The number of nonmetropolitan counties with high poverty rates increased between the 2000 Decennial Census and 2011–2015 (hereafter 2013) American Community Survey (ACS), and so did the share of the rural population residing in these disadvantaged areas. Over this time period, the percentage of rural counties with poverty rates of 20 percent or more increased from a fifth to nearly one-third, and the share of the rural population living in these places nearly doubled to over 31 percent. Levels of concentrated poverty increased substantially both before and after the Great Recession in rural areas, while increases in urban areas occurred mainly during years affected by the economic downturn (Box 1). Increases in county-level poverty rates were also concentrated in rural areas with small cities, and the share of the population residing in high-poverty counties increased much more among the non-Hispanic white and black populations in rural areas than among the rural Hispanic population.

How readily do potential migrants respond to increased returns to migration? Even if origin areas become less attractive vis-à-vis migration destinations, fixed costs can prevent increased migration. We examine migration responses to hurricanes, which reduce the attractiveness of origin locations. Restricted-access U.S. Census data allows precise migration measures and analysis of more migrant-origin countries. Hurricanes increase U.S. immigration, with the effect increasing in the size of prior migrant stocks. Large migrant networks reduce fixed costs by facilitating legal immigration from hurricane-affected source countries. Hurricane-induced immigration can be fully accounted for by new legal permanent residents (“green card” holders).

This study assesses impact of the Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP), a federal program designed to convert foreclosed properties into renovated affordable housing through public investment. To identify the impact, I exploit a discontinuity in how neighborhoods were selected with respect to a critical threshold. The program caused non-foreclosure housing prices in targeted neighborhoods to appreciate 6.5% between 2009 and 2011. These pricing gains remained stable through the end of my sample in 2014. Furthermore, the program caused changes in neither the supply of foreclosures nor neighborhood income. This suggests quality improvement externalities were behind the price appreciation. Lastly, low market liquidity and asymmetric information in targeted neighborhoods may justify the NSP public initiative, despite foreclosure resale profitability after 2009.

Teenage childbearing is a common incident in developed countries. However, the occurrence of teenage births is much more likely in the United States than in any other industrialized country. The majority of these births are delivered by female teenagers coming from low-income families. The hypothesis put forward here is that the welfare state (a set of redistributive institutions) plays a significant role for teenage childbearing behavior. We develop an economic theory of parental investments and risky sexual behavior of teenagers. The model is estimated to fit stylized facts about income inequality, intergenerational mobility and sexual behavior of teenagers in the United States. The welfare state institutions are introduced via tax and public education expenditure functions derived from U.S. data. In a quantitative experiment, we impose Norwegian taxes and/or education spending in the economic environment. The Norwegian welfare state institutions go a long way in explaining the differences in teenage birth rates between the United States and Norway.

Inspired by Pugh (2015), this paper explores the connection between work and couple stability, using a new combination of data from the Current Population Survey (CPS) and the American Community Survey (ACS). I test the association between job turnover, a contextual variable, and divorce at the individual level. Results show that people who work in jobs with high turnover rates – that is, jobs which many people are no longer working in one year later – are also more likely to divorce. One possible explanation is that people exposed to lower levels of commitment from employers, and employees, exhibit lower levels of commitment to their own marriages.

Importance Current recommendations for low-risk drinking are based on drinking quantity: up to one drink daily for women and two drinks daily for men. Drinking frequency has not been independently examined for its contribution to mortality. Objective To evaluate the impact of drinking frequency on all-cause mortality after adjusting for drinks per day and binge drinking behavior. Design Two independent observational studies with self-reported alcohol use and subsequent all-cause mortality: the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), and data from Veteran’s Health Administration clinics (VA). Setting Epidemiological sample (NHIS) and VA outpatient database (VA Corporate Data Warehouse). Participants 208,661 individuals from the NHIS interviewed between 1997 and 2009 at the age of 30 to 70 with mortality follow-up in the last quarter of 2011; 75,515 VA outpatients born between 1948 and 1968 who completed an alcohol survey in 2008 with mortality follow-up in June 2016. Exposures Quantity of alcohol use when not binging (1-2 drinks on typical day, 3-4 drinks on typical day), frequency of non-binge drinking (never, weekly or less, 2-3 times weekly, 4 or more times weekly), and frequency of binge drinking (never, less than weekly, 1-3 times weekly, 4 or more times weekly). Covariates included age, sex, race, and comorbidity. Main Outcomes and Measures All-cause mortality. Results After adjusting for binge drinking behavior, survival analysis showed an increased risk for all-cause mortality among people who typically drink 1-2 drinks four or more times weekly, relative to people who typically drink 1-2 drinks at a time weekly or less (NHIS dataset HR=1.15, 95% CI 1.06-1.26; VA dataset HR=1.31, 95% CI 1.15-1.49). Conclusions and Relevance Drinking four or more times weekly increased risk of all-cause mortality, even among those who drank only 1 or 2 drinks daily. This was seen in both a large epidemiological database and a large hospital-based database, suggesting that the results can be generalized.

El presente estudio realiza una comparación entre la fecundidad de las cubanas migrantes residentes en Estados Unidos, el resto de las hispanas y nativas en ese país, en el período 2000-2014. Para ello se utilizan los datos publicados en la base de datos IPUMS sobre la American Community Survey en los años seleccionados. A partir de esa información se calculan indicadores de fecundidad para las cubanas migrantes, para el resto de las hispanas y para las nativas en Estados Unidos. Estas comparaciones se realizan dividiendo la muestra en dos grupos: las residentes en la Florida y las residentes en el resto del país. El criterio utilizado para esta división territorial fue básicamente fundamentado en la concentración de los cubanos en la Florida, donde reside más del 75% de los cubanos en Estados Unidos. Si bien el trabajo es descriptivo, en la medida en la que se van observando los resultados se intenta relacionar la información con elementos de contexto para de alguna manera esbozar algunas teorías sobre el comportamiento entorno a la fecundidad de migrantes y nativas.

Both individual and structural level analyses have been conducted on black intermarriage extensively, but how well have they been measured? This dissertation examines the effects of education and metropolitan contexts of black intermarriage in the United States. Evidence from 2008-2014 IPUMS-ACS data suggest that education and the distance in education level between spouses predict greater odds of intermarriage for both black men and women. Logistic regression and HLM modeling were used to analyze the relationship between education, metropolitan context and predating the odds of intermarriage for both black men and women. When context is considered, there is a stark contrast among gender lines in the prediction of intermarriage. Findings indicate that both education and context are important for predicting the likelihood of intermarriage for black men. The picture is not so clear for black wives.

The purpose of this paper is to look at Mexican skilled migration to Texas, particularly to Houston, a prominent U.S. health research hub. The paper is structured as follows: a) a literature review and research questions; b) background on the issue of skilled Mexican migration; c) methodology for the study; d) results on a “care drain,” 4 or the migration of medical professionals and women; e) a discussion of Mexican diaspora organizations; and f) conclusions.

This book assembles and organizes a selected range of methods and techniques that every planning practitioner should know to be successful in the contemporary global urban landscape. The book is unique because it links different aspects of the planning/policy-making enterprise with the appropriate methods and approaches, thus contextualizing the use of specific methods and techniques within a sociopolitical and ethical framework. This volume familiarizes readers with the diverse range of methods, techniques, and skills that must be applied at different scales in dynamic workplace environments where planning policies and programs are developed and implemented. This book is an invaluable resource in helping new entrants to the planning discourse and profession set aside their own disciplinary biases and empowering them to use their expert knowledge to address societal concerns.

We address the question of whether media influences occupational choices. To theoretically examine media effects, we construct a dynamic Bayesian occupational choice model with sequential decisions under ambiguity due to imperfect information. We show that sufficiently intensive positive media articles and reports about entrepreneurship increase the probability of self-employment and decrease the probability of wage work. To test our model, we use an instrumental variable approach to identify causal media effects using US micro data and a country-level macro panel with two different media variables. We find that an increase in positive media articles and reports about entrepreneurs generates effects on choice probabilities that are consistent with our model.

Using Baccalaureate and Beyond data, I study whether university quality, both absolute and relative to other universities in the region, affects earnings one and ten years after graduation, controlling for the individual’s SAT score. One year after graduation, high SAT score students earn 12% less if their university’s regional rank is worse by 35 places, conditional on absolute university quality. This effect disappears ten years after graduation. The results suggest initial job quality does not have long-run career effects. The results also confirm the initial importance of a university’s regional rank, an often overlooked dimension of university quality.

This thesis applies micro–econometric techniques to examine the effect of social structure on knowledge. Chapter 2 investigates the role of mass migration in the passage of compulsory schooling laws. It provides qualitative and quantitative evidence that compulsory schooling laws were used as a nation–building tool to homogenise the civic values held by the culturally diverse migrants who moved to America during the “Age of Mass Migration”. Our central finding is that the adoption of compulsory schooling by American-born median voters occurs significantly earlier in time in states that host many migrants who had lower exposure to civic values in their home countries and had lower demand for common schooling when in the US. Chapter 3 explores whether, and to what extent, the position in the coauthorship network of medical scientists matters for the productivity of a researcher. I use sudden and unexpected deaths of star scientists as exogenous shocks to the network thus providing a causal identification of the loss of a star on the productivity of a scientist. I characterise the heterogeneity in the impact of the death by exploiting the position of the deceased scientists. Following the death of a star, coauthors suffer on average a 8% decrease in annual publications and this effect can differ by up to 31% depending on the network position. Chapter 4 examines knowledge spillovers by measuring the relative intensity of patent citations in two technological fields for which clean and dirty inventions can be clearly distinguished: energy production (renewables vs. fossil fuel energy generation) and automobiles (electric cars vs. internal combustion engines). We develop a new methodology based on Google’s PageRank algorithm to measure the social benefit of knowledge spillover. We find that clean technologies generate 40% higher spillovers than their dirty counterparts.

Surface water irrigators in arid regions confront public good issues for building and maintaining shared infrastructure as well as common-pool resource issues to appropriate the surface water. Drawing on the unique history of New Mexico, I explore how the transition in the early 20 th century from the original small decentralized communal Spanish irrigation systems (acequias) to centralized quasi-public irrigation districts altered agricultural development and production. My results confirm that that irrigation districts can significantly improve outcomes when investing in costly infrastructure to expand irrigated acreage, increasing farmland values up to 33 percent. However, I find no broader evidence that the centralized control of water distribution provides any gains to acreage previously under irrigation by the decentralized acequias.

This paper examines how human capital based approaches explain the distribution of earnings. It assesses traditional, quasi-experimental, and new micro-based structural models, the latter of which gets at population heterogeneity by estimating individual-specific earnings function parameters. The paper finds one’s ability to learn and one’s ability to retain knowledge are most influential in explaining earnings variations. Marketable skills actually acquired in school depend on these two types of ability. However, schools may also implement ability enhancing interventions which can play a role in improving learning outcomes. Policy initiatives that improve these abilities would be a possible strategy to increase earnings and lower earnings disparity.

This paper was presented at a Conference on Social Mobility held at the University of Chicago on 5 November 2014, under the title “The Role of Income and Credit Constraints in Human Development, Part II”. We thank Linor Kiknadze for very helpful research assistance. We thank Magne Mogstad and the participants in the conference for thoughtful comments. We also received helpful comments at a January 2015 seminar at the Norwegian School of Economics, and at seminars held at the University of Copenhagen, Aarhus University, SOFI (Stockholm), INET Paris (April 2015), and Copenhagen Education Network. We are especially grateful to Roger Bivand, Sam Bowles, Juanna Joensen, Øivind Anti Nilsen, Kjell Salvanes, Agnar Sandmo, Erik Sørensen, Torben Tranæs, Anders Björklund, and Matthew Lindquist. We have received helpful comments on this draft of the paper from Juanna Schrøter Joensen, Rich Neimand, Matt Tauzer, and Ingvil Gaarder. This research was supported in part by: the Pritzker Children's Initiative; the Buffett Early Childhood Fund; NIH grants NICHD R37HD065072, NICHD R01HD054702, and NIA R24AG048081; an anonymous funder; The Rockwool Foundation; Successful Pathways from School to Work, an initiative of the University of Chicago's Committee on Education and funded by the Hymen Milgrom Supporting Organization; the Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Global Working Group, an initiative of the Center for the Economics of Human Development and funded by the Institute for New Economic Thinking; and the American Bar Foundation. The views expressed in this paper are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the funders or the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

As the title suggests, unlike most IARIW papers, this is a white paper. It argues that median income is a better statistic of central tendency for skewed income data than mean income (per-capita GDP). It offers philosophical and practical reasons for why Median Expected Lifetime Income (MELI) should supersede GDP as a measure of welfare. MELI is a snapshot of a nations health and earnings during a particular year. It is the amount that a person could reasonably expect to earn over a lifetime if conditions always remained exactly the same as during the measured year. This paper demonstrates that MELI can be measured at minimal expense using data that is already available in rich nations. Even though MELI is already a better measure of welfare than GDP, I also give suggestions for how MELI and related statistics could be improved substantially by spending a modest amount of resources to gather better data and develop more sophisticated methodologies. I examine why GDP has been successful from interdisciplinary perspectives and use these perspectives to argue why MELI has more potential for success at going beyond GDP than all the numerous other attempts. As a generalist white paper, it raises some big-picture philosophical issues that will hopefully be at least incidentally relevant to a wide variety of other IARIW-BOK conference paper topics.

Self-rated health (SRH) is a commonly used measure for assessing general health in surveys in the United States. However, individuals from different parts of the United States may vary in how they assess their health. Geographic differences in health care access and in the prevalence of illnesses may make it difficult to discern true regional differences in health when using SRH as a health measure. In this article, we use data from the 1986 and 19892006 National Health Interview Survey Linked Mortality Files and estimate Cox regression models to examine whether the relationship between SRH and five-year all-cause mortality differs by Census region. Contrary to hypotheses, there is no evidence of regional variation in the predictive validity of SRH for mortality. At all levels of SRH, and for both non-Hispanic white and non-Hispanic black respondents, SRH is equally and strongly associated with five-year mortality across regions. Our results suggest that differences in SRH across regions are not solely due to differences in how respondents assess their health across regions, but reflect true differences in health. Future research can, therefore, employ this common measure to investigate the geographic patterning of health in the United States.

We examine the impact of assisted reproductive technology on womens choice to pursue professional careers. We hypothesize that the availability of assisted reproductive technology increases the expected benefits of a professional degree by allowing women to delay childbearing in their 20s and 30s while establishing their careers, thereby reaping greater financial benefit from human capital investment. State-level timing differences in the enactment of laws which mandated infertility treatment coverage in employer-sponsored health plans allow us to exploit state, year, and cohort variation in womens ages at the time the laws are passed. These insurance mandates dramatically increase access to assisted reproductive technology. Using a triple difference strategy, we find that a mandate to cover assisted reproductive technology does increase the probability that a woman chooses to invest in a professional degree and to work in a professional career.

Many organizations collect and make available perinatal data for research and quality improvement initiatives. Analysis of existing data and use of retrospective study design has many advantages for perinatal researchers. These advantages include large samples, inclusion of women from diverse groups, data reflective of actual clinical processes and outcomes, and decreased risk of direct maternal and fetal harm. We review 11 publicly available datasets relevant to perinatal research and quality improvement, detail the availability of interactive websites, and discuss strategies to locate additional datasets. While analysis of existing data has limitations, it may provide statistical power to study rare perinatal outcomes, support research applicable to diverse populations, and facilitate timely and ethical well-woman research immediately relevant to clinical care.