In 2021, the economy added more jobs than it had in nearly two decades. Despite the fact that women’s labor force participation rates have approximately returned to pre-pandemic levels,1 working-class women and mothers are still lagging behind. Women who stay in low-wage jobs or who are employed in the service sector may experience volatile hours, affecting their take-home pay, not to mention the stress they may bring home to their children. Overall economic gains did not flow to the working class, exposing the deep veins of inequality that run through the US economic system. Higher rates of job switching during the recovery phase of the pandemic recession may signal a critical need to develop more responsive, family-based economic policies and workplace practices that can transform bad jobs into better jobs. Specifically, policies and practices need to ensure greater income security, better pay, and more stable scheduling that helps stabilize the week-to-week or month-to-month family financial situations. Historically, women’s poverty rates have been higher than men’s for nearly all races and ethnicities, whether measured using the official poverty measure or the supplemental poverty measure (SPM).2 3 This is despite increased overall female participation in the labor force over the last half century and the consistently high frequency of nonwhite mothers’ employment, which has increased considerably over the past few decades. Even in 2020, a year with massive government economic response to the pandemic, women still had a higher SPM poverty rate relative to men nationwide, even with a poverty measure that accounts for all sources of government transfers and net of tax.4 The intersection of educational attainment, family structure, and the low-wage labor market may jointly shape women’s economic well-being. In 2020, nearly five-in-nine workers in the US were paid hourly wages as opposed to annual salaries.5 More than 77 percent of wage workers do not hold a bachelor’s degree (as compared to only 36.7 percent of salaried workers).6 Although pay levels have long affected the financial well-being of workers, particularly those employed in the service sector, the prevalence of unstable working hours is drawing new attention from researchers and policy makers. Besides those in food service and retail, service sector jobs may include work in health care, building cleaning or maintenance, and care work—a sector where women are overwhelmingly employed. Adding a child to these families may pose additional financial challenges, especially to sole caregivers (mostly mothers). High childcare costs often push families with young children into poverty.7 It is not uncommon for these families to have insufficient resources and liquid assets to buffer the negative consequences of work volatility. This brief examines three aspects of economic security facing women in recent years: poverty, instability in working hours, and a lack of financial savings, with special attention paid to lesseducated women with children.

This dissertation studies the role family structure and processes play in the sociocultural outcomes and well-being of children from immigrant and non-immigrant households. Diverse immigrant groups and their families are constituting larger shares of the U.S. population, often sparking conversation on their children’s ability to fit into mainstream American culture. Immigrant families are one of the primary sources of socialization, and as such, the context of the family can affect how immigrant children are introduced into their host society. There is a growing body of literature that examines cultural outcomes of adolescents in the context of immigrant households. This study adds to this body of literature by examining three topics: whether family structure impacts adolescent sociocultural outcomes (e.g. primary language spoken at home, religious beliefs and behaviors, and dating activities) and well-being by generation, the extent to which family structure operates indirectly through family processes (e.g. parental attachment, involvement, communication, and control), and the manner in which generation paints the effects of family structure and processes on adolescent outcomes and well-being. To answer my research questions I analyzed Wave 1 (1994) of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health). The final sample consisted of 13,801 first- (n=1,008), second- (n=2,007), and third+ generation children (n=10,786) aged 12 – 17 with at least one biological parent. I used a variety of statistical approaches to test for direct and indirect effects of family structure (one vs two parent households) on three measures of sociocultural outcomes- primary language spoken at home, religious beliefs and behaviors, and dating activities – as well as three measures that make up well-being (e.g. depression, delinquency, and drinking/smoking). Indirect measures were assessed by testing mediating effects of parental attachment, involvement, communication, and control. Statistical approaches depended on the outcome variable of interest and included ordinary least square (OLS), binary logistic, negative binomial regression, and multinomial logistic regression. Analysis consisted of fully moderated regression models and increasingly complex regressions. I also test if generation modifies the effects of family structure and family processes on measures of interest. I found that the effects of family structure differed across generations, with the presence or absence of a parent playing less of a role for immigrant families. Similarly, the effects of family structure were less likely to operate indirectly via parental attachment, involvement, communication, or control in immigrant homes. And finally, there were minor differences between immigrant and non-immigrant family structures and their effects on primary language spoken at home, religious identity, and well-being, with first- and second-generation children from single-parent homes experiencing advantages relative to their third+ generation counterparts. Future research should explore how factors outside the home, including peers, neighborhoods, and schools, might contribute to adolescent sociocultural outcomes and well-being. This study concludes with theoretical, practical, and policy implications, as well as a brief discussion on the role public sociology can play in immigrant research.

More than 3.1 million immigrants reside in New York City, comprising more than a third of the city’s total population. The boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens are home to nearly 940,000 and more than 1 million immigrants, respectively. According to the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene’s (DOHMH) Community Health Survey (CHS), foreign-born New Yorkers have poorer health and less access to healthcare than their US-born counterparts. For this study, the Center for Migration Studies of New York (CMS) focused on six neighborhoods in these two boroughs whose immigrant residents were identified by a previous CMS study, Virgin and Warren (2021), as most at risk of poor health outcomes: Brooklyn • Bay Ridge/Dyker Heights • Bushwick • Sunset Park/Windsor Terrace Queens • Elmhurst/South Corona • Flushing/Whitestone/Murray Hill • Jackson Heights/North Corona Immigrants comprise between 31 to 63 percent and undocumented immigrants comprise between 5 to 18 percent of the total populations in these neighborhoods. Though many of New York City’s health and social service programs are open to all residents, immigrants – especially the undocumented – remain at greater risk of poor health outcomes than US-born residents due to other barriers to access to healthcare. The CMS research team conducted a survey of 492 immigrants across these six neighborhoods and convened one focus group to collect data on immigrants’ health and well-being. CMS also surveyed 24 service providers including community health clinics, health focused community based organizations (CBOs), and hospitals that work with immigrants in the studied neighborhoods. Analysis of these data, together with the US Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS) and the DOHMH's CHS, provides insight into the factors that affect immigrants’ health and wellbeing across these neighborhoods. This study highlights several social determinants of health that likely contribute to the native-immigrant health gap. Finally, the study describes steps that can be taken to close this gap.

Despite considerable improvements in electricity coverage, millions of people are still lacking the access to electricity. Residential electricity access is a prerequisite for numerous aspects of increased well-being and quality of life. The aim of this paper is to identify key household characteristics that are linked to the energy poverty measured as access to electricity. Literature on financial and general poverty showed mixed results on household size and characteristics as a driver of poverty. We argue that household size and proportion of children in households are key variables associated with energy poverty in developing countries with lowest levels of electricity coverage. Our research approach treats electricity access as economic good and focuses on demand side – households. By utilizing census microdata across 69 non-OECD countries, our research provides large-scale analysis on household size and characteristics as a driver of energy poverty. We found that, in majority of low-income countries, same principles for general or financial poverty apply to energy poverty which is represented by negative effect of household size and proportion of children on energy poverty.

Data on women’s living conditions and socio-economic development are important for understanding and addressing the pronounced challenges and inequalities faced by women worldwide. While such information is increasingly available at the national level, comparable data at the sub-national level are missing. We here present the LivWell global longitudinal dataset, which includes a set of key indicators on women’s socio-economic status, health and well-being, access to basic services and demographic outcomes. It covers 447 regions in 52 countries and includes a total of 265 different indicators. The majority of these are based on 199 Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) for the period 1990–2019 and are complemented by extensive information on socio-economic and climatic conditions in the respective regions. The resulting dataset offers various opportunities for policy-relevant research on gender inequality, inclusive development and demographic trends at the sub-national level.

Low family income is associated with worse child academic achievement. Little is known about how health insurance expansions affect children’s achievement in low-income households. This study examined the effects of the Affordable Care Act’s coverage expansions primarily for Medicaid and Marketplace enrollment, beginning in 2014, on children’s academic achievement in Iowa. The study employed a unique linkage of birth certificates and data on standardized school tests for children in Iowa and took advantage of differences in uninsurance rates across areas in the state before the ACA insurance expansions. There is evidence that the ACA expansions beginning in 2014 were associated with higher reading scores after three years for children born to mothers with a high school education or less. There is no consistent evidence of an effect on math scores. Overall, these findings suggest broad spillover benefits from health insurance expansions to the well-being and development of children in low-income households that should be part of the continuing policy

Scholars have long debated whether home rule powers help improve municipal financial well-being; however, a consensus has yet to be reached. This study advances the home rule literature by causally estimating the impact of home rule in Texas on municipal revenue stability. To accomplish this, we employed a difference-in-differences estimator coupled with event-study specifications on a 40-year-long panel data set. This approach revealed strong empirical evidence that cities adopting a home rule charter had a significant reduction in the probability of experiencing revenue decline. This finding remained robust with multiple measures of revenue change, an alternative sample, and different model specifications. Moreover, we found that home rule cities’ revenue stability was likely to come from their increase in property taxes.

Since the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that marriages of same-sex couples are legal in all states in the union, federal surveys have adapted to the shifting legal climate and included new measures that more directly identify same-sex and different-sex cohabiting and married couples. In this research note comparing the largest and most recent federal surveys—the 2019 American Community Survey and Current Population Survey—we find consistent levels of cohabitation and marriage across surveys. While the vast majority (90%) of different-sex couples were married, we report a more even split in cohabitation and marriage among same-sex couples. Our evaluation of sociodemographic characteristics of married and cohabiting couples indicates that differences were less prominent among same-sex couples than among different-sex couples, suggesting weaker sociodemographic selection into marriage among the former. However, factors affecting same-sex and different-sex couples' decisions to live together and marry may differ because of legal and social climates that still present unique obstacles for same-sex couples. Researchers need to acknowledge these differences in assessments of the implications of marriage for health and well-being.

Often lost in the deluge of policy opinions regarding international migration management is the development and well-being of children and youth who in one way or another are affected by their parents’ decisions to leave communities of origin in Mexico for opportunities in the United States. The experiences of these students are diverse. Some migrate at an early age with their parents, others take on solitary migratory journeys during adolescence, and yet others cross the border over and again, leading truly transnational lives. Most, however, are affected by migration less directly, through the international migration experiences of their parents and/or other relatives (resulting, among other things, in stresses associated with family separation).

As cities increase in size, total wages grow superlinearly, meaning that average wages are higher in larger cities. This phenomenon, known as the urban wage premium, supports the notion that urbanization and the growth of cities contribute positively to human well-being. However, it remains unclear how the distribution of wages changes as cities grow. Here we segment the populations of U.S. cities into wage deciles and determine the scaling coefficient of each decile’s aggregate wages versus city size. We find that, while total wages of all deciles grow superlinearly with city size, the effect is uneven, with total wages of the highest wage earners growing faster than all other deciles. We show that this corresponds with the predominance of high-wage jobs in larger cities. Thus, the effects of urbanization are mixed -- it is associated with higher average wages but with increasing inequality, thus inhibiting prospects for long-term sustainability.

Fathers are integral to family processes and children’s well-being. However, major social and economic changes in the United States over the last several decades have had profound impacts on the economic and social well-being of men of lower socioeconomic status (SES) and men of color, specifically Black, Latino, and Indigenous men. These changes have created stark disparities in the ability and capacity of fathers to be involved with their children. Social policies can be effective mechanisms for promoting and ensuring the well-being of fathers, but fathers are rarely the explicit target of policy efforts. Child support enforcement, the only national policy targeting fathers, has produced an inequitable system that disproportionately subjects low-SES fathers and fathers of color to a series of punitive enforcement mechanisms with minimal benefit to children. We provide evidence for the potential of a broad swath of social policies that have not traditionally been targeted at fathers to improve the well-being of fathers and facilitate their engagement with children. We propose that social workers are uniquely positioned to advocate for reforms and expansions to these policies that will improve father, child, and family well-being and promote economic, social, and racial justice.

How did Progressive era reforms affect the lives of urban residents across U.S. cities? The historical record is unclear. Some scholars argue that many of the progressive reforms were motivated by nativist and racist animus and explicitly designed to benefit white business elites at the expense of disadvantaged groups. Others point out that reformers often sought to improve urban living and working conditions and expand access to education, which generated new opportunities for social mobility. We inform this debate leveraging new data on 455 U.S. cities from 1900-1940 combining i) dates of adoption of reform-style government, ii) deanonymized census data, iii) data on political participation, and iv) detailed municipal budget data. Using a difference-indifferences design, we document the impact of Progressive reforms on political participation, public goods spending, and the relative socioeconomic well-being of black, immigrant, and working class residents visa -vis whites, natives, and business elites. Despite finding that voter turnout decreased in reformed cities, we uncover only a modest increase in earnings inequality across more and less advantaged groups and no significant differences in expenditure patterns as a consequence of reform. This approach provides a comprehensive portrait of the legacy of Progressive municipal institutions and suggests that, on average, the reforms of this era may have exacerbated political inequality more than economic inequality, at least in the first decades following their adoption.

The main purpose of this study is to observe and analyze the various impacts mental health has on a person’s labor participation and whether these impacts are exacerbated among veterans. Many war veterans struggle with mental well-being and have diffculties fnding work or purpose in their lives when transitioning to the civilian world. Additionally, the steady decrease of mental well-being across the United States among the general populace has generated concerns regarding a loss of labor due to burnout and suicide, particularly among teens and young adults. This study discusses the impact cognitive diffculties have on labor participation through a weighted logit model for 450 households from 2001 to 2020. The result from this model demonstrates the adverse impact cognitive diffculties have on a person’s willingness to participate in the labor force, especially among older individuals, but are not a signifcant factor in determining a veteran’s motivation to work.

Context: Land use change drives a host of sustainability challenges on Earth’s grasslands. To understand the relationship between changing land use patterns, human well-being, and ecosystem services, research is needed into land use transitions on privately-owned grasslands. Such inquiry lies at the intersection of land system science, landscape sustainability science and environmental governance. Objectives: This study investigated land use change in a mountain ranching community in the Sierra Nevada, California. The research objective was to highlight factors influencing land use transitions and corollary ecological outcomes on privately-owned grasslands in the Western US. Methods: This mixed methods case study integrated participant observation, 30 semi-structured interviews, and analysis of land cover and real estate data. Interviews were conducted with ranchers, public agencies, and conservation and real estate industry representatives, and analyzed with the constant comparison method using NVivo 12. Results: Land use transitions in the case study region include agricultural intensification, residential and solar development, and disintensification. These transitions were influenced by many factors including decreasing land access and water availability, amenity migration, intergenerational succession, and conservation policy. Conclusions: By highlighting factors influencing land use transitions on working lands, this study can be applied to improve the uptake of environmental policies. For the future, several approaches may support grasslands conservation: ensuring grazing lands access, income diversification, groundwater regulations, agriculture-compatible conservation easements, and land use policies supporting ownership transition to amenity purposes rather than low-density residential development.

Nuclear energy occupies a conspicuous place in the global energy transition. In the United States, civilian nuclear power plants are shutting down before their licenses expire, leaving nuclear host communities struggling to cope with the unexpected change. This study focuses on the socio-economic dimensions of the effects of nuclear power plant shutdowns in nuclear host communities in the United States. Our study attempts to strike a balance between intensive case studies, which often fail to disentangle place-specific factors from broader trends and to put observations in perspective, and large-sample-based quantitative analyses, which seeks a general impact of decommissioning without paying sufficient attention to local variations. We adopt a quasi-experimental approach, which compares communities with decommissioned plants to their control neighbors, to assess the diverse trajectories of socio-economic well-being of nuclear host communities before and after plant closure. These communities are analyzed in terms of their population, per capita income, education, poverty levels, and unemployment. The findings provide a starting point from which more detailed case studies can be conducted, and nuclear host communities can better navigate the decommissioning process.

This paper provides a unified framework for practitioners who wish to estimate alternative indices of multidimensional poverty. These alternative indices are used to estimate multidimensional poverty in the USA over the last decade with a focus on analyzing trends by race and ethnicity. Individual level data on five different dimensions of well-being are compiled over the last decade using annual Census surveys. We find that multidimensional poverty in the USA declined over time regardless of the index used. A higher incidence of multidimensional poverty was observed among Hispanics, American Indians and Blacks. Poverty ranking among racial/ethnic groups was robust to the indices used. Estimates of alternative indices highlight different aspects of multidimensional poverty and provide complementary information on poverty in the USA in the last decade.

Relying on data from the United States Census and the American Time Use Survey (2010–2017), we examine how residential segregation influences per capita discretionary time availability in Los Angeles, New York City and Miami. We find a sizable disadvantage of being Latinx for discretionary time availability. Non-Latinx Whites have 182 extra hours of per capita discretionary time per year than do Latinx individuals. Both within-neighbourhood and adjacent-neighbourhood influences matter. In most neighbourhoods, segregation is correlated with having more discretionary time. Individuals in highly segregated areas have approximately 80 more hours of discretionary time per year than those living in diverse areas. This suggests that in addition to socioeconomic, cultural and well-being benefits, ethnic enclaves may also impart temporal advantages. However, we find that there may be diminishing marginal returns with increasing segregation in surrounding areas. Sociodemographic characteristics explain over one-quarter of the variance between segregation and discretionary time availability.

The papers in this dissertation empirically estimate the causal effect of our social environment on our beliefs, preferences, and well-being. I present clear evidence that our decisions are not made in isolation. Rather, our very beliefs and preferences are shaped by our neighbors. Even our happiness may depend on the circumstances of those around us. The first paper reports evidence that neighbors with strong preferences or beliefs around politics, religion, or race are likely to shape our beliefs and preferences. In fact, the migration of individuals with strong preferences appears to be a key determinant of geographic patterns in political outcomes in contemporary America. The second paper shows how social context shapes reports of psychological well-being commonly used in important longitudinal surveys. Individuals understate the symptoms of depression and overstate their happiness when reporting directly to another individual. The final papers tests the relative income hypothesis showing that we are less happy when our neighbors become relatively richer. However, we find no evidence that individuals are averse to increases in income inequality.

It is widely believed that female students benefit from being taught by female teachers, particularly when those teachers serve as counter-stereotypical role models. We study education in rural areas of the US circa 1940--a setting in which there were few professional female exemplars other than teachers--and find that female students were more successful when their primary-school teachers were disproportionately female. Impacts are lifelong: female students taught by female teachers were more likely to move up the educational ladder by completing high school and attending college, and had higher lifetime family income and increased longevity.

The sixth cycle of the octennial California Regional Housing Needs Assessment indicates that, over the next eight years, the City of Los Angeles needs to plan for the creation of nearly 260,000 homes for families earning 30 percent to 80 percent of area median income and for the creation of 197,000 units for families earning more than that amount. Meeting this goal would require the production of more than 100,000 homes per year over the next eight years, with more than 50 percent of them available at affordable rents. The magnitude of the region’s housing needs has led many policymakers and other stakeholders to call for an all-of-the-above approach to expanding the housing supply that includes increasing the production of both publicly funded affordable housing and market-rate housing, incentivizing increased density for infill housing projects, doubling down on such innovations as modular housing, and increasing support for the preservation of the existing affordable housing stock. In this report, we attempt to inform such an approach by focusing on one channel that could be an important part of the overall approach: the adaptive reuse (AR) of underutilized commercial real estate (CRE) as multiunit housing. The objectives of this report were to (1) generate evidence on the potential capacity of AR to bolster the supply of housing in the region, (2) assess how recent trends in prices and utilization rates of CRE affect the financial feasibility of AR, (3) explore how the geographic distribution of underutilized CRE coincides with social and environmental goals related to the siting of housing, and (4) assess how the distinct aspects of AR projects and relevant policy might affect the feasibility of this approach in terms of meeting regional housing goals. This research was conducted by the RAND Center for Housing and Homelessness in Los Angeles (CHHLA), part of the Community Health and Environmental Policy Program within RAND’s Social and Economic Well-Being division. The CHHLA is focused on providing policymakers and stakeholders with timely research and analysis to address the dual crises of housing affordability and homelessness in the Los Angeles region and beyond. For more information, visit www.rand.org/chhla.