Corporationsareretainingever-largercorpusesofpersonaldata;thefrequencyorbreaches and corresponding privacy impact have been rising accordingly. One way to mitigate this risk is through use of anonymized data, limiting the exposure of individual data to only where it is abso- lutely needed. This would seem particularly appropriate for data mining, where the goal is general- izable knowledge rather than data on specific individuals. In practice, corporate data miners often insist on original data, for fear that they might ”miss something” with anonymized or differentially private approaches. This paper provides a theoretical justification for the use of anonymized data. Specifically, we show that a k-nearest neighbor classifier trained on anatomized data satisfying l- diversity should be expected to do as well as on the original data. Anatomized data preserves all attribute values, but introduces uncertainty in the mapping between identifying and sensitive val- ues, thus satisfying l-diversity. The theoretical effectiveness of the proposed approach is validated using several publicly available datasets, showing that we outperform the state of the art for nearest neighbor classification using training data protected by k-anonymity, and are comparable to learning on the original data.

This article explores the role of university placement offices in shaping a twen- tieth-century corporate elite. While studies of the “corporatization” of the univer- sity focus on developments after the 1970s, the rise of the modern university and corporate economy were inextricably linked by the early twentieth century. Scholars of this period have described the circulation of scientific knowledge and the influx of college graduates into industry, but the specific ties that facili- tated their employment remain underexplored. By examining the correspondence between placement officers and employers in Boston, I demonstrate how univer- sities actively cultivated a new corporate class that not only had the right tech- nical knowledge and social skills but the gender, racial, and class-based characteristics employers preferred. In so doing, universities helped incorporate these characteristics into the meaning of academic merit itself. The marriage of universities and corporate management legitimated a credential-based form of inequality that continues to structure the American political economy.

The Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC) is the most widely used type of Current Population Survey (CPS) data, but it is cumbersome to use the ASEC as part of a longitudinal CPS panel, especially linking to non-March months. In this paper, we detail the challenges associated with linking the ASEC to monthly CPS data, outline the creation of an identifier that links the ASEC and the March Basic Monthly data from 1989 through 2017, and provide substantive examples that illustrate the value of combining the ASEC with monthly data. The variable, MARBASECID, which we created to link ASEC and March monthly CPS data, represents a significant contribution to social and economic data infrastructure, saving individual researchers from having to duplicate the effort required to create linkages between ASEC and monthly CPS data.

Despite a major upscaling of suburban houses over the last decades, house satisfaction has remained steady in the United States. I show that upward comparison in size can explain this paradox, as top housing size mirrored the U-shaped pattern of top income inequality. Combining data from the American Housing Survey from 1984 to 2009 with an original dataset of three millions suburban houses built between 1920 and 2009, I find that suburban owners who experienced a relative downscaling of their home due to the building of bigger units in their suburb record lower satisfaction and house values. These homeowners are more likely to upscale and subscribe to new loans. Results are robust to household fixed effects and concentrated in counties with lower segregation, suggesting a causal link between inequality and mortgage debt. In the absence of keeping up with the Joneses, I estimate the mortgage debt to income ratio would have been 25 percentage points lower at the eve of the 2008 financial crisis.

Over the past few years, new home construction has fallen considerably short of rising demand for housing, putting downward pressure on apartment vacancies and existing homes for sale and preventing young adults from forming new households. Increasing rents and sales prices will spur construction growth over the medium term. But the level of home construction is likely to remain low by historical benchmarks, significantly constraining household formation.

Migrant networks affect the probability of migration, migrants’ location decisions, and their economic outcomes in destination communities. Yet available data sources on migrant networks either i) cover only a small fraction of sending- or receiving-country locations or ii) provide very coarse geographic information. In this paper, we show how to use administrative data from the Matricula Consular de Alta Seguridad (MCAS) identification card program to measure migration networks with complete geographic coverage of both Mexico and the U.S. and detailed information on migrants’ sources and destinations. We first confirm the quality and representativeness of the MCAS data by comparing them with well-known household surveys in Mexico and the U.S., finding strong agreement on the migrant location distributions available across datasets. We then document substantial differences in the distribution of destinations among migrants from different municipios within the same source state, which implies that state-based network measures are at best a noisy measure of network connections based on place of birth. We conclude by demonstrating how these detailed migration network data can be used to study the effects of destination-specific conditions on migration patterns. We find that an Arizona law reducing employment opportunities for unauthorized migrants resulted in decreased emigration from and increased return migration to Mexican source regions with pre-existing strong network ties to that state.

Recent research shows that entrepreneurial activity has been declining in the US in recent decades. Given the role of entrepreneurship in theories of growth, job creation and economic mobility this has generated considerable concern. This paper investigates why entrepreneurship has declined. It documents that (1) the decline in entrepreneurship has been more pronounced for higher education levels, implying that at least part of the force driving the changes is not skill-neutral, and (2) the size distribution of entrepreneur businesses has been quite stable. Together with a decline in the entrepreneurship rate the second fact implies a shift of economic activity towards non-entrepreneur firms. Guided by this evidence I evaluate explanations for the decline in entrepreneurship based on skill-biased technical change, increases in the fixed costs of businesses which could be due to technological change or increases in regulations, and changes in technology that have benefited large non-entrepreneur firms. I do this using a general equilibrium model of occupational choice calibrated with a rich set of moments on occupations, income distributions and firm size distributions. I find that an increase in fixed costs explains most of the decline in the aggregate entrepreneurship rate and that skill-biased technical change can fully account for the larger decrease in entrepreneurship for more educated people when combined with the other forces.

These essays concern human capital investment and the role of labor markets in both the production of human capital and the marketing of human capital. Chapter 1 studies the effects of school finance legislation on the outcomes of public school students in the United States. Reforms to state school finance systems have led to substantially higher spending in schools, but existing evidence suggests that schools do not hire more or better teachers, despite raising teacher salaries. I confirm with new data on achievement that school quality does not improve, in terms of how quickly students learn. However, I contribute new evidence that schools extend the school year, taking advantage of excess labor supply during the summer vacation to give students more time to learn, but imposing previously un-measured opportunity costs on students and their families. Chapter 2 studies a puzzle in the literature on employer learning and wage setting. It has been argued that employers are poorly informed about the cognitive skills of their workers, so that the most skilled workers have a strong incentive to reveal information to reap higher wages. The puzzle is why cognitive testing isn’t in greater use. My coauthor Maria Zumbuehl and I show that entry-level employers already have access to highly predictive, publicly observed proxies of the relevant cognitive skills, making testing redundant. Chapter 3 studies self-commitment among high school students as a means of motivating effort toward investments in human capital. My coauthor Ana Carolina Brito and I show that observed commitment behavior in two field experiments is far from the optimal behavior in a standard model of self-commitment with time-inconsistent preferences.

From the first year of the Meiji era in 1868 until 1924 in which the U.S. Immigration Act banned immigration from Japan, 231,359 Japanese immigrated to Hawaii. This article examines socio-demographic profiles of the early Japanese immigrants in Hawaii utilizing the 1900 and the 1910 US Census Public Use Micro Sample (PUMS) data provided by Minnesota Population Center (IPUMS-USA). Findings from our study reveal that five different waves of Japanese immigrants shaped socio-demographic diversities among the Issei in Hawaii. Our study also suggests that upward occupational mobility was viable for those who stayed long enough in Hawaii or those who were born in there as Nisei despite the fact that overwhelming numbers of Japanese immigrants at the time were still farm laborers.

This dissertation constitutes three separate essays in health economics. The first essay examines whether Medicare Part D led to changes in the health behaviors that are essential to manage chronic diseases. Using data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, I find that the implementation of Medicare Part D reduces the probability of engaging in physical exercise. The effect on dieting is inconsistent across different specifications and the effect on cigarette smoking is not statistically significant. The negative physical exercise effect of Medicare Part D is more pronounced among patients with low educational attainment. The second essay looks into whether early health shocks persist to cause health inequality across generations. Linking the Ethiopian Socioeconomic Survey with the 1984 Ethiopian Census, I show that in utero and early childhood(age 0-3) exposure to the 1983-85 Ethiopian famine increases the probability of stunting and reduces the height-forage z-score of the next generation. Estimates that account for the fertility response, infant and fetal culling effects of famine indicate that the baseline estimate represents the lower bound of the total effect of the famine. Linking a village-level interpolated rainfall data to a child-level longitudinal survey-the Ethiopian Rural Household Survey-the final essay explores whether the child health effects of P R E V I E W

Despite a major upscaling of suburban houses over the last decades, house satisfaction has remained steady in the United States. I show that upward comparison in size can explain this paradox, as top housing size mirrored the U-shaped pattern of top income inequality. Combining data from the American Housing Survey from 1984 to 2009 with an original dataset of three millions suburban houses built between 1920 and 2009, I find that suburban owners who experienced a relative downscaling of their home due to the building of bigger units in their suburb record lower satisfaction and house values. These homeowners are more likely to upscale and subscribe to new loans. Results are robust to household fixed effects and concentrated in counties with lower segregation, suggesting a causal link between inequality and mortgage debt.

We offer this article in the admittedly quaint hope that it is better to operate with full and complete transparency and that an open and honest discussion of the facts will in the end lead to informed poverty-reducing policy. The simple predicate of this piece is that, given the massive externalities brought on by running a high-poverty economy, there is an open-and-shut case for reform efforts that are authentically focused on reducing the poverty rate. We will attempt, therefore, to identify the key poverty facts that such legitimate reform efforts should bear in mind. In the course of doing so, we will reveal how the current array of reform proposals, including those published here, attend to different sets of stylized facts.

BACKGROUND: Prior research has reported disparities in environmental exposures in the United States, but, to our knowledge, no nationwide studies have assessed inequality in noise pollution. OBJECTIVES: We aimed to a) assess racial/ethnic and socioeconomic inequalities in noise pollution in the contiguous United States; and b) consider the modifying role of metropolitan level racial residential segregation. METHODS: We used a geospatial sound model to estimate census block group–level median (L50) nighttime and daytime noise exposure and 90th percentile (L10) daytime noise exposure. Block group variables from the 2006–2010 American Community Survey (ACS) included race/ethnicity, education, income, poverty, unemployment, homeownership, and linguistic isolation. We estimated associations using polynomial terms in spatial error models adjusted for total population and population density. We also evaluated the relationship between race/ethnicity and noise, stratified by levels of metropolitan area racial residential segregation, classified using a multigroup dissimilarity index. RESULTS: Generally, estimated nighttime and daytime noise levels were higher for census block groups with higher proportions of nonwhite and lower-socioeconomic status (SES) residents. For example, estimated nighttime noise levels in urban block groups with 75% vs. 0% black residents were 46.3 A-weighted decibels (dBA) [interquartile range (IQR): 44.3–47.8 dBA] and 42.3 dBA (IQR: 40.4–45.5 dBA), respectively. In urban block groups with 50% vs. 0% of residents living below poverty, estimated nighttime noise levels were 46.9 dBA (IQR: 44.7–48.5 dBA) and 44.0 dBA (IQR: 42.2–45.5 dBA), respectively. Block groups with the highest metropolitan area segregation had the highest estimated noise exposures, regardless of racial composition. Results were generally consistent between urban and suburban/rural census block groups, and for daytime and nighttime noise and robust to different spatial weight and neighbor definitions. CONCLUSIONS: We found evidence of racial/ethnic and socioeconomic differences in model-based estimates of noise exposure throughout the United States. Additional research is needed to determine if differences in noise exposure may contribute to health disparities in the United States.

A large body of evidence suggests that social interactions causally influence individuals’ economic decisions (e.g. Duflo and Saez, 2003; Bayer, Ross and Topa, 2008; Dahl, Loken and Mogstad, 2014). This finding implies that differences in the social environment faced by members of different races - in particular, differences in social norms and in the characteristics of social networks - may help perpetuate racial inequality. In this dissertation, I present two papers that attempt to understand how these differences in the social environment are created and reinforced. In the first chapter, I assess the influence of media role models on black educational attainment by examining the impact of a popular 1980’s sitcom: The Cosby Show. The show portrayed an upper-middle class black family, and frequently emphasized the importance of a college education. If role model effects exist, young black people should have responded more strongly to this message. I test this hypothesis by relating educational attainment to city-level Cosby ratings, using Thursday NBA games and very warm Thursdays as instruments. I find that Cosby increased years of education by 0.2-5.0% among black youth, but had no effect on white youth. In the second chapter, I examine a determinant of social segregation by race in the United States: physical distance. Because U.S. cities are highly segregated, the time cost of interacting with a member of another race is typically higher than the cost of interacting with a same-race friend. My goal in this chapter is to quantitatively assess the importance of this channel in explaining why people typically interact with members of their own race. I argue that the causal effect of distance on social interactions is captured by consumers’ distaste for travel. Based on external estimates of this parameter, I simulate the frequency of cross-racial interactions that would occur if only distance mattered in determining individuals’ choice of interaction partners. I compare the simulation results to a new measure of the actual frequency of inter-racial interactions based on Flickr photographs. I estimate that 25-30% of social segregation for whites in the U.S. is attributable to physical distance alone.

This paper assesses the effect of import competition on the health of US workers by exploiting over 52 million individual observations on health and mortality. We first show that import shocks affect employment and income, but only in areas with a high proportion of routine tasks. In those areas, we find that import had a detrimental effect on physical and mental health, worsened health behavior, decreased health care utilisation and increased hospitalisation for a range of conditions. The mortality hazard of workers in manufacturing increased by 3 percent per billion dollar import increase.

BACKGROUND: Agriculture employs 10% of Wisconsin workers and has the third highest reported annual rate of workplace injury in the state. Agricultural injuries may be underreported due to limitations of current surveillance systems. Our Minnesota Collaborative partner used alternative data sources to improve agricultural injury surveillance (Landsteiner AMK et al., 2015). We applied this approach to Wisconsin data to pilot a potentially new agricultural injury indicator. METHODS: We described agricultural injuries in Wisconsin hospital discharge and emergency department (ED) datasets during 2005-2014 using seven external cause of injury codes (ICD-9-CM, E codes) to identify distinct groups of probable and possible agricultural injuries. Rate denominators of individuals living on a farm plus individuals working but not living on a farm were calculated using the American Community Survey (ACS; US Census Bureau) and the Census of Agriculture (US Department of Agriculture). RESULTS: Of 28,381 agricultural injuries identified, 11% were from inpatient records and 89% were ED records. Thirteen percent of agricultural injuries were considered probable, while 87% met less stringent criteria and were classified as possible. The most frequently coded injuries were from riding animals (E828) and other animal-caused injuries (E906.8). Annual rates for probable cases ranged from 1.5–6.9/1000 workers; possible case rates ranged from 14.8–18.8/1000. Although workers aged 35–64 years incurred the most injuries, workers aged ≥65 years were more likely to be probable cases. Probable cases were predominantly male (85%) and possible cases were predominantly female (62%). Two-thirds of injuries occurred during May through October, and 74% were incurred by residents of rural counties. Potential for underreporting was found in several parts of this analysis. Workers’ Compensation was an anticipated primary or secondary payer in only 6% of all reported injuries. Use of Wisconsin hospital and ED data resulted in nearly a threefold increase in the number of identified injuries compared to the Survey of Occupational Injury and Illness (SOII) (e.g., 10-year average of 2838 injuries/year vs. SOII’s 2015 estimate of 1000 injuries/year). CONCLUSIONS: Our results were largely consistent with Minnesota’s findings. Despite the limitations of hospital and ED discharge data, the proposed indicator provides a more sensitive measure of agricultural injury in Wisconsin and has potential for use in other agricultural states.

I investigate, both empirically and theoretically, how minimum-wage laws affect the intensive margin of labor, or the number hours per employee. Using CPS data, I document the fact that minimum-wage employees work longer hours when the minimum wage is higher. To explain this pattern, I introduce a theoretical model of search and bargaining, subject to minimum-wage laws. Within a match, the number of hours is determined by an upward-sloping labor-supply curve, so people are willing to work more when the minimum wage goes up. Because contracts are bargained bilaterally, the firm's marginal profit from hiring an extra hour is positive, so firms are willing to accept the extra labor. However, higher wages diminish total profits, vacancy creation, and employment. I derive conditions under which a minimum wage can be welfare-improving, and I discuss empirical tests to determine whether those conditions are satisfied. In particular, if an increase in the minimum wage leads to an increase in total payrolls, then it suggests that a higher minimum wage is welfare-improving. After deriving these analytical results, I extend the model to facilitate a quantitative analysis.

The frequency with which people move home has important implications for national economic performance and the well-being of individuals and families. Much contemporary social and migration theory posits that the world is becoming more mobile, leading to the recent ‘mobilities turn’ within the social sciences. Yet, there is mounting evidence to suggest that this may not be true of all types of mobility, nor apply equally to all geographical contexts. For example, it is now clear that internal migration rates have been falling in the USA since at least the 1980s. To what extent might this trend be true of other developed countries? Drawing on detailed empirical literature, Internal Migration in the Developed World examines the long-term trends in internal migration in a variety of more advanced countries to explore the factors that underpin these changes. Using case studies of the USA, UK, Australia, Japan, Sweden, Germany and Italy, this pioneering book presents a critical assessment of the extent to which global structural forces, as opposed to national context, influence internal migration in the Global North. Internal Migration in the Developed World fills the void in this neglected aspect of migration studies and will appeal to a wide disciplinary audience of researchers and students working in Geography, Migration Studies, Population Studies and Development Studies.

The discussion proceeds as follows. The first section describes the nation’s retirement income challenge and the particular problem created by Massachusetts’ high housing costs. The second section describes the major existing programs for homeowners’ relief in Massachusetts: two that cost the taxpayer and one that allows low-income homeowners to help themselves through limited property tax deferral. The third section describes a proposal for a new statewide program of property tax deferral that would be open to all homeowners. The fourth section addresses likely utilization and startup costs before the program becomes self-financing. The final section concludes that a comprehensive property tax deferral program offers enough promise to at least be tried as a pilot.

Policy makers and advocates nationwide recognize that funding for early childhood education is a crucial investment in the future. Critical foundational development occurs before age 5, and research consistently shows that high-quality early education for children leads to higher future educational attainment and lower likelihood of crime, and yields a return on investment of 7 to 13 percent. Yet accessing affordable, quality early childhood education and care is a challenge for families nationwide. More than a quarter of families with young children are burdened by child care costs, and the availability and quality of child care and education are highly variable across states. One program that connects the most economically vulnerable families with quality early childhood programming is Early Head Start (EHS). Subject to rigorous quality and staffing standards, implemented among the youngest children (prenatally through age 2), and delivered via a two-generation approach, EHS is a significant opportunity for providing quality care and education to a population that might otherwise struggle to access it. This brief explores the characteristics of EHS in Maine, compares them to the national landscape, and connects these findings to a discussion of the federal and state policy climates. [This brief was funded by the John T. Gorman Foundation.]