Historically in the United States, the public sector has served as an equalizing institution through the expansion of job opportunities for minority workers. This study examines whether the public sector continues to serve as an equalizing institution in the aftermath of the Great Recession. Using data from the Current Population Survey, I investigate changes in public sector employment between 2003 and 2013. My results point to a post-recession double disadvantage for black public sector workers: they are concentrated in a shrinking sector of the economy, and they are more likely than white and Hispanic public sector workers to experience job loss. These two trends are a historical break for the public sector labor market. I find that race and ethnicity gaps in public sector employment cannot be explained by differences in education, occupation, or any of the other measurable factors that are typically associated with employment. Among unemployed workers who most recently worked for the public sector, black women are the least likely to transition into private sector employment.

The 1896 presidential election between William Jennings Bryan and William McKinley has gained new salience in the wake of the 2016 contest. We provide the first systematic analysis of voting patterns in 1896, combining county-level returns with economic, financial, demographic and climatological data. Specifically, we consider the economic concerns of the Populists with falling crop prices, high interest rates and railroad monopolies. We show that Bryan did well where mortgage interest rates were high, railroad penetration was low, and crop prices had declined by most over the previous decade. Using our estimates, we show that further declines in crop prices or increases in interest rates would have been enough to tip the Electoral College in Bryan’s favor. But to change the outcome, the additional fall in crop prices would have had to be large. The counterfactual increase in interest rates appears, at first blush, to have been more modest. But where previous authors have argued that interest rates came down in the 1890s because of the entry of additional banks, our estimates indicate that bank entry would have had to be very significantly slower to tip the election. There is no question that economic grievances mattered in 1896. But small or even moderate changes in economic conditions would not have changed the outcome of the election.

This thesis aims to understand trends of trees in transportation planning and to determine if street trees have a negative or positive influence on crash frequency and severity. As roadways become more walkable and livable, they become safer. Street trees are a vital component of this trend. Planners must understand the impacts of trees on roadway user safety as they work to reduce crash risk. Although spatial analysis suggests there may be a negative relationship between trees and crash frequency, correlation models find a significant correlation between trees and crash severity, but no significant correlation between trees and crash frequency. Regression models of crash reports, tree inventory data, and other related variables in the city of Des Moines, Iowa, show that the presence of trees has a positive relationship on crash severity but no relationship on crash frequency. For every one unit increase in trees there is a 1.428 increase in predicted severe crashes, but an increase in trees does not result in any statistically significant influence on crash frequency. These findings are useful in gaining an understanding of tree influences on crash frequency and severity at the block group level, but further analysis of other variables is necessary for any further conclusions to occur.

The Farr–Bertillon law states that the mortality rate of single and widowed persons is about three times the rate of married people of same age. This excess mortality can be measured with good accuracy for all ages except for young widowers. The reason is that, at least nowadays, very few people become widowed under the age of 30. Here we show that disability data from census records can also be used as a reliable substitute for mortality rates. In fact excess-disability and excess-mortality go hand in hand. Moreover, as there are about ten times more cases of disability than deaths, the disability variable is able to offer more accurate measurements in all cases where the number of deaths is small. This allows a more accurate investigation of the young widower effect; it confirms that, as already suspected from death rate data, there is a huge spike between the ages of 20 and 30. By using disability rates we can also study additional features not accessible using death rate data. For example we can examine the health impact of a change in living place. The observed temporary inflated disability rate confirms what could be expected by invoking the “Transient Shock” conjecture formuladted by the authors in a previous paper. Finally, in another observation it is shown that the disability rate of newly married persons is higher than for those who have been married for more than one year, a result which comes in confirmation of the “newly married couple” effect reported in an earlier paper.

We examine inferences about old-age mortality that arise when researchers use survey data matched to death records. We show that even small rates of failure to match respondents can lead to substantial bias in the measurement of mortality rates at older ages. This type of measurement error is consequential for three strands in the demographic literature: (1) the deceleration in mortality rates at old ages; (2) the black-white mortality crossover; and (3) the relatively low rate of old-age mortality among Hispanics, often called the “Hispanic paradox.” Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Older Men matched to death records in both the U.S. Vital Statistics system and the Social Security Death Index, we demonstrate that even small rates of missing mortality matching plausibly lead to an appearance of mortality deceleration when none exists and can generate a spurious black-white mortality crossover. We confirm these findings using data from the National Health Interview Survey matched to the U.S. Vital Statistics system, a data set known as the “gold standard” (Cowper et al. 2002) for estimating age-specific mortality. Moreover, with these data, we show that the Hispanic paradox is also plausibly explained by a similar undercount.

In the recent work, I use the external variation of the WWII in order to exploit the effects of increase in female labor supply on the education outcomes for children. The mobilization process in the early 1940s in the U.S. pushed in some cases, incentivized in others, females to enter the labor market or to increase the weeks worked annually. For investigating that process I use data for the mobilization rates per state. This unique shift in the female labor outcomes gives opportunity to investigate the education attainment of children of mothers who were affected by the mobilization process. The main results show that there is a significant positive correlation between mobilization rates and females annual weeks worked, and negative correlation between females weeks worked and the education attainment of their children. The empirical results are utilized by statistical and/or economic significance.

The expansion of Medicaid to low-income nondisabled adults is a key component of the Affordable Care Act's strategy to increase health insurance coverage, but many states have chosen not to take up the expansion. As a result, for many low-income adults, there has been stark variation across states in access to Medicaid since the expansions took effect in 2014. This study investigates whether individuals migrate in order to gain access to these benefits. Using an empirical model in the spirit of a difference-in-differences, this study finds that migration from non-expansion states to expansion states did not increase in 2014 relative to migration in the reverse direction. The estimates are sufficiently precise to rule out a migration effect that would meaningfully affect the number of enrollees in expansion states, which suggests that Medicaid expansion decisions do not impose a meaningful fiscal externality on other states.

The author uses variation by the day of week-comparing weekdays to weekends-to reconsider three main explanations for variation in women's housework time. The author predicts that though evidence of gender deviance neutralization (GDN) should be evident across the days of the week, evidence of time constraints and absolute earnings should be most apparent on weekdays. The author tests these hypotheses with the largest sample to date (American Time Use Survey 2003-2012) and careful consideration of the functional form between resources/constraints and housework time. The author finds that all three measures of resources/constraints-relative earnings, absolute earnings, and employment hours-perform as poor predictors of women's housework on weekends. Weekends are when women, regardless of employment status, do gender, but not in the way hypothesized by GDN. On weekdays, women's own employment hours and earnings have negative, but diminishing, effects on their housework time. GDN is not supported.

Despite the widespread use of self-rated health (SRH) in population health studies, the meaning of this holistic health judgment remains an open question. Gender differences in health, an issue of utmost importance in population research and policy, are often measured with SRH; the comparisons could be biased if men and women differ in how they form their health judgment. The aim of this study is to examine whether men and women differ in how health inputs predict their health rating across the adult life span. We use the 2002–2015 National Health Interview Survey data from US-born respondents aged 25–84. Ordered logistic models of SRH as a function of 24 health measures including medical conditions and symptoms, mental health, functioning, health care utilization, and health behaviors, all interacted with gender, test how the measures influence health ratings and the extent to which these influences differ by gender. Using a Bayesian approach, we then compare how closely a select health measure (K6 score) corresponds to SRH levels among men and women. We find little systematic gender difference in the structure of SRH: men and women use wide-ranging health-related frames of reference in a similar way when making health judgments, with some exceptions: mid-life and older men weigh physical functioning deficits and negative health behaviors more heavily than women. Women report worse SRH than men on average but this only holds through mid-adulthood and is reversed at older ages; moreover, the female disadvantage disappears when differences in socio-economic and health covariates are considered. Our findings suggest that the meaning of SRH is similar for women and men. Both groups use a broad range of health-related information in forming their health judgment. This conclusion strengthens the validity of SRH in measuring gender differences in health.

It is a common misperception that low-income populations are transit-dependent or typically do without a car because it is too expensive. While much larger proportions of low-income populations use a mode of transportation other than a personal automobile to commute to work, a majority of them still use a personal automobile. In this edition of the Periodic Atlas, we looked at commuting as it relates to people of color and low-wage workers using the most recent reliable Census data as well as data from the Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics Origin-Destination Employment Statistics (LEHD-LODES).

Comparing the 1935 and 1975 U.S. birth cohorts, wages of married women grew twice as fast as for married men, and the wage gap between married and single women turned from negative to positive. The employment rate of married women also increased sharply, while that of other groups remained quite stable. To better understand these diverse patterns we develop a lifecycle model incorporating individual and household decisions about education, employment, marriage/divorce and fertility. The model provides an excellent fit to wage and employment patterns, along with changes in education, marriage/divorce rates, and fertility. We assume fixed preferences, but allow for four exogenously changing factors: (i) mother’s education, health and taxes; (ii) marriage market opportunities and divorce costs; (iii) the wage structure and job offers; (iv) contraception technology. We quantify how each factor contributed to changes across cohorts. We find that factor (iii) was the most important force driving the increase in relative wages of married women, but that all four factors are important for explaining the many socio-economic changes that occurred in the past 50 years. Finally, we use the model to simulate a shift from joint to individual taxation. We predict this would increase employment of married women by 8.3% and the marriage rate by 8%.

This dissertation comprises two papers that examine the employment outcomes and location choices of Ph.D.-trained individuals that often face dual-thin marriage and labor markets. The first paper investigates the degree to which single Ph.D.-trained workers, both domestic and foreign-born, face trade-offs between marriage and labor market opportunities. When job markets are not geographically overlapping with marriage markets, single PhDs may be forced to choose between metropolitan areas (MSAs) that offer better employment opportunities versus better marriage markets. I find significant evidence of a “sorting” effect – the local marriage market is a location-specific consumer amenity for which highly trained foreign-born singles may sacrifice real wage in equilibrium to access a more active dating environment. The second paper uses differencing strategies to compare the location choices of foreign-born versus domestic-born Ph.D.-trained workers. Results suggest that single foreign-born Ph.D. workers are partly willing to forgo the greater labor market opportunities found in large MSAs in exchange for a more active dating scene. In contrast, findings on married foreign-born Ph.D. workers echo those from Costa and Kahn (2000) that highly educated couples are disproportionately drawn to large MSAs in order to solve their job market co-location challenge.

We examine inferences about old age mortality that arise when researchers use survey data matched to death records. We show that even small rates of failure to match respondents can lead to substantial bias in the measurement of mortality rates at older ages. This type of measurement error is consequential for three strands in the demographic literature: (1) the deceleration in mortality rates at old ages, (2) the black-white mortality crossover, and (3) the relatively low rate of old age mortality among Hispanics—often called the “Hispanic paradox.” Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Older Men (NLS-OM) matched to death records in both the U.S. Vital Statistics system and the Social Security Death Index, we demonstrate that even small rates of missing mortality matching plausibly lead to an appearance of mortality deceleration when none exists, and can generate a spurious black-white mortality crossover. We confirm these findings using data from the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) matched to the U.S. Vital Statistics system, a dataset known as the “gold standard” (Cowper et al., 2002) for estimating age-specific mortality. Moreover, with these data we show that the Hispanic paradox is also plausibly explained by a similar undercount.

Piketty, Atkinson and Saez have put the analysis of income distribution back on center stage. The distinction between property income and labor income plays a central role in this framework. Property income derives from the rate of return on stocks of income-earning wealth and is more unequally distributed than labor income. Piketty argues that, because the rate of return (r) is generally greater than the rate of growth of the economy (g), property income tends to grow more rapidly than labor income, so that rising income inequality is an intrinsic tendency of capitalism despite interruptions due to world wars and great depressions. This article argues the exact opposite. The rise of unions and the welfare state were the fruits of long-term historical gains made by labor, and the postwar constraints on real and financial capital arose in sensible reaction to the Great Depression. The neoliberal era beginning in the 1980s significantly rolled back all of these. The article uses the econophysics two-class argument of Yakovenko to show that we can explain the empirical degree of inequality using two factors alone: the profit share and the degree of financialization of income. The rise of inequality in the neoliberal era then derives from a reduction in the wage share (rise in the profit share) in the face of assaults on labor and the welfare state, and a sharp increase in the financialization of incomes as financial controls are weakened. These are inherently socio-political outcomes, and what was lost can be regained. Hence, there is no inevitable return to Pikettys patrimonial capitalism.

Background: Segregation in Southern cities has been described as a 20th-century development, layered onto an earlier pattern in which whites and blacks (both slaves and free black people) shared the same neighborhoods. Urban historians have pointed out ways in which the Southern postbellum pattern was less benign, but studies relying on census data aggregated by administrative areas - and segregation measures based on this data – have not confirmed their observations. Methods: This study is based mainly on 100% microdata from the 1880 census that has been mapped at the address level in Washington, D.C. This data makes it possible to examine in detail the unique spatial configuration of segregation that is found in this city, especially the pattern of housing in alleys. Results: While segregation appears to have been low, as reflected in data by wards and even by much smaller enumeration districts, analyses at a finer spatial scale reveal strongly patterned separation between blacks and whites at this early time. Contribution: This research provides much new information about segregation in a major Southern city at the end of the 19th century. It also demonstrates the importance of dealing explicitly with issues of both scale and spatial pattern in studies of segregation.

Child protection is a highly consequential social institution that simultaneously supports and regulates marginalized families. This dissertation shows that child protection systems are largely a product of the institutional environments in which they are enmeshed. Rates of child welfare intervention are closely tied to the character of a state’s social policy regime. Places with aggressive police forces and punitive criminal justice systems are likely to produce higher volumes of reported child abuse and neglect, and are likely to place more children into foster care. Places that exhibit high levels of racial inequality in their criminal justice systems are also likely to exhibit high levels of racial inequality in their foster care systems. Places with relatively generous social welfare systems are likely to place fewer children into foster care, and are likely to institutionalize fewer children in their foster care system. Taken as a whole, these findings show that child protection is sensitive to both feedback effects from criminal justice and welfare systems and to the political and institutional forces that guide policy design and implementation.

In this study we re-visit the relationship between private health insurance mandates, access to employer-sponsored health insurance, and labor market outcomes. Specifically, we model employer-sponsored health insurance access and labor market outcomes across the lifecycle as a function of the number of high cost mandates in place at labor market entrance. Our analysis draws on a long panel of workers from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 and exploits variation in five high cost state mandates between 1972 and 1989. Four principal findings emerge from our analysis. First, we find no strong evidence that high cost state health insurance mandates discourage employers from offering insurance to employees. Second, employers adjust both wages and labor demand to offset mandate costs, suggesting that employees place some value on the mandated benefits. Third, the effects are persistent, but not permanent. Fourth, the effects are heterogeneous across worker types. These findings have implications for thinking through the full labor market effects of health insurance expansions.