The United States made substantial progress toward reducing gender inequality in the late twentieth century, not only thanks to the feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s but also as an unintended consequence of the shift to a post-industrial economy. The gender gap in pay rates, for example, narrowed not only because unprecedented numbers of women gained entry to the elite professions and upper-level management starting in the 1970s, but also because real wages for male workers, especially those without a college education, fell sharply in that same period with de-industrialization and union decline. As manufacturing withered, the traditionally female-employing service sector expanded; surging demand for female labor, in turn, drew more and more married women and mothers into the workforce. By the twentieth century’s end, women typically were employed outside the home throughout their adult lives, apart from brief interludes of full-time caregiving. They were far less likely to be economically dependent on men than their mothers and grandmothers had been. Their legal and social status had dramatically improved as well, and the idea that women and men should have equal opportunities in the labor market won wide acceptance.

This paper examines the long-term impacts of in-utero and early childhood exposure to ambient air pollution on adult labor market outcomes. We take advantage of a new administrative data set that is uniquely suited for addressing this question because it combines information on individuals' quarterly earnings together with their counties and dates of birth. We use the sharp changes in ambient air pollution concentrations driven by the implementation of the 1970 Clean Air Act Amendments as a source of identifying variation, and we compare cohorts born in counties that experienced large changes in total suspended particulate (TSP) exposure to cohorts born in counties that had minimal or no changes. We find a significant relationship between TSP exposure in the year of birth and adult labor market outcomes. A 10 unit decrease in TSP in the year of birth is associated with a 1 percent increase in annual earnings for workers aged 29-31. Most, but not all, of this effect is driven by an increase in labor force participation. In present value, the gains from being born into a county affected by the 1970 Clean Air Act amount to about $4,300 in lifetime income for the 1.5 million individuals born into these counties each year.

Theories of criminology suggest that neighborhood-level economic activity affects the conditions that make crime more likely. However, most studies on neighborhoods and crime focus solely on residential characteristics and ignore the commercial ones. In this article, we estimate the effect of neighborhood-level economic activity on crime holding residential characteristics constant. To do so, we use crime and census data combined with a detailed data set on establishments in Washington, DC from 2000 to 2010 to create a comprehensive measure of neighborhood-level economic activity. We exploit the panel nature of the data to identify the directionality of the results by removing unobserved heterogeneity and estimating lags and leads of economic activity. Results indicate that increases in economic activity are associated with reductions in property crime, but that the reduction in property crime occurs before the growth in economic activity and rises afterward. Violent crime declines the same year as growth in economic activity.

Research on undocumented students has explored the challenges of this population in accessing and persisting in higher education. It has also analyzed the factors that undocumented students draw upon to be academically resilient. This research has been exclusively conducted at public 4-year universities and community colleges, many of which exist in states that have in-state tuition laws for undocumented students. Highly selective private liberal arts colleges and national research universities have also offered admission and, in most cases, full tuition packages to undocumented students. However, research has not yet empirically examined the college experience of undocumented students attending these institutions. To address this gap in research, this study relies on the qualitative application of two identity-development models and theories—the Multidimensional Model for Racial Identity (Sellers et al., 1998) and the concept of stigmatized identities and management of stigma (Goffman, 1963)—to explain the ways in which undocumented Latino students conceptualize their identity and navigate their immigration status, academics, and their social experience in the context of highly selective, private national universities and liberal arts colleges.

Despite a wealth of evidence showing the benefits of appropriate use of preventive health services, less than half of women in a 2010 survey had met their recommended use of preventive screenings and services (McMorrow, Kenney, and Goin, 2014; IOM, 2011). A key factor associated with reduced use of some preventive services is a lack of health insurance (Rezayatmand, Pavlova, and Groot, 2012). Therefore, improving access to health care and emphasizing prevention were timely focuses of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010. These goals were addressed by increasing health insurance coverage and coverage generosity, particularly through the possibility of states expanding their Medicaid program eligibility to adults up to 138% of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL); 32 states including the District of Columbia adopted Medicaid expansions as of January 2017 (Kaiser Family Foundation, 2017). Additionally, the ACA’s Federal subsidies were available for those with incomes up to 400% of the FPL to purchase coverage in the health insurance exchanges (McMorrow, Kenney, and Goin, 2014). Along with these changes in insurance coverage, the ACA . . .

My dissertation examines economic determinants of household financial decisions and investor behaviors. It contains three essays. The first essay investigates whether gender norms shape intra-household financial decision making. Analyzing microdata covering more than 30 million U.S. households, I document that families with a financially sophisticated husband are more likely to participate in the stock market than those with a wife of equal financial sophistication. Consistent with the gender norm hypothesis, the baseline effect is attenuated among individuals brought up by working mothers, but becomes stronger among descendants of pre-industrial societies in which women specialized in activities within the home and households with a husband born and raised in a southern state. A randomized controlled experiment further reveals that female identity hinders idea contribution by the wife. In contrast, male identity causes men to be less open to an opposing viewpoint of their wife, even if her proposition in optimal. These things suggest that gender identity norms can have real consequences for household financial well-being. The second essay explores the impact of local agglomeration economies on stock market participation. We find that when the industry in which individuals work is locally agglomerated, they are more likely to participate in the stock market. Further, we show that this relationship is especially strong among skilled workers. We find that the local agglomeration effect is not explained by risk tolerance, worker inertia, or a preference for stocks of firms that are in the same industry as the worker. Instead, our findings are consistent with local agglomeration enhancing human capital and in turn, raising workers’ optimal allocations to risky assets. More generally, our analysis underscores the role of geography in shaping human capital and household financial decisions. The third essay examines whether momentum in stock prices is induced by changes in the political environment. We find that momentum profits are concentrated among politically sensitive firms and industries. A trading strategy with a long position in winner portfolios that are politically unfavored and a short position in losers that are politically favored eliminates all momentum profits. Further, our political sensitivity based factor explains 25% (40%) of monthly stock (industry) momentum alphas. Collectively, our results suggest that investor underreaction to political information generates momentum in stock and industry returns.

Recent trends suggest a decline in the rate of intermarriage between Mexicans and non-Hispanic whites. In this paper, we argue that interpretations of this trend as a decline in preferences for intermarriage are misleading because of the lack of adequate data that captures both spatial and temporal variation in the level of intergroup contact. Using data from the Decennial Census (1980-2000) and the American Community Survey (2008-2011), we employ a novel methodological approach to disentangle the impact of spatial diffusion, ethnic replenishment, and shifts in preferences for homophily on Mexican ethnic intermarriage patterns across 543 Consistent Public Use Microdata Areas (cPUMA). Once changes in the demographic composition of cPUMAs are accounted for, multilevel models for repeated crosssectional data provide no evidence of a change in the marital preferences of Mexicans over time. Trends in intermarriage rates are predominantly explained by compositional and structural changes

Making Modern Meals explores the state of American cooking across all its varied practices, whether cooking is considered a chore, a craft, or a creative process. Trubek challenges current assumptions about who cooks, who doesn’t cook, and what this means for culture, cuisine, and health. Contending that cooking has changed in the past century, she locates, identifies, and discusses the myriad ways Americans cook in the modern age. In doing so, she argues that changes in making our meals—from shopping to cooking to dining—have created new cooks, new cooking categories, and new culinary challenges.

An understanding of the freedoms (or the lack of freedoms) and their economic consequences on early black Americans provides an informative understanding to the freedoms (or the lack of freedoms), and their economic consequences on other, modern ethnic groups. Curtis (2017) investigates the link between the social asymmetry and economic asymmetry among early blacks and whites in the United States of America. For the empirical study, Curtis (2017) uses cross-sectional variables from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Sample (IPUMS), developed informative conditional ratios, and employed least squares statistical analyses. This study finds that economic differences among ethnic groups, as measured by differences between early blacks and whites, are intertwined with asymmetrical freedoms, leading to statistically insignificant returns to education, as measured by literacy. One might conclude that the individual’s basic protection of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness must proceed any expectations of measured returns to schooling, particularly among individuals in disenfranchised groups. Furthermore, one might propose education policy such that modern higher education investment programs prioritize education entrepreneurs and/or state/social planners with academic research familiarity of differences in wealth.

Electronic Health Record (EHR) is used to measure the incremental growth of different medical conditions. The said data can also be utilized for various research purposes, such as clinical trials or epidemic control strategies. Along with the advantages, there lies a fear in publishing such data publically, as it puts the privacy of the individuals at stake. Therefore, the question that arises is "How to publish such data that is secure and useful?" After years of research, the aforesaid question is still an open issue. To achieve the best combination of privacy and utility, several privacy definitions have been proposed. Due to the sensitivity of medical data, privacy is of utmost importance. On the other hand, if we lose the utility of medical data by applying privacy approaches, then it may lead to the wrong prediction. In the said perspective, we propose a simple and computationally achievable semantic hybrid privacy definition, referred to as Range Random Sampling + Differential Average Diversity (DAD), which promises to deliver high data utility. To demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed algorithm, we performed experimental analysis on two different datasets: (a) Hepatitis and (b) US Census Bureau. The experiments reveal that our proposed hybrid Framework achieves better utility rates while preserving the privacy of the data.

My dissertation consists of three essays in empirical labor economics which are selfcontained and can be read independently of the others. The first essay, coauthored with Professor Modestino, measures mismatch unemployment in US economy in the postrecession era and explores the heterogeneity among educational groupings. The second essay estimates the changing effects of cognitive ability on wage determination of college bound and non-college bound young adults between 1980s and 2000s. The third essay, coauthored with Professor Dickens, examines the impact of measurement error in survey data on identifying the extent of downward nominal wage rigidity in US . . .

The Developmental Origin of Disease and Health hypothesizes that the early- life, including pre-natal, shocks to health. affects individuals’ later-life health and mortality. Following a line of research established by Doug Almond (2006), we examine whether the 1918 influenza epidemic is a health shock which is orthogonal to chronic health status. Almond, however, does not present results on mortality rates. Our findings are that 1) cross sectional data does not exist which would allow us to treat the influenza epidemic as a field experiment with state-by-state variation, and that when we use what data exists, controlling for geographic variation in health, the influenza-exposed cohorts do not experience significantly higher mortality. This is at variance with Almond’s results. Econometric testing of the DOHaD hypothesis faces formidable barriers, and would require more careful attention to the life history of treatment and control cohorts than is common in economic analysis.

This paper examines the effects of the Energy Star building labeling program, particularly as it pertains to public school buildings. The stated goals of this program include increasing sustainability and reducing energy costs. Said improvements, such as improving ventilation systems, enhancing temperature control, and adding more sunlight, have been shown to improve building values and rents in the corporate sector. I examine whether a similar effect exists for green public school buildings, focusing on factors such as school and district enrollment, school and district graduation rates, and, additionally for California, standardized test scores. I present evidence that green schools may serve as a signaling mechanism to attract more affluent students. I also show that green schools increase English Language Arts standardized test scores by 3.4 percent, and Mathematics scores by 4.4 percent, even after controlling for factors such as parental education levels and students receiving free lunch. Results on graduation rates are mixed, and small, at best. These findings suggest that sustainable buildings could contribute to improving student performance through higher enrollments and student achievement.

For all of the U.S. states with sufficient data, we estimated live birth and population prevalences for Down syndrome (DS). As social service resources vary between states, such data are important for public policy discussions and state planning. We predicted the actual and nonselective live birth prevalence, and population prevalence, for DS in nine U.S. states based on publicly available datasets from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series. As of 2010, we estimated a population size for people with DS of 4,554 in MA (population prevalence 1 in 1,440), 6,101 in NJ (1 in 1,443), 14,315 in NY (1 in 1,355), 9,739 in IL (1 in 1,319), 4,354 in IN (1 in 1,491), 7,295 in MI (1 in 1,354), 9,099 in FL (1 in 2,071), 3,014 in KY (1 in 1,442), and 3,596 in AZ (1 in 1,784). The number of people living with DS has steadily increased from 1950 until 2010 in these nine U.S. states. Population prevalence would have been higher absent DS-related elective terminations. Racial and ethnic groups, other than non-Hispanic whites, comprise a growing proportion within these DS communities, particularly among younger-aged persons.

Place-based funders2 can play an important role in connecting economic growth to economic opportunity. Looking for Progress in America's Smaller Legacy Cities describes a study tour undertaken by representatives from four Federal Reserve Banks and more than two dozen place-based funders, under the auspices of the Funders’ Network-Federal Reserve Philanthropy Initiative. What began as an inquiry into four small legacy cities – Chattanooga, TN; Cedar Rapids, IA; Rochester, NY; and Grand Rapids, MI – that appeared to have experienced some measure of revitalization in the post Great Recession environment evolved into an understanding that revitalization in these places is moving along two distinct paths: an “arc of growth” and an “arc of opportunity.” In the context of these small legacy cities, growth and opportunity is unfolding separately along these two long-term “arcs,” leading to the conclusion that broad community prosperity lies in: 1) recognizing that growth alone does not naturally lead to opportunity; and 2) advancing deliberate policies, investments, and programs that connect growth to opportunity. Tour participants observed that without the action of organizations like placed-based funders, that connection rarely occurs.

Although many studies have found that female legislators pursue policies important to women, we know relatively little concerning the effect of women’s descriptive representation (WDR) on women’s quality of life. We address this question by examining the relationship between the election of women state legislators and public health. Specifically, we estimate the effect of WDR on premature death rates from 1981-2010, utilizing an error correction model and a novel instrumental variable approach to mitigate endogeneity. We find that WDR serves to improve the well-being of both women and men. However, the effect of WDR is significantly stronger for women (compared to men) in states that play a larger role in the provision of healthcare. Overall, our results suggest that policy remedies aimed at improving the severe underrepresentation of women in government may help improve the relatively low ranking of the United States on indicators of public health.

Powerful currents have reshaped the structure of families over the last century. There has been (1) a dramatic drop in fertility and greater parental investment in children; (2) a rise in married female labor-force participation; (3) a significant decline in marriage; (4) a higher degree of positive assortative mating; (5) more children living with a single mother; and (6) shifts in social norms governing premarital sex and married women's roles in the workplace. Macroeconomic models explaining these aggregate trends are surveyed. The relentless flow of technological progress and its role in shaping family life are stressed.

This paper considers the marginal effect of an airport hub on a metropolitan areas economy over the period 1978-2012. Evidence from fixed effect panel regressions indicates that airline hub airports increase personal income by at least 2.3 percent, and also increase establishment counts by at least 1.6 percent within their respective commuting zone (CZ). Sectors most likely to experience employment growth are air travel and hotels and lodging. Effects vary substantially by decade; hubs appear to have been at their strongest during the 2000-2009 time period, with gains in employment, establishments, and payroll uniformly observed in hub cities. Moreover, a hub premium on ticket prices was observed from 1980-1999, with the 2000-2009 period seeing significant decreases in non-stop hub market access. Evidence from an event study analysis corroborates these findings. It additionally suggests hub loss causes significant decreases in service sector employment, service establishments, aggregate wages/payroll and wages per worker in the wake of hub closures. These effects appear to operate, especially for hubs dominated by major airlines, through changes in access to markets served by non-stop flights. These findings suggest that the effects of hub airports, in most cases, operate through their ability to facilitate efficient business travel.

This paper studies optimal insurance against private idiosyncratic shocks in a life-cycle model with intensive labor supply and endogenous retirement. In this environment, the optimal labor tax is hump-shaped in age: insurance benefits of taxation push for increasing-in-age taxes while rising labor supply elasticities and optimal late retirement of highly productive workers push for lowering taxes for old workers. In calibrated numerical simulations, the optimum achieves sizable welfare gains that age-dependent taxes do not deliver under the status quo US Social Security. Nevertheless, an optimal combination of age-dependent linear taxes with increasing-in-age retirement benefits generates welfare gains close to optimal.

Powerful currents have reshaped the structure of families over the last century. There has been (i) a dramatic drop in fertility and greater parental investment in children; (ii) a rise in married female labor-force participation; (iii) a decline in marriage and a rise in divorce; (iv) a higher degree of assortative mating; (v) more children living with a single mother; (vi) shifts in social norms governing premarital sex and married women’s roles in the labor market. Macroeconomic models explaining these aggregate trends are surveyed. The relentless flow of technological progress and its role in shaping family life are stressed.