Migration was once a way for the poor to escape crushing poverty and even an early death. In 1840s and 1850s, more than a million people died in the Great Famine in Ireland, but another million escaped that fate be emigrating to the United States. Thousands more escaped to Great Britain and the British dominions. These migrants also sent money to remaining family members (support known as remittances), saving them from starvation as well. Famine struck again . . .

This dissertation examines the impact of childhood exposure to public investments on later life outcomes from the lenses of changes in the political landscape due to women's enfranchisement and increases in early childhood education investments. Chapter 1, joint with Elira Kuka and Na'ama Shenhav, examines the long-term impact of women's political empowerment on children's educational outcomes following the suffrage laws in the early 1900s in the U.S. Exploiting plausibly exogenous variation in U.S. state and federal suffrage laws, we find that exposure to women's enfranchisement during childhood leads to large increases in educational attainment for children from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, in particular blacks and Southern whites. We show that the educational gains are plausibly driven by the rise in public expenditures following suffrage. Our findings contribute to the first long-term estimates of a broad-based expansion of women's political power. Chapter 2 analyzes the impact of the Head Start program on academic achievement by exploiting a new source of variation in program funding intensity across local communities and over time during the 1990s. Head Start is the largest federal preschool program that provides education, health, nutrition, and other social services to low-income children age three to five and their families. Since its inception in 1965, Head Start has been a key intervention for reducing educational gaps across socioeconomic groups in school readiness. However, its impact on test scores remains unclear. Using student-level data from Texas, I find that exposure to more generous Head Start funding at age four significantly improves test scores in third grade through fifth grade for low-income children. My results show that Head Start benefited Hispanics with limited language proficiency the most. I provide quantitative evidence that Head Start significantly improves language proficiency among Hispanics, which could partly explain the test score gains in this group. I also show that the gains in test scores can be explained by an increase in both program quality and capacity. These findings contrast to the previous literature, which reports smaller or no detectable impacts on children's test scores over the medium-run and contribute to the extensive literature that evaluates Head Start's effectiveness. Finally, Chapter 3 examines the intergenerational impact of Head Start on infant health. Head Start has served low-income children over 50 years and has been shown to be a success in improving long-term outcomes of children who participated the early phases program. This paper evaluates the effects of maternal access to Head Start on infant health outcomes using Vital Statistics Natality data. Using variation in the year of Head Start's introduction in each county from 1966 to 1970, I find that maternal access to Head Start at ages three to five improves infant health for both whites and blacks, with larger impacts on blacks. It also increases the probability that a new mother is more educated, reduces the number of births, reduces likelihood of smoking and drinking during pregnancy. These findings suggest that the estimates of the returns to early childhood programs may significantly understate the total benefit.

Reporting of family planning indicators for unmarried women is a relatively new area; consensus on how to calculate and present them has not yet been reached. There is a great diversity in exposure to risk of pregnancy (i.e. sexual activity) amongst unmarried women. We present the definition and calculation of two sets of family planning indicators: those amongst all unmarried, versus sexually active unmarried women. Micro datasets for 216 DHSs demonstrate the impact of the two definitions on numerators, denominators and overall percent. Contraceptive prevalence and unmet need are generally lower as a percentage, though the absolute number of women is greater, when reported for all unmarried women compared to sexually active unmarried. We demonstrate that there is a conceptual issue with unmet need amongst unmarried sexually active women; pregnant/postpartum women whose last-pregnancy/birth was unintended are excluded if they are not currently sexually active, which is inconsistent with the married women approach. They are included when unmet need is calculated for all unmarried. The difference in demand satisfied between all unmarried (52.1%) and sexually active unmarried (48.0%) is not substantial. Clear definitions of family planning indicators are crucial. We recommend reporting for all-unmarried women.

In the face of a rather stagnant federal minimum wage, many states have enacted generous wage levels exceeding the federal standard, while other states have not. Over the years, this distinction has provided favorable circumstances for studying the effects of this policy. The intention of the minimum wage has always been to aid low-income adults, ideally ensuring enough income to afford the bare necessities. Researchers have endeavored to expose whether the policy truly works as originally envisioned. This paper adds to the vast literature by examining the effect of state minimum wage hikes on the labor supply decisions made by parents. Specifically, my research focuses on the intensive margin of labor supply, namely hours of work per week. I use data from the Current Population Survey Outgoing Rotation Group to study this effect. My sample comprises a wide variety of people, and utilizes different model specifications to robustly analyze the demographic of interest: parents. The models include ordinary least squares (OLS), linear probability model (LPM), logit, triple differencing, and Heckman selection correction. The results of this research suggest that there is indeed a negative, but quite small, labor supply effect from boosts to state minimum wages. My analysis also indicates an additional slight negative response for parents compared to non-parents, but with limited statistical significance depending on the model. In some cases, the effect is more robust and statistically significant when considering parents with young children, particularly children under the age of five.

Poverty has a strong relationship to geography in the United States. Previous research has found that rural areas have higher average poverty rates than urban areas, but the new supplemental poverty measure (SPM) has shown in recent years that urban areas have higher average poverty. In this article, we analyze poverty trends from 1967 to 2014 in rural and urban America, using the improved SPM metrics. We find a dramatic decline in poverty in rural areas, and also show that the geographic adjustment of the poverty threshold in the SPM (which lowers poverty thresholds in less expensive areas and raises them in more expensive areas) is an important explanatory factor. We also find that changes in the demographic and economic characteristics of rural and urban residents help to explain the decline. Last, we investigate whether migration of the poor between rural and urban areas helps to account for differential poverty trends, but we find little evidence in support of that hypothesis.

This dissertation explores the impact of policy and economic conditions on the current economic crises of crime, substance abuse, and financial exclusion faced domestically and abroad. Although these issues span the income distribution, impoverished regions are disproportionately affected by the highest rates of risky behaviors such as drug abuse and crime. The ability for public policy makers to affect large populations of at-risk individuals can be difficult; oftentimes, these groups operate outside of the public sphere and large-scale interventions can miss the mark. In my first substantive chapter, I investigate the efficacy of state-wide insurance reform aimed at reducing drug dependency by requiring insurance providers to cover rehabilitation and detoxification. Utilizing state-level panel data in a generalized differences-in-differences framework, I find that states which enact laws expanding insurance coverage are successful at encouraging treatments for some types of conditions but are limited in their ability to reach individuals struggling with opiate addiction and, correspondingly, have little impact on deterring accidental overdose deaths. In my second substantive chapter, I question the assumptions made in previous empirical work regarding the relationship between economic conditions and crime. Existing literature finds that property crime rates are positively correlated with the unemployment rate. In this paper, I investigate whether this relationship is evolving over time and find that the relationship between property crime rates and unemployment has diminished toward zero. Moreover, I find evidence that there is a non-zero relationship between unemployment and violent crimes during certain periods in time. In my last substantive chapter, we develop a theoretical model illustrating the basic trade-offs in the functioning of financial institutions (Village and Savings Loan Associations) designed to provide financial inclusion to under-served populations in developing countries. We develop a theoretical model which suggests that these groups lack a mechanism to ensure equilibrium in the supply and demand for funds. We test the predictions of this model using experimental data from newly formed groups in Uganda and find that groups operate with excess demand for loans but are often able to generate a high return on savings.

Politicians often struggle to claim credit for programmatic policies and therefore use personalized benefits to win elections. Non-programmatic strategies that target individual voters provide a greater electoral return, even if the technocratic provision of public goods would better serve citizens’ needs. Mexico’s PRI historically relied on such targeting to win elections and used social welfare spending to reinvigorate this practice after its poor 1988 electoral results. Thus, claims that Programa Agua Limpia (PAL), a clean water program, was technocratic merit skepticism. This paper assesses such claims and whether the resulting health improvements had electoral consequences. Analysis indicates that electoral considerations did not influence PAL. Furthermore, this program increased support for the PRI. A dollar spent on PAL may have yielded better electoral returns then larger particularistic social welfare programs concurrently implemented by the PRI. Our analysis illuminates the conditions under which politicians can garner electoral returns for providing public goods.

This dissertation explores questions on the substance and methods of economic history. Chapter one studies a little-known policy change in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to explore the causal effects of political exclusion on the economic wellbeing of immigrants. Starting in the mid-19th century, twenty-four states and territories expanded their electorates to allow non-citizen immigrants the right to vote; from 1864-1926, however, these same jurisdictions reversed this policy, creating a mass disenfranchisement for which the timing varied across states. Using this variation as well as a discontinuity in nationalization proceedings of the era, I find that political exclusion led to a 25-60% reduction in the likelihood that affected immigrants obtained public sector employment. I also document significant negative intergenerational effects: individuals of immigrant parentage born around the time of disenfranchisement earned 5- 9% less as adults than comparable individuals of native parentage. I am able to rule out as mechanisms for this intergenerational effect a variety of policy and spending channels, but find evidence for a reduction in English-language proficiency among disenfranchised immigrants, which may have adversely affected the human capital of their children. Chapter two explores the causes of the adoption and repeal of alien voting in the United States. This policy shift offers a valuable opportunity to understand the forces determining political inclusion and exclusion in a formative period of American democracy, and contributes to the broader literature on theories of democratization. I use qualitative evidence from the historical record to outline competing theories of both xi adoption and repeal of alien voting, and then rationalize these hypotheses within the context of a median voting model. Using a discrete time hazard specification, I find evidence consistent with the hypothesis that states used alien voting as a locational amenity, with the objective of inducing immigrant in-migration in order to foster agricultural development. The results indicate that the timing of repeal was driven by social costs, rather than economic or political factors, although there is evidence for heterogeneity in correlates of support for repeal across states. Finally, the costs of constitutional change were salient for both adoption and repeal: states for which it was less costly to re-write or amend the constitution were more likely to adopt and repeal alien voting. Chapter three is a co-authored methodological study intended to assess the efficacy of commonly used techniques to create name-linked historical datasets. The recent digitization of historical microdata has led to a proliferation of research using linked data, in which researchers use various methods to match individuals across datasets by observable characteristics; less is known, however, about the quality of the data produced using those different methods. Using two hand-linked ground-truth samples, we assess the performance of four automated linking methods and two commonly used name-cleaning algorithms. Results indicate that automated methods result in high rates of false matches – ranging from 17 to over 60 percent – and the use of phonetic name cleaning increases false match rate by 60-100 percent across methods. We conclude by exploring the implications of erroneous matches for inference, and estimate intergenerational income elasticities for father-son pairs in the 1940 Census using samples generated by each method. We find that estimates vary with linking method, xii suggesting that caution must be used when interpreting parameters estimated from linked data.

This study examined whether mammography receipt was associated with mortality due to causes other than breast cancer, hypothesizing that mammography screening was a proxy for the predisposition to seek preventive health behaviors. Using data on 89,574 women from the 2000 National Health Interview Survey and National Death Index, a discrete-time hazard model estimated the mortality from any cause except breast cancer as a function of screening status. Receiving a mammogram was associated with a 24% reduction in the likelihood of death all causes except breast cancer. These odds were reduced to 21.1% when demographic and socioeconomic variables are added and reduced further to 20.9% when health resource variables were added. The final adjusted model shows that women who received a mammogram had reduced their probability of death by 20%. These results suggest women who undergo mammograms may be more likely to seek other preventive health services or engage in healthy behaviors that affect mortality. While the use of mammograms to predict breast cancer mortality merits further consideration, if a proxy for a woman's predisposition for additional preventive screenings, encouraging mammography may be a pivotal pathway for preventing mortality due to other causes for women.

The objectives of the study are to understand road safety within the context of regional development processes and to assess how urbanrural categories represent differences in motor vehicle occupant fatality risk. We analysed 2015 motor vehicle occupant deaths in Wisconsin from 2010 to 2014, using three definitions of urbanrural continua and negative binomial regression to adjust for population density, travel exposure and the proportion of teen residents. RuralUrban Commuting Area codes, Beale codes and the Census definition of urban and rural places do not explain differences in urban and rural transportation fatality rates when controlling for population density. Although it is widely believed that rural places are uniquely dangerous for motorised travel, this understanding may be an artefact of inaccurate constructs. Instead, population density is a more helpful way to represent transportation hazards across different types of settlement patterns, including commuter suburbs and exurbs.

The 2016 election highlighted deep social and political divisions in the United States, and related unhappiness and frustration among poor and uneducated whites. We find large heterogeneities in optimism across race groups. After controlling for individual characteristics, African Americans are by far the most optimistic, while whites and Asian Americans are the least optimistic, and these differences are largest among low-income groups. When adding a rural/urban dimension, we found that poor rural whites are the least hopeful among the poor. African Americans and Hispanics also display higher life satisfaction and lower stress incidence than do poor whites. The gaps between African Americans and whites tend to be at their peak in middle age (45-54 and 55-64 year olds). We also explored the association between our detailed data on subjective well-being with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention mortality rate data at the Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) level. Our results suggest that the absence of hope, which relates to fears about downward mobility among poor and middle-class whites, matches the trends in premature mortality among 45-54 year olds of the same cohorts and in the same places. MSAs with a higher percentage of African-American respondents, which are typically urban and ethnically diverse, tend to be healthier, happier, and more optimistic about the future. We also discuss the mediating effects of reported pain, reliance on disability insurance, and differential levels of resilience across blacks, Hispanics, and whites. These trends constitute a social crisis of proportions that we do not fully understand. We highlight the importance of documenting the extent of the crisis and exploring its causes as a step toward finding solutions in the safety net, health, education, and well-being arenas.

Current technology uses wind turbines’ blade aerodynamics to convert wind energy to electricity. This process generates significant low-frequency noise that reportedly results in residents’ sleep disruptions, among other annoyance symptoms. However, the existence and the importance of wind farms’ health effects on a population scale remain unknown. Exploiting over 800 utility-scale wind turbine installation events in the United States from 2001-2013, I show robust evidence that wind farms lead to significant increases in suicide. I explore three indirect tests of the role of low-frequency noise exposure. First, the suicide effect concentrates among individuals who are vulnerable to noise-induced illnesses, such as the elderly. Second, the suicide effect is driven by days when wind blows in directions that would raise residents’ exposure to low-frequency noise radiation. Third, data from a large-scale health survey suggest increased sleep insufficiency as new turbines began operating. These findings point to the value of noise abatement in future wind technology innovations.

Previous studies have shown that years of formal schooling attained affects health behaviors, but little is known about how the stringency of academic programs affects such behaviors, especially among youth. Using national survey data from the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBS), we study the effects of mathematics and science high-school graduation requirements (HSGR) on high school students’ risky health behaviors--specifically on drinking, smoking, and marijuana use. We find that an increase in mathematics and science HSGR has significant negative impacts on alcohol consumption among high-school students, especially males and non-white students. The effects of math and science HSGR on smoking and marijuana use are also negative but generally less precisely estimated. Our results suggest that curriculum design may have potential as a policy tool to curb youth drinking.

Rational choice, assimilation, and other traditional approaches to understanding Puerto Rican migration and incorporation are not sufficient for explaining newly emerging diaspora communities. Using census numbers, ethnographic data, and oral history narratives, we look at the case of Central Florida where Puerto Ricans struggle to build an ethnic community in the face of internal divisions and racialization pressures from their non-Hispanic neighbors. In the 21st-century Great Dispersal, it remains to be seen whether Puerto Ricans in new diaspora settlements will see economic bifurcation and birthplace diversity compounded by social assignments as either "honorary white" or "collective black," or whether they will manage to forge a collective identification from which to challenge ongoing socioeconomic hierarchies in new destinations.

The U.S. teen birth rate remains high relative to other industrialized countries. Despite extensive literature on teen mothers and their children, almost no research has examined the rest of the mother’s family. I address this gap, finding that teen birth negatively affects the mother’s younger siblings. To estimate this effect, I use several matched control methods, all of which compare siblings of teen mothers to similar students in other families. I show that it is important to control for pre-existing downward trajectories in these families, both for estimating sibling spillovers and for estimating the effect on the mother herself.

We use data from multiple national surveys to describe trends in private elementary school enrollment by family income from 1968-2013. We note several important trends. First, the private school enrollment rate of middle-income families declined substantially over the last five decades, while that of high-income families remained quite stable. Second, there are notable differences in private school enrollment trends by race/ethnicity, urbanicity, and region of the country. Although racial/ethnic differences in private school enrollment are largely explained by income differences, the urban/suburban and regional differences in private school enrollment patterns are large even among families with similar incomes. Factors contributing to these patterns may include trends in income inequality, private school costs and availability, and the perceived relative quality of local schooling options.

Whether public opinion influences federal judges is a question that has long motivated-but often eluded-scholars. In this article, we examine two related questions: First, whether federal circuit court judges respond to circuit-level public opinion and, second, whether judges with extensive past elected political experience are even more responsive. The data show that circuit judges indeed respond to public opinion. The results also suggest that judges with greater past elected political experience may be more responsive. The results have implications for democratic control of the unelected judiciary, and suggest that appointing judges with electoral experience could, for better or worse, lead to a more majoritarian judiciary.

Evidence from the U.S. that couples with daughters are more likely to divorce than couples with sons has not been found for other Western countries. Using 1995-2015 Dutch marriage registry data, we show that daughters are associated with higher divorce risks, but only when they are 13 to 18 years old. There are no detectable gender differences before or after those ages. These age-specific findings are at odds with son-preference and selection explanations for differences in divorce risks. Instead, the findings point to explanations which involve family relationship dynamics associated with teenage sons and daughters. We find supporting evidence of relationship explanations in supplemental analyses of Dutch survey data. We also find that teenage daughters are associated with higher divorce in analyses of the Current Population Survey Marriage and Fertility Supplements.

This paper describes a new initiative to create and disseminate longitudinal data infrastructure for the United States based on the entire population enumerated between 1850 and 2020. The National Longitudinal Research Infrastructure (NLRI) aims to produce a foundational reference collection for demographic and health research. The availability of a massive collection of life histories of the U.S. population over 170 years will open new avenues for social and behavioral research, education, and policy-making. By disseminating the infrastructure to the broadest possible audience, the project will enhance scientific and public understanding of critical policy-related issues. We are developing the infrastructure through three closely interconnected research projects: (1) the Census Longitudinal Infrastructure Project (CLIP); (2) the American Opportunity Study (AOS); and (3) the Multi-Generational Longitudinal Panel (IPUMS-MLP). The paragraphs that follow briefly describe the origins of the project and our preliminary studies. We then explain how NLRI will overcome critical barriers and transform research on the effects of public policies, social institutions, and health care on the health, well-being, and functioning of people over the life course and in their later years.

This chapter examines the effects that airports have had on economic development in cities from 1950 to 2010. It uses a novel dataset consisting of previously unexploited data on the origins and history of the aviation system in the United States. Applying the method of synthetic controls to a set of medium and small airports, I examine both the overall impacts and the heterogeneity within the outcomes of various airports. Then, I use regression analysis to determine key factors differentiating successful airports from less successful ones, as it pertains particularly to population and employment growth. I find that, first, on average, cities have benefited from airports over this period. Airports, overall, provided a causal contribution of 0.2– 0.6% per year on population and employment growth over the time period. Second, I show that city-level factors contributing to airport success include: (1) closer proximity to a major research university, (2) a capital city location, and (3) climate factors, particularly higher January mean temperatures and/or hours of sunshine. City size is a consideration as well; cities in larger metropolitan areas, with larger shares of employment in nontradables in the 1950s, were also better positioned to reap the benefits that airports provided on city growth. Significant differences were not found across regions, airport governance structures, or other factors.