The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1966 increased the federal minimum wage in several industries previously excluded from federal minimum wage legislation. As a result of this act, the minimum wage increased to 1 USD in 1967 for workers in several previously excluded industries. These changes disproportionately affected Black workers, substantially narrowing the racial wage gap over a period of just a few years (Derenoncourt and Montialoux, 2021). In this paper, I use a difference-indifferences in differences approach to evaluate the effect of narrowing the racial wage gap on the racial infant mortality gap. I estimate the model at the county level, exploiting variation in industry employment shares as measured in the early 1960s. Intuitively, counties that pre-reform had higher shares of employment in industries affected by the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1966 in this sense were more treated by the reform and experienced greater narrowing of the racial wage gap. Using employment shares from the 1960 Census, an increase in covered employment by one percentage point reduces the infant mortality gap by about 0.16 deaths per 1,000 births (or 1.2% of the mean racial infant mortality gap).

Broadening participation in STEM education, improving STEM graduate employability, and retaining a labor force with high STEM qualifications has become increasingly important in both higher education and regional development in the United States. However, few studies have examined the labor market experiences of STEM graduates. Drawing on interdisciplinary research, this study develops a framework that encompasses individual attributes, university institutional characteristics, and labor market factors to explore labor market outcomes for US STEM graduates. Based on analyses of multiple cohorts of STEM-educated college graduates in the US from 2000 to 2010, the study finds that there is a significant relationship between college location, STEM graduates’ job earnings, and the degree to which these graduates are underemployed or unemployed. We argue not only that college locations provide potential employment locations, but also that the interaction between students, universities and the regional context will last through students’ college years and factor into employment opportunities and levels of salary. Research and practice in higher education and regional development should be drawn on to coordinate efforts to increase graduate employability and promote collaboration between universities and industries.

We study how technology adoption and changes in global value chain (GVC) integration jointly affect labor shares and business function specialization in a sample of 14 manufacturing industries in 14 European countries in 1999–2011. Our main contribution is to highlight the indirect effect of robotization on relative demand for labor via GVC integration. To do this, we develop a methodology to separately account for robots in the total capital stock. Increases in upstream, forward GVC participation directly reduce labor shares, mostly through reductions in fabrication, but also via management, marketing and R&D business functions. We do not find any direct effects of robot adoption; robotization affects labor only indirectly, by increasing upstream, forward GVC integration. In this sense robotization is “upstream-biased”. We also study novel channels through which rapid robotization in China shaped robotization in Europe and, therefore, GVC participation. This highlights an understudied way by which the global integration of China has affected relative demand for labor in its trading partners.

Asian Americans are the fastest-growing racial group in the US but we know little about how Asian immigration has affected cities, neighborhoods and schools. This paper studies white flight from Asian arrivals in high-socioeconomic-status Californian school districts from 2000-2016 using initial settlement patterns and national immigrant flows to instrument for entry. We find that, as Asian students arrive, white student enrollment declines in higher-income suburbs. These patterns cannot be fully explained by racial animus, housing prices, or correlations with Black/ Hispanic arrivals. Parental fears of academic competition may play a role.

High-paying factory jobs in the 1940s were an engine of egalitarian economic growth for a generation. Are there alternate forms of work organization that deliver similar benefits for frontline workers? Work organization varies by types of complexity and their degree of employer control. Technical and tacit knowledge tasks receive higher pay for signaling or developing human capital. Higher autonomy tasks elicit efficiency wages. To test these ideas, we match administrative earnings to task descriptions from job postings. We then compare earnings for workers hired into the same occupation and firm, but under different task allocations. When jobs raise task complexity and autonomy, new hires' starting earnings increase and grow faster. However, while half the earnings boost from complex, technical tasks is due to shifting worker selection, worker selection changes less for tacit knowledge tasks and very little for adding high autonomy tasks. We also study which employers provide these jobs: frontline tacit knowledge tasks are disproportionately in larger, profitable manufacturing and retail firms; technical tasks are in newer health and business services; and higher autonomy jobs are in smaller and fast-growing firms. These results demonstrate how organization-level allocations of tasks can undergird high-paying jobs for frontline workers.

This project explores the representation of minority groups in contemporary U.S. Southern literature, with a particular focus on Asian communities. It not only challenges the conventional perception that Asians in America are primarily associated with the West Coast but also underscores how Asian representation in literature plays a crucial role in illuminating the complexities of regional identity and social structure in the American South. Historically, Asian immigrants have been part of the Southern landscape since the eighteenth century when Filipino sailors settled in New Orleans. Chinese immigrants also played essential roles as laborers in the post-slavery South. However, their experiences were conspicuously absent from Southern literature until the 1990s. This dissertation examines the evolution of Southern studies from the “Southern Renascence” to “New Southern Studies.” It underscores the need to move beyond a focus on white upper-class life in Southern literature and explore narratives that transcend racial and gender boundaries. The study examines four contemporary Southern novels that incorporate Asian perspectives: Susan Choi’s The Foreign Student, Robert Olen Butler’s A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, Monique Truong’s Bitter in the Mouth, and Cynthia Shearer’s The Celestial Jukebox. These novels explore themes like language barriers, the Korean immigrant experience during the Cold War, the Vietnamese immigrant experience, cultural identity, and the contribution of Chinese immigrants to Mississippi Delta culture. The central argument of this dissertation is that the inclusion of Asian voices enriches the understanding of Southern identity, literature, and culture. It also sheds light on the enduring impact of historical events like the Korean and Vietnam Wars on immigrants and their descendants. By exploring the experiences of Asian communities, this research challenges the conventional notion of a uniform Southern identity and emphasizes the region’s diversity. Ultimately, this project aims to rectify the lack of scholarly attention given to the Asian presence in the South. It contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of the U.S. South and its complex cultural tapestry, inviting readers to question established narratives and adopt a more inclusive perspective that acknowledges the diverse voices within the region.

Racism deeply affects the social determinants of health, resulting in racial health inequities in populations of color. Recently, measures have been taken to address this issue in Washington, DC. These measures include the 2020 Racial Equity Achieves Results (REACH) Amendment Act, which focuses on racial equity, social justice, and economic inclusion (The DC Line, 2020). To further these efforts, there is a need to understand the relationship between structural racism, unemployment, poverty, and violence. The research reported here explores the correlation between historic racism, social determinants of health, housing policies, and community violence in Washington, DC. The methods used include mapping racial covenants from 1940 to 2010, neighborhood displacement, and social determinants of health. Current mortgage lending in the neighborhoods across the city was used to measure the housing market and lending discrimination. The author also used demographic data from various sources to measure the social determinants of health across statistical neighborhoods. Findings indicate that Wards 5, 7 and 8, in Southern and Eastern parts of DC, have the highest rates of crime, unemployment and concentrated poverty and the lowest house lending rates. Between 1940-2010, these wards also experienced the most housing displacement. The district’s racial dissimilarity index of 70.9 indicates that Washington, DC is still highly segregated and that individual health and exposure to violence varies significantly by zip code. To achieve health equity, appropriate measures to dismantle structural racism must be taken. The needed measures must be linked to community-based participatory research and policies that incorporate the historical context of the problem along with the voices of community members.

Aphasia is a disorder that results from damage to portions of the brain that are responsible for language and can vary significantly by type and severity. Differences in aphasia outcomes are influenced by the social determinants of health (SDOH). The SDOH are structural, environmental, and personal determinants that influence health outcomes. Intersectionality, or how one's social and political identities interact to influence individual life outcomes and/or advantage in our society, provides a way to examine the varying levels of the SDOH. However, intersectionality is complex, difficult to measure, and has not yet been explored in post-stroke aphasia outcomes. This article reviews the relationship of race and aphasia outcomes and the SDOH and aphasia outcomes. Additionally, we provide a novel current approach to examine the SDOH and aphasia outcomes. Lastly, we discuss the need for evaluation of intersectionality in aphasia and aim to provide a leveled social-ecological framework to examine aphasia-related outcomes. With notable individual differences among aphasia outcomes, we present a framework to support optimizing research and clinical aphasia care in speech-language pathology.

20% of Millennials and 68% of Gen Z-ers still live with other family members, taking longer to leave home compared to previous generations. Many members of the younger generations living at home do not anticipate a change any time soon: A RentCafe survey reveals that over 40% of Millennials and Gen Z-ers expect to share their homes for at least two more years. California is the state with the most Millennials and Gen Z-ers living in multigenerational households.

Previous research has shown that audiologists in the United States tend to locate in urban areas with younger populations, higher income, lower proportions of older adults with hearing loss. Research investigating accessibility to audiologists have shown that older adults with hearing loss in rural areas have to travel longer distances to the nearest audiologist. Thus, the individuals who may need audiologists the most are less likely to have access to available audiologists. Using geographic software, census data, and audiology business data, this study examines whether similar results also exist in the state of Iowa. Iowa was chosen for this study because Iowa is a largely rural and agricultural state, and hearing loss and hearing healthcare disparities are associated with living in rural areas. The results of this study showed that audiology businesses tend to locate more in rural areas than urban areas, older adults with hearing loss living in rural areas have to drive longer distances and times to the nearest audiology business, and the relationship between audiology businesses and proportions of older adults with hearing loss was inconclusive. This study shows that while similar results exist for travel distance and time in other areas of the United States, disparities will differ for different areas and further research in other geographic areas will need to be done for disparities to be adequately addressed by public policy makers.

This study uses data from the American Community Survey to examine the relationship between race, family configurations, and inequalities in private school enrollment among adoptees. We find that private school enrollment is higher in transracial than in same-race families. This disparity is driven by the outcomes of adoptees in transracial families with zero rather than one same-race parent. Among adoptees themselves, there are diverging patterns of racial stratification in same-race and transracial families. White adoptees in same-race families are more likely to be enrolled in private school than Black, Asian, or Hispanic adoptees in such families. However, among adoptees in transracial families, the highest odds of private school enrollment are found among Asians. Finally, we argue that our findings have important implications for understanding how kinship cues, compensation, and social disadvantage shape parental investment in adopted children.

As legislative actions, such as the Affordable Care Act, and technological innovations have increasingly looked to provide improved healthcare delivery in the United States (US), the desire for quality of life, overall health, and, notably, patient access to healthcare has become extremely important in people’s lives. Building on path dependency theory, agency theory, and prior healthcare access research, this dissertation provides a research model of patient access by postulating and empirically validating the factors associated with patients seeking healthcare. Essay 1 focuses on understanding patient behaviors when seeking healthcare in distinct periods before and after the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). I conduct four separate analyses of secondary data using binary logistic regression of the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) to understand whether there are differences in healthcare-seeking choices before and after legislation shifts. The research model is tested using secondary data from the NHIS for 2016–2019. The findings reveal the differences in patients’ choices regarding patient access across the periods. In Essay 2, I draw upon agency theory, the strength of ties, and technology acceptance theories to test a research model of healthcare-seeking differences between veteran and nonveteran groups. Binary logistic regression is used, with patient access as the dependent variable and critical variables related to economic costs, social embeddedness, and technology access as independent variables. I theorize that veteran groups have stronger socially embedded ties and are more apt to use technology when seeking healthcare than nonveterans. Furthermore, I posit that age and gender impact health-seeking, such that younger persons have a demonstrably more significant impact on social embeddedness and the use of technology. The findings confirm the role of social embeddedness and technology use in seeking healthcare. Findings from this dissertation have important academic and practical implications for patient access to healthcare and veteran access to healthcare and help explain whether there are deficiencies in veterans accessing healthcare compared with nonveterans. Notably, the findings from this dissertation have practical significance to Department of Veteran Affairs healthcare decision-makers to help understand veteran preferences, areas for further exploration, and healthcare provision. Conclusions from this dissertation outline the need for further study into patient access to healthcare aspects that will increase access to healthcare and the use of healthcare by patients. One key recommendation is to understand better and encourage the use of technology and social embeddedness of patients to activate themselves in seeking solutions to their healthcare from healthcare providers.

Using archival data from the American Civil Liberties Union of Eastern Missouri and current data from Fatal Encounters (FE), this study descriptively compared concentrated incidents of fatal police shootings of civilians in St. Louis, Missouri at two points in time – 1970 to 1980 and 2000 to 2010. This study also explored connections to race and income by mapping the composition of Black residents and levels of concentrated economic disadvantage using 1980 and 2010 United States Census data. Geographic Information Systems (GISs) results revealed noticeable similarities in the sites of fatal police shootings of civilians across the two time periods. Specifically, most of the incidents occurred in the northern and southeastern sectors of St. Louis City in neighborhoods with a higher number of Black residents and impacted by economic disadvantage. All of the individuals shot and killed by the police were male, and a majority were 22 years old or younger, and armed during the incident. Results from police perceptions studies from the 1970s and early to mid oughts are also discussed to posit that a persistence of police violence historically and presently may help offer key insights into how legal estrangement may ensue.

This dissertation studies three different aspects of migration decisions. Using U.S. and Mexican survey data, the first essay investigates the effects of the different labor market and demographic characteristics on the decision to migrate as documented or undocumented immigrants to the U.S. We find documented, and undocumented immigrants are different in terms of their skills. Mexican individuals with 5-9 years of education have the highest probability of migrating as an undocumented immigrant. My second essay studies the effects of increased border protection and domestic surveillance on low-skilled documented and undocumented immigrants from Mexico and Central American Countries. The results suggest that increased border protection reduces undocumented immigration and increases documented immigration, but the total number of low-skilled immigrants falls. Undocumented immigrants have job creation effects on native workers, and therefore reduced undocumented immigration reduces native wages and employment. One common finding of my first two essays is that increased border control reduces the number of immigrants from the origin countries. My third essay tests the hypothesis that internal migrants in the U.S. have different risk preferences than non-migrants. We do not find any significant differences in risk preferences between these two groups.

This paper investigates the correlation of socioeconomic characteristics of communities close to Superfund sites with the duration of cleanup using spatial survival analysis with frailty effects. Census-tract-level data is used to achieve a more accurate representation of affected areas. We find evidence of slower cleanup in areas with higher minority population, particularly when controlling for EPA Region. Additionally, sites that are more costly, have high assessed hazards, and have a Community Action Group are associated with longer cleanup times, while sites which are federally owned and have low assessed hazards are associated with shorter cleanup times.

As an independent risk factor, ambient air pollution can assume a considerable part in mortality and worsening of cardiovascular disease. We sought to investigate the association between long-term exposure to ambient air pollution and cardiovascular disease mortality and their risk factors in Iranian's elderly population. This inquiry was conducted ecologically utilizing recorded data on cardiovascular disease mortality from 1990 to 2019 for males and females aged 50 years or more from the Global Burden of Disease dataset. Data was interned into Joinpoint software 4.9.0.0 to present Annual Percent Change (APC), Average Annual Percent Change (AAPC), and its confidence intervals. The relationship between recorded data on ambient air pollution and cardiovascular disease' mortality, the prevalence of high systolic blood pressure, high LDL cholesterol levels, high body mass index, and diabetes mellitus type2 was investigated using the Spearman correlation test in R 3.5.0 software. Our finding demonstrated that cardiovascular diseases in elderly males and females in Iran had a general decreasing trend (AAPC = −0.77% and −0.65%, respectively). The results showed a positive correlation between exposure to ambient ozone pollution (p ≤ 0.001, r = 0.94) ambient particulate and air pollution (p < 0.001, r = 0.99) and mortality of cardiovascular disease. Also, ambient air pollution was positively correlated with high systolic blood pressure (p < 0.001, r = 0.98), high LDL cholesterol levels (p < 0.001, r = 0.97), high body mass index (p < 0.001, r = 0.91), diabetes mellitus type2 (p < 0.001, r = 0.77). Evidence from this study indicated that ambient air pollution, directly and indirectly, affects cardiovascular disease mortality in two ways by increasing the prevalence of some traditional cardiovascular disease risk factors. Evidence-based clinical and public health methodologies are necessary to decrease the burden of death and disability associated with cardiovascular disease.

The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically disrupted the United States labor market, and many commentators have interpreted the ongoing labor dynamics as evidence of a “Great Resignation”, emphasizing workers’ dissatisfaction with their employment situation as a significant instigator of labor market uncertainty. In this paper, I develop an indexed “lousiness” score for a given occupation based on occupational survey data. I then track the rebound in employment and labor force participation in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic for workers within “lousy” and “non-lousy” occupations, revealing a sizable gap between their respective rates of return throughout 2020 and 2021. I then use industry-level data from the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey to calculate aggregated hiring and quit rates over time, revealing a larger increase in employee-initiated churn rates for industries with a high concentration of “lousy” occupations since the summer of 2020. This supports the perception that employee concerns about flexibility, safe working conditions, and emotional stress are affecting their employment choices and labor force participation rates to a greater degree than before COVID-19.

Traditionally, Labor Force Surveys and Household Surveys have been used to gather information on the time individuals devote to paid work (e.g., labor-force statistics), unpaid work, and childcare. However, in recent decades Time Use Surveys have been developed, with the support of National Statistical Offices, as an instrument aimed at measuring the time-allocation decisions of individuals, and they have proven to be a superior instrument in terms of accuracy and reliability, which has led to many developed and developing countries using them. This chapter reviews the main characteristics of Time Use Surveys, with a summary of their history, technical questions regarding sample frames, activities, and complementary information, and harmonization projects.

Background/Objective This study aims to comprehensively examine racial and ethnic differences in pediatric unintentional injuries requiring hospitalization by age across injury mechanisms. Study Design This was a retrospective, nationally representative cross-sectional analysis of discharge data within the 2016 Kids' Inpatient Database for 98,611 children ≤19 years with unintentional injuries resulting in hospitalization. Injury categories included passengers and pedestrians injured in a motor vehicle crash, falls, drownings, burns, firearms, drug and nondrug poisonings, suffocations, and other injuries. Relative risk (RR) for injuries requiring hospitalization were calculated for children of Black, Hispanic, and Other races and ethnicities compared with White children, and then RR were further stratified by age. Excessive hospitalizations were calculated as the absolute number of hospitalizations for each race and ethnicity group that would have been avoided if each group had the same rate as White children. Results Black children were significantly more likely to be hospitalized compared with White children for all injury mechanisms except falls, and in nearly all age groups with the greatest RR for firearm injuries (RR 9.8 [95% confidence interval: 9.5–10.2]). Differences were associated with 6263 excessive hospitalizations among all racial and ethnic minority children compared with White children. Conclusions Racial and ethnic minority children represent populations at persistent disproportionate risk for injuries resulting in hospitalization; risk that varies in important ways by injury mechanism and children's age. These findings suggest the importance of the environmental and societal exposures that may drive these differences, but other factors, such as provider bias, may also contribute.

In this paper, we develop a framework and metrics for estimating the impact of emission sources on regulatory compliance and human health for applications in air quality planning and life cycle impact assessment (LCIA). Our framework is based on a pollutant's characterization factor (CF) and three new metrics: Available Regulatory Capacity for Incremental Emissions (ARCIE), Source CF Ratio, and Activity Health Impact (AHI) Ratio. ARCIE can be used to assess whether a receptor location has capacity to accommodate additional source emissions while complying with regulatory limits. We present CF as a midpoint indicator of health impacts per unit mass of emitted pollutant. Source CF Ratio enables comparison of potential new-source locations based on human health impacts. The AHI Ratio estimates the health impacts of a pollutant in relation to the utilization of the source for each unit of product or service. These metrics can be applied to any pollutant, energy source sector (e.g., agriculture, electricity), source type (point, line, area), and spatial modeling domain (nation, state, city, region). We demonstrate these metrics through a case study of fine particulate (PM2.5) emissions from U.S. corn stover harvesting and local processing at various scales, representing steps in the biofuel production process. We model PM2.5 formation in the atmosphere using a novel reduced-complexity chemical transport model called the Intervention Model for Air Pollution (InMAP). Through this case study, we present the first area-source PM2.5 CFs that address the recommendations of several LCIA studies to establish spatially explicit CFs specific to an energy source sector or type. Overall, the framework developed in this work provides multiple new ways to consider the potential impacts of air emissions through spatially differentiated metrics.