Background Visits to emergency departments (EDs) for dental symptoms are on the rise, yet reliance on EDs for dental care is far from ideal. ED toothache visits represent opportunities to improve access to professional dental care. Methods This research focuses on 20- to 29-year-olds, who account for more ED toothache visits than do other age groups. The authors analyzed publicly available ED visit data from the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NHAMCS) from 2001 through 2010. They assessed trends in ED toothache visit rates compared with back pain and all cause ED visits during the past decade. The authors used NHAMCS data for years 2009 and 2010 to characterize the more recent magnitude, relative frequency, and independent risk factors for ED toothache visits. Statistical analyses accounted for the complex sampling design. Results The average annual increase in ED visit rates among 20- to 29-year-olds during 2001-2010 was 6.1% for toothache, 0.3% for back pain, and 0.8% for all causes of ED visits. In 2009 and 2010, 20- to 29-year-olds made an estimated 1.27 million ED visits for toothaches and accounted for 42% of all ED toothache visits. Toothache was the fifth most common reason for any ED visit and third most common for uninsured ED visits by 20- to 29-year-olds. Independent risk factors for ED toothache visits were being uninsured or Medicaid-insured. Conclusions Younger adults increasingly rely on EDs for toothaches—likely because of barriers to accessing professional dental care. Expanding dental coverage and access to affordable dental care could increase options for timely dental care and decrease ED use for dental symptoms. Practical Implications Though additional research is needed to better understand why younger adults disproportionately use the ED for toothaches, findings from this study suggest the importance of maintaining access to a dental home from childhood through adolescence and subsequently into early adulthood.

Of particular interest in economics, regional science, public policy, and other disciplines interested in migration processes, is the understanding of the factors that determine an individual's or household's preferred residential location and the forces that might induce the individual or household to switch to another location. Using data from the Current Population Survey and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, we investigate the dynamics of work-motivated household relocations over the period 1999-2010 by associating the likelihood of individuals moving to a different state or within the same state under different macroeconomic conditions and accounting for different sociodemographic factors. Our results indicate that home ownership status is an important inhibitor of migrations decision, especially during economic contractions. This phenomenon might help explain why labor markets do not clear rapidly during recessions. We also show that minority groups are far less likely to migrate than whites are even after adjusting . . .

The U.S. refugee resettlement program is the world's largest, accepting two-thirds of the 98,000 refugees who were permanently resettled in 2013. Because of the scale of the program and the growing diversity of resettled refugees, service providers face an increasing range of challenges. To better understand these challenges, this report analyzed previously non-public State Department admissions data to gain insight into the characteristics of arriving refugees, including native-language proficiency and education. The report also draws on U.S. Census Bureau data to assess refugees' integration outcomes, finding that their income levels and rates of public benefits usage approximate those of the U.S. born with longer residence in the United States. These findings underscore that most refugees become self-supporting over timea core goal of the U.S. resettlement program.

In the antebellum South, slave transport between the Upper and Deep South was profitable due to a persistent gap in slave prices between the two regions. The gap has been attributed to agricultural productivity differences. This paper examines another potential explanation: regional variation in the chance of successful escape. To do so, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 is exploited as a natural experiment. The Act strengthened slaveowners property rights reducing the likelihood of successful escape. Providing identification, the Act had a bigger impact in border states, where escape to the Free states was arguably easier. Using data from probate records, estimates suggest a large fraction (between 23 and 27% depending on specification) of the observed price difference disappears after the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act. Interestingly, because the Act reduced rather than eliminated the potential for successful escape, the estimates provide only a lower bound on how escape contributed to regional price differences. The findings imply that even if productivity were somehow equalized across regions, a higher likelihood of escape in the Upper South may still have resulted in transportation of slaves between regions.

Going to college is a risky investment in human capital. However, we highlight two options inherently embedded in college education that mitigate this risk: (i) college students can quit without completing four-year degrees after learning about their post-graduation wages and (ii) college graduates can take jobs that do not require four-year degrees (i.e., underemployment). These options reduce the chances of falling in the lower end of the wage distribution as a college graduate, rendering standard mean-variance calculations misleading. We show that the interaction between these options and the rising wage dispersion, especially among college graduates, is key to understanding the muted response of college enrollment and graduation rates to the substantial increase in the college wage premium in the United States since 1980. Furthermore, we find that subsidies inducing marginal students to attend colleges will have a negligible net benefit: Such students are far more likely to drop out of college or become underemployed even with a four-year degree, implying only small wage gains from college education.

Since the release of the Clean Power Plan (CPP), stakeholders across the U.S. have vigorously debated the pros and cons of different options for reducing CO2 emissions from existing power plants. By providing energy modeling relevant to these decisions, the authors seek to help policymakers and other stakeholders make well-informed choices. This paper uses the Georgia Institute of Technology’s National Energy Modeling System to evaluate alternative low-carbon electricity pathways. Among the scenarios studied, we find that the least-cost compliance pathway involves a combination of renewable and energy- efficiency policies plus a modest price on carbon that could be expected to result from the Plan’s implementation. In addition to transitioning to a low-carbon power system, this compliance pathway would produce substantial collateral benefits including lower electricity bills across all customer classes, greater GDP growth, and significant reductions in SO2, NOx, and mercury emissions. The variation in compliance costs across the nation and within the South suggests that regional approaches to compliance would be most cost- effective. In addition, our modeling indicates that rate-based goals may generally be less costly than mass-based goals.

The Infant Health and Development Program (IHDP) was designed to promote the development of low-birth weight (up to 2,500 grams) and premature (up to 37 weeks gestational age) infants. There is evidence that the IHDP intervention, a randomly-assigned bundle of services including primarily free, high-quality child care from 12 to 36 months, boosted cognitive and behavioral outcomes by the time participants at the end of the intervention. The literature has established that the intervention was more effective among the subsample of heavier low birth weight (2,000-2,500 grams) than among those born lighter. Among the heavier group, it was more effective for children from lower-income families. Families who participated in the intervention were diverse in key observable characteristics like income, race or ethnicity. In addition, families reallocated their time in different ways when then had the opportunity to use the free services provided by the IHDP. The goal of this paper is to understand the economic decisions and constraints faced by households who gained access to the IHDP and explain their differential behavior. In order to do so, we propose an economic model, construct measures of theoretically-relevant drivers of postnatal investment decisions, and explore patterns of heterogeneity in parental response and child development along these dimensions.

African Americans have yet to achieve parity with whites in terms of income. A growing number of studies have identified several factors that have influenced the size of the racial gap, which has been found to vary by social class status and gender as well as across space. While most research has examined these factors separately, they may interact with each other in shaping racial inequality. Using an intersectional approach with a multilevel model, this study focuses on the impact of residential segregation and social class on racial differences in earnings for men and women. Findings indicate that (1) earning differences between African Americans remain after controls for socioeconomic status, gender, and other control variables; (2) racial differences increase with rising social class status; (3) segregation increases the disparity between African American and white males; and (4) among males only, segregation worsens the disparity that increases with rising social class.

This paper examines the time-use patterns of adults in dual-earner households with and without children as a function of several individual and household socio-demographics and employment characteristics. A disaggregate activity purpose classification including both in-home and out-of-home activity pursuits is used because of the travel demand relevance of out-of-home pursuits, as well as to examine both mobility-related and general time-use related social exclusion and time poverty issues. The study uses the Nested Multiple Discrete Continuous Extreme Value (MDCNEV) model, which recognizes that time-decisions entail the choice of participating in one or more activity purposes along with the amount of time to invest in each chosen activity purpose, and allows generic correlation structures to account for common unobserved factors that might impact the choice of multiple alternatives. The 2010 American Time Use Survey (ATUS) data is used for the empirical analysis. A major finding of the study is that the presence of a child in dual-earner households not only leads to a reduction in in-home non-work activity participation (excluding child care activities) but also a substantially larger decrease in out-of-home non-work activity participation (excluding child care and shopping activities), suggesting a higher level of mobility-related social exclusion relative to overall time-use social exclusion. To summarize, the results in the paper underscore the importance of considering household structure in activity-based travel demand models, as well as re-designing work policies in the United States to facilitate a reduction in work-family conflict in dual-earner families.

The marriage market is a fundamental concept in social-demographic work on marriage and family patterns because it draws attention to the consequences of population structure and social organization for what many consider to be personal decisions about whether, when, and who to marry. I use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 on a contemporary cohort of young adults in the United States to update our understanding of how marriage markets influence marriage timing and partner selection in light of rapid social, economic, and demographic changes of the past half century. By adopting a marriage-market approach, I also offer a new perspective on social forces behind recent family trends and clarify their significance for the strength of social boundaries in society. First, I examine the consequences of sex ratios--a key demographic characteristic of the marriage market--for men's marriage behavior. Contrary to existing theories, I find that the sex ratio's influence depends on men's life course stage, union status, and education. The results support theories that emphasize social context and growing economic inequality, rather than innate gender differences, to explain recent marriage declines in the United States. Next, I turn to the religious composition of the marriage market to understand religious intermarriage trends. I find that higher concentrations of same-faith partners are associated with increases in religious homogamy (relative to intermarriage) as well as marriage timing. The results imply that spouse's religion remains relevant to marriage decisions in young adulthood, even as religious intermarriage has become more commonplace. Finally, I consider the . . .

As the population structure of the United States continues to grow older and more diverse by race/ethnicity and nativity, the importance of understanding health differences in mid- and late-life becomes crucial for our society. Disability and functioning are strong and consistent predictors of independence and quality of life. In addition, because health is strongly associated with socioeconomic and social environmental factors, it is important to examine the extent to which the social environment at least partially explains race/ethnic and nativity differences in physical functioning and disability. Chapter 2 of this dissertation examines three measures of disability and functioning across 13 broad race/ethnic and nativity groups for adults aged 50 and above. I find that middle-aged foreign-born individuals in nearly every subgroup exhibit lower proportions of functional limitations and disability than U.S.-born whites. This pattern of immigrant advantage is generally reversed in later life and becomes a disadvantage. Moreover, most U.S.-born minority groups had significantly higher levels of disability and functional limitations than U.S.-born whites in both mid- and late life. This broad examination takes into account the demographic heterogeneity of the U.S. population and is especially timely given the rapid population aging that U.S. minority and immigration subpopulations are experiencing. In chapters 3 and 4 I use the National Health and Aging Trends Survey (NHATS) and examined race/ethnic and nativity differences in two new measures of disability: self -care and household activity limitation. I introduced a new conceptual framework of disability pathways, drew from an intersectionality approach and examined how socioeconomic status, social environmental factors, chronic health conditions, and physical capacity/functioning attenuate race/ethnic and nativity differences. My findings indicate that these key social environmental factors generally attenuate disparities, with the exception of foreign-born Hispanics. This sub-group continued to experience high rates of household and self-care limitations during their relatively long lives even net of these social environmental controls. I examine possible explanations for such striking health disadvantages. More research is needed to examine why this group has such high odds of debilitating disability, especially as they begin to enter later life in significantly large numbers.

We construct datasets of linked census records to study internal migrants’ selection and destination choices during the first decades of the “Great Migration” (1910-1930). We study both whites and blacks and intra- and inter-regional migration. While there is some evidence of positive selection, the degree of selection was small and participation in migration was widespread. Differences in background, including initial location, cannot account for racial differences in destination choices. Blacks and whites were similarly responsive to pre-existing migrant stocks from their home state, but black men were more deterred by distance, attracted to manufacturing, and responsive to labor demand.

In this report, we dive deeply into the pace of household formation and homeownership attainment-nationally and by age groups and race/ethnicity over the past quarter-century-and project future trends. Considering the great uncertainty about household formation and homeownership, single-point forecasts of homeownership rates and housing demand could seriously mislead policy makers and obscure the potential implications of their decisions. Instead, we offer plausible competing scenarios for household formation and homeownership that generate a range of future national housing demand projections.

We provide the first estimates of the effect of statutes requiring English as the language of instruction and compulsory schooling laws on the school enrollment, work, literacy, and English fluency of immigrant children during the Americanization period (1910-1930). English-only statutes moderately increased the literacy of certain foreign-born children, particularly those living in cities or whose parents were not fluent in English. However, these laws had no impact on immigrants' eventual labor market outcomes or measures of social integration (from 1940 census and WWII enlistment records). Only laws regulating the age when children could work significantly affected immigrant outcomes.

This paper examines the time-use patterns of adults in dual-earner households with and without children as a function of several individual and household socio-demographics and employment characteristics. A disaggregate activity purpose classification including both in-home and out-of-home activity pursuits is used because of the travel demand relevance of out-of-home pursuits, as well as to examine both mobility-related and general time-use related social exclusion and time poverty issues. The study uses the Nested Multiple Discrete Continuous Extreme Value (MDCNEV) model, which recognizes that timedecisions entail the choice of participating in one or more activity purposes along with the amount of time to invest in each chosen activity purpose, and allows generic correlation structures to account for common unobserved factors that might impact the choice of multiple alternatives. The 2010 American Time Use Survey (ATUS) data is used for the empirical analysis. A major finding of the study is that the presence of a child in dual-earner households not only leads to a reduction in in-home non-work activity participation (excluding child care activities) but also a substantially larger decrease in out-of-home nonwork activity participation (excluding child care and shopping activities), suggesting a higher level of mobility-related social exclusion relative to overall time-use social exclusion. To summarize, the results in the paper underscore the importance of considering household structure in activity-based travel demand models, as well as re-designing work policies in the United States to facilitate a reduction in work-family conflict in dual-earner families.

This paper analyzes the causal relationship between parental death during childhood and long-run labor market outcomes by examining the 1853 New Or- leans yellow fever epidemic as a natural experiment. In 1853, nearly 8,000 New Orleanians died of yellow fever, leaving many broken families and orphaned chil- dren behind. Because yellow fever was spread by the Aedes aegypti mosquito, neighboring New Orleanians faced similar risk of contracting yellow fever condi- tional on nativity and race (the main determinants of yellow fever susceptibility). I link death records from the 1853 yellow fever epidemic to the 1850 Census. I then link children who lost an adult household member and children in neigh- boring families to the 1880 Census. The results indicate that parental death during childhood lowered the probability of entering white collar occupations (professionals and managers) and increased the probability of entering unskilled occupations or reporting occupational non-response.

Immigrants are widely perceived to be highly entrepreneurial, contributing to economic growth and innovation, and self-employment is often viewed as a means of enhanving labor market integration and success among immigrants. Accordingly, Many countries have established special visas and entry requirements to attract immigrant entrepreneurs. . .