When minimum wages increase, employers may respond to the regulatory burdens by substituting away from disadvantaged workers. We test this hypothesis using a correspondence study with 35,000 applications around ex-ante uncertain minimum wage increases in three U.S. states. Before the increases, applicants with distinctively Black names were 19 percent less likely to receive a callback than equivalent applicants with distinctively white names. Announcements of minimum wage hikes substantially reduce callbacks for all applicants but shrink the racial callback gap by 80 percent. Racial inequality decreases because firms disproportionately reduce callbacks to lower-quality white applicants who benefited from discrimination under lower minimum wages.

Objectives. To evaluate public health surveillance and monitoring systems’ (PHSMS) efforts to collect, monitor, track, and analyze racism.Methods. We employed an environmental scan approach. We defined key questions and data to be collected, conducted a literature review, and synthesized the results by using a qualitative description approach.Results. We identified 125 PHSMS; only 3—the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, Pregnancy Risk Assessment and Monitoring System, and California Health Interview Survey—collected and reported data on individual-level racism. Structural racism was not collected in PHSMS; however, we observed evidence for linkages to census and administrative data sets or social media sources to assess structural racism.Conclusions. There is a paucity of PHSMS that measure individual-level racism, and few systems are linked to structural racism measures.Public Health Implications. Adopting a standard practice of racism surveillance can advance equity-centered public health praxis, inform policy, and foster greater accountability among public health practitioners, researchers, and decision-makers. Failure to explicitly address racism and the insufficient capacity to support a robust health equity data infrastructure severely impedes efforts to address and dismantle systemic racism. (Am J Public Health. 2023;113(S1):S80–S84. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2022.307160 )

KEY FINDINGS Only a little over half of eligible Latino/a/x and two thirds of eligible Asian families received CTC payments, compared to about three-quarters of eligible White, Black, and multiracial families.  Middle-income families made up the largest portion of CTC recipients compared to higher and lowerincome families. Most families used CTC payments mostly to pay off debt. CTC payments helped low-income families reduce financial insecurities, but families also experienced barriers in accessing payments.

Asian Americans nearing economic parity with White individuals is unique, particularly given the historical and contemporary disadvantaged position of other racial minorities in the U.S. labor market. While there is growing literature exploring how Asian Americans are reshaping the labor force, most of these studies categorize them as a homogenous group, failing to recognize social, cultural, and historical diversities within the community. Using the Current Population Survey, we investigate income disparity trends across ethnic groups and gender. Results show that Asian American men and women have high income levels compared to other racial minority groups. However, these perceived advantages reinforce racial stereotypes and mask income variations within these groups and across genders. We find a widening gender income gap over recent years for Asian ethnic groups, highlighting how race and gender interact to shape their labor-market experiences. We conclude by discussing the implications for future studies in labor-market research.

Sun exposure increases the risk of sun-related illnesses and skin cancer among U.S.Hispanic farmworkers. Reinforced by the health belief model, the purpose of this study was to determine the association between socio-demographic factors (i.e., age,educational attainment, gender, income, and marital status) and skin cancer with the level of sun exposure (sun’s effect on skin, sunburn reported) and protective behaviors (use of cap/visor, use of sunscreen) among adult Hispanic farmworkers in the United States. The study included Hispanic farmworkers aged 21 or older (N = 112) who responded to the2015 National Health Interview Survey. Ordinal logistic regression showed that older male Hispanic farmworkers are positively associated with the use of cap/visor, and females are associated with the use of sunscreen. Binary logistic regression showed that increasing age was associated with a decreased likelihood of sunburn reported, χ2(1) =3.764, p = 0.052, (95% CI, 0.921 to 1.000). Increasing knowledge of beneficial behaviors that decrease sun exposure in Hispanic farmworkers represents a positive social change for public health. This research can inform current interventions and policies aimed at reducing sun-related illnesses and skin cancer among Hispanic farmworkers in the United States.

According to new assimilation theory, assimilation can entail not only the adoption, by immigrants, of the established population's cultural practices, but also the adoption, by the established population, of immigrants' cultural practices. However, empirical research on assimilation has either neglected adaptation on the part of the established population or identified only modest changes. We examine reactions to a massive and rapid inflow of immigrants, and specifically, those of Mexican-origin Californios around the time of the Gold Rush of 1849. Treating naming patterns as indicators of assimilation, we find that Mexican American children born in California after 1849 were significantly less likely to receive distinctively Hispanic first names. As a placebo test, we further show that a similar pattern does not obtain in areas (e.g. New Mexico) that did not experience a rapid inflow of new American settlers. The findings validate an important insight of new assimilation theory, as well as shed new light on contemporary research on demographic change.

The evidence on the impact of employment shocks on preferences for redistribution is mixed on stated outcomes and sparse on revealed ones. We conduct a survey of US workers to measure the impact of repeated labour market shocks on both stated and revealed redistributive preferences. We measure the former by support on seven different policies and the latter through donations. We look at experiences of both mild shocks (having to reduce working hours) and hard shocks (unemployment), as well as past unemployment during formative years. We find evidence of adaptation to unemployment on policy preferences and compounding for milder shocks on donations, suggesting that the effects of repeated shocks on preferences for redistribution are not independent. Our results show that unemployment impacts preferences in a self-interested way, while milder shocks lead to broader support for redistribution.

Can the electoral participation behavior of a group with a common ethnic denominator be explained by the choice of identity? How is participation in elections influenced by participation in the labor market, also plausible to be explained by an identity choice? We present an original bivariate model of cognitive adaptation to examine the decision to register for elections in the United States, where individuals experience tension between their own preferences and social pressure from members of their ethnic group. The decision to participate or self-exclude from the labor market is applied, along with the political decision as a second identity decision that conditions the cost that the lack of coherence between decisions can generate. What is at stake for the individual is to be exposed to the gaze of the other as someone who is indolent towards his or her group, a situation that generates a social return in the form of loss of utility due to identity if he or she decides not to register. We offer evidence that social pressure results in greater participation in elections for most of the groups studied, as argued by Jang (2009), and that this social pressure is greater for those minority males who experience workplace discrimination, such as African Americans, the aboriginals and, to a lesser extent, the Hispanics. Improving understanding of the impact of the other's gaze, this work allows us to evaluate the extent to which identification with the ethnic group to which one belongs influences and explains the differences in the political participation of minorities.

Purpose: The current study examines the mobility patterns of gang associates in East Los Angeles using Field Investigation (FI) cards collected by police officers to document informal encounters with civilians. Methods: We construct a typology classifying each stop in relation to a gang associate's claimed territory, residence, and the location of the stop. We then report on the distribution of mobility types and describe the individual-, event-, and gang-level characteristics commonly associated with each. Results: Our findings suggest that there is significant variability in the mobility patterns of gang associates, and that associates often live outside their gang's turf, sometimes returning to their turf, but often spending time away from their turf. Conclusions: These results have implications for place-based gang interventions and suggest that all gangs may not be equally suited to interventions such as civil gang injunctions.

Objective: To understand how married mothers' and fathers' earnings and ability to telecommute structured their employment throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Background: We weigh two competing explanations—rational choice and gendered resources—to evaluate the association between married parents' financial and workplace resources and sustained employment throughout the pandemic. Method: We use hierarchical logistic regression models to analyze rotating panel data from the current population survey for respondents in dual-earner, different-sex marriages who are aged 25 to 54 with children 12 years or younger from January 2020 through August 2021. We restrict our analysis to those who were employed prior to the start of the pandemic to isolate pandemic-related exits. Results: We find that being the primary earner (i.e., earning at least half of the household income) prior to the start of the pandemic did not protect mothers from employment exits during the pandemic. Fathers' primary earner status did help sustain their employment. In contrast, access to telecommuting was an important resource to help sustain mothers' work attachment throughout the pandemic but had little association with fathers' employment. Conclusion: Rational choice explanations help explain married fathers' but not mothers' employment during the pandemic. Gendered resources better explain mothers' employment. Mothers who were primary earners were still pulled away from employment as caregiving demands grew during the pandemic. Telecommuting supported mothers' employment by offering flexibility in addressing these competing work and family demands, but not by challenging conventional gender divisions of labor among different-sex couples.

Adverse life events are often understood as having negative consequences for mental health via objective hardships, which are worse for persons with less income. But adversity can also affect mental health via more subjective mechanisms, and here, it is possible that persons with higher income will exhibit greater psychological sensitivity to negative events, for various reasons. Drawing on multiple sociological literatures, this article theorizes potential mechanisms of increasing sensitivity with income. The proposition of differential sensitivity is tested using the strategic case of spousal and parental bereavement among older US adults. The analyses find consistent evidence of increasing sensitivity of depressive symptoms with income. A series of robustness checks indicate that findings are not due to endogenous or antecedent selection. Further, exploratory analyses of mechanisms suggest that higher sensitivity among the affluent was driven by greater expectations and better relationship quality with the deceased. These findings problematize the conceptualization and assessment of human suffering in economically stratified societies.

Purpose: The relationship among ethnicity, social determinants of health (SDOH), and disparities in poststroke outcomes is complex, and the impact on communication difficulties is unclear. This study investigated the presence and nature of communication difficulties in poststroke non-Hispanic White (PsnHw) and Hispanic U.S. populations using population-level data. Method: We performed a cross-sectional analysis of 2,861 non-Hispanic White and 353 Hispanic poststroke respondents included in the 2014–2018 National Health Interview Survey. Respondents self-reported difficulties communicating in their usual language, in addition to providing information relating to demographics and lifestyle, health care access and utilization, health status, and SDOH. We used univariate statistics, generalized linear models, and an exploratory mediation analysis, to characterize the pattern of differences between these cohorts, examine associations between variables and communication difficulties, and determine the potential intermediate role of cumulative SDOH on the likelihood of reporting communication difficulties. Results: Findings indicated a more challenging life context for the poststroke Hispanic population due to SDOH disparities. Poverty and Internet use were associated with greater and lower odds of communication difficulties for PsnHw, respectively. The mediation analysis showed that ethnicity significantly affected communication difficulties, but only when mediated by SDOH. SDOH accounted for approximately two thirds of the total effect on reporting communication difficulties. Conclusions: This study underscores the need for uniform measures of SDOH in prospective research and for interventions aimed at mitigating health disparities through addressing disparities in SDOH. Future research should focus on evaluating the effectiveness of such strategies in diverse ethnic and socioeconomic poststroke populations.

Suburbs were once a haven for advantaged, White families to avoid city life and access high-status schools. This urban-suburban divide, however, has changed in recent decades as suburban communities (and their school districts) have diversified. This study provides an updated cross-sectional portrait of recent racial-ethnic segregation and inequality between and within urban and suburban school districts in U.S. metropolitan areas. We find that the urban-suburban divide remains an important stratifying force—a substantial portion of racial-ethnic residential and school segregation, as well as racial-ethnic inequality in school poverty and test scores, occurs between urban and suburban school districts. Significant segregation and inequality also occur between and within suburban school districts. Suburban stratification is a key feature of the geography of inequality, warranting theoretical and methodological attention.

In the age of mass migration, the US became economically crucial with the development of Atlantic trade and attracted labour flows from the rest of the world. Meanwhile, the Ottoman Empire was suffering severe economic and political problems. The Ottoman citizens of various ethnic origins, such as Turks, Jews, Armenians and Arabs, moved to different countries, including the US, for economic and political reasons. This paper examines the effect of institutional reforms in the Ottoman Empire during the Second Constitutional Era on immigration decisions of different ethnic groups to the US. Data come from the US census data of IPUMS (the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series) for 1910. The empirical results show that the institutional reforms could reduce emigration from the Ottoman Empire through granting additional civil liberties. However, this effect works heterogeneously for different ethnic groups. This result points out the importance of institutional improvements in home countries on reducing migration outflows.

Aims: While several studies have examined the impact of individual indicators of structural racism on single health outcomes, few have explicitly modeled racial disparities in a wide range of health outcomes using a multidimensional, composite structural racism index. This paper builds on the previous research by examining the relationship between state-level structural racism and a wider array of health outcomes, focusing on racial disparities in mortality from firearm homicide, infant mortality, stroke, diabetes, hypertension, asthma, HIV, obesity, and kidney disease. Methods: We used a previously developed state structural racism index that consists of a composite score derived by averaging eight indicators across five domains: (1) residential segregation; (2) incarceration; (3) employment; (4) economic status/wealth; and (5) education. Indicators were obtained for each of the 50 states using Census data from 2020. We estimated the Black-White disparity in each health outcome in each state by dividing the age-adjusted mortality rate for the non-Hispanic Black population by the age-adjusted mortality rate for the non-Hispanic White population. These rates were obtained from the CDC WONDER Multiple Cause of Death database for the combined years 1999-2020. We conducted linear regression analyses to examine the relationship between the state structural racism index and the Black-White disparity in each health outcome across the states. In multiple regression analyses, we controlled for a wide range of potential confounding variables. Results: Our calculations revealed striking geographic differences in the magnitude of structural racism, with the highest values generally being observed in the Midwest and Northeast. Higher levels of structural racism were significantly associated with greater racial disparities in mortality for all but two of the health outcomes. Conclusions: There is a robust relationship between structural racism and Black-White disparities in multiple health outcomes across states. Programs and policies to reduce racial heath disparities must include strategies to help dismantle structural racism and its consequences.

The announcement of evacuation orders during hurricanes is an integral part of an emergency preparedness and response plan, specifically for reducing social and economic distress. Although such orders are generally assumed to be followed in theory, in practice, evacuation rates in response to an evacuation order vary widely among communities. The purpose of this study is to examine how socioeconomic and demographic factors affect the evacuation decisions of communities in response to government-issued evacuation orders. Particularly, we harness passively collected high-fidelity mobility data in conjunction with the community characteristics to analyze the disparate evacuation pattern of 2, 617 census block groups (CBGs) in Florida during Hurricane Dorian. Our finding suggests that the lead time of evacuation orders, median age, and a racial minority percentage of CBGs affect the shift in evacuation rate once orders are issued. The study results, along with the comprehensive discussion, contribute to a deeper understanding of the factors that influence evacuation behavior during hurricanes. This can assist emergency management stakeholders in making strategic decisions to maximize community response to evacuation orders.

The economic burden of health inequities ranged from $421 billion to $978 billion in 2018, suggesting more resources are needed to improve health equity for racial and ethnic minorities and people with low education levels. The JAMA study assesses the economic burden of health inequities for five racial and ethnic minority groups: American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, Black or African American, Hispanic or Latino, and Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, and three education groups: adults with less than a high school education, those with a high school degree or general educational development (GED) credit, and those with some college or an associate degree. These populations often face barriers to healthcare, employment, education, and transportation, leading to poor health outcomes. Dig Deeper The Role of Finance, Revenue Cycle in Advancing Health Equity Health Inequity Leads to $320B in Unnecessary Healthcare Spending Coronavirus Healthcare Spending Dwindles, Threatening Health Equity

Between February 2020 and April 2020, the US labor force participation rate (LFPR) fell by more than 3 percentage points—that’s five times larger than the largest two-month drop from 1970 through 2019. Nearly three years later, in January 2023, the US LFPR remained almost a percentage point below its prepandemic level. Such large changes in the US LFPR have brought new attention to state-level estimates of the LFPR, as people want to know how their state has fared. This District Data Brief is a short introduction to state-level estimates of the LFPR and what they can—and cannot—tell us about recent trends in the LFPRs of states in the Fourth Federal Reserve District.1 While monthly state-level LFPRs are best thought of as “ballpark estimates,” the annual estimates from the American Community Survey are precise enough to measure year-to-year changes in state-level LFPRs.

Objective- To assess changes in COVID-19 mortality rate and disparities over variants/waves by industry groups. Methods- We used a population-based retrospective cohort study approach. We identified COVID-19 deaths that occurred between January 2020 and May 2022 among the California working population age 18-64 years using death certificates. We used the Current Population Survey to derive estimates for working-age Californians at risk of COVID-19 mortality. The waves in deaths were categorized as Wave 1: March -June 2020, Wave 2: July -November 2020, Wave 3/Epsilon & Alpha variants: December 2020-May 2021, Wave 4/Delta variant: June 2021-January 2022, and Wave 5/Omicron variant: February -May 2022. Poisson regression was used to generate wave-specific mortality rate ratios (MRR). We assessed significance of change in MRR for each industry across waves by including an interaction term between industry and wave in different models. Results – In all waves of the pandemic, Healthcare (MRRwave 1=2.49, 95%CI (1.78 – 3.49)), Other Services (MRRwave 4=2.89, 95%CI (2.39 - 3.50)), Manufacturing (MRRwave 2=2.01, 95%CI (1.59 - 2.53)), Transportation (MRRwave 4=2.64, 95%CI (2.20 - 3.17)), and Retail Trade industries (MRRwave 5=1.87, 95%CI (1.48 - 2.36)) had higher mortality rates than the Professional, Scientific, and Technical industry which had one of the lowest mortality rates. Healthcare industry had the highest relative rate earlier in the pandemic, which diminished over time while Other Services, Utilities and Accommodation and Food Services industries had substantial increases in mortality rate ratios in later waves. Conclusion- Industries that consistently had disproportionate burden of the COVID-19 mortality may have benefitted from protections that consider workers’ increased exposure and vulnerability to severe outcomes.

The COVID-19 pandemic and related recession layered a sudden economic shock atop persistent employment inequities. Beginning in March 2020, lockdowns shuttered businesses, schools, and many child-care providers. Steep employment loss and slow recovery hurt certain groups more than others, and women’s employment particularly suffered. To better understand the gendered effects of the pandemic-induced economic shock, we asked where gender employment gaps stood before the pandemic, which women were most impacted by employment loss, and who struggled most to recover employment as lockdowns lifted through June 2020. We find that in June 2020, the gender employment gap stood at nearly 15 percentage points—over 3 percentage points wider than before the onset of the pandemic, a period of relatively high employment. In exploring variation in this overall trend, we find that steep employment loss more gravely impacted two groups of women: those already suffering from low employment before the pandemic, and mothers of school-aged children, whose recovery of employment lost during initial lockdowns was particularly poor relative to fathers. The COVID-19 recession’s disparate impacts are less surprising when we consider the extent to which parental status and race/ethnicity shaped women’s employment before the pandemic. The dramatic increase in disparities during the recession serves as a reminder of the vulnerabilities of certain populations to economic events. While our findings focus on the immediate effects of the pandemic shutdowns, the implications continue to reverberate years later, further underscoring the need for policy that not only mitigates the disproportionate impacts of economic shocks but also addresses underlying labor market disparities. This analysis points us toward solutions that address fundamental barriers to maximum employment.