Urban social stratification has become much more polarized than it was in previous waves of capitalist development. Cities in the twenty-first century are also marked by complex patterns of social differentiation deriving in part from rapidly changing occupational structures and in part from the ways in which these structures are intertwined with the variables of race, ethnicity, gender, and so on. A matter of particular concern is the great growth of the marginalized slum population of the cities of the Global South.

This paper studies whether marginal voters are more or less prejudiced in democratic elections in comparison with regular voters. We focus on low-level statewide elections in which marginal voters are plausibly ill-informed in order to mitigate concerns that the estimates reflect unobserved candidate-specific attributes that correlate with race. Both descriptive evidence and falsification tests reaffirm the research design. We find considerable evidence that marginal voters engage in more racial discrimination than regular voters. There is no evidence of bias against female candidates.

We derive a non-standard unit root serial correlation formulation for intertemporal adjustments in the labor force participation rate. This leads to a tractable three-error component model, which in contrast to other models embeds heterogeneity into the error structure. Unlike in the typical iid three-error component two-tier stochastic frontier model, our equation’s error components are independent but not identically distributed. This leads to a complex nonlinear likelihood function requiring identification through a two-step estimation procedure, which we estimate using Current Population Survey (CPS) data. By transforming the basic equation linking labor force participation to the working age population, this paper devises a new method which can be used to identify labor market joiners and leavers. The method’s advantage is its parsimonious data requirements, especially alleviating the need for survey based longitudinal data.

Higher education in Latin America and the Caribbean has expanded dramatically in the past 15 years, as the average gross enrollment rate has more than doubled, and many new institutions and programs have been opened. Although higher education access has become more equitable, and higher education supply has become more varied, many of the 'new' students in the system are, on average, less academically ready than are their more advantaged counterparts. Furthermore, only half of higher education students, on average, complete their degree, and labor market returns to higher education vary greatly across institutions and programs. Thus, higher education is at a crossroads today. Given the region's urgency to raise productivity in a low-growth, fiscally constrained environment, going past this crossroads requires the formation of skilled human capital fast and efficiently. 'At a Crossroads: Higher Education in Latin America and the Caribbean' contributes to the discussion by studying quality, variety, and equity of higher education in Latin America and the Caribbean. The book presents comprehensive evidence on the recent higher education expansion and evolution of higher education labor market returns. Using novel data and state-of-the-art methods, it studies demand and supply drivers of the recent expansion. It investigates the behavior of institutions and students and explores the unintended consequences of large-scale higher education policies. Framing the analysis are the singular characteristics of the higher education market and the market segmentation induced by the variety of students and institutions in the system. At this crossroads, a role emerges for incentives, information, accountability, and choice.

We present an approach to measure the stratification of occupations by sex. For that, we extend the conventional framework for measuring gender segregation to take into account the quality of jobs (e.g. average earnings) predominantly held by each sex. We complement segregation curves and measures derived from them, with their associated concentration curves and indices, to determine whether women are segregated into low-paying jobs. We investigate with this approach the long-term trends of gender segregation and stratification of occupations by sex in the US using census data. Our results show that de-stratification of occupations by sex was more intense than their desegregation, and lasted longer, even after segregation had stagnated. Neither segregation nor stratification levels can be explained by the different characteristics of male and female workforces, although the profound changes in the composition of workers over time (e.g. education, marital status) did help to substantially explain their trends. Changes in the earnings structure favoring occupations held by women since 1980 additionally contributed to reduce stratification over time. Finally, changes in the conditional occupational distribution by sex only reduced segregation and stratification before 1990.

We develop a theoretical framework to investigate how culture and institutions determine long-term growth. Since culture and institutions are abstract and broad notions, we focus on the degree of individualism represented by culture, and the protection of property rights represented by institutions. This leads to an endogenous growth model in which culture, institutions and growth are jointly determined. The model admits multiple steady states and dynamic social equilibria through different combinations of culture and institutions in equilibrium. The multiplicity stems from a strategic complementarity between culture and institutions. Each social equilibrium consists of an economic equilibrium along with culture and institutions, and equilibrium selection depends entirely on self-fulfilling expectations. (i) We show that collectivist societies may fall into low-growth trap because they are more inclined toward poor protection of property rights. (ii) Societies near the growth trap may suffer from excess volatility arising from endogenous regime switching between weak and strong enforcement of property rights.

About three in ten Medicaid recipients could be affected by a work requirement, a share that is similar in rural and urban places. Among Medicaid recipients potentially affected by a work requirement, the majority worked at least part of the previous year or were motivated to work but could not find a job, a share that is slightly higher in rural places than in urban (83.4 percent versus 78.7 percent).

The earned income tax credit (EITC) is the federal government’s largest meanstested cash assistance program. In 2014 the program provided over $69 billion in tax credits and tax spending in the form of reduced tax liabilities. These benefits were distributed to 25.8 million tax filers for an average of about $2,400. The EITC rewards work by providing tax credits to lower earning workers that initially increase as workers earn more. Over an initial range of earnings, the tax credits effectively raise workers’ wage rates. After the initial range of earnings with increasing tax credit amounts, there is then a range of earnings over which the tax credits are constant. As workers earn above this range, the tax credits gradually fall, such that above a given threshold the tax credit is zero. The credits also vary by family size and given the family size the credits have become more generous over time. The maximum credits and the range for EITCeligible income have been legislatively increased since the EITC was introduced in 1975. Consistent with other studies, we find that among women with some college or less education, participation in the labor market by single women with children has increased in response to expansions in the EITC program. Hours of work and annual earnings for this group have not increased relative to other single women with no children in the household, however. In general, earnings inequality among women with some college or less education has risen as has the share attributable to single women with children. Finally, evidence on how the EITC helps boost workers’ future earnings is mixed.

This research explores the relationship between place and the career experiences of STEM-educated recent college graduates in the U.S. over the 2000–2010 decade. Specifically, it seeks to understand how these graduates’ early career outcomes (earnings, odds of unemployment and underemployment) are contingent on the location where they received their degrees, in addition to individual and institutional level characteristics. The findings show that individual factors are the most important factors determining all three outcomes. Women and Blacks are considerably more disadvantaged (than male and White counterparts), while higher grades, more experience and spatial mobility are overwhelmingly positively related to earnings, and negatively—to chances of unemployment and underemployment. Health and engineering are the most lucrative majors in terms all three outcomes. Graduates’ outcomes worsened during the recent recession, but varied significantly across the geographic areas. Higher education institutional factors, selectivity and college specialization in STEM, are strong predictors of higher earnings, but not other outcomes. Geographic factors, such as college area STEM employment concentration and proximity to STEM clusters, are significant in explaining all three outcomes. This study contributes to the scholarship on higher education, labor market, and gender and racial disparity studies from a geographic and comparative perspective. It particularly provides policy implication on higher education policy with regards to STEM disciplines; it further calls for investigation of the relationship between higher education institution and regional development, and the integration of the efforts between the two.

Workers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) are vital for regional and national prosperity. Not every person with STEM qualifications, however, finds employment in a STEM job. This article analyzes the geography of this matching between STEM degree holders and certain types of STEM occupations across large metropolitan labor markets in the United States. We find that although labor-market size has no effect, living in denser STEM labor markets elevates the probabilities of matching; having an advanced degree enhances this effect. Women are also far less likely to be matched than men; being black or Latino additionally lowers the chances of matching. Combining spatial effects with individual attributes increases probabilities of matching in places with high concentrations of STEM jobs for women, racial minorities, and the foreign born, but these advantages are often the same for white, native-born men. In denser STEM labor markets the job-matching advantage spans the labor pool, conferring no differential benefit for different population subgroups.

We exploit regional variations in house price fluctuations in the United States during the early to mid‐2000s to study the impact of the housing boom on young Americans' choices related to home ownership, household formation, and fertility. We also introduce a novel instrument for changes in house prices based on the predetermined industrial structure of the local economy. We find that in regions that experienced large increases in house prices between 2001 and 2006, the youngest households were substantially less likely to purchase residential property, to be married, and to have a child, both in 2006 and in 2011.

We extend the conventional framework for measuring segregation to consider stratification of occupations by gender, i.e. when women or men are predominantly segregated into low-paying jobs. For this, we propose to use concentration curves and indices. Our empirical analysis using this approach shows that the decline over time in occupational gender segregation in the US has been accompanied by a deeper, longer reduction in gender stratification. We further investigate the role of workers characteristics, showing that gender differences cannot explain the levels of segregation/stratification in any year. However, changes over time for each gender do help to explain their trends.

A broadly accepted view contends that the 2007-09 financial crisis in the U.S. was caused by an expansion in the supply of credit to subprime borrowers during the 2001-2006 credit boom, leading to the spike in defaults and foreclosures that sparked the crisis. We use a large administrative panel of credit file data to examine the evolution of household debt and defaults between 1999 and 2013. Our findings suggest an alternative narrative that challenges the large role of subprime credit in the crisis. We show that credit growth between 2001 and 2007 was concentrated in the prime segment, and debt to high risk borrowers was virtually constant for all debt categories during this period. The rise in mortgage defaults during the crisis was concentrated in the middle of the credit score distribution, and mostly attributable to real estate investors. We argue that previous analyses confounded life cycle debt demand of borrowers who were young at the start of the boom with an expansion in credit supply over that period.

This research quantitatively examines whether the current demographic changes in the United States are linked to changes in automobile travel using comprehensive datasets. Specifically, this research focuses on the impact of three major demographic shifts: immigration, Millennials entering adulthood, and aging. The findings of the three essays suggest that these aforementioned demographic changes significantly influence the demand of automobile travel, controlling for socio-economic, vehicle ownership, time-specific and regional-specific factors. Understanding the link from demographics to automobile travel creates opportunities for policy makers to transform American cities to be more sustainable and to more effectively predict future travel patterns based on demographic trends.

Five states—Arkansas, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, and Montana— operate section 1115 Medicaid demonstrations that require or encourage monthly payments from Medicaid beneficiaries with incomes up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level.1 These demonstrations vary in the amount and timing of the required payments, the income levels at which payments are required, and the consequences for nonpayment. In some states, the monthly payments are considered traditional premiums; in others, they are contributions to beneficiary accounts that resemble health savings accounts. We compare the design of monthly payments in the five demonstrations during the 2014–2016 period. We also (1) estimate the number and proportion of potential enrollees in each state who would be subject to monthly payments using data from the American Community Survey and (2) report the proportion of potential enrollees that could be disenrolled for nonpayment to illustrate how broadly nonpayment consequences might apply to demonstration beneficiaries. Overall, we find that the proportion of the demonstration population required or encouraged to make monthly payments ranges from 25 percent in Michigan to 100 percent in Indiana, although in some states beneficiaries may opt out of making payments with few consequences. In Iowa, Indiana, and Montana, about one quarter of the estimated eligible population can be disenrolled for nonpayment. We close by looking ahead to our continuing observation and evaluation of these demonstrations, including elements of monthly payment design which could be the basis of valid comparisons across states.

Background: Growing evidence indicates that immigration policy and enforcement adversely affect the well-being of Latino immigrants, but fewer studies examine ‘spillover effects’ on USA-born Latinos. Immigration enforcement is often diffuse, covert and difficult to measure. By contrast, the federal immigration raid in Postville, Iowa, in 2008 was, at the time, the largest single-site federal immigration raid in US history. Methods: We employed a quasi-experimental design, examining ethnicity-specific patterns in birth outcomes before and after the Postville raid. We analysed Iowa birth-certificate data to compare risk of term and preterm low birthweight (LBW), by ethnicity and nativity, in the 37 weeks following the raid to the same 37-week period the previous year (n = 52 344). We model risk of adverse birth outcomes using modified Poisson regression and model distribution of birthweight using quantile regression. Results: Infants born to Latina mothers had a 24% greater risk of LBW after the raid when compared with the same period 1 year earlier [risk ratio (95% confidence interval) = 1.24 (0.98, 1.57)]. No such change was observed among infants born to non-Latina White mothers. Increased risk of LBW was observed for USA-born and immigrant Latina mothers. The association between raid timing and LBW was stronger among term than preterm births. Changes in birthweight after the raid primarily reflected decreased birthweight below the 5th percentile of the distribution, not a shift in mean birthweight. Conclusions: Our findings highlight the implications of racialized stressors not only for the health of Latino immigrants, but also for USA-born co-ethnics.

The nonprofit Urban Institute is dedicated to elevating the debate on social and economic policy. For nearly five decades, Urban scholars have conducted research and offered evidence-based solutions that improve lives and strengthen communities across a rapidly urbanizing world. Their objective research helps expand opportunities for all, reduce hardship among the most vulnerable, and strengthen the effectiveness of the public sector. ABOUT THE ME TROP OL ITA N P LANN IN G C OUN CIL Since 1934, the Metropolitan Planning Council (MPC) has been dedicated to shaping a more equitable, sustainable, and prosperous greater Chicago region. As an independent, nonprofit, nonpartisan organization, MPC serves communities and residents by developing, promoting, and implementing solutions for sound regional growth.

haring and working on sensitive data in distributed settings from healthcare to finance is a major challenge due to security and privacy concerns. Secure multiparty computation (SMC) is a viable panacea for this, allowing distributed parties to make computations while the parties learn nothing about their data, but the final result. Although SMC is instrumental in such distributed settings, it does not provide any guarantees not to leak any information about individuals to adversaries. Differential privacy (DP) can be utilized to address this; however, achieving SMC with DP is not a trivial task, either. In this paper, we propose a novel Secure Multiparty Distributed Differentially Private (SM-DDP) protocol to achieve secure and private computations in a multiparty environment. Specifically, with our protocol, we simultaneously achieve SMC and DP in distributed settings focusing on linear regression on horizontally distributed data. That is, parties do not see each others’ data and further, can not infer information about individuals from the final constructed statistical model. Any statistical model function that allows independent calculation of local statistics can be computed through our protocol. The protocol implements homomorphic encryption for SMC and functional mechanism for DP to achieve the desired security and privacy guarantees. In this work, we first introduce the theoretical foundation for the SM-DDP protocol and then evaluate its efficacy and performance on two different datasets. Our results show that one can achieve individual-level privacy through the proposed protocol with distributed DP, which is independently applied by each party in a distributed fashion. Moreover, our results also show that the SM-DDP protocol incurs minimal computational overhead, is scalable, and provides security and privacy guarantees.

This article focuses on determining the school counseling activities perceived as important by a sample of Latino high school students. The researchers explored student perceptions through the administration of a survey instrument created for this project to better understand Latino students’ perceptions and satisfaction with school counselor activities. The instrument consisted of items aligned with domains described in the American School Counselor Association’s National Model and current literature on Latino adolescents’ experiences. According to the results, students indicated that they believed college and career activities to be important, however were not satisfied with how their school counselors provided those activities. The results, limitations, and suggestions for school counselors are provided.

The instatement of Bahasa Indonesia as Indonesia’s national language is widely cited as a successful example of language planning; yet it also has implications for endangerment of local languages. With over 700 local languages, Indonesia is one of the most linguistically diverse countries in the world. It is widely acknowledged that “small” languages are at risk of endangerment, but what is the fate of the “big” languages? In a multifaceted project, we address this issue investigating language shift among the “big” languages of Indonesia, those with over 1 million speakers.