This study takes on the issue of young adults retreat from the housing and auto markets from a different perspective. Instead of trying to establish a correlation and causality between homeownership and student loan debt of young households, which has been the common approach in the literature, this study will attempt to reveal the connection between student loan debt and young households access to credit markets. Two important questions will be investigated in this research. The first question is: Are young households with existing student loan debt more likely to be turned down in credit applications than similar households with no student loan debt? The second question is: Are young households with existing student loan debt more likely to be discouraged to apply for credit than households with no student loan debt? Answers to these two questions will shed light on the possible reasons why young households with student loan debt might be retreating from auto and housing markets. Student loan debt doesnt seem to have any discouraging effect on young households without a college degree, neither does it seem to increase their probability to be turned down in a loan application. In fact, student loan debt reduces the probability to be turned down for households with no college degree. On the other hand, households with college degree are negatively affected by their student loan debt, although it is not an economically significant effect.

Negative shocks to childhood health can have a lasting impact on the economic success of an individual by altering families' schooling investment decisions. This article introduces a new dataset of brothers serving in World War II and uses it to demonstrate that improvements in childhood health led to substantial increases in educational attainment in the first one-half of the twentieth century. By exploiting variation in health within families, the data show that this relationship between childhood health and educational attainment holds even after controlling for both observed and unobserved household and environmental characteristics.

This paper analyzes the impact of college enrollment expansion on student academic achievements and labor market outcomes in the context of competition among colleges. When public policies promote "access" to college education, colleges adjust their curricula: Less selective public colleges adopt a less demanding curriculum in order to accommodate the influx of less able students. As we argue in the paper, this adjustment benefits low-ability college students at the expense of those of medium ability. At the same time, this reduces the competitive pressure faced by elite colleges, as less selective colleges become a less appealing alternative for the medium ability students. The selective, elite colleges therefore adopt a more demanding curriculum to better serve their most able students, again at the expense of medium ability students. The model offers an explanation to two sets of empirical phenomena: (i) the observed U-shaped earnings growth profile among college-educated workers in the U.S. and (ii) the diverging selectivity trends of American colleges. for helpful comments. All remaining errors are our own.

The rising importance of information technology (IT) occupations in the US economy has been accompanied by an expansion in the representation of high-skill, foreign-born IT workers. To illustrate, the share of the foreign born in IT occupations increased from about 15.5% to about 31.5% between 1993 and 2010, with this increased representation particularly marked among those younger than 45. This analysis focuses on understanding the role that US higher education and immigration policy plays in this transformation. A degree from a US college/university is an important pathway to participation in the US IT labor market, and the foreign born who obtain US degree credentials are particularly likely to remain in the United States. Many workers from abroad, including countries like India and China where wages in IT fields lag those in the United States, receive a substantial return to finding employment in the United States, even as temporary work visa policies may limit their entry. Limits on temporary work visas, which are particularly binding for those educated abroad, likely increase the attractiveness of degree attainment from US colleges and universities as a pathway to explore opportunities in the US labor market in IT.

The California Poverty Measure (CPM) is released annually to document the overall poverty rate, demographic differences in poverty, county and regional differences in poverty, and the effects of government policies and programs on poverty. The CPM was first released with 2011 data by a team of researchers from the Public Policy Institute of California and the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality.1 It will continue to be released annually and with a reduced time lag as the CPM protocol comes to be regularized. The CPM, which is closely modeled on the . . .

Do economic inequalities translate into political inequalities, and if so, how? Combining data on over 500,000 requests for services from the 24-Hour Constituent Service Hotline in Boston, Massachusetts with fine-grained census data on income, we show that higher-income census tracts request and receive more services from the city’s government than do lower-income census tracts located in the same neighborhood. To ensure that these results are not driven by differences in the service needs of higher- vs. lower-income areas, we first estimate them using only requests for snow removal, because snowfall affects the entire city. We report that a 10% increase in the per-capita income of a census tract predicts roughly a 3% increase in the number of requests for snow removal (p < 10^−5). We then show that higher-income areas are more likely to place requests using the city’s smartphone app, and patterns in the timing of requests suggest, as expected, that the smartphone app is more convenient than the alternative methods for placing requests available to those who do not own smartphones. Higher-income citizens are thus advantaged in the non-electoral components of local politics because it is easier for them to participate.

Access to automobiles may be particularly important to housing voucher recipients, who are more likely than residents of public housing to live in suburban neighborhoods where transit service is often limited. Access to high-quality public transit is more likely to benefit low-income households who live in dense central-city neighborhoods in close proximity to employment. In this analysis we draw on survey data from two housing voucher experimentsthe Moving to Opportunity for Fair Housing and Welfare-toWork Voucher programsto examine the relationship between access to automobiles and public transit and the employment and earnings outcomes of program participants. Our research underscores the importance of automobiles in achieving desirable outcomes for families who receive subsidized housing. Access to automobiles is associated with improved economic outcomes for all program participants and better facilitates job acquisition, job retention, and earnings than public transit. Our findings suggest the need to better link housing and transportation programs and to pursue a set of policies that increase automobile access among all subsidized housing recipients.

In 2007, the State of Arizona passed the Legal Arizona Workers Act (LAWA), which required all employers to verify the legal status of all prospective employees. Using the American Community Survey, we show that LAWA induced a large emigration away from Arizona. We estimate that roughly 36,000 Mexican-born people left Arizona as a consequence of LAWA. These effects were the most pronounced in the farming and construction sectors, among high school drop-outs, and among people with weak familial ties to the US. Finally, we show that about 25% of those who left relocated to New Mexico, suggesting that LAWA had spillovers on adjoining states, which underscores a potential problem with lacking a cohesive national immigration policy.

This chapter begins with a summary of the findings for each of the preceding chapters. It then demonstrates that the negative effects of demographic change can be overcome through measures to reduce levels of socioeconomic inequality between racial/ethnic groups. It indicates that higher levels of income are associated with higher levels of education for all racial/ethnic groups across occupational groups. It shows that past growth rates from 1980 through 2010, if continued through 2060, do not close the socioeconomic gaps between racial/ethnic groups or lead to levels of economic growth equal to those of the past. Further results indicate that current patterns of growth in aggregate household income, aggregate net worth, mean household income, net worth per household, consumer expenditures and tax revenues per household have not kept pace with household growth and decreasing per household values. Only poverty rates exceed the growth rate in households. The analysis shows net reductions in per capita and mean household income, consumer expenditures, employment in higher skilled occupations, and educational attainment levels in 2060 compared to 2010 if rates for 2010 are applied to 2060 population bases, but increases if average 19802010 rates were to characterize the future. Finally data are shown that demonstrate that the highest rates of economic growth will result from complete closure of socioeconomic levels between minority and nonHispanic Whites.

This paper uses the 1918 influenza pandemic to test how household resources are reallocated in response to a health shock to one child. Using a new dataset linking census data on childhood household characteristics to adult outcomes from military enlistment records, I show that families with a child in utero during the pandemic shifted resources to the child's older siblings, leading to significantly higher educational attainments for these older siblings. These results suggest that the reallocation of household resources in response to a negative childhood health shock tended to reinforce rather than compensate for differences in endowments across children.

Objective: Providers recommend waiting to transplant patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) secondary to lupus nephritis (LN), to allow for quiescence of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE)-related immune activity. However, these recommendations are not standardized, and we sought to examine whether duration of time to transplant was associated with risk of graft failure in U.S. LN-ESRD patients. Methods: Using national ESRD surveillance data (United States Renal Data System), we identified 4743 U.S. patients with LN-ESRD who received a first transplant on or after 1/1/00 (follow-up through 9/30/11). The association of wait time (time from ESRD start to transplant) with graft failure was assessed with Cox proportional hazards models, with splines of the exposure to allow for non-linearity of the association and with adjustment for potential confounding demographic, clinical, and transplant factors. Results: White LN-ESRD patients who were transplanted later (vs. <3 months on dialysis) were at increased risk of graft failure [adjusted HR (95% confidence interval): 3-12 months, 1.23 (0.93-1.63); 12-24 months, 1.37 (0.92-2.06); 24-36 months, 1.34 (0.92-1.97); and >36 months, 1.98 (1.31-2.99)]. However, no such association was seen among black recipients [3-12 months, 1.07 (0.79-1.45); 12-24 months, 1.01 (0.64-1.60); 24-36 months, 0.78 (0.51-1.18); and >36 months, 0.74 (0.48-1.13)]. Conclusion: While future studies are needed to examine the potential confounding effect of clinically recognized SLE activity on the observed associations, these results suggest that longer wait times to transplant may be associated with equivalent or worse, not better, graft outcomes among LN-ESRD patients. 2014 American College of Rheumatology.

This paper investigates the accuracy of six measures of housing cost differences among US metropolitan areas. Using Census data from 177 metropolitan areas, it tests the measures in two ways. First, it tests the ability of changes in the measures to predict changes in the shelter component of the metropolitan CPI from 1990 to 2000. Second, it tests the ability of the measures themselves to predict a proxy in 2000. A measure based on Fair Market Rents calculated by HUD placed second on the first test but did badly on the second. The housing component of the ACCRA index, a living cost measure frequently used by researchers, performed poorly on both tests. The top performer on both tests was a measure based on the average rent per room for a metropolitan area’s dwellings. Researchers wishing to control for living cost differences among places should consider including it in their living cost index.

In 2007, the State of Arizona passed the Legal Arizona Workers Act (LAWA) which required all employers to verify the legal status of all prospective employees. Using the American Community Survey, we show that LAWA induced a large emigration away from Arizona. We estimate that roughly 36,000 Mexican-born people left Arizona as a consequence of LAWA and that about 25% of those who left relocated to New mexico suggesting that LAWA had spillovers on adjoining states. Finally, the effects of LAWA were the most pronounced in the farming and construction sectors.

In poor countries, labor productivity in agriculture is considerably lower than in the rest of the economy. We assess whether this well-known fact implies that labor is mis-allocated between the two sectors. We make several observations that suggest otherwise. First, the same fact holds for US states where severe mis-allocation is implausible. Second, the gaps between the marginal value products of agriculture and non-agriculture are considerably smaller when measured through wages than through labor productivities. Third, labor productivity in agriculture is severely mis-measured in the US.

Using a new dataset constructed from nonprofit tax-returns, this paper explores how vouchers and other large-scale programs subsidizing private school attendance have affected the fiscal outcomes of private schools and the affordability of a private education. We find that subsidy programs created a large transfer of public funding to private schools, suggesting that every dollar of funding increased revenue by a dollar or more. Turning to the incidence of subsidies and the impact of subsidies on enrollment, our findings depend on the type of program introduced, with programs restricting eligibility to certain groups of students creating relatively large enrollment gains and small price increases compared to unrestricted programs. We calculate elasticities of demand and supply for private schools, and discuss welfare effects.

Obesity in the United States has been continuing increasing and cited as a major health issue in recent decades. Many researchers have studied its socio-economic cause, but very few studies center on the potential influence that health insurance has on obesity. In our common sense, health insurance reduces the money that we pay for health care and makes many treatments cost affordable which we may choose to give up originally due to our financial situation. However, everything has two sides. The benefits from insurance also can lead people to change their choices and behaviors. As an insured, people may take on more health risk than they did without insurance. Insurance reduces peoples responsibility, and reduced responsibility decrease health consciousness. Using 3 years of individual-level data from the Integrated Health Interview Series corresponding to year 2000, 2005 and 2010, I attempt to research if the presence of health insurance has effect on body weight. Then by dividing overall BMI into detailed group, I study further on if health insurance affects overweight and obesity. The 2SLS result shows insurance is positively related with BMI, so insured individuals tend to be heavier than those non-insured. Whats more, the presence of health insurance affects obesity much more than overweight. People with health insurance have a higher probability to be obese.

There are several open source and commercial implementations of the Visvalingam algorithm for line generalisation. The algorithm provides scope for implementation-specific interpretations, with different outcomes. This is inevitable and sometimes necessary and, they do not imply that an implementation is flawed. The only restriction is that the output must not be so inconsistent with the intent of the algorithm that it becomes inappropriate. The aim of this paper is to place the algorithm within the literature, and demonstrate the value of the teragon-test for evaluating the appropriateness of implementations; Mapshaper v 0.2.28 and earlier versions are used for illustrative purposes. Data pertaining to natural features, such as coastlines, are insufficient for establishing whether deviations in output are significant. The teragon-test produced an unexpected loss of symmetry from both the Visvalingam and Douglas-Peucker options, making the tested versions unsuitable for some applications outside of cartography. This paper describes the causes, and discusses their implications. Mapshaper 0.3.17 passes the teragon test. Other developers and users should check their implementations using contrived geometric data, such as the teragon data provided in this paper, especially when the source code is not available. The teragon-test is also useful for evaluating other point reduction algorithms.

We estimated hypertension and diabetes prevalence among US homeless adults compared with the general population, and investigated prevalence trends. We systematically searched 5 databases for published studies (19802014) that included hypertension or diabetes prevalence for US homeless adults, pooled disease prevalence, and explored heterogeneity sources. We used the National Health Interview Survey for comparison. We included data from 97366 homeless adults. The pooled prevalence of self-reported hypertension was 27.0% (95% confidence interval=23.8%, 29.9%; n=43 studies) and of diabetes was 8.0% (95% confidence interval=6.8%, 9.2%; n=39 studies). We found no difference in hypertension or diabetes prevalence between the homeless and general population. Additional health care and housing resources are needed to meet the significant, growing burden of chronic disease in the homeless population.

In recent months, events in the news have highlighted the deep historical roots of the antebellum regional conflicts that led to the Civil War and that, to a large extent, still define much of our economic history of recent decades. The early history of the United States, and specifically, the settlement patterns that led to financial centers in the Northeast, manufacturing and agriculture in the Midwest, and plantation capitalism in the South, set in motion regional differences that remain to this day. Patterns of economic activity have also been defined by land colonial acquisition, native American removal, immigration patterns, early transportation systems, locational patterns of early industries, and of course the rich natural resources of the North American continent. Regional differences that derived from these geographical features continue to drive conflict and change in the U.S. economy in this 21st century. This project is utilizing ARCGIS along with data from the NHGIS to develop a series of layered mapping tools to visualize key demographic and other census data that define the key turning points in U.S. economic history and to help illuminate these regional differences. These maps will be used in Economics 418 in spring 2016, as the basis for a number of labs in the spring semester to help students visualize and integrate the changes to the U.S. economy over time and help them develop more original and more personally relevant research topics for their culminating experience for the course.