Paradoxically, men report better health and quality of life than women, but men experience higher mortality rates than women at most ages. One conclusion from these findings is that men have been selected to disregard signs of ill health, or even to deceive themselves about their health, to their detriment because presenting themselves as healthy has fitness benefits. We hypothesize that men have been sexually selected to present themselves to women as healthy but that the cost of not attending to their minor health problems results in earlier mortality than women. We present a review of the human and primate literature that supports health selection theory, the hypothesis that females have preferentially selected males who present themselves as healthy.

Conservation plans are commonly used tools for prioritizing areas for protection, but plan implementation is often limited and rarely formally evaluated. Without evaluations of planning outcomes, it is difficult to justify expending resources to develop new plans and to adapt future plans so they are more likely to achieve desired conservation outcomes. We evaluated implementation of four conservation plans in Wisconsin, USA, by quantifying land protection within plan boundaries over time. We found that 44% of lands inside plans are currently protected, compared to 5% outside plans. We then asked which environmental, institutional, and socio-economic factors explained implementation of the most recent (2008) plan by the state natural resources agency. Institutional and environmental metrics related to agency policy and past actions explained 61% of implementation variability among individual priority areas within the plan: the agency having secured acquisition authority (a policy requirement) and subsequently successfully protected land in the priority area prior to the conservation plan being completed, and acquiring land near open water (a policy priority). Our findings suggest that implementation is possible under a wide variety of socio-economic settings and indicate that development of new conservation plans may not necessarily lead to action in new locations in the near term, but rather may facilitate action in locations where the institutional groundwork for action has already been laid. Considering institutional policies of active conservation partners in the development of future conservation plans can facilitate identification of priority areas that are more likely to correspond with on-the-ground implementation opportunities.

Until the Supreme Court put an end to it in Shelby County v. Holder, section 5 of the Voting Rights Act was widely regarded as an effective, low-cost tool for blocking potentially discriminatory changes to election laws and administrative practices. The provision the Supreme Court left standing, section 2, is generally seen as expensive, cumbersome, and almost wholly ineffective at blocking changes before they take effect. This Article argues that the courts, in partnership with the Department of Justice, could reform section 2 so that it fills much of the gap left by the Supreme Courts evisceration of section 5. The proposed reformation of section 2 rests on two insights: first, that national survey data often contains as much or more information than precinct-level vote margins about the core factual matters in section 2 cases; and second, that the courts have authority to regularize section 2 adjudication by creating rebuttable presumptions. Most section 2 cases currently turn on costly, case-specific estimates of voter preferences generated from precinct-level vote totals and demographic information. Judicial decisions provide little guidance about how future caseseach relying on data from a different set of electionsare likely to be resolved. By creating evidentiary presumptions whose application in any given case would be determined using national survey data and a common statistical model, the courts could greatly reduce the cost and uncertainty of section 2 litigation. This approach would also reduce the dependence of vote dilution claims on often-unreliable techniques of ecological inference and would make coalitional claims brought jointly by two or more minority groups much easier to litigate.

Trajectories of parental involvement time(engagement and child care) across 3, 6, and 9 months postpartum and associations with parents own and their partners psychological adjustment (dysphoria, anxiety, and empathic personal distress) were examined using a sample of dual-earner couples experiencing first-time parenthood (N = 182 couples). Using time diary measures that captured intensive parenting moments, hierarchical linear modeling analyses revealed that patterns of associations between psychological adjustment and parental involve-ment time depended on the parenting domain,aspect of psychological adjustment, and parent gender. Psychological adjustment difficulties tended to bias the 2-parent system toward a gendered pattern of mother step in and fa-ther step out, as father involvement tended to decrease and mother involvement either remained unchanged or increased in response to their own and their partners psycholog-ical adjustment difficulties. In contrast, few significant effects were found in models using parental involvement to predict psychological adjustment.

Despite extensive use of housing data to reveal valuation of non-market goods, the process of house price adjustment remains vague. Using the restricted access American Housing Survey, a high-frequency panel of prices, turnover, and occupant characteristics, this paper examines the time path of prices and preference-based sorting in response to air quality changes caused by differential regulatory pressure from the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments. The results suggest that owner-occupied units capitalize changes quickly, whereas rent prices lag behind amenity levels. The delayed but sharp rent response temporally coincides with evidence of sorting, indicating a strong link between location choices and price dynamics.

This paper explores the relationship between the advent of the birth control pill and divorce rates. Women using the pill can decide when and whether to have children and whether to maintain their attachment to the labor force. This ability may increase women's autonomy, making divorce more feasible. The pill's effects are identified through a quasi-experiment exploiting differences in the language of the Comstock anti-obscenity statutes approved in the late 1800s and early 1900s in the United States. Empirical evidence from state-level data on US divorce rates 1950 to 1985 shows that sales bans of oral contraceptives have a negative impact on divorce. These findings are robust to alternative specifications and controls for observed (such as women's labor force participation) and unobserved state-specific factors, and time-varying factors at the state level. Results suggest that the impact of women's control of hormonal contraception on their autonomy is important in divorce decisions.

This paper considers the implications of two types of technological change for the income distribution with a unified model in which occupational choice plays a key role. Type A technological change augments the productivity of unskilled labor and yet leads to greater income inequality, while raising the level of overall income. Type B expands the range over which Increasing Returns to Scale (IRS) operate in some occupations, by increasing the scale of operation for all workers. This hurts the least talented workers while possibly benefitting the most talented ones, and increases income inequality. The paper compares the theoretical results with U.S. data and finds support for the predictions.

The principal data set used in this paper is the 1995–2010 waves of HRS and AHEAD and includes retired individuals aged 65 and above who are single or married to retired spouses. Our sample is essentially the same as that of Kopecky and Koreshkova (2014) and we refer the interested reader to that paper for more specifics on the construction of the sample. We define healthy individuals to be those who self-report their health status to be excellent, very good or good. . .

Using data from the U.S. Census, we find that married self-employed men have between 0.1 and 0.2 more children as compared to if they are not self-employed. This is consistent with the hypothesis that self-employed households have a preference for larger families to raise the likelihood that an inside family member will be a good match at running the business. This empirical relationship is established using a regression framework, including the use of instrumental variables estimation to allow for the possibility of endogeneity of the respondent’s self-employment status and whether the respondent’s spouse stays at home. Moreover, we find a slightly higher demand for sons among the self employed who are over 40 at the time of the 1990 U.S. Census: namely, given the exogenous variation in gender mix of prior children, self employed parents born prior to 1950 appear to have an increased demand for a third child if the first two children were not sons. This effect does disappear, however, for the later generation of respondents.

We implement a randomized experiment offering Salvadoran migrants matching funds for educational remittances, which are channeled directly to a beneficiary student in El Salvador chosen by the migrant. The matches lead to increased educational expenditures, higher private school attendance, and lower labor supply of youths in El Salvador households connected to migrant study participants. We find substantial crowd-in of educational investments: for each $1 received by beneficiaries, educational expenditures increase by $3.72. We find no shifting of expenditures away from other students, and no effect on remittances.

The Great Recession and the recovery that followed have demonstrated a clear need for policies to encourage job growth. The United States has experienced a fairly steady recoveryfifty-three consecutive months of positive job creation as of this writingbut there is room for continued improvement. As of March 2015 there are roughly 8.7 million unemployed Americans, 2.7 million of whom are classified as long-term unemployed (i.e., workers who have been unemployed longer than six months) (Bureau of Labor Statistics 2015b).

This dissertation comprises three papers on spatial features of labor markets and links to the housing market. The first two papers look at how a local parental leave policy and the neighborhood in which one resides can influence womens decision to work. One paper shows that New Jerseys 2009 family leave insurance program induces women to remain employed following childbirth. The other reveals that, for women, having other women with similar aged children to yours among your closest neighbors makes you emulate their work behavior. The final paper analyzes how seasonality in occupational employment via either monthly or businesscycle induced fluctuations to labor demand increases the likelihood of holding a home equity line of credit. This finding is consistent with individuals drawing on these credit lines to access stored home equity in order to smooth consumption in the face of short-term breaks to employment.

I estimate the effects of college loan and subsidy eligibility on college attendance and later life outcomes. I use seven datasets and a Fixed Effects Instrumental Variables approach based on large policy changes in Guaranteed Student Loans, Pell Grants, and Social Security Student Benefits. I find that unsubsidized loan eligibility shifted attendance towards four-year colleges and private colleges, but did not increase overall college attendance or later life earnings. I find a significant effect of subsidy eligibility on college attendance, a smaller significant effect on eventual college completion, but no effect on later life earnings, job satisfaction, or well-being. I also do not find any evidence of external benefits, such as reduced criminal behavior or increased civic engagement. Using a sufficient statistic approach as well as a direct approach, I conclude that the subsidy programs did not increase social welfare. Overall, these results suggest that college credit constraints explain very little of the variation in college attainment and later life outcomes.

In this project, I will look at the literacy rates of Whites, Hispanics, and Blacks in Houston based on Census data from 1930. This data will allow me to draw conclusions about literacy and education based on race. In doing so, I hope to address the ramifications of race and subsequent inequality on the ability of individuals to obtain education and the ability to read. I intend to frame my research by addressing segregation and the unequal opportunities of whites and African Americans. I will also examine the literacy rates as they pertain to men and women, and I will break down the results further to examine race and sex at the same time. Education and the ability to read open doors for individuals, and those with better access to education will logically become more successful than those denied access. Examining the disparity in literacy rates and education between African Americans and whites in 1930s Houston allows us to draw conclusions about the broader relationship between people of color and whites. Unequal access to education and unequal rates of literacy account for inequality in every aspect of life, and the importance of education cannot be overstated.

Mothers who engage in controlling feeding practices, such as pressure to eat, may undermine their children’s natural abilities to respond to satiety cues and may increase their risk for obesity-related health conditions. Asian American parents use pressure to eat more frequently than other ethnic groups. This practice may be particularly influential in the obesogenic U.S. environment, where Asian American children’s obesity rates are increasing despite stabilizing rates among other ethnicities. We investigated factors that may predict Asian American parents’ use of pressure to eat with their 3- to 8-year-old children. Maternal acculturation was significantly associated with decreased use of pressure to eat practices among mothers with low and moderate levels of parenting stress; however, this association was not significant when mothers experienced high levels of parenting stress. Our findings inform community and intervention programs that aim to work with mothers in culturally appropriate ways to promote healthy feeding practices.

Does the availability of health insurance for young adults affect entrepreneurial behavior? Prior research has proposed that the employer-provided system of insurance in the US may reduce entrepreneurship, as individuals are locked into an employer-employee relationship to maintain coverage. It is also possible that policy effects may go beyond the binary, and shape choices around entrepreneurial form, such as the decision around incorporation. I use the adoption of 38 dependent coverage mandates in 31 states, passed from 1986 to 2013, and the adoption of a federal mandate in 2010 to analyze the impact of non-employer provided insurance on entrepreneurial activities. I find a positive relationship between the 2010 federal mandate and unincorporated entrepreneurship, and negative relationships between state and federal mandates and incorporated entrepreneurship. These results suggest that while a reduction in job lock through non-employer insurance for young adults may encourage unincorporated entrepreneurship, it may lower participation in incorporated entrepreneurship.

In this paper, we employ a partially linear nonparametric additive regression estimator, with recent U.S. Current Population Survey data, to analyze returns to schooling. Similar to previous research, we find that blacks and Hispanics have higher rates of return on average. However, for married males, while non-Hispanic whites have lower returns on average, they typically possess the highest returns in the sample. For females, we are able to show that Hispanics have uniformly higher returns over non-Hispanic whites for the full sample. When we restrict our analysis to females whose highest level of education is a high school diploma, we find average, but no longer uniformly higher returns. However, these uniformly higher returns resurface for college graduates.

There has been a growing chorus in favor of a much higher minimum wage. But the ongoing pressure from orthodox economists keeps a lid on just how high the rate can go. Even when new empirical data show that a higher minimum wage does not cost jobs, the orthodoxy remains convinced it will. Why is this? Few examinations are as thorough as the author presents here. It is a tour de force of analysis about why orthodox views that a hike in the minimum wage will be costly to the economy overall remain.