This paper analyses the determinants of spatial wage disparities in the US context for the period 1980-2000. Agglomeration benefits are estimated based on city productivity premia which are computed after controlling for the skills distribution among metropolitan areas as well as industry fixed effects. The drivers of productivity differentials that are taken into consideration are the size of the local economy, the spatial interactions among local autonomous economic systems and the structure of urban governance as well as the policy responses to the fragmentation issue. A metropolitan area with ten percentage more administrative units than another of the same size, experiences wages that are between 2.0% and 3.0% lower. The presence of a voluntary governance body is found to mitigate the problem of fragmentation only marginally, while the existence of special purpose districts have a negative impact on regional productivity. The implementation of a metropolitan government with a regional tax system is expected to increase productivity by around 6%.

OBJECTIVE To examine the role of residential neighborhood characteristics in accounting for race disparities in participation among a large sample of community-living adults with chronic spinal cord injury (SCI). DESIGN Secondary analysis of cross-sectional survey data from the national Spinal Cord Injury Model Systems (SCIMS) database linked with national survey and spatial data. SETTING SCIMS database participants enrolled at 10 collaborating centers active in follow-up between 2000 and 2014. PARTICIPANTS The sample consisted of persons with SCI (N=6892) in 5441 Census tracts from 50 states and the District of Columbia. INTERVENTION Not applicable. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE The Craig Handicap Assessment and Reporting Technique was used to measure full participation across 4 domains: physical independence, mobility, occupation, and social integration. RESULTS Racial minority groups had lower odds of reporting full participation relative to whites across all domains, suggesting that blacks and Hispanics are at risk for poorer community reintegration after SCI. Neighborhood characteristics, notably differences in socioeconomic advantage, reduced race group differences in the odds of full occupational and social integration, suggesting that the race disparities in community reintegration after SCI are partially attributable to variation in the economic characteristics of the places where people live. CONCLUSIONS This investigation suggests that addressing disadvantage at the neighborhood level may modify gaps in community participation after medical rehabilitation and provides further support for the role of the environment in the experience of disability.

Fertility is a main driver and outcome of long-term growth. Yet, fertility may not only interact with the level of income but also with its volatility. In pre-modern economies where formal social security was largely absent, fertility decisions may also have been made in view of insuring income shocks which were hard to predict such as an income shock due to crop disease, a shortage in rainfall, a case of serious illness or a job loss. In this paper, I focus on the demographic transition in the United States covering the period 1870 to 1930 and explore whether variation in fertility among American settlers can be explained by variations in exposure to rainfall risks. Identification relies on fertility differences between farm and nonfarm households within counties and over time. The results suggest that increased rainfall risk does indeed increase fertility among farming households but not among households with other occupations that are less dependent on rainfall. The channel is robust to other relevant forces such as returns to education and childrens survival. The analysis also shows that this effect is reduced if risk management devices such as irrigation systems, formal financial institutions or machinery emerge. The findings contribute to the understanding of the demographic transition in the US and in risk-prone areas more generally.

Previous research focuses on factors that influence self-employment participation, in part because entrepreneurship has been associated with economic growth. This literature has tended to focus only on men or the comparison of women to men, while ignoring substantial heterogeneity in employment decisions among women. By investigating the impact of individual, household, and local economic and cultural characteristics on the labor market outcomes of different groups of women, we get a more comprehensive picture of their self-employment decision. Recognizing self-employment as one of multiple labor market choices, we use multinomial logit and two confidential, geocoded micro-level datasets to study women`s career choices in urban areas. We find that the effects of various push and pull factors differ between married and unmarried women. In particular, more progressive gender attitudes pull married women into self-employment, while household burdens associated with children push them into self-employment. For unmarried women, the local business climate and individual characteristics have the strongest influence. In both cases, the motivations for women are quite different than men.

I use the method introduced by Gottschalk and Hansen (2003) to analyze the rate of overeducation among workers with exactly a college degree between 2006 and 2013. To my knowledge, this is the first study to use this method to analyze trends in overeducation during the great recession in the U.S. I find that the proportion of workers with exactly a college degree working in occupations offering low college premiums increased during great recession and fell afterwards. An increase in the rate in overeducation could be due to more college-educated workers working in noncollege occupations that were noncollege in the past or because there was an increase in the number of noncollege occupations. I show that changes in the rate of overeducation are mostly due mostly to the latter. When shutting the down the flexibility for occupations to change from college to noncollege (and vice versa), the rate of overeducation increases only slightly between 2006 and 2013. Regardless, these findings run contrary to the secular decline of the rate of overeducation during the end of 20th century documented by previous research.

As early as the late 1980’s, William Wilson (1987, 1996) argued that widespread economic transitions had altered the socioeconomic structure of American inner cities to the detriment of African Americans. Wilson identified declines in manufacturing work and its replacement with poorly compensated service sector work as driving racial segregation and leaving African Americans jobless, poor and alienated from American society. These transitions were particularly problematic for African American men since manufacturing work was their primary gateway to middle-class employment while African American women had already focused more on service work. Since the initial exposition of Wilson’s theory of deindustrialization, Wilson’s framework of transition, disadvantage and alienation has proven true with a vengeance for working class African American men. The decline in manufacturing jobs since the 1980’s has left African American men without their traditional gateway to the middle-class and accelerated the decline of American unions which benefited those men. As the economy transitioned from manufacturing to service jobs, African American men’s disadvantages in education have left them at a loss in competing for the high wage jobs that remain. At the same time deindustrialization was sweeping our economy, the nation waged a “War on Drugs,” largely at the expense of inner city African American men who suffered high rates of imprisonment with long mandatory sentences even for non-violent offences. These high rates of imprisonment removed African American men from the Black community and left them at a serious disadvantage in an increasingly competitive low-skilled labor market. . .

This dissertation, “Childhood Nutrition and Income Status Effects on Health and Economic Outcomes”, estimates the effects of childhood nutrition and family income on an adult’s health and social economic status. The relevance of my work lies in the fact that the future rests on today’s children, i.e. evidence shows that intergenerational disparity in health and economic outcomes among adults are reflective of what happened early in their lives. Hence, there is a real need to understand childhood intervention policies or affirmative actions that may affect future economic well-being. The first chapter in my dissertation investigates the long-term effects of the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program by ex- amining the adults who had exposure to the program when they were children. Using the difference-in-differences methodology and exploiting the timing of the introduction of the WIC program in the US, our results suggest that children of low-income families who were exposed to the WIC program end up as adults who were healthier and more economically stable. In particular, exposed individuals have 6 percent less probability of having cancer and 0.4 less of number of ADL. In addition, our results suggest that individuals with expo- sure of WIC are more likely to be employed and above the census poverty line. Moreover, full exposure to WIC program also reduces the chance of having mental problems and feel- ing depressed. Males show larger beneficial effects for both physical health outcomes and mental health outcomes. These findings suggest that WIC has long lasting beneficial effects for low-income families. The second chapter contributes to the growing body of research that measures the effects of health shocks, both during childhood and in-utero, in developing countries. Our paper looks the Great Chinese famine . . .

Previous editions of the Navigator have presented national-level data about people with vision loss for the entire U.S. population, [school-aged children], and [infants and toddlers]. Now, we will focus on one of the largest demographic concentrations of people who are blind/visually impaired: older Americans. Various agencies and studies have focused on the aging population, and (if you are a regular reader of the Navigator) you won’t be surprised to learn that no single age range “defines” the senior population. For the purposes of this Navigator, we will focus on people ages 65 and up, traditionally referred to as “normal retirement age,” although the Social Security Administration has made changes to gradually increase that age to 67 for people born after 1937 (Social Security Administration, n.d.). Sixty-five is also the age at which most Americans qualify for Medicare. We will also include some information about older and younger age ranges. Please note that there is more data than we could possibly share in this newsletter, so we have included suggestions of easy-to-access websites and reports with additional data.

This thesis addresses the significance of marriage to same-sex cohabitating couples in the United States, 20122014, using data from the American Community Survey. We first consider differences in marriage rates between opposite- and same-sex couples and to what extent differences in the probability of marriage between opposite- and same-sex couples decrease when controlling for a couples degree of access to marriage. The analysis is repeated by age group, considering the benefits of legal marriage at different life stages. We then note same-sex couples are less likely to specialize, have a lower probability of homeownership, and have fewer children than opposite-sex couples. We attempt to answer to what extent these differences are attributable to differences in marriage rates rather than differences in other endowments or behavior through a series of Oaxaca decompositions. We then estimate the effect of marriage, all else equal, on the three household decision variables separately for opposite- and same-sex couples to isolate differences in behavior. Lastly, we compare same-sex marriage effects in states that do and those that do not recognize same-sex marriage and attempt to confront the selection bias embedded in our estimated marriage effects. We claim that smaller marriage effects among same-sex couples may reflect that many had adjusted to their prior lack of access to marriage.

We estimate the increase in earnings from a law degree relative to a bachelors degree for graduates who majored in different fields in college. Students with humanities and social sciences majors comprise approximately 47 percent of law degree holders compared to 23 percent of terminal bachelors. Law degree earnings premiums are highest for humanities and social sciences majors and lowest for STEM majors. On the other hand, among those with law degrees, overall earnings are highest for STEM and Business Majors. This effect is fairly small at the low end of the earnings distribution, but quite large at the top end. The median annual law degree earnings premium ranges from approximately $29,000 for STEM majors to $45,000 for humanities majors.

The U.S. Census Bureau supplies GIS-compatible definitions of census geographic units via its TIGER (Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing) data product series. Between the 2000 and 2010 censuses, the U.S. Census Bureau completed major improvements to their MAF/TIGER geographic database, from which all TIGER products are derived. The 2010 TIGER products, which supply boundaries for both 2000 and 2010 census units, are therefore significantly more accurate than 2000 TIGER data, which supply boundaries for both 1990 and 2000 census units. The accuracy improvements should be highly beneficial for spatial analyses of recent census data, but for spatio-temporal analyses that span the 19902010 period (or longer), the improvements impose a cost: in many cases, it is impossible to determine exactly which 1990 units correspond to which 2010 units. Boundaries that are in fact coincident may have representations that are not coincident in the separate TIGER versions, and the representational discrepancies are sometimes very large. The National Historical Geographic Information System (NHGIS https://nhgis.org) has recently begun releasing geographically standardized time series, which provide U.S. census data from multiple times for a single censuss geographic units. To allocate one censuss data to another censuss geographic units, NHGIS interpolates data from the smallest source units for which the data are available. The first release, in 2015, supplied 2000 data for 2010 census units by interpolating data from 2000 census blocks. The next release will supply 1990 data for 2010 census units, again by interpolating block data, but in this setting, because of the improvements in TIGER data, the interpolation is complicated by the uncertain correspondence between 1990 blocks and 2010 census units. Fortunately, TIGER data do make it possible to determine correspondences between 1990 and 2000 units, and between 2000 and 2010 units, and from these crosswalks, we can impose certain constraints on possible 1990-2010 unit relationships. Still, not all relationships can be exactly determined. In this paper, I posit three general alternatives for implementing areal interpolation in this setting: simply overlaying 1990 and 2010 boundaries without regard to representational discrepancies; using 2000 units as a bridge between 1990 and 2010 units; or a combined approach, overlaying 1990 and 2010 boundaries, but also using known topological relationships with 2000 units to constrain and refine the interpolation. In order to assess potential relative advantages of these approacheswithout yet implementing themI present here an assessment of how much uncertainty there is in block-based 1990 population estimates for 2010 units, identifying in particular how much uncertainty may be added by inexact correspondence information (i.e., the hidden costs of improved TIGER data).

This dissertation analyzes the effects of United States environmental policy - specifically that which regards air pollution - on health, labor market, and environmental outcomes. The first chapter examines the potential long-term effects of childhood exposure to atmospheric lead. The outcome of interest is crime, and the policy analyzed is the leaded gasoline phaseout. The second chapter seeks to investigate the effects of environmental regulation on labor markets. Nonattainment status designation creates variation in regulatory levels across counties based on a countys air quality for a given pollutant, in this case ozone. The third chapter provides analysis of the design ramifications of the Acid Rain Programs tradable permit market for sulfur dioxide established by Title IV of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990. The study examines how the two-phase approach as well as the initial permit allocation rule affected emissions. These studies all show evidence of the wide range of effects environmental policy can have.

Adopting a new approach to historical data, Peter H Lindert and Jeffrey G Williamson have charted the history of American incomes ‐ and income inequality ‐ since colonial times. Here the authors of Unequal Gains explain their method, and share a rich harvest of findings that cast new light on three‐and‐a‐half centuries of economic history.

Approximately 42 percent of workers in St. Paul, Minnesota lack paid sick time, and low-income and part-time workers are especially unlikely to be covered. Access to paid sick time promotes safe and healthy work environments by reducing the spread of illness 1 and workplace injuries, 2 reduces health care costs, 3 and supports children and families by helping parents to fulfill their caregiving responsibilities. 4 This briefing paper presents estimates of access to paid sick time in St. Paul by sex, race and ethnicity, occupation, part/full-time employment status, and personal earnings through analysis of government data sources, including the

As was intended, the construction of railways transformed the landscape and societies of the Atlantic World. Great fortunes and forces emerged in the directions of the tracks, sufficient to create structures of economy and organize communities in ways that persisted long after a railway’s use had diminished. In this dissertation, the author argues that the connections and reorganization effected by railway construction created new economic paths in the American South, Panama, and Gold Coast West Africa; the transformations were marked by struggles for power along racial lines, enslavement and coercion in labor, and the interchange between communities and their existing markets and a largely foreign, imperial order. Using sources from African Americans, Afro-Caribbean, and West Africans who comprised the bulk of the labor, as well as the communities where the railways were constructed, the author combines these with . . .

Cities and their regions are dynamic, continuously evolving places. American suburbs are a relatively new phenomenon in the history of places of urban settlement, although some are more than 100 years old. As some of the earliest suburbs, especially those of older Northeastern and Midwestern cities, enter their second centuries, they are experiencing dynamics more typically associated with central cities. . .

Exploiting county-level variation in oil-producing areas from shocks to world oil and gas prices from 1970-2011, we study how local labor market conditions affect disability benefit take-up. We estimate elasticities of benefit payments to earnings for SSDI and SSI programs of between 0.25 and -0.35 for most specifications, and account for why our SSI elasticity is smaller than that found in previous well-known work. Our analysis extends the best-known previous work that have used a similar research design by studying a more representative sample in terms of region and demographics, over a more recent period when disability payments skyrocketed.

The U.S. Civil War and emancipation wiped out a substantial fraction of southern wealth. The prevailing view of most economic historians, however, is that the southern planter elite was able to retain its relative status despite these shocks. Previous studies have been hampered, however, by limits on the ability to link individuals between census years, and have been forced to focus on persistence within one or a few counties. Recent advances in electronic access to the Federal Census manuscripts now make it possible to link individuals without these constraints. We exploit the ability to search the full manuscript census to construct a sample that links top wealth holders in 1870 to their 1860 census records. Although there was an entrenched southern planter elite that retained their economic status, we find evidence that the turmoil of 1860s opened greater opportunities for mobility in the South than was the case in the North, resulting in much greater turnover among wealthy southerners than among comparably wealthy northerners.

High-technology industries are seen as important in helping urban economies thrive, but at the same time they are often considered potential drivers of relative poverty and social exclusion. Little research, however, has assessed how high-tech affects urban poverty and the wages of workers with little formal education. This article addresses this gap in the literature and investigates the relationships among employment in high-tech industries, poverty, and the labor market for non-degree-educated workers using a panel of 295 Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) in the United States between 2005 and 2011. The results show no real impact of the presence of high-technology industries on poverty and, especially, extreme poverty. Yet there is strong evidence that tech employment increases wages for non-degree-educated workers and, to a lesser extent, employment for those without degrees. These findings suggest that although tech employment has some role in improving welfare for non-degree-educated workers, tech employment alone is not enough to reduce poverty.

Climate change is a pressing issue, and regional studies play an important part in understanding the impact of global climate change. This project explored the spatial and temporal patterns apparent in temperature records from 1935 to 2014 using homogenized station data from 66 stations in Southern California. Using Hurst Exponent, an index used to explore the persistence of trends in longitudinal data, the strength of the increasing temperature trend observed at every station was evaluated. Hurst Exponent values were calculated for the high, mean, and low temperature series for both the summer and winter 3-month period. The spatial distribution of each of the six Hurst values was examined with respect to location, elevation, aspect, land use, and population density of each station using Microsoft Excel and ArcGIS. Results show that there is persistence in the increase of temperature at all stations beginning around 1980, though the strength of this persistence varies. Winter High temperature persistence is strongest in coastal areas and weaker in the inland mountains as shown by the hot spot analysis.