The recovery of the US manufacturing sector following the 2008–2009 economic recession has coincided with a sharp drop in natural gas prices. Popular discussion has often attributed a large portion of the manufacturing recovery to this drop in gas prices, but little rigorous analysis has been conducted on this issue. We use confidential plant-level data to estimate the manufacturing employment effects of changes in natural gas and other energy prices. Previous analyses have used aggregated data and failed to control for multiple drivers of employment dynamics, such as other input costs and proximity to product demand. We show that controlling for these factors substantially diminishes the effects of natural gas and electricity prices on manufacturing employment. Accounting for the direct effects of natural gas prices as well as the indirect effects via electricity prices, we estimate that the decline in natural gas prices between 2007 and 2012 raised overall manufacturing employment by 0.6 percent. For industries in the top quartile of the gas intensity distribution, the natural gas price drop raised employment by three times as much— that is, 1.8 percent.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) statistics shows that South Carolina is one of the state with the highest number of the motorcycle fatalities and the fatal crashes. South Carolina repealed its Universal Helmet Law in 1980 which might be one of the reason for the increment of crashes and fatalities in South Carolina. Head and facial injuries are main causes of death in case of motorcycle fatal crashes. Helmet use can save number of lives and reduce the head and facial injuries. The thesis focuses on the advantages of the helmet use and necessity of Universal Helmet Law in South Carolina. The crash data for South Carolina from 1975 to 2015 was collected from Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) to identify the various factors affecting the likelihood of the helmet using the logistic regression. The socio-economic data for South Carolina from 2002 to 2012 was collected from US Census Bureau. The motorcycle crash data from 2002 to 2015 was obtained from the SCDOT database. The roadways for South Carolina was obtained from the RIMS database. The CPI (cost price index) data from Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor’s Statistics and fatal crash data was used to identify the effectiveness of helmet use in South Carolina. The social media and newsfeed were collected from twitter and various news channel and word cloud was created to characterize the opponents and ad vocative’s viewpoint. The results show that helmet use before the repeal of the Universal helmet law is three times more than after the repeal of the Universal helmet law. Also, the fatality trend from 1975 to 1980 is decreasing whereas the trend is increasing from 1981 to 2015. Among the various factors age, alcohol consumption and Universal helmet law are the significant factors in determining the likelihood of helmet use in South Carolina using the logistic regression. Universal Helmet Law is one of the major factor in determining the likelihood of helmet use. The total motorcycle crash data of South Carolina from 2013 to 2015 shows that the unhelmeted motorcyclists are twice the helmeted motorcyclists in the total motorcycle crashes. The percentage of helmeted motorcyclist with blood alcohol level >0.08 is five times less than the percentage of the unhelmeted motorcyclists. People with the higher college degree education are more likely to wear the helmet than the people with diploma. Higher household income motorcycle riders are more likely to wear the helmet than the motorcycle riders of lower household income are. Also, the freeways, minor arterial and local roads are more prone to the motorcycle crashes. Highways like Kings Highway, Cleo Chapman Highway and other highways that passes through the urban areas are more prone to the motorcycle crashes. Local roads around the Columbia city and the Greenville city have more chances of having the higher motorcycle crashes. The KDE and Kriging analysis shows that the hot spots vary with and without the normalization of crashes by population. Charleston, which is a hotspot without normalizing the crashes, changes to be cold spot when the crashes are normalized with the population of that area. The text analysis in the study shows that the opponents focus on having freedom of choosing their own safety. The proponents are more concerned about the public safety, which they support with the facts and researches. The reinstatement of Universal helmet law in South Carolina is particularly recommended. Various educational programs should be conducted to educate the people regarding the use and effectiveness of helmet. Enforcement should be done in the Highways and local roads that are prone to motorcycle crashes.

From the late 2000s, racial salary discrimination against black players emerged in the National Basketball Association (NBA) league. At the same time in the United States, the income gap between white and black citizens, which had been decreasing in the previous 20 years, stalled in the mid-2000s and started to increase again from the late 2000s. In this study, we examine whether increasing racial salary discrimination against black players in the NBA is positively associated with the non-shrinking income gap between white and black citizens. Using census data, we calculate the median income ratio of white and black males in each metropolitan area where at least one NBA team is located. Then, we examine whether the white premium of the salary of an NBA player is correlated with the median income ratio between white and black citizens of the metropolitan area where the player’s team is located. We find that the white premium becomes higher in a metropolitan area where the median income gap of the citizen becomes smaller. Thus, increasing salary gap against black players in the NBA in the late 2000s and 2010s is not positively associated with non-shrinking income gap between white and black citizens . . .

Evidence from the American Time Use Survey 2003-12 suggests the existence of small but statistically significant racial/ethnic differences in time spent not working at the workplace. Minorities, especially men, spend a greater fraction of their workdays not working than do white non-Hispanics. These differences are robust to the inclusion of large numbers of demographic, industry, occupation, time and geographic controls. They do not vary by union status, public- private sector attachment, pay method or age; nor do they arise from the effects of equal- employment enforcement or geographic differences in racial/ethnic representation. The findings imply that measures of the adjusted wage disadvantages of minority employees are overstated by about 10 percent.

Over recent years, the hollowing out of the American middle class has emerged as a topic of much speculation and concern. During the middle of the twentieth century, the middle class rose to a position of economic and demographic dominance. The question of whether this is no longer the case is closely related to the issue of rising income and wealth inequality but focused more directly on those who fall between the extremes of rich and poor. This report aims to broadly document trends affecting the middle class in Illinois with a focus on employment. The notion of “class” defies straightforward measurement with conventional data sources and encompasses more than employment status. In lieu of a clear way to define and measure class per se, this report follows previous national analyses in focusing on “middle income” households and their changing composition over time: • TheportionofIllinoishouseholdsfallingwithinthemiddleincomerangehas fallen from about 59 percent in the early 1970s to about 49 percent over the last five years. Middle income levels are also not keeping pace with the growth of upper income levels. • LikeIllinois’populationasawhole,thestate’smiddle-incomehouseholdshave grown more diverse, although their composition remains disproportionate by race. In 1980, non-Hispanic Whites made up 84 percent of people in middle-income households, but this portion fell to 67 percent by 2015. • Growthinthefemaleworkforcebetweenthe1970sand1990sandtheslowdecline of the gender pay gap has probably moderated the relative decline of middle- income households. • Theobservabledeclineinmiddle-incomehouseholdsiscloselyrelatedtoother contemporaneous trends, such as declining earnings for workers without a college education, the changing mix of industries that support middle-income employ- ment, and changing affects of labor market institutions on earnings. The report concludes with a discussion of how state and local policy can raise em- ployment standards and affect the supply and demand for labor. Such policies should be evaluated on how they achieve two objectives: growing the middle class from below and stabilizing the middle class from within.

Previous research has demonstrated that urban context significantly affects refugees’ access to suitable housing and jobs, however little research has been done into how sites for resettlement are selected. In the United States, this is a decentralized process which relies on actors on several scales, each of which are driven by markedly different aims. Voluntary Agencies identify and prepare a suitable housing unit for the family before they arrive. These are ideologically driven, largely faith based organizations, who contract with the federal government. On the local level, resettlement is supported by preexisting institutions, who offer language classes or job training, and local politicians who choose to advocate for refugees in their town. The driver for these actors is largely economic. Federal quotas for refugees to be admitted are largely determined by politics. Through interviews refugee resettlement professionals and analysis of American Community Survey data, I will describe The way in which these 3 actors interact to determine the location and type of housing provided to a refugee upon their arrival to the United States. This story varies significantly based on the type of city in which a family is placed. Large cosmopolitan gateway cities with a long history of integrating refugees offer a well established resettlement infrastructure and ethnic communities to provide support for refugees, but come with high rents. Therefore, the geography of resettlement has shifted to emerging gateways in suburban municipalities with budding communities of recent refugees. Many recent refugees have no existing ethnic communities in the US to join, and are placed in pre-emerging gateway cities with limited foreign born population. These different environments offer distinctly different pathways to finding housing and becoming an economically self sufficient member of American society, however analysis of ACS data demonstrates that within a few years of their arrival refugees learn English, and demonstrate higher rates of business ownership and employment than Native Born Americans. As their income grows steadily with increased time spent in the U.S., refugees become important members of their local community, contributing to the local tax base, renovating abandoned homes, and diligently completing jobs that are not in high demand among native born workers.

Classical behavioral genetics models for twin and other family designs decompose traits into heritability, shared environment, and nonshared environment components. Estimates of heritability of adult traits are pervasively observed to be far higher than those of shared environment, which has been used to make broad claims about the impotence of upbringing. However, the most commonly studied nondemographic variable in many areas of social science, educational attainment, exhibits robustly high estimates both for heritability and for shared environment. When previously noticed, the usual explanation has emphasized family resources, but evidence suggests this is unlikely to explain the anomalous high estimates for shared environment of educational attainment. We articulate eight potential complementary explanations and discuss evidence of their prospective contributions to resolving the puzzle. In so doing, we hope to further consideration of how behavioral genetics findings may advance studies of social stratification beyond the effort to articulate specific genetic influences.

Access and use of mainstream wireless technology is essential to social and economic participation, which can be especially challenging to people with disabilities. Technology ownership rates are indicative of general access to these critical technologies. However, analysis of the activities of technology users can provide more detailed assessment of the nature and degree of technology access. This article presents findings from the Survey of User Needs (SUN) for Wireless Technologies, a large, multi-year survey on use of consumer wireless technology by people with disabilities, conducted by the Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center for Wireless Technologies. Because of their versatility (connectivity, size, and portability) smartphones have come to occupy the center of many people’s digital experience. Data are presented on the ways people with disabilities use their smartphones, including voice calling, text messaging, emailing, using mobile apps, social networking, etc. Analysis of smartphone activities is provided on three areas: 1) adults with physical, cognitive, and sensory disabilities analyzed as a group; 2) the impact of key demographic variables – age, race/ethnicity, household income; 3) activities by disability type (blindness, deafness, difficulty speaking, etc.).

Dual citizenship is now tolerated under U.S. law and practice. As the granting of dual nationality by sending countries has spread, however, the relationship between dual citizenship and immigrant integration has emerged as an issue of debate. This paper explores whether or not recognition of dual nationality by sending countries positively a§ects the U.S. naturalization rate of immigrants from those countries. The empirical analysis draws on data from the 1990 and 2000 U.S. Censuses and examines immigrants from the countries of Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Costa Rica and Mexico, all of which changed their laws to permit dual citizenship in the 1990s. A utility maximizing framework predicts that, everything else being equal, immigrants coming from a country that has recently allowed dual citizenship should be more likely to naturalize because of the decrease in a major cost of naturalization, speciÖcally the need to forfeit rights in the country of origin. The analysis shows that older cohorts of immigrants from Öve of the six Latin American countries that have changed the law averaged higher naturalization rates in 2000 compared to other countries. Evidence for more recent immigrants is mixed and appears to be related to the rate of illegal immigration by the origin country.

This dissertation is comprised of three chapters focusing on the spatial distribution of human capital across cities in the US. The first chapter investigates the consequences of an increase in local human capital in local economies. The second chapter explains how location choices of highly educated immigrants and natives are different. The last chapter examines whether a large research university generate spillovers to workers in local economies. These three chapters aim to improve our understanding of the uneven distribution of human capital.

The term “intermarriage” refers to marriages between a Hispanic and a non-Hispanic, or marriages between non-Hispanic spouses who come from the following different racial groups: white, black, Asian, American Indian, multiracial or some other race.1 In the racial and ethnic classification system used for this report, individuals are classified first by ethnicity (defined as whether someone is Hispanic or not) and then by race. As such, all references to whites, blacks, Asians, American Indians, multiracial persons or persons of some other race include those who are not Hispanic; Hispanics may be of any race. So, for instance, in the 2015 American Community Survey, 4% of black newlyweds reported that they are also Hispanic. These people are categorized as “Hispanic” in this analysis, and if they are married to someone who identifies as a non-Hispanic black, both are counted as being in an intermarriage. By the same token, if a Hispanic black person marries a non-Hispanic white person . . .

Despite having affected the male population more than the female population, the first global crisis of the 21st century provides a useful scenario for analyzing the complex relationship between economic cycles, the female labor force and immigration. Quantitative methodologies were used to evaluate the impact of the Great Recession on the Latina immigrant labor force in the United States, contrasting its situation with that of US-born female workers and other female immigrants at three points in time: 2007 (pre-crisis), 2009 (recession), and 2014 (recovery). The results highlight both the predominantly countercyclical (buff ring) nature of female immigrant workers (particularly Latinas) throughout the economic cycle - mediated by the gender segregation of labor markets - and the lasting negative effects of the deep recession on their employment opportunities several years after the start of the economic recovery.

Voters and elected officials must consider the merits of local proposals to reduce African-American unemployment. Effective policies that invest in workers, invest in public transit, bolster public sector employment, and lower the relative cost of homeownership can facilitate good, middle-class jobs for African Americans who face considerable structural barriers. The City of Chicago, Cook County, and the State of Illinois should all take steps to achieve these goals.

This study examines the economic, demographic, and scal history of Dayton, Ohio, from the turn of the 20th century to the present. The purpose of this study is to place Dayton in the context of a declining manufacturing city that must overcome substantial challenges if it is going to succeed as a 21st-century city. In many ways Dayton is the archetype of the declining Rust Belt city. Until the 1960s, Dayton was a thriving midwestern manufacturing hub, initially built around waterways and later railroads and surrounded by fertile farmland. In the mid-20th century, southerners migrated northward to take advantage of the job opportunities and higher wages in places like Dayton. Southern racial discrim- ination and segregation limited educational opportunities for many southern blacks, and this legacy of institutionalized discrimination inhibited the educa- tional attainment of many blacks and contributed to the city’s inability to adapt to changing economic conditions. Highway construction and the nationwide decline in manufacturing also harmed Dayton, and since the 1960s, Dayton and other midwestern cities have experienced declines in population, wages, and home values. The nationwide shift to a service economy has reduced reliance on natural resources, and this, combined with the long-term decline in transporta- tion costs, means that government policies and climate will increasingly decide the economic fate of cities. Dayton cannot change its physical location, so local o cials must compete using policy if Dayton is to have a chance at revitalization.

State public health agencies play a crucial role in disease prevention and health promotion by implementing policies that advance population health. This dissertation examines how institutional, organizational, and political factors affect the implementation decisions of health professionals who work within these agencies. In particular, I focus on the effects of bureaucratic professionalism, which I define as the extent of self-regulating, networked experts in a policy-relevant field within a government agency. I elucidate how bureaucratic professionalism influences agency health policy implementation decisions within certain institutional and political contexts. I begin by developing a theory of bureaucratic professionalism, which I refine through interviews with state government employees and professional association representatives. I then examine why we see variation in bureaucratic professionalism across state health departments and over time. I hypothesize that bureaucratic professionalism will increase when the legislature is more professionalized and of the opposite party. While some of my empirical results support this hypothesis, they are inconsistent across different measures of professionalism and are sensitive to model specification. Next, I elucidate how and under what conditions variation in bureaucratic professionalism affects state public health policy by focusing on childhood immunization rulemaking. The particular conditions of interest include: the existence of a board of health, the level of bureaucratic professionalism, and the presence of divided government. I find that states with a greater proportion of bureaucrat-professionals in state government propose fewer immunization rules under divided government. This is surprising, as the literature on science-driven, federal-level bureaucracy suggests that bureaucrats enjoy a certain amount of autonomy based on the professional reputation of their field. Finally, I shift my focus from rulemaking to program implementation to ascertain the effects of professionalism on this aspect of policy implementation. I conduct a case study of a recent childhood immunization rule in Michigan to understand how bureaucrat-professionals at the local level implement a state rule. Local-level professionals appear to use their discretion to accommodate parents’ decisions not to vaccinate their children, which at first appears to be at odds with what the effects of professionalism might suggest. However, the rule also represents a shift in the types of professionals responsible for implementing the policy, replacing school secretaries with health professionals who are committed to providing education about vaccination and may be held accountable for vaccination rates. The main effect of this policy is that it makes obtaining a vaccination as convenient as obtaining a nonmedical exemption, as both require an appointment with a health professional. Additionally, my analysis of the implementation of this rule reveals an overlooked aspect of bureaucratic professionalism: professionals within local health departments are absorbing and managing conflict between the public and public health through the departments’ approach to the education sessions. This dissertation helps us better understand the role of bureaucrat-professionals in state government, and the conditions under which they employ their expertise to implement health policy. Concern for reputation and the potential for reduced policy implementation authority lessens professionals’ desire to make rules in challenging political environments. And, in implementing a rule that helps parents avoid vaccines, professionals appear to be utilizing their long-term mindset and commitment to education to overcome the short-term focus of vaccinating all children. The long-term goals of the profession lead health professionals within bureaucracies to adopt a strategic mindset toward agency policy implementation.

This paper analyzes age and cohort changes in the occupational attainment of Blacks and Whites born in successive decades from 1910 to 1979. Occupational attainment is operationalized as “occupational returns to education” and “earnings returns to occupation.” The primary objective is to determine whether the relative occupational attainment of Blacks of the baby-boom generation and Generation X improved over that of their great-grandparents, grandparents, and parents. The results indicate that Blacks and Whites, and men and women improved their occupational attainment levels over those of previous birth cohorts. However, neither Black men of the baby-boom generation nor those of Generation X improved their occupational attainment relative to White men of the same age and born in the same decade. Moreover, on a per capita basis, Black men’s occupational status declined for the most recent birth cohorts due in large part to joblessness starting with members of the 1940 birth cohort, which increased progressively with each successive birth cohort. On the other hand, Black women seem to have improved their occupational status relative to White women, but the improvements fluctuated over the decades. These findings are discussed in relation to possible causes and limitations of this analysis.

Preventative screenings hold the promise of detecting disease before it becomes fatal. However, they often have the unintended consequence of creating socioeconomic disparities because individuals with social and economic resources are the heaviest users. This research investigates education- and insurance-based disparities in colorectal cancer screening participation and how these associations change over time. I use data from the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) to analyze trends in colorectal cancer screening participation for adults over 50 from 1992 to 2013 (n=51,385). Controlling for key sociodemographic factors, results suggest that education and access to insurance have become increasingly important predictors of screening participation over time. Specifically, the findings appear to primarily apply to endoscopy use, a more invasive and expensive type of colorectal cancer screening. By showing that education and insurance are more relevant for predicting endoscopy use, this study contributes to fundamental cause research on the uptake of medical innovations; the study shows that the use of complicated technologies is more heavily influenced by socioeconomic factors. I conclude by considering how policy changes can reduce socioeconomic disparities in cancer screenings.

Historically, improvements in the quality of municipal drinking water made important contributions to mortality decline in wealthy countries. However, water disinfection often does not produce equivalent benefits in developing countries today. We investigate this puzzle by analyzing an abrupt, large-scale municipal water disinfection program in Mexico in 1991 that increased the share of Mexico’s population receiving chlorinated water from 55% to 85% within six months. We find that on average, the program was associated with a 37 to 48% decline in diarrheal disease deaths among children (over 23,000 averted deaths per year) and was highly cost-effective (about $1,310 per life year saved). However, we also find evidence that age (degradation) of water pipes and lack of complementary sanitation infrastructure play important roles in attenuating these benefits. Countervailing behavioral responses, although present, appear to be less important.

In the last four decades, the US and other industrialized economies have experienced a pronounced drop in the fraction of the population working in middle-waged jobs. Since employment growth has been weighted toward the upper- and lower-tails of the wage distribution, this phenomenon has become known as job polarization. An important literature demonstrates that this change has meant the loss of job opportunities in a certain type of occupation—those that are routine in nature, for which the tasks performed on the job follow a well-defined linear structure or procedural routine. The fact that such occupational tasks are easily automated has led researchers to study the role of recent advances in “automation technologies” in this disappearance of middle-skilled jobs. In this paper, we review the . . .

A paper published by Bleakley in this journal (Quarterly Journal of Economics 122(1)(2007), 73–117) produces evidence that the campaign to eradicate hookworm from the American South circa 1910 boosted school enrollment among children in historically endemic areas, and raised their incomes in adulthood. This comment reconstructs the Bleakley data set and reanalyzes it while hewing closely to Bleakley methods. The comment confirms the central correlation found in Bleakley, but questions the causal interpretation. Outcomes for children born in historically endemic areas indeed improved faster after eradication, which suggests, in a difference-in-difference framework, that eradication brought large benefits. But this convergence began decades earlier, and does not appear to have accelerated at the times predicted by the Bleakley causal theory. This fact emerges more sharply in the reanalysis for several reasons. The reanalysis uses 100-fold larger census microdata samples now available. It puts little interpretive weight on the tabulated regressions in the original, few of which can distinguish whether trends were preexisting. It emphasizes analysis of time series patterns, with a combination of graphical presentation and formal tests for trend breaks. And it more consistently tests for robustness to the inclusion of the Bleakley full control set.