America will soon be a majority people-of-color nation, yet inequality is skyrocketing and low-income people and communities of color face persistent barriers to accessing the resources and opportunities they need to reach their full potential. Equity, inclusion, and fairness are more than the right things to do, they are economic imperatives. Equity is the superior growth model. The National Equity Atlas was developed as a tool for the growing movement to create a more equitable, sustainable, and resilient economy. It is a comprehensive resource for data to track, measure, and make the case for inclusive growth in Americas regions, and states, and nationwide. The Atlas contains data on demographic change, racial and economic inclusion, and the potential economic gains from racial equity for the largest 100 cities, largest 150 regions, all 50 states, and the United States as a whole. PolicyLink and the Program for Environmental and Regional Equity (PERE) built the Atlas to equip community leaders and policymakers with the facts and analyses needed to: Understand how your communitys demographics are changing; Assess how well your communitys diverse populations can participate in its economic vitality, contribute to its readiness for the future, and connect to its assets and resources (and also see how it compares to other places); Build a compelling narrative and shared understanding about why and how much equity matters to your community's future; and Inform the development of policies, plans, strategies, business models, and investments to advance equitable growth.

Conflict and instability in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Central America are generating record numbers of refugees. While migration pressures continue to mount in Europe and the Middle East, it remains the case that the United States operates the world's largest formal refugees resettlement program. In response to the growing humanitarian crisis.

We examine immigrant entrepreneurship and the survival and growth of immigrant-founded businesses over time relative to native-founded companies. Our work quanti.es immigrant contributions to new firm creation in a wide variety of fields and using multiple definitions. While significant research effort has gone into understanding the economic impact of immigration into the United States, comprehensive data for quantifying immigrant entrepreneurship are difficult to assemble. We combine several restricted-access U.S. Census Bureau data sets to create a unique longitudinal data platform that covers 1992-2008 and many states. We describe differences in the types of businesses initially formed by immigrants and their medium-term growth patterns. We also consider the relationship of these outcomes to the immigrants’ age at arrival to the United States.

Polls show that a large portion of the public considers traffic congestion to be a problem and believes a number of policy interventions would ameliorate it. However, most of the public rejects new taxes and fees to fund transportation system improvements or raise the cost of travel. This may be because of a disconnect between the publics stated antipathy towards congestion and the recalled emotional costs congestion imposes. To explore this, we use a large and representative sample drawn from the American Time Use Survey to examine how drivers experience four emotions (happiness, sadness, stress, and fatigue), plus a constructed composite mood variable, when they travel in peak periods, in large metropolitan areas, in city centers, and in combinations of these. We also explore the interactions between these indicators and trip duration. We find evidence that drivers in the largest cities at the very peak of rush hour (5:00 pm6:00 pm) on non-holiday weekdays are in a less positive mood, presumably because of congestion. However, this effect, though significant, is small, and we find no significant results using broader definitions of the peak period. In all, our findings suggest that congestions impact on drivers as a group is quite limited. This may help explain why the publics attitude toward painful financial trade-offs to address congestion is lukewarm.

This study aims to examine the spatio-temporal dynamics of Rocky Mountain spotted fever (RMSF) prevalence in four contiguous states of Midwestern United States, and to determine the impact of environmental and socioeconomic factors associated with this disease. Bayesian hierarchical models were used to quantify space and time only trends and spatiotemporal interaction effect in the case reports submitted to the state health departments in the region. Various socioeconomic, environmental and climatic covariates screened a priori in a bivariate procedure were added to a maineffects Bayesian model in progressive steps to evaluate important drivers of RMSF space-time patterns in the region. Our results show a steady increase in RMSF incidence over the study period to newer geographic areas, and the posterior probabilities of county-specific trends indicate clustering of high risk counties in the central and southern parts of the study region. At the spatial scale of a county, the prevalence levels of RMSF is influenced by poverty status, average relative humidity, and average land surface temperature (>35C) in the region, and the relevance of these factors in the context of climatechange impacts on tickborne diseases are discussed.

In recent years, rising suicide rates for Minnesota’s Black and Lao communities have captured the attention of the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH). Comparing aggregated suicide rates from 2005 through 2009 to 2010 through 2014, Black suicides increased by 18% while Asian suicides increased significantly by 71%.1 After working with the Lao community it was determined that the community would be better served by looking at the many stressors that may lead to suicide, referred to as overwhelming stress. The purpose of this project is to understand suicide within the Black community and overwhelming stress in the Lao community by examining underlying risk factors, awareness of the issue and prevention resources, and readiness to address the problem.

0ver the past several decades, Oregon has emerged as an increasingly popular destination for many newly arrived immigrants looking to build new lives in the United States. In 1990, immigrants accounted for almost 5 percent of Oregons total population. By 2010, that share had doubled, reaching almost 9.8 percent. In more recent years, such patterns have only continued.

In developing parts of the world, significant increases in primary school enrollment are often generated by large national level programs, which can simultaneously promote overcrowding and reductions in education quality. To analyze this trade-off one must first identify and evaluate the effect of the reform on schooling. This paper provides a method with which a reform’s impact can be identified in developing settings using both temporal and geographic variation, and readily available data. The method is applied to an early 1990s reform in Ethiopia based around the release of the Education and Training Policy, which removed schooling fees from grades one to ten. The model finds that the reform generated an increase in schooling of 1.2 years. Further evidence demonstrates the additional enrollment also led to a higher rate of literacy, suggesting an increase in learning.

Since the mid-20th century, elite political behavior has increasingly nationalized. In Congress, for example, within-party geographic cleavages have declined, roll-call voting has become increasingly one-dimensional, and Democrats and Republicans have diverged along this main dimension of national partisan conflict. The existing literature finds that citizens have displayed only a delayed and attenuated echo of elite trends. We show, however, that a very different picture emerges if we focus not on individual citizens but on the aggregate characteristics of geographic constituencies. Using estimates of the economic, racial, and social policy liberalism of the average Democrat, Independent, and Republican in each state-year 1946–2014, we demonstrate a surprisingly close correspondence between mass and elite trends. Specifically, we find that: (1) ideological divergence between Democrats and Republicans has increased dramatically within each domain, just as it has in Congress; (2) economic, racial, and social liberalism have become highly correlated across state-party publics, just as they have across members of Congress; (3) ideological variation across state-party publics is now almost completely explained by party rather than state, closely tracking trends in the Senate; and (4) senators’ liberalism is strongly predicted by the liberalism of their state-party subconstituency, even controlling for their party affiliation and their state public’s overall liberalism. Taken together, this correspondence between elite and mass patterns suggests that members of Congress are actually quite in synch with their constituencies, if not with individual citizens.

In recent decades, the rapid growth of the Latino population has had a profound impact on Southern communities. It has spurred economic activity, changed the way schools educate students and sparked heated debates about immigration across the region. As the 2016 election season heats up, attention is shifting to another key area where Latinos are reshaping the South: the Southern electorate. Over the next two decades, the number of eligible Latino voters in the region will increase dramatically as today’s Latino youth — almost all of whom are U.S. citizens — turn 18 and become eligible to vote. By 2020, over 1.6 million Latino youth in the South* will age into the electorate. By 2024, if current trends hold, Southern states are projected to gain 3 million new Latino voters. The aging-in of young Latino voters living in the South presents a critical opportunity to expand Latinos’ electoral clout, which has not kept pace with the community’s growing numbers due to the citizenship status and young age of many Latinos in the region. With numbers trending towards growing electoral power for Latinos, the question becomes whether these new voters will be engaged and motivated enough to cast ballots in the South’s future elections.

With its close proximity to our nations capital, it is of little surprise that Maryland has emerged in recent years as a popular destination for the countrys immigrants. In 1990, immigrants made up 6.6 percent of the states total population. By 2010, that number had more than doubled, reaching 13.9 percent. In more recent years, such patterns have only continued. Between 2010 and 2014, the number of immigrants living in Maryland grew by almost 81,000 people-rising by 10 percent. During that same time period, the number of foreign-born residents in the United States as a whole grew by just 5.8 percent, a far less dramatic jump.

This paper overviews the research opportunities made possible by a NIA-funded program project, Early Indicators, Intergenerational Processes, and Aging. Data collection began almost three decades ago on 40,000 soldiers from the Union Army in the US Civil War. The sample contains extensive demographic, economic, and medical data from childhood to death. In recent years, a large sample of African-American soldiers and an oversampling of soldiers from major US cities have been added. Hundreds of historical maps containing public health data have been geocoded to place soldiers and their family members in a geospatial context. With newly granted funding, thousands of veterans will be linked to the demographic information available from the census and vital records of their children.

This study will examine the lived experiences of six successful inner city Black males, whose high school experiences as student athletes helped them to achieve better outcomes in all areas during their school matriculation. My investigation intends to lead to a better understanding as to why individuals in sports appear to experience better student outcomes. A phenomenological approach will be employed for this study to capture the stories through the lenses of the students. Few studies capture the stories through the lenses of the participants; furthermore this study will capture the essence of shared experiences of inner city Black male high school student athletes. This study will report how students describe their experiences playing scholastic sports and being successful in the classroom. In order to complete the analysis and comparative study, I prepared a hypothetical individual representing the shared similarities of all the Black students’ athletes in the study. Finally the study will analyze what the participants’ stories reveal in addition to what the literature revealed in order to make meaning of the shared experiences.

The Soap Opera is a typical Latin American product, and is present markedly in the Hispanic culture in the United States. The ratings success of soap operas in Hispanics channels in the United States also reflects the atraction of television advertising investments in these products, and some ad actions are occurring in ways never before experienced. In this context, this research aims to reflect on the new possibilities of promotion and consumption with the plots of soap operas in Latin America, through primarily of direct and indirect sources of documentation.

Property rights are at the heart of capitalism's ability to efficiently allocate resources. Historically, married women have been one of the groups with the greatest legal disabilities in this regard, to the benefit of their husbands. Starting in the second half of the 19th century, common law countries, which were entirely dominated by men, gave married women property rights. Before this ``women's liberation,'' married women were subject to the laws of coverture. Coverture had detailed laws as to which spouse had ownership and control over various aspects of property both before and after marriage. These laws created a strong disincentive for women to invest in financial assets, such as stocks, bonds, and even bank deposits. This paper develops a general equilibrium model with endogenous determination of women's rights in which these laws affect portfolio choices, leading to inefficient allocations. We show how technological advancement eventually leads to men granting rights, and in turn how these rights affect development. Exploiting cross-state variation in the timing of rights, we show that increases in non-agricultural TFP predict the granting of rights. The granting of rights in turn leads to a dynamic labor reallocation towards the non-agricultural sector, representing further development. Finally, we show that women's rights are associated with lower interest rates and greater financial intermediation, consistent with an increase in the supply of credit.

Over the last several decades, Michigan has become increasingly attractive to immigrants-a development that has had a positive impact on the economy of this Midwestern state. Rust Belt cities like Detroit were particularly hard-hit during the Great Recession, suffering both economic downturns and population loss, but recent influxes of immigrants have helped to mitigate some of these negative effects, providing businesses with the customers they need and governments with a healthy tax base. In 1990, Michigans immigrant community represented only 3.8 percent of the states total population. By 2010, that share that had risen to 5.8 percent. And between 2010 and 2014, Michigans foreign-born population grew by an additional 60,000 people.

At the end of the U.S Civil War, veterans had to choose whether to return to their prewar communities or move to new areas. The late 19th Century was a time of sharp urban growth as workers sought out the economic opportunities offered by cities. By estimating discrete choice migration models, we quantify the tradeoffs that veterans faced. Veterans were less likely to move far from their origin and avoided urban immigrant areas and high mortality risk areas. They also avoided areas that opposed the Civil War. Veterans were more likely to move to a neighborhood or a county where men from their same war company lived. This co-location evidence highlights the existence of persistent social networks. Such social networks had long-term consequences: veterans living close to war time friends enjoyed a longer life.

This article investigates whether the 9/11 attacks affected the assimilation rate of Muslims in the US. Terror attacks by Islamic groups are likely to induce a backlash against Muslims, thereby raising their costs of assimilation. We find that Muslim immigrants living in states with the sharpest increase in hate crimes also exhibit: greater chances of marrying within their own ethnic group; higher fertility; lower female labour force participation; and lower English proficiency. These findings shed light on the increasing use of terror and concurrent rise in social tensions surrounding Muslim immigrants in the West.

Texas, our countrys second largest state by population, is a giant among even the most immigrant-rich states. From the 1960s to the 1990s, Texas was one of seven states that, together, attracted between 60 to 75 percent of the immigrants arriving to America each year. Today, Texas is home to nearly 4.5 million immigrants, the second largest population of immigrants in the country behind California.