The homecare industry has grown exponentially in recent decades and will continue to do so in the future. However, low wages make it difficult to recruit enough workers to meet this rapidly growing demand. Unless California’s homecare crisis is addressed and workers’ wages are increased, the elderly and people with disabilities will not get the care they require, homecare workers will continue to live in poverty, and the public cost of long-term care will increase.

Income inequality has increased dramatically in the United States since the mid- 1970s. This remarkable change in the distribution of household income has spurred a great deal of research on the social and economic consequences of exposure to high inequality. However, the empirical record on the effects of income inequality is mixed. In this paper, we suggest that previous research has generally overlooked a simple but important pathway through which inequality might manifest in daily life: inequality shapes the ability of women to outsource domestic labor by hiring others to perform it. One important venue where such dynamics might then manifest is in time spent on housework, and in particular in the time divide in housework between women of high and low socio-economic status. We combine microdata from the 2003-2013 American Time Use Survey with area-level data on income inequality to show that the class divide in housework time between women with a college degree and from high-earning households and women of lower socioeconomic status is wider in more unequal places. We further assess whether this gap can be explained by domestic outsourcing by combining micro-data from the 2003-2013 Consumer Expenditure Survey with area-level data on income inequality and show that the gap in spending for household services between households of high and low socio-economic status also increases in contexts of higher inequality.

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is a national health care reform passed by Congress in 2010 and implemented in 2014. Several policies, including the individual health care mandate, subsidies on privately-purchased health care, Medicaid expansion, and the employee’s dependent’s coverage mandate, has profoundly impact people’s choices and financial status. In this paper, regression discontinuity design (RDD) is used to identify any impact occurring locally around the pre-determined benefit threshold. The analysis shows that mandates that impose fine if violated lead to an increase in healthcare coverage rate. Programs that offer a financial incentive are not as effective in encouraging individuals to obtain health care. General costs of out-of- pocket costs rise after the ACA, which contradicts its goal. The results give an insight into the effectiveness of policies in the Act for potential further modification of the act.

The National Academy of Social Insurance is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization made up of the nation's leading experts on social insurance. Its mission is to advance solutions to challenges facing the nation by increasing public understanding of how social insurance contributes to economic security. Social insurance encompasses broad-based systems that help workers and their families pool risks to avoid loss of income due to retirement, death, disability, or unemployment, and to ensure access to health care. The Academy convenes steering committees and study panels that are charged with conducting research, issuing findings, and, identifying policy option recommendations based on their analyses. Members of these groups are selected for their recognized expertise and with due consideration for the balance of disciplines and perspectives appropriate to each project.

An increasingly robust body of evidence exists regarding the effect of climate change and weather shocks on human migration (Fussell et al. 2014; Hunter et al. 2015), health (McMichael et al. 2006), and mortality (Deschênes & Greenstone 2011). Yet there have been few empirical evaluations of climate effects on malnutrition (Phalkey et al. 2014). This omission in the literature is particularly surprising given that climate effects on agriculture and food security have been hypothesized (and in some cases demonstrated) to be an important mechanism linking climate and demographic outcomes (Nawrotzki & Bakhtsiyarava 2016). As well, malnutrition— particularly among young children—has been shown to have permanent effects on cognitive development, morbidity and mortality, and socioeconomic attainment later in life (Alderman et al. 2006). As such, childhood malnutrition is one of the most consequential outcomes expected to be affected by climatic changes. We work to address this knowledge gap in the current paper by producing generalizable estimates of the effect of climate anomalies on early childhood stunting and wasting across 18 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, and testing hypotheses regarding the distribution of vulnerability to such shocks.

As shown in FP-17-06, the composition of young adult Baby Boomers and Millennials differs markedly across factors such as racial-ethnic composition and education. In addition to such demographic differences, there have been substantial shifts in family behaviors. This profile examines differences at the family level between the two generations during young adulthood (those aged 25-34 in 1980 and 2015) using data from the 1980 Decennial Census and the 2015 American Community Survey. This approach ensures that we compare the two groups at a similar point in their lifetimes (ages 25-34) to ensure consistency.

We estimate the importance of age at arrival for immigrant outcomes with a new dataset of arrivals linked to the 1940 Census. We find that brothers who arrived at younger ages, or those with more childhood exposure to the American environment, had much higher adult incomes than older-arriving brothers. The high return to human capital acquired during childhood contrasts with a low rate of assimilation during this period. The effect of age at arrival is a primary determinant of a source country’s skill gap with natives, and may be more important than other factors like selection or discrimination.

This paper provides a statistical portrait of the US undocumented population, with an emphasis on the social and economic condition of mixed-status households – that is, households that contain a US citizen and an undocumented resident. It is based primarily on data compiled by the Center for Migration Studies (CMS). Major findings include the following: There were 3.3 million mixed-status households in the United States in 2014. 6.6 million US-born citizens share 3 million households with undocumented residents (mostly their parents). Of these US-born citizens, 5.7 million are children (under age 18). 2.9 million undocumented residents were 14 years old or younger when they were brought to the United States. Three-quarters of a million undocumented residents are self-employed, having created their own jobs and in the process, creating jobs for many others. A total of 1.3 million, or 13 percent of the undocumented over age 18, have college degrees. Of those with college degrees, two-thirds, or 855,000, have degrees in four fields: engineering, business, communications, and social sciences. Six million undocumented residents, or 55 percent of the total, speak English well, very well, or only English. The unemployment rate for the undocumented was 6.6 percent, the same as the national rate in January 2014.[1] Seventy-three percent had incomes at or above the poverty level. Sixty-two percent have lived in the United States for 10 years or more. Their median household income was $41,000, about $12,700 lower than the national figure of $53,700 in 2014 (US Census Bureau 2015).

During the Great Recession, U.S. regions that experienced large declines in household debt also experienced large drops in consumption, employment, and wages. We develop a search and matching model in which tighter debt constraints raise the cost of investing in new job vacancies and so reduce job-finding rates and employment. On-the-job human capital accumulation is critical to generating sizable drops in employment: it increases the duration of the benefit flows from posting vacancies, thereby amplifying the employment drop from a credit tightening tenfold relative to the standard model. Our model reproduces the salient cross-regional features of the U.S. Great Recession.

Owing to secular increases in divorce rates, remarriage has become a prevalent feature of American family life; yet, research about mate selection behavior in higher order marriages remains limited. Using log-linear methods to recent data from the 2008e2014 American Community Survey, we compare racial and ethnic sorting behavior in first and subsequent marriages. The two most frequently crossed boundaries e those involving White-Asian and White-Hispanic couples e are more permeable in remarriages than in first marriages. Boundaries that are crossed with less frequency e those between minority groups and the White-Black boundary-are less permeable in remarriages than in first marriages. Collectively, these findings suggest that racial and ethnic sorting processes in remarriage may reify existing social distances between pan-ethnic groups. Racial and ethnic variations in how the relative permeability of boundary changes between first and higher-order marriages underscore the importance of considering a broad array of interracial pairings when assessing the ways in which changes in family structure and marital sorting behavior promote integration.

Residential mobility rates in the United States (US) have historically been among the highest in the world (Molloy et al, 2011); however, these rates have been in steady decline for the last two decades. While most planning models have ignored migration flows, and instead, focused on the characteristics of the population as drivers of travel demand, there are suggestions from other literatures that recent migrant may have different travel behavior than settled residents. This study is the first to explicitly model this relationship by merging data from the American Community Survey and the National Transit Database. The results also demonstrate that recent immigrant migrants to a metropolitan area are less likely to use transit if they arrived from another metropolitan area than those that have arrived directly from a foreign country.

This dissertation consists of two chapters on topics in public economics. In the first chapter, I study the conflict over the provision of multiple public goods in U.S. cities. I use a rich dataset of municipal spending and Census micro-data to provide evidence that different demographic groups do indeed have conflicting preferences over the composition of public goods and services provided at the local level. To account for endogeneity due to sorting I use a simulated instrumental variable approach where I simulate the demographic distribution in each city that would have occurred if each city's demographic composition had evolved in the same way as in the national level. I then propose a model that can accommodate multiple groups with conflicting preferences over each public good provided and different income distributions within groups and I estimate it using GMM. Using the estimated model, I use the projected evolution of each demographic group to generate predictions on the supply of different public goods in each city. I find that, if the current demographic trends continue, by 2030 there will an average decrease in the provision of public education in U.S. cities of 2%, an average increase in basic public goods and redistributive spending of 20%, with substantial variability across cities. In the second chapter, I propose a new model of how the level and composition of public services are determined in a city. The model allows for an arbitrary number of groups with different preferences over public goods and within-group income heterogeneity. I embed the political economy model of public good provision in the city into a location choice model between the central city and the suburbs in order to study the interactions between mobility and the political conflict over the composition of the budget. Through a numerical exercise I show that mobility and demographic conflict interact in a surprising way, generating a non-monotonic effect between increasing demographic heterogeneity and the size of the public sector. When heterogeneity is low, increasing it reduces the size of the public sector, but it also alters the demographic composition of the city as richer individuals of the minority group leave for the suburbs and the richer individuals from the majority move from the suburbs to the city. This leads to a more homogeneous city and to an inflection in the support for public spending. Eventually, increases in taste heterogeneity lead to increases in public spending per capita, and to a starker segregation between city and suburbs.

The economic effect of immigration on the United States economy and its cost to American citizens has long been of public policy concern. Particularly, there is concern about immigrants taking advantage of the United States welfare system, which in part led to the nativity-based restrictions in the Personal Responsibility Work Opportunity and Reconciliation Act in 1996. However, much of the research on the welfare receipt of the children of immigrants is based on data collected during the 1990s or is based on select geographic samples, and therefore does not represent the newest waves of immigrants and their children. Using data from the 2012-2016 Current Population Survey, Annual Social and Economic Supplement, this study presents the current public assistance use of a nationally representative sample of young adult (25-29) children of immigrants and the children of natives. Additionally, using data from the 2001 American Community Survey, this study utilizes a mean grouping estimation strategy to examine the intergenerational relationship between parent program participation and young adult program participation and socioeconomic achievement. This study finds that among those living at or below 185% of the federal poverty line, the young adult children of immigrants have lower levels of cash assistance, food stamp, and Medicaid receipt than the young adult children of natives. In particular, the young adult children of Central American immigrants are less likely to utilize public assistance programs than the young adult children of natives. The results also suggest that there is no intergenerational transmission of public assistance use between a cohort of immigrant parents and a cohort of the young adult children of immigrants, but that immigrant parents may use public assistance programs as a way to invest in their childrens educational attainment.

We analyze the occupational structure of the non-Hispanic American Indian/Alaska Native (AIAN) workforce in the United States, relative to the non-Hispanic White workforce, using public-use census microdata. AIAN workers are generally overrepresented in low-skilled occupations and underrepresented in high-skilled occupations, relative to White workers. This pattern is stronger among men than among women and stronger among single-race AIANs than multiple-race AIANs. AIAN occupational dissimilarity does not appear to have declined substantially since 1980. Controlling for individual differences in factors such as education, age, location, and language proficiency accounts for a significant proportion of AIAN underrepresentation in high-education occupations.

In this note we question the emerging view that automation is a primary driver of wage and employment outcomes in labor markets. While it is indeed the case that on average middle-wage occupations have experienced lower wage and employment growth in recent decades, we show that this fact masks substantial occupation-level variation. In fact, the difference in average wage and employment growth between middle-wage and high-wage occupations is small compared to the differences in wage and employment growth of occupations within wage brackets. The ability of automation to account for this occupation-level variation is limited. We then discuss evidence that occupation-level outcomes are best explained by the complexity of an occupation – the extent to which tasks performed on the job require higher-order skills such as the ability to abstract, solve problems, make decisions, or communicate effectively.

The organizers of the widely attended Women’s March on Jan. 21 are following up the protest with a national “Day Without a Woman” demonstration on Wednesday in which women are encouraged to stay home from work.

Sociala medier har blivit en del av de flesta svenskars vardag, där Facebook står ut som det största sociala nätverket. Facebook används främst av yngre människor av vilka en klar majoritet använder Facebook dagligen. Facebook uppfattas som gratis, men i verkligheten betalar användarna med data som samlas in för att bland annat sälja vidare till tredje part. Har svenskar kunskap om hur deras data samlas in och används av Facebook? Vet de om att Facebook samlar in data över huvud taget, och hur mycket kunskap besitter de i så fall om denna datainsamling? Påverkar deras kunskap hur de använder Facebook och diverse säkerhetstjänster? Vi undersökte detta genom att i en kvantitativ undersökning fråga 125 användare i åldern 20-29 år en rad frågor och utifrån svaren tog vi reda på användarnas kunskapsnivåer i ämnet. Vi ställde även frågor kring hur de använde Facebook och diverse säkerhetstjänster och jämförde sedan kunskapsnivåerna med hur de svarat att de använder Facebook och säkerhetstjänster. De flesta av användarna visade sig ha viss kunskap om Facebooks datainsamling och en viss skillnad i användandet av Facebook och säkerhetstjänster kunde härledas till användarnas kunskap i ämnet.

Background: Demographic risk factors for multimorbidity have been identified in numerous population-based studies of older adults; however, there is less data on younger populations, despite the fact that approximately 24% of US adults age 18+ have multimorbidity. Understanding multimorbidity earlier in the life course is critical because of the increased likelihood of long-term disability and loss of productivity associated with chronic disease progression. Objective: To examine the associations of education and race/ethnicity with mutimorbidity among adults aged 3064 using cross-sectional data from the 20022014 National Health Interview Surveys. Design: Multimorbidity was defined as having at least 2 of 9 self-reported health conditions. Educational attainment was categorized as less than high school (HS), completed HS or some college, and bachelor's degree or higher. Logistic regression models of multimorbidity controlled for time since last doctor's visit, demographic and socioeconomic measures. Results: Compared to having a bachelor's degree or higher, completing less than HS (OR=1.58, 95% CI = 1.501.66) or HS/some college (OR=1.32, 95% CI = 1.271.37) were both associated with increased odds of multimorbidity net of all included covariates. Non-Hispanic Blacks had greater odds of multimorbidity (OR=1.07, 95% CI = 1.021.11) compared to Non-Hispanic Whites with comparable characteristics. Conclusions: Epidemiologic and demographic research on the burden of multimorbidity among non-elderly adults is limited, but warrants renewed attention given the potential for long-term loss of quality of life, productivity, and well-being for non-elderly adults. Reducing multimorbidity through health promotion efforts across the socioeconomic spectrum and earlier in the life course will be a requirement to age successfully and support overall well-being in the aging US population.

Pride and regret are self-conscious emotions that develop later in life and become a source of emotional struggle. This study examines the content of regret and pride among Asian American elders. Among a convenience sample of 118 Asian American older adults, the researchers examined the contents and intensities of both regret and pride felt over events in life. Across three groups of Asian American immigrants, older adults in this study reported a variety of regrets and pride in the areas of college education, marital relationship, children’s problems, career aspirations, financial difficulty, immigration, and grief or losses that they have experienced in life courses. Findings further explored culture-specific sources of self-conscious emotions, and the intensities of regrets may be strongly influenced by cultural context.

The 1799 discovery of gold in the North Carolina piedmont began a decades-long conversation about the desirability of mining in the region. Within the pages of local and national periodicals, a debate unfolded that pivoted around issues central not to mining, but to agrarianism itself: morality, proper land management, and the relationship between industry and agriculture within North Carolina's economy. Examining the rhetoric surrounding gold extraction offers insight into the nature of early national agricultural reform, as it indicates that at least some of the South's agricultural reformers were not hardline agrarians but rather economic boosters in a more general sense. Reformers' support of highly capitalized mining operations, unaffordable to most of the backcountry farmers who found gold on their land, and their derision of farmers working superficial deposits, suggests that, at least at times, they prioritized general economic improvement over the farmers they ostensibly sought to help.