The use of tax-increment financing (TIF) remains a popular yet highly controversial tool among policymakers in their efforts to promote economic development. This paper is a comprehensive assessment of the effectiveness of Missouri’s TIF program, specifically in Kansas City and Saint Louis, in creating economic opportunities. We build a time-series dataset covering the period from 1990 through 2012 of detailed employment levels, establishment counts, and sales at the census block group level to run a set of difference-in-differences estimates for the impact of TIF at the local level. Our analysis of the impact of TIF on a wide set of indicators and across various industry sectors yields no conclusive evidence that the TIF program in either city has a causal impact on key economic development indicators.

Public school teachers earn 16.8 percent less in weekly wages and 12.5 percent less in weekly total compensation (wages and benefits) than other full-time workers in New Jersey. An analysis of hourly compensation shows that teachers earn 13.7 percent less in wages and 9.4 percent less in total compensation.

A central provision of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was a Medicaid expansion intended to reduce uninsurance among adults with incomes at or below 138 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL). Low-income childless adults experienced the largest eligibility gains from that expansion. In this brief, we examine coverage gains resulting from the Medicaid expansion for several subgroups of childless adult citizens with incomes below the federal poverty level. Using data from the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), we estimate the effect of the ACA Medicaid expansion on the uninsured rate for poor, childless adult citizens by age, gender, race, income, education, and self-reported . . .

The current scenario of the migration between Mexico and the United States has characteristics never seen before. A decelerating migratory flow towards the north and an unexpected return of Mexicans to their communities of origin. At the same time and without taking into account the facts, immigration policy and governmental speech intensify the control of the border and manifests the need to expel a large number of undocumented Mexicans. In this article, I analyze the demographic trends of the workforce under a binational and longitudinal perspective through the construction of a semi-panel. The results show convergent trends in both populations towards a gradual aging, the concentration of Mexicans in the United States at young adult ages and the return of Mexicans in all age groups to the labor market. It also shows the persistent segmentation of the U.S. labor market and the vulnerability regarding unemployment that returnees face in Mexico.

We evaluate a San Francisco policy requiring employers to provide health benefits or contribute to a public-option health plan to better understand the incidence of employer mandates through their effects on wages, employment, and prices. We develop an individual case study approach combining border discontinuity in policies and permutation-type inference using other metropolitan areas. Findings indicate that employment patterns did not change appreciably following the policy, and there is little evidence of significant negative earnings in highly impacted sectors. However, approximately half of the incidence of the mandate in the restaurant sector fell on consumers via surcharges.

Objective: This study provides a national snapshot comparing immigrants to the U.S. with native-born citizens who work in healthcare occupations, including their sociodemographic characteristics and the jobs they fill. Data/Setting: We used a three-year pooled sample (2011 to 2013) of the American Community Survey, an annual household survey conducted by the U.S. Census, selecting a sample of noninstitutionalized individuals age 18 to 75 years in the U.S. labor force. Design/Methods: We compared native-born U.S. citizens with immigrants, which include naturalized citizens and noncitizens. We examined sociodemographic characteristics including birthplace, gender, age, marital status, metropolitan or non-metropolitan residence, highest level of educational attainment, and state of residence. Among immigrants, we also examined the number of years they had lived in the U.S. and age of immigration, and among naturalized citizens, age at naturalization. We compared the sociodemographic characteristics of healthcare workers having less than a bachelors degree with those having a bachelors degree and higher by immigrant and citizenship status. Results: Immigrants constituted 15.7% of the healthcare labor force. There were about twice as many naturalized citizen (10.5%) as noncitizen (5.3%) immigrants in healthcare. Unemployment in healthcare was lower for naturalized citizens (3.5%) compared with native born citizens (4.8%) and noncitizens (6.0%). Most common birthplaces for naturalized citizens were Asia, the Caribbean, Europe, and Africa. For noncitizens, most common birthplaces were Asia, the Caribbean, Mexico, and Africa. Naturalized citizens were older than native-born citizens and noncitizens; noncitizens were the youngest. Naturalized citizens had immigrated into the U.S. at a younger age and had lived in the U.S. about 10 years longer than noncitizens. Immigrants were more likely than native-born citizens to be married. Over 97% of immigrants lived in metropolitan counties. More naturalized citizens (53.2%) had a bachelors degree or higher than native-born citizens (44.4%) and noncitizens (41.1%). Unemployment rates were higher for individuals with less than a bachelors degree versus those with a bachelors degree or higher, regardless of immigration or citizenship status. Most common healthcare jobs of naturalized citizens included registered nurse (19.8%); nursing/psychiatric/home health aide (18.4%); and physician/surgeon (11.4%). The most common healthcare jobs of noncitizens included allied health occupations such as nursing/psychiatric/home health aide (27.3%) and personal/home care aide (17.6%), as well as registered nurse (12.7%). Conclusions: Our study suggests that noncitizens in the healthcare labor force are likely to experience greater social and labor market vulnerability than either naturalized citizens or native born citizens. Further research to understand these patterns, the causes of health worker migration, and its consequences. Given shortages of healthcare professionals in underserved communities in the U.S., and the loss of healthcare talent in immigrants home countries, the extent of the mismatch between immigrants skills and the jobs they occupy is an issue of great concern. Policymakers in the U.S. and other nations need a more thorough understanding of these dynamics of healthcare worker migration and occupational outcomes to make more rational use of scarce and valuable human resources for health.

Following the Great Recession (2007–2009), growth in multiunit housing starts has been exceptionally strong and sustained. In this study, we examine empirical evidence for three possible explanations, namely, the passage of Baby Boomers into senior years, the depressed economic conditions, and rising preference of recent birth cohorts for residing in urban cores. Applying Age-Period Cohort analysis to census data on multiunit housing occupancy from 1970 to 2010, we find evidence to support the explanations that a sharp increase in demand from Millennials drawn to urban cores and retiring Baby Boomers are contributing to the growth in multiunit housing starts. The results provide weak evidence of a negative relationship between depressed economic conditions and demand for multiunit housing starts. Over the long term, demand for multiunit housing can be expected to moderate as a result of the projected aging of the population.

Both labor force participation and hours per worker of seniors, individuals above age 62, have been growing steadily in the US since the mid 1980s. This is in contrast to the long decline in the labor supply of seniors that began as early as in the 1950s. This paper uses data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to estimate a life-cycle model of labor supply, retirement, and wealth accumulation in order to contrast the labor supply behavior of two cohorts in the US: individuals born after the World War I (”the Great Depression Kids”), and those born after the World War II (”the Baby Boomers”). The paper focuses on the differences between these two cohorts in earning and health dynamics as well as policies that they face, a gradual increase in Normal Retirement Age and the elimination of the Earnings Test in 2000, as potential sources of change. The results show that the effects of policies and policy-unrelated factors are of similar magnitude. The elimination of the Earnings Test had the biggest impact of all policies. Jointly, the rise in out-of-pocket medical expenditures and the increase in life expectancy are the dominant factors among non policy-related ones.

Child care is a necessity for working women with young children. Yet, the costs of high-quality center-based child care in the United States—particularly for children under age five—are prohibitively high for many families. In this proposal, I describe a multifaceted approach to child-care policy that reduces the financial burden of child care, encourages maternal employment, and supports child development. I propose to replace existing federal childcare tax policies with a single refundable federal child-care tax credit that is more generous to lower-income families and families with children under the age of five. To address child care quality, I propose investments in Quality Rating and Improvement Systems and in expansion of universal preschool for four-year-olds. State and local governments could pursue these investments on their own or with federal assistance.

Who invents? This is a central question to understanding possible barriers to entry in the innovation process. To address it, we match the Annual Report of the Commissioner of Patents from 1870 to 1940 to the corresponding U.S. Federal Population Censuses. This matching procedure provides a rich set of demographic information on a comprehensive set of inventors. We first document that patentees over this seventy year period are more likely to be older, white, male and to be living in a state other than the one in which they were born. These patterns are very persistent over space and time. We then attempt to identify correlates of the demographics of patentees focusing on county-level economic and demographic characteristics. Beyond the most obvious, such as the fraction of a particular demographic group in that county, very little explains differences in the demographics of inventors across counties. We then examine two historical institutions that differentially affected particular demographic groups. For blacks, we consider historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and for women, state-level extension of the franchise. We find some evidence that HBCUs differentially increased black patenting rates while the extension of the franchise did not seem to have an effect for the representation of women amongst inventors.

During the 20th century there was a secular transformation within American families from a household dominated by the father to a more egalitarian one in which the wife and the children have been empowered. This transformation coincided with two major economic and demographic changes, namely the increase in economic opportunities for women and a decline in family size. To explain the connection between these trends and the transformation in family relationships we develop a novel model of parenting styles that highlights the importance of competition within the family. The key intuition is that the rise in relative earnings of wives increased competition between spouses for the love and affection of their children while the decline in family size reduced competition between children for resources from their parents. The combined effect has empowered children within the household and allowed them to capture an increasing share of the household surplus over the past hundred years.

Each year, 10,000 individuals die in alcohol-impaired traffic accidents in the United States, while psychoactive drugs are involved in 20% of all fatal traffic accidents. We investigate whether state parity laws for substance use disorder (SUD) treatment have the unintended benefit of reducing fatal traffic accidents. Parity laws compel insurers to cover SUD treatment in private insurance markets, thereby reducing the financial costs of and increasing access to treatment for beneficiaries. We employ over 20 years of administrative data from the national Fatal Accident Reporting System coupled with a differences-in-differences research design to investigate the potential spillover effects of parity laws to traffic safety. Our findings indicate that passage of a state parity law reduces fatal traffic accident rates by 4.1 to 5.4%. These findings suggest that government regulations requiring insurers to cover SUD treatment can significantly improve traffic safety, possibly by reducing the number of impaired drivers on roadways.

Since 1980 a growing gap has emerged between female life expectancy in the U.S. and much of Europe. In the late 1970s, American women lived as long as women in France, Spain, and Italy; today, women in those countries live about 4.5 years longer than do American women. This paper considers the reasons for this growing longevity gap. In the first part of the paper, we examine causes of death to determine proximate reasons for the growing disparity. We show that the emergence of the life expectancy gap is associated with increasing smoking-related deaths among U.S. women. Using national health surveys across multiple countries, we document that U.S. women began smoking three to four decades before European women. The second part of the paper explores possible explanations for the early smoking initiation of American women. We find that smoking increases are closely tied to women working. In areas and time periods where more women work, smoking rates increase.

We study the impact on income poverty of unequal growth experienced in the US over 1989-2013 using a new measure of poverty. This measure accounts for both the relative and absolute aspects of income poverty. It depends on a key normative parameter that defines how much weight is given to each of these two aspects. The preferred parameter value for an absolutist moral observer lies at one extreme of the parameter range, whereas that of a relativist observer lies at the other extreme. Under unequal growth, absolutists often disagree with relativists. The former typically consider that poverty decreases and the latter that poverty increases. We first develop simple theoretical conditions under which the poverty judgments obtained with our measure are fully robust to the choice of its normative parameter. For non-robust cases, we derive a simple formula returning the threshold parameter value at which the judgment is reversed. We then apply our measure to study the evolution of poverty in the US over the recent period of unequal growth. Results show that our measure provides sensible poverty judgments that are not drastically different from those obtained with the official measure but far enough to justify its pertinence. Making pairwise comparisons of poverty over time or across states, our measure reaches opposite conclusions to those of the official measure when inequality is significantly higher in the high-income distribution. Specifically, unlike the official poverty rate, our measure deems the core unequal growth period between 1993 and 2008 as poverty increasing. Interestingly, poverty judgments are largely robust to the choice of the normative parameter.

Administrative data from the U.S. Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program reveal that, across locations, one extra TAA trade-displaced worker is associated with overall employment falling by about two workers. This finding is robust to local Bartik-style import penetration measures, suggesting a role for within-industry heterogeneity. A Ricardian trade model with endogenous variable markups can rationalize such a trade displacement multiplier. In the medium run following a trade liberalization, employment and earnings collapse in the less productive locations because of both higher trade-induced job losses and lower job creation, as in the data. Earnings inequality increases and prompts transitional transfers towards decaying locations, even as aggregate employment rises amidst muted geographic mobility.

This chapter is about how the conflict between Vietnamese Americans and the SRVN has unfolded in Washington and around the world and the strategies that grassroots activists have used to gain support for their broad and ambitious agenda: democratization in Vietnam. I begin with a brief history of the Vietnamese diaspora, giving emphasis to the stages of politicization of the American community and the changing, as well as paradoxical, nature of its relationship with the SRVN. I then turn to five elements that feature in the groups grassroots lobby, focusing on the ways in which organizations, demonstrations, elections, money, and media forge to contest the SRVN in public spaces, symbolically and sometimes literally. Following this, I move to an analysis of the outcomes of these efforts, 3 looking at 382 pieces of legislation before Congress between 1981 and 2014 for evidence of Vietnamese American or SRVN influence. I conclude with a reflection on the findings.

A key component of Oregon's population growth, migration has shaped and continues to shape Oregon's social and cultural history, as well as its economic fortunes. Nowhere in Oregon are the sociocultural, economic, and political effects of migration more profound than in Portland, the state's principal economic region. Here, in the wake of the Great Recession, roughly 300 people moved to the Portland metro region each day - combined with 234 people moving out each day, the Rose City region attracted and retained roughly 66 in-migrants each day.

This dissertation examines what mechanisms allowed for the economic success of immigrant populations who entered in the first half of the twentieth century. Sociologists have largely speculated about yesterday’s immigrant progress, and then make claims about whether today’s immigrants will follow a similar trajectory without testing their claims. However, data are currently being released as confidentiality requirements expire across the world, which allows me to recreate the entire immigrant experience during this time that was previously impossible. Thus, I create longitudinal datasets where I track individuals from their home country in Europe to when they are living in the US. Each of my substantive chapters (2-4) focuses on particular aspects of immigrants during this time that has been previously thought to facilitate or hinder economic mobility. Drawing on data from passenger records, complete count censuses, and personnel records from manufacturing companies, I tease out various mechanisms that allowed yesterday’s immigrants to enter the working and middle class. This dissertation joins a burgeoning literature that analyzes immigrant socioeconomic mobility within and across generations in the first half of the twentieth century.