The U.S. decennial census is an invaluable source to guide demographic analysis. It enumerates demographic characteristics within different levels of geography to protect privacy. Small statistical units such as census tracts and blocks in different points in time are indispensable to analyze regional and local trends of demographic characteristics. However, the linkage between census demography and those geographies mandates that their boundaries change from one census year to another to reflect underlying population changes. This inconsistency complicates studies of micro-scale nuanced demographic processes. Previous research efforts have aggregated inconsistent census geographies to larger comparable units or used areal interpolation to transfer demographic attributes from geographies of one census year (source zones) to geographies of another (target zones). The former disrupts the required resolution for micro-scale analysis while the latter is susceptible to errors. This dissertation contributes analytical solutions to the above-mentioned persistent problem in enumerated data, typically used in demography, health sciences or economics. It combines spatial (dasymetric) refinement with areal interpolation methods to increase their accuracy in population estimation over time. This combination leads to a more precise allocation of population, which results in more reliable modeling for different configurations of target zones. The research conducts comprehensive analyses involving various ancillary variables, namely the National Land-Cover Database (NLCD), the Global Human Settlement Layer (GHSL), parcels, buildings and ZTRAX®, to transfer different demographic attributes, namely total population, population by race and age structure and urban population from census tracts in 1990 and 2000 within census tract boundaries in 2010 across different geographic scales (county/state) and under various demographic settings (urban/rural). This constructs demographic estimates within temporally consistent small units over 10- and 20-year periods. The outcomes of the research affirm the effectiveness of combining spatial refinement with areal interpolation for accurate multi-temporal demographic analysis. The application domain of the methodological advancements of this dissertation includes demography, risk assessments, resource allocation planning, crime analysis and economics, to name a few.

Skill differences in geographical mobility are entirely driven by (typically young) workers who report moving for a new job. I argue this is a natural consequence of the specialized nature of skills, independent of geography. In a thin labor market, given the importance of job match quality, skilled workers will accrue substantial rents as they climb the jobs ladder. This is particularly so for younger workers, who are just beginning their careers. Though the origin of these rents is unrelated to geography, I claim these rents are crucial in explaining geographical mobility given that moving is typically costly. Using data from the US, I show that skill differences in wage rents are large enough to plausibly explain the mobility gap. I find little support for the view that skilled mobility is driven principally by low migration costs. In fact, based on estimates of the wage returns to cross-state matches, I show that workers realized migration costs are steeply increasing in skill - conditional on moving. This is a natural consequence of selection on large wage offers. I also present new evidence on subjective migration costs which supports my claims.

Spousal characteristics such as age, height, and income are often used in social science research to infer social preferences. For example, a male taller norm has been inferred from the fact that fewer wives are taller than their husbands than would occur with random matching. The fact that more husbands out-earn their wives than vice versa has been used as evidence that husbands prefer that their wives earn less or wives prefer that their husbands earn more. This paper argues that it is difficult and potentially misleading to infer social preferences from marriage market outcomes. We first show how standard economic theory predicts that positive assortative matching on a characteristic in equilibrium is consistent with a wide variety of preferences. This theoretical result is applied to an empirical investigation of income differences between spouses, where a persistent gender gap also exists. Simulations which sort couples positively on permanent income can largely replicate the observed distribution of spousal income differences in US Census dataincluding the sharp drop-off in mass as the wife begins to out-earn her husbandwithout assuming a norm against the wife out-earning her husband.

Introduction: This study investigated associations between maternal prepregnancy BMI and child behaviors at ages 9–11 years and examine interaction by race and gender. Methods: The National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and the Children and Young Adults surveys are U.S.-based, ongoing longitudinal studies, initiated in 1979 and 1986, respectively. Mothers (n=2,952) reported pregnancy and child (n=5,660) developmental information at multiple time points. Child total, internalizing, and externalizing problems at ages 9–11 years were assessed using the Behavior Problems Index (BPI), collected biennially until 2012. Associations between prepregnancy BMI and child BPI outcomes were examined, as well as two- and three-way interactions by race and gender. Analyses were conducted in 2017. Results: Boys whose mothers had higher prepregnancy weights exhibited higher total BPI and externalizing scores at ages 9–11 years versus those with normal-weight mothers. Boys with severely obese mothers had higher total BPI (mean difference=7.99, 95% CI=3.53, 12.46) and externalizing (mean difference=5.77, 95% CI=1.50, 10.04) scores. Prepregnancy underweight was associated with boys’ higher total BPI (mean difference=2.34, 95% CI=0.02, 4.66) and externalizing (mean difference=3.30, 95% CI=0.69, 5.91); these associations were not significant in sensitivity analyses. No associations emerged for girls or internalizing problems. Two-way interactions by race and three-way interactions by race and gender were not significant. Conclusions: Maternal prepregnancy weight was associated with BPI level among boys. Boys with severely obese mothers exhibited markedly higher behavioral problems at ages 9–11 years versus those with normal-weight mothers, regardless of race. Maintaining healthy prepregnancy weight may be important for preventing boys’ deleterious behavior outcomes in middle childhood.

Commercial trucking by its nature is a transient occupation, and those involved with commercial trucking can find themselves on the road and away from their homes for extended periods of time. Given the occupation’s transitory nature, why have some commercial drivers chosen to call rural America home when any place near a highway should suffice? Through the use of semi-structured interviews, this thesis attempts to explore whether rural truck drivers have any historical or geographical ties to the rural areas that they have chosen to live in. Using qualitative interview approach this thesis endeavored to find whether there are connections to the loss of agricultural or rural manufacturing jobs in a rural driver’s community and their decision to enter the occupation of trucking. In this way this thesis has attempted to discern to what extent structural changes in the rural economy over the last 40 years, may have played a role in a person’s decision to enter the occupation of trucking. This thesis has also attempted to elicit a phenomenological understanding of how they rural truck drivers understand themselves in relation to the larger American society through the work they perform.

Ever since the studies of Louis-Adolphe Bertillon in the late 19th century it has been known that marital status and number of children markedly affect death and suicide rates. This led in 1898 Emile Durkheim to conjecture a connection between social isolation (especially at family level) and suicide. However, further progress was long hampered by the limited statistical data available from death certificates. Recently, it was shown by the present authors that disability data from census records can be used as a reliable substitute for mortality data. This opens a new route to investigations of family ties because census information goes much beyond the limited data reported on death certificates. It is shown that the disability rate of adults decreases when they have more family links. More precisely, the reduction of the parents’ disability brought about by the presence of a child reveals that the strength of ties between parents and child is highest in the first year after birth and then weakens steadily as the child ages. It will also be seen that the strength of the bond between husband and wife is highest when they are of same age and decreases fairly steadily when the age gap increases.

Cliometrics has transformed economic history from a primarily narrative to a mathematical approach, causing much apprehension and debate about the proper balance between economics and history. The culmination of this transformation occurred in 1993 when Clio pioneers Robert Fogel and Douglass North were awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Science. Cliometrics has walked a fine line between being too narrowly “economic,” whence it would only measure phenomenon that it cannot explain, and too historical, at which point it would cease to appeal to the economics profession. By merging economic history with modern techniques, cliometricians have not ended economic history, but elevated it.

Significant increases in the volume of big spatial data have driven researchers and practitioners to build specialized systems to process and analyze this data. Existing efforts focus on either big raster data, e.g., remote sensing data or medical images, or big vector data, e.g., geotagged tweets or trajectories. However, when raster and vector data mix, one dataset must be converted to the other representation requiring vector-to-raster or raster-to-vector transformation before processing, which is extremely inefficient for large datasets. In this paper, we advocate a third approach that mixes the raw representations of both vector and raster data in the query processor. As a case study, we apply this to the zonal statistics problem, which computes the statistics over a raster layer for each polygon in a vector layer. We propose a novel method, called Scanline method, which does not require a conversion between raster and vector. Experimental evaluation on real datasets as large as 840 billion pixels shows up to three orders of magnitude speedup over the baseline methods.

This report shows national trends in housing affordability for ELI renters, based on data from the 2000 Census and the five-year American Community Surveys for 2005-09 and 2010-14.1 It updates our 2015 brief, the first publication on housing affordability to combine county-level data for ELI households with data from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) rental assistance (Leopold et al. 2015). This report also incorporates new data that show the impact of US Department of Agriculture (USDA) rental assistance programs benefiting ELI renters and a new methodology for integrating survey and administrative data to estimate housing affordability and better isolate the role of federal rental assistance in making housing affordable for ELI households.

Former President Obama’s 2020 Goal for the United States to have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world required that both new and disengaged college students attain degrees. The workforce development system could assist the latter by supporting credit-bearing education as training. Its ability to address this need depends on the controlled devolved structure established by the Workforce Investment Act of 1998, which allows states and local workforce investment areas to set priorities and make a range of choices bounded by federal constraints. Analyzing interview data with frontline staff, case managers, and leadership in workforce systems in four states, the authors identify obstacles and opportunities for supporting degree completion. Three federal Workforce Investment Act mandates are particularly influential: individual training accounts, eligible training provider lists, and emphasis on demand occupations. The authors also model factors such as local partnerships and staff knowledge that can mediate how policy and practice shape local workforce investment area support for college.

This paper examines the effect of younger marriages on the likelihood of divorce. Our research design exploits U.S. President Lyndon Johnson’s August 26, 1965, Executive Order eliminating lower priority for married men in the Vietnam draft. A deluge of “midnight marriages” followed. Marriages to draft-eligible men increased by more than 350 percent, reducing men’s average age at marriage by 8 to 10 months and shifting their partner choice. Using the 1980 Census, we next compare the long-term outcomes of men married in the third quarter of 1965 to those married in the same quarter in 1964 or from 1960 to 1970. Consistent with the midnight marriages being determined by idiosyncratic factors, men induced to marry by the policy change were no more likely to attain a college degree or become Vietnam veterans. Our most striking finding is that these midnight marriages—formed hastily and under duress for men ages 19 to 26—were less likely to result in divorce 15 years later. Whereas previous literature has found detrimental effects of very young teen marriages on women, we find little evidence that earlier marriages due to Executive Order 11241 had deleterious effects on men or women.

New large-scale data linking projects are revolutionizing empirical social science. Outside of selected samples and tightly restricted data enclaves, little is known about the quality of these “big data” or how the methods used to create them shape inferences. This paper evaluates the performance of commonly used automated record-linking algorithms in three high quality historical U.S. samples. Our findings show that (1) no method (including hand linking) consistently produces samples representative of the linkable population; (2) automated linking tends to produce very high rates of false matches, averaging around one third of links across datasets and methods; and (3) false links are systematically (though differently) related to baseline sample characteristics. A final exercise demonstrates the importance of these findings for inferences using linked data. For a common set of records, we show that algorithm assumptions can attenuate estimates of intergenerational income elasticities by almost 50 percent. Although differences in these findings across samples and methods caution against the generalizability of specific error rates, common patterns across multiple datasets offer broad lessons for improving current linking practice.

The literature on the economics of religion finds that increased religious participation or religious density is associated with positive socio-economic outcomes such as increased earnings, educational attainment, and lower engagement in risky behaviors. The literature suggests that this relationship is causal, and that the gains from religion often tend to be accrued among low-skill or marginalized youth groups. In turn, as education and income increase, societies become more secular. Will the positive outcomes associated with religion disappear as western societies become more secularized?

In recent years Puerto Ricans in New York City have become difficult to locate in the public realm. This is a paradox given that Puerto Ricans make up the largest Hispanic subgroup in the larger metropolitan region. This study examines how, when, and why Puerto Ricans became publicly invisible in New York City. Through content analysis of archival newspapers, interviews with local politicians’ offices and local residents, analysis of demographic data, and ethnographic fieldwork in historically Puerto Rican neighborhoods in the 2012-2013 academic year, I examine the impact of changes in local demography, media, politics, and culture on the public identity of Puerto Ricans in New York City. With respect to demography, the Puerto Rican has become increasingly dispersed throughout the region, as well as increasingly dispersed among other Latinos. The result is that Puerto Rican concentration has lessened in historically Puerto Rican neighborhoods, contributing to declining visibility. What has not changed, however, is the high poverty rate, the low labor force participation, the low median income, and the low levels of educational attainment that many local Puerto Ricans continue to face. In the media, local news reports about Puerto Ricans have dwindled, and in their place, news reports about Hispanics have flourished. This phenomenon is present in both the English language and Spanish language news. The New York Times and El Diario La Prensa have both shifted their lenses away from local Puerto Ricans, a shift that began in earnest in the 1970s. As one of the primary means of public visibility, local media has also contributed to Puerto Rican public invisibility. In the political realm, Puerto Ricans make up the majority of local Hispanic politicians, and tend to focus on issues that Puerto Ricans do not face. For example, many Puerto Rican politicians are quite passionate about policies related to Hispanic immigration, a process that Puerto Ricans are not subject to. In contrast, the issues that Puerto Ricans face, such as high poverty rates, low labor force participation, and comparatively low median incomes amongst local Hispanics, are rarely a public topic of political discussion. This trend largely began in the 2000s. This combined with the increase in Hispanic local news coverage means that the gains made amongst Puerto Rican politicians in recent decades has been largely ignored. Both of these political developments have contributed to Puerto Rican invisibility. Lastly, Puerto Ricans have become far less visible in the cultural realm. Salsa music, as perhaps one of the most visible Puerto Rican cultural objects in the U.S., is one example of how Puerto Ricans have become culturally invisible. The musical genre was never institutionalized, music marketers have since moved on to promote more pop versions of “Latin” music, and prominent Puerto Rican artists have denied any kinds of ownership of the genre. In sum, demographic, media-based, political, and cultural changes have all contributed to the decline in Puerto Rican ethnic visibility. The consequence is that although Puerto Ricans continue to be racialized (as evidenced by their socioeconomic indicators), their racialization cannot be seen in the public realm. Instead, Hispanic characteristics are highlighted in public discourse. The subsuming of Puerto Ricans into the quasi-racial Hispanic category means that their ethnic specificity is muted. This story of invisibility is not a story of assimilation, it is a story of racialization.

Does direct democracy strengthen popular control of public policy in the United States? A major challenge in evaluating policy representation is the measurement of state-level public opinion and public policy. Although recent studies of policy responsiveness and congruence have provided improved measures of public opinion using multilevel regression and poststratification (MRP) techniques, these analyses are limited by their static nature and cross-sectional design. Issue attitudes, unlike more general political orientations, often vary considerably over time. Unless the dynamics of issue-specific public opinion are appropriately incorporated into the analyses, tests of policy responsiveness and congruence may be misleading. Thus, we assess the degree of policy representation in direct democracy states regarding same-sex relationship recognition policies using dynamic models of policy adoption and congruence that employ dynamic MRP estimates of attitudes toward same-sex marriage. We find that direct democracy institutions increase both policy responsiveness and congruence with issue-specific public opinion.

Every year, tens of thousands of U.S. civilians are affected by firearm violence yet gun control is still heavily debated. The relationship between gun ownership and violence is hotly disputed and highly politicized; much of this stems from the fact that the research is inconclusive on the direction and strength of this relationship. The research that has been done struggles to find clear evidence because the task of identifying precisely the nature of gun policies is a difficult one. This study seeks to help clarify the problem by examining correlations between legislation and gun violence. Found literature supports the finding that gun laws have significant, but varying, relationships with firearm incident rates. A policy change between 2013-2015, allows concealed carrying of long guns,and requires permits to purchase handguns. These were found to be positively correlated with an increase in gun violence. Allowing individuals to openly carry handguns and requiring permits to purchase long guns were correlated with decreases in gun violence. Future research is encouraged to examine the effects of gun control policies via time series analysis, and more closely investigate the relationship between laws and violence to ensure that legislation is effective.

In this research paper, we consider the extent to which families who incur child care expenses for their young children are pushed below the poverty threshold by those costs using a supplemental poverty measure (SPM) framework. We use Current Population Survey data to determine poverty rates among families with young children who incur child care costs. We then subtract their out of pocket child care from their income to estimate the poverty rate among these families when child care is considered. Our findings suggest that one third of the poverty experienced by these families is a result of child care expenses. Families most often pushed into poverty by child care expenses include households with three or more children, those headed by a single parent, those with a black or Hispanic head of household, and those headed by someone with less than a high school degree or by someone who does not work full time.

This article is based on 18 months of ethnographic field work in an elementary, middle, and high school cafeteria in the Midwest to analyze how school food service employees (i.e., lunch ladies) challenged and adhered to common portrayals of them in popular culture through the use of emotions. Utilizing Collins concept of controlling images, this article explores media representations of lunch ladies from television, film, literature and music to describe two reoccurring depictionsthe mother and the witch. Then, by drawing on participant observation and interviews, this article shows how lunch ladies simultaneously challenge and adhere to these controlling images in their everyday work by invoking a range of emotions. Consequently, this article illustrates how lunch ladies can find meaning in this low-status, low-paying occupation, in a society that devalues and underpays feminized occupations.

This paper studies the effects of marijuana legalization on neighborhood crime using unique geospatial data from Denver, Colorado. We construct a highly local panel data set that includes changes in the location of marijuana dispensaries and changes in neighborhood crime. To account for endogenous retail dispensary locations, we use a novel identification strategy that exploits exogenous changes in demand across different locations. The change in geographic demand arises from the increased importance of access to external markets caused by a change in state and local policy. The results imply that retail dispensaries lead to reduced crime in the neighborhoods where they are located. Reductions in crime are highly localized, with no evidence of benefits for adjacent neighborhoods. The spatial extent of these effects are consistent with a policing or security response, and analysis of detailed crime categories provides indirect evidence that the reduction in crime arises from a disruption of illicit markets.