The existing forest fragmentation studies have limited contributions and connections to land use planning because they frequently neglect the effects of land use planning on forest fragmentation and they rarely present municipality-specific results or solutions to planners. In this study, I examine the state of forest fragmentation in 2011 and the short-term change of forest fragmentation from 2001–2011 in the State of Wisconsin at the municipality level, as well as the driving factors that contribute to them. The results suggest that Wisconsin municipalities have experienced significant forest fragmentation. Moreover, there is remarkable spatial heterogeneity in the relationships between forest fragmentation and the selected socioeconomic, geophysical, proximity, community characteristics, and policy factors. Much of the spatially varying effects of these factors can be credited to the natural variations in the distribution of Wisconsin forest resources and topographic features, the urban-rural distinctions, and the local planning efforts. These factors also show temporally varying effects because they drive long-term and short-term forest fragmentation changes differently. In . . .

The Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, has led to a historic increase in health insurance coverage for whites and, in particular, for low-income whites.

Conventional wisdom has it that in the 1930s fiscal policy did not work because it was not tried. This paper shows that fiscal policy was tried in 1936. The veterans' bonus of 1936 paid 2 percent of GDP to 3.2 million veterans; the typical veteran received a payment equal to per capita income. Multiple sources, including a household consumption survey, show that veterans spent the majority of their bonus. Point estimates of the MPC are between 0.6 and 0.75. Spending was concentrated on cars and housing in particular.

In September of 2015, the Star Tribune published an article illustrating the large income disparity that Minnesota faces among African Americans and their white counterparts. The article sites the American Community Survey (ACS), a survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. The ACS determined that, the median income for black householdsfell [by] 14 percent (Reinan, Webster 2015). This is a decrease of $4,500 from $31,500 to $27,000. In comparison, the overall state median household income is $61,400 and that of white Minnesotans is roughly $64,800 while Asian and Hispanics earn $68,000 and $42,000 respectively. It is very clear that income is a great disparity in Minnesota; however shifting the focus to wealth it is more likely that there is an even greater disparity. How much wealth an individual holds is not a direct effect of how much income that individual attains. The same can be argued for a multitude of factors, of which will be discussed later in this report. Income is a snap shot of the amount of money that one accumulates in a certain amount of time. Wealth on the other hand is the net worth of an individual. Wealth indicates the economic opportunity, security and the overall well being an individual or household possesses (Darity, Hamilton 2015). When studying wealth, it is necessary to take into account all assets along with all debt. This wealth influences the quality and level of education, health care, access to proper housing and the resources available. Having low wealth can have detrimental consequences when unexpected life situations occur, such as loosing a job, a health crisis or as simple as incurring further debt. A household that holds a positive net wealth, with liquid assets is more likely to bear any one of these life circumstances occurring. Research shows that the wealth gap between African Americans and White Americans is substantially wide. It is wider than any income gap. Wealth is one the largest disparities faced by African Americans in the United States. As noted previously, the drop in income level has exacerbated the disparity in income in Minnesota. If the income disparity is this large then assuming the gap in wealth is substantially higher in the state is not unreasonable.

The Bridge to Health Survey has been a trusted source of population based health status information that numerous organizations and local coalitions have used to improve the health of people throughout the Northeast Minnesota and Northwest Wisconsin region. This is our fifth survey which has been conducted every five years since 1995.

This paper studies the role of occupational segregation in explaining the low wages among first, second and third generation Mexican immigrants in the United States. Mexican-Americans earn lower wages than blacks mainly because they possess less human capital. With respect to whites, their lower wages are also a product of their smaller rewards for skills and underrepresentation at the top of the occupational structure. Occupational segregation constitutes an important part of the wage gap between natives and Mexican-born immigrants. For subsequent generations, the contribution of occupational segregation to the wage gap varies significantly between groups and according to the decomposition used

How much of the dispersion in lifetime earnings, wealth, consumption, and ultimately, utility or well-being is resolved early in life (prior to working life) vs. later? This critical question has received much attention, with influential recent contributions coming from Keane and Wolpin (1997), Storesletten et al. (2005), and Huggett et al. (2011). The goal of this paper is to provide quantitative measures of how the full range of households' investment (and financing) opportunities matters for the fraction of lifetime inequality determined relatively early in life relative to later on. We focus on the role played by three specific investment opportunities: risky and lumpy college education, risky equity, and costly borrowing. To our knowledge, our work is the first to provide quantitative measures of the importance of each in the temporal resolution of lifetime inequality and the importance of the interaction between them. We find, first, that nearly all income inequality is attributable to human * The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond or the Federal Reserve System. ¶ Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, ivan.vidangos@frb.gov 1 capital variation as of age 23. In other words, for individuals who have likely completed major educational investments, our results suggest that financial opportunities play only a minor role in altering inequality. Second, we find that the option to invest in high-return, high-risk assets meaningfully increases the importance of initial inequality, whereas the ability to borrow lowers the importance of initial inequality.

This dissertation uses the institutions of public schooling in the U.S. as a lens to study how broad economic trends – rising income inequality and the business cycle – affect household residential choice, neighborhood composition and popular support for local public goods. The first chapter explores the consequences of rising neighborhood inequality for public schools. Income inequality across neighborhoods more than doubled in the U.S. between 1970 and 2010. This spatial reallocation may affect public schools through changes to the distribution of peers and support for local taxes. I find that rising neighborhood inequality within a school district increases local school funding, but also depresses human capital . . .

Los países latinoamericanos y caribeños en general y los que aquí se estudian en particular han sido y continúan siendo, en mayor o menor medida, receptores de fl ujos de migrantes procedentes de la misma región. Dicho patrón de inmigración regional, que ha ido variando su intensidad en asociación al contexto económico de los países de la región y de sus principales destinos extraregionales, ha sido un rasgo constante a lo largo de la historia, destacándose principalmente por su importancia cuantitativa los fl ujos migratorios entre países limítrofes. En el contexto reciente de crisis económica de los países más desarrollados y mejora de los indicadores económicos y sociales en los países latinoamericanos y caribeños, diversos estudios han coincidido en identifi car un incremento de la importancia de la migración intrarregional en detrimento de la emigración extra regional (OIM, 2012; Martínez Pizarro, Cano y Soffia, 2014; OEA, 2015). En efecto, de acuerdo a los resultados de la última ronda censal, los inmigrantes intraregionales representan una clara mayoría en los países de América Latina y el Caribe, con las únicas excepciones de Brasil y de México, países donde la inmigración de ultramar tiene un peso mayor (Martínez Pizarro et al., 2014). Asimismo, aunque en los países bajo estudio coexisten en mayor o menor medida corrientes inmigratorias y emigratorias, dichos países ha tenido y tienen diferentes perfi les migratorios, como se desprende del gráfi co 1.1. En efecto, mientras Argentina, Chile y Costa Rica son desde hace al menos tres décadas importantes receptores de la inmigración intrarregional, Trinidad y Tobago es un país tradicionalmente emigratorio, en el que la inmigración extranjera ha tenido un bajo peso cuantitativo en relación a la población residente y ha crecido fundamentalmente a infl ujo de las corrientes de retorno de nacionales radicados en el exterior (véase el capítulo dos)2. Por su parte, el caso de Brasil es diferente a los anteriores, en la medida que ha registrado durante toda la segunda mitad del siglo XX y principios del siglo XXI tasas netas de migración cercanas a cero, lo que quiere decir que los fl ujos inmigratorios han sido grosso modo de la misma magnitud que los fl ujos emigratorios.

According to recent reports from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, unemployment levels in the United States are nearing 5.0%, and US economy seems to have recovered from the Great Recession. The City of Boston, in particular, boasts an unemployment rate of 3.7% and can be considered a striking example of this recovery. However, academics are intrigued about the nature of this recovery and the kinds of jobs that are being created. Some literature points to a disproportionate growth in low-wage jobs compared to middle- and high-income ones (Lowrey, 2014). Additionally, the growth in start-up and technology sectors raises questions about the overall quality of jobs in the current economy. Most notably, employment opportunities like those offered by Uber have turned on its head the traditional notion of a 9-5 job. In order to dig deeper into these questions about the nature and quality of work, the CIPA capstone team worked on a project for the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA). The goal of this project was to define what constitutes fragile work and estimate the number of such fragile workers in the Boston area. This project ties in neatly with the BRAs overall mission to plan the future of Boston by building a more resilient, prosperous, and vibrant city and to understand the current environment of the city. Our team started with studying the academic literature that exists on the subject. While we did not find current literature on fragile work, there is a good deal of of literature on precarious work, temporary work and research that explores the informal sector. In our literature review, we were able to identify common themes across the varying definitions of fragility and precarity. The team then synthesized the key overarching themes from the various sources into a single definition of fragility with three key components: Unlivable income, Lack of benefits, and Lack of full-time work. Going further, we constructed a spectrum of fragility which would make it possible to estimate the numbers of those workers who were truly in perilous working conditions. Workers were divided into three levels of fragility based on whether they displayed one, two or all three of the above characteristics. In order to build estimates of the number of fragile workers in the Boston area and examine the trends in the number of such workers over the past two decades, we used two data sets: the Bureau of Labor Statistics Current Population Survey (CPS) and the US Census Bureaus American Community Survey (ACS). In both these surveys, we looked at income, number of hours worked and employee sponsored health-care. While the variables income and part-time work are direct components of our definition of fragility, we used employee-sponsored health care as an indicator for employee sponsored benefits, given the paucity of data regarding other the other benefits. In order to gain a long-term perspective, we looked at data starting from the year 2000 for the CPS dataset and beginning 2005 for the ACS dataset. The sample size for both the surveys is large enough to yield statistically significant conclusions. The smaller CPS survey is able to attain a 95% confidence level with an interval of 3% for all years. The large ACS, however, is able to provide even statistically stronger conclusions at a confidence level of 99% with an interval of 2% at the metropolitan level. Despite the constraints imposed by the availability of data we strove to include data for as many years as possible. Hence, the trends for the unlivable wage and part-time work variables were studied from 2005-2014 (ACS) and 2000-2015 (CPS). The number of workers with employer-sponsored health insurance and number of full time workers with employer sponsored health insurance variables were looked at for 2008-2014 (ACS) and 2000-2013 (CPS). While the CPS data for the 2000-2013 period does indicate an upward trend in terms of total fragility (32.0%-39.6%) the trends for the 2008-2014 (ACS) and 2008-2013 (CPS) time periods are inconclusive.

Starting in the 1930s, agriculture in the US underwent a productivity revolution. We examine the role of irrigation in the changing productivity of the arid lands of the western US and distinguish the effects of surface water from groundwater. We use data from the US agricultural census to track measures of irrigation and farm productivity from 1910 on. To statistically identify the effect of irrigation, we compare counties based on their potential access to surface water and groundwater defined by physical characteristics. Results indicate that groundwater access in a county created the largest gains: increasing percent of land irrigated, crop production, and ultimately farm values. Expanded storage of surface water also provided a boost, but considerably less due to large costs and little expansion of irrigated acreage. The Bureau of Reclamation expanded surface water infrastructure immensely beginning with the completion of the Hoover Dam in 1936. Meanwhile, rural electrification and the advent of the center pivot expanded use of groundwater as well. Without this expanded water access post 1940, 19 billion fewer dollars worth of crops would have been produced in the West each year-15 percent of total US crop production. Given the importance of irrigation and differential gains by water source we identify, we conclude by arguing that improved groundwater management, rather than increased surface water storage, should be central to climate change adaptation policy.

This book is the second volume of a two-volume festschrift in honor of Professor Baleshwar Thakur titled Spatial Diversity and Dynamics in Resources and Urban Development. The volume is intended to provide an opportunity for specialists in urban development who utilize urban development processes to understand urban practices, policy, and politics both in the metropolitan and peripheral regions of the world. The volume recognizes that the locus of urban development now lies in the transforming of peripheral regions of the world, which has caused a paradigm shift in regional and local decision making. Given this overview of urban development, this volume revisits our understanding of interdependencies between places and among scales. Beyond the applied nature of chapters, this volume engages with dynamic issues of urban development that can be approached from diverse perspectives. Consequently, contributions use cutting-edge theories and spatial techniques to examine dramatic changes in issues such as: urban growth in developing and transforming regions, infrastructure growth as an urban land shaper, proliferation of housing and squatter settlements, our changing perceptions and quality of urban life, impact of rural to urban migration on land use dynamics, impact of spatial division of labor on ethnicity in cities, the impact of locational decisions at the local and regional scales on metropolitan retail and wholesale space and structure, and the cumulative impact of all of this on future urban planning regulations.

Purpose - This chapter provides both an intoduction to the volume and a brief review of literature on special social groups and social factors as linked to disparities in health and health care services. Methodology/approach - This chapter takes the form of a literature review. Findings - The chapter argues for the importance of greater examination of special social groups and other social factors in understanding disparities in health and health care services. Originality/value - Reviews this issues of special social groups and other social factors and previews this volume.

This chapter examines postsecondary education and two related factors, Spanish and English language usage and income, among the children of Mexican Immigrants in the Greater Los Angeles area. Interviews with 1.5-generation children of Mexican immigrants, second-generation U.S.-born children of Mexican immigrants, and three-plus-generation Mexican Americans find that language, education, and income are . . .

L’obiettivo centrale di questo lavoro sarà quello di analizzare il ruolo della città nell’attuale processo di crescita economica. Per arrivare a questo faremo una panoramica della storia della città e riporteremo molti esempi, vincenti e non, di città del passato ed in particolare del ‘900. Vedremo come la sua assoluta centralità nei processi innovativi e di crescita economica del passato sia poi stata messa in discussione negli ultimi decenni, soprattutto negli anni ’90 in favore di luoghi più periferici e dei distretti industriali. Analizzeremo i tassi di crescita della popolazione urbana nei vari paesi del mondo, evidenziando le differenze storiche ed ipotizzando degli scenari futuri. Parleremo del fenomeno dello sprawl e anche delle sue conseguenze ecologiche sottolineando come le caratteristiche uniche delle città, che vedremo nel dettaglio nella prima parte di questo lavoro, rimangano tuttora inimitabili e vincenti per creare ricchezza ed innovazione. Nella seconda parte cercheremo di capire come sarà la città del futuro dal punto di vista del tessuto urbanistico e sociale, economico, innovativo e tecnologico. Parleremo del nuovo ruolo che spetta alle governance, soprattutto locali, e come esse debbano necessariamente cooperare tra loro, nonché con imprese ed università. Questo per ideare e realizzare quel programma necessario di politiche, interventi e riforme che rilancino, soprattutto in Italia, gli investimenti, l’innovazione ed i consumi interni. In tema di . . .

This study uses data collected on self-employed women and men in a singlecounty to analyze the influence of job preferences on the gender-based earnings gap. Datareduction, carried out on the pooled sample, reduces eleven job preference measuresselected for the study to five: challenge of competition, make a lot of money, job security,close to extended family, and can be innovative. A separate regression for self-employedwomen indicates make a lot of money has a positive and close to extended family anegative effect on earnings. For self-employed men, results indicate positive effects onearnings for challenge of competition and make a lot of money. Sensitivity resultsindicate, in estimates for self-employed women, the positive effect of make a lot of moneyis not robust. At the same time, the sensitivity analysis indicates a positive effect ofpreference for financial risk-taker on the earnings of self-employed women. A Oaxacadecomposition using pooled, female, and male coefficients indicates the strongerpreference of self-employed men in the sample towards make a lot of money explains atleast 6.37 percent of the earnings gap.

This study shows that state efforts at child protection are structured by the policy regimes in which they are enmeshed. Using administrative data on child protection, criminal justice, and social welfare interventions, I show that children are separated from their families and placed into foster care far more frequently in states with extensive and punitive criminal justice systems than in states with broad and generous welfare programs. However, large welfare bureaucracies interact with welfare program enrollment to create opportunities for the surveillance of families, suggesting that extensive and administratively complex welfare states engage in soft social control through the surveillance and regulation of family behavior. The article further shows that institutionalization, a particularly restrictive form of foster care placement, is least common in states with broad and generous welfare regimes and generally more common under punitive regimes. Taken together, these findings show that policy regimes influence the interaction between families and the state through their proximate effects on family structure and well-being and through institutional effects that delimit the routines and scripts through which policymakers and street-level bureaucrats intervene to protect children.

Same-sex partnered individuals are far more likely to use transit, walk, and cycle, and to a lesser extent, use carpools than are people in straight couples. As society becomes more tolerant, gay and lesbian populations are an increasingly visible social group, yet they have received scant attention by transportation scholars. This paper builds on this nascent literature by documenting and attempting to explain these dramatic differences by controlling for factors known to influence mode choice. We perform two separate analyses employing two distinct datasets. The first analysis examines journey-to-work data from the American Community Survey. The second analysis focuses in specifically on non-motorized (walking, biking) travel using use self-reported walk and bike frequency from the 2009 National Household Travel Survey. In both, we find that characteristics of the neighborhoods in which gays and lesbians live, as well characteristics of the individuals themselves, only explain part of the increased propensity to use alternative modes of transportation; a strong residual effect remains

After being relatively stable from 1947 to 1980, household income inequality has steadily increased. Political commentary often blames bad lifestyle choices by the poor or the greediness of the rich. US Census micro data from 1980 to 2015 suggests that both assertions are wrong. The data indicates that the rise in income inequality for households is primarily due to changes in (1) household educational composition and educational payoffs and (2) spousal income.

Standard models in macroeconomics and development economics imply that growth in the aggregate enhances welfare for everyone in the economy. I show that instead, if economic growth is biased toward the consumption bundle of the rich, the welfare of the poor may fall. I document the relevance of this mechanism during the latter part of the Twentieth Century by showing that new information technology disproportionately benefited sectors consumed by the rich.