the language barrier and not having health insurance) to formal US healthcare: dependence on co-ethnic doctors in the United States, the use of Hanbang (traditional Korean medicine) in the United States, and medical tours to the homeland. This book also finds that social transnational ties and health insurance status are the most influential contributing factors to Korean immigrants’ decision to take medical tours to the home country. The vast majority of Korean immigrant medical tourists are satisfied with their medical tourism experiences. In this book, Sou Hyun Jang makes both empirical and theoretical contributions to the literature on immigrant healthcare and immigrant transnationalism by focusing on one immigrant group and connecting medical transnationalism to other types of transnationalism. The findings of this book imply that health programs for the most marginalized group—small business owners and their employees—and better support for bilingual Korean-English translators at hospitals are needed.