A new macroseismic intensity prediction equation is derived for the central and eastern United States and is used to estimate the magnitudes of the 1811–1812 New Madrid, Missouri, and 1886 Charleston, South Carolina, earthquakes. This work improves upon previous derivations of intensity prediction equations by including additional intensity data, correcting magnitudes in the intensity datasets to moment magnitude, and accounting for the spatial and temporal population distributions. The new relation leads to moment magnitude estimates for the New Madrid earthquakes that are toward the lower range of previous studies. Depending on the intensity dataset to which the new macroseismic intensity prediction equation is applied, mean estimates for the 16 December 1811, 23 January 1812, and 7 February 1812 mainshocks, and 16 December 1811 dawn aftershock range from 6.9 to 7.1, 6.8 to 7.1, 7.3 to 7.6, and 6.3 to 6.5, respectively. One‐sigma uncertainties on any given estimate could be as high as 0.3–0.4 magnitude units. We also estimate a magnitude of 6.9±0.3 for the 1886 Charleston, South Carolina, earthquake. We find a greater range of magnitude estimates when also accounting for multiple macroseismic intensity prediction equations. The inability to accurately and precisely ascertain magnitude from intensities increases the uncertainty of the central United States earthquake hazard by nearly a factor of two. Relative to the 2008 national seismic hazard maps, our range of possible 1811–1812 New Madrid earthquake magnitudes increases the coefficient of variation of seismic hazard estimates for Memphis, Tennessee, by 35%–42% for ground motions expected to be exceeded with a 2% probability in 50 years and by 27%–35% for ground motions expected to be exceeded with a 10% probability in 50 years.

After going up steadily for the last century, the female labor force participation (FLFP) rate in the United States suddenly leveled off in the early 1990s. Using March Current Population Survey data, I find that the FLFP stopped rising for birth cohorts from the 1950s on. My shift-share analyses show that both the plateau and the earlier upward trend in FLFP appeared within almost every category broken down by education, marital status, and child-rearing.

The Birmingham Metropolitan Area experienced land use land cover (LULC) change over the last three decades, such as the development of urban area, the development of transportation system, deforestation, and rise of population. The main purpose of the thesis is to model and analyze the LULC change through last three decades in Birmingham area, and also simulate the LULC in next three decades. Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper (TM) and Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager (OLI) data from U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is used for investigating the LULC in Birmingham area. Supervised Classification is used; the maximum overall accuracy is 86.33%. Drivers such as transportation, topographic measures, population and income, location measures are analyzed. Remote sensing indices are also derived from Landsat data, such as NDVI, NDBI, MNDWI, and LST. Pearson’s Correlation test is run among the LULC proportion, drivers within counties and census tracts. Finally, the cellular automation model SLEUTH is used to simulate the future pattern of LULC. The results shows the Birmingham experienced a significant LULC change in last three decades. Transportation and slope are two main factors in terms of LULC change. In summary, the thesis completes a systematic LULC classification in Birmingham area in last three decades, and uses different methods to model and analyze LULC and eventually simulate the LULC pattern in next three decades.

This study examines the consequences of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) dependent coverage provision for the health of U.S. young adults aged\-25. Using data from the Current Population SurveyMarch Supplement for the years 2007-2012 and ordered logistic regression analyses, we examine self-rated health and its association with dependent health insurance coverage for 19- to 25-year-olds and a comparison group of 28- to 34-year-olds before and after implementation of the ACA. Compared to 28- to 34-year-olds, results indicate the post-ACA period (2010-2011) is associated with increased access to dependent health insurance coverage and improved health for young adults aged 19-25 relative to the period before implementation (2008-2009). More than half of the difference in health improvement across age groups can be attributed to changes in dependent coverage. These results are the first to demonstrate a positive health benefit resulting from the implementation of the ACA.

From 1940 to 1960 across twenty large U.S. cities, rents fell, renters' incomes rose, rents share in household budgets fell, and, as expected, renters real housing consumption increased. From 1970 to 2010, rents increased, renters incomes decreased, rents budget share rose, but, unexpectedly, renters real housing consumption increased. We find neither demographics nor housing supply factors account for the anomalous post-1970 increase in renters housing consumption. We conclude that after 1970 there was a nationwide increase in renters preferences for housing consumption. With incomes falling, renters increased housing consumption by decreasing consumption of other necessities including food, clothing, and transportation.

Objectives. We calculated cancer incidence for Arab Americans in California; Detroit, Michigan; and New Jersey, and compared rates with non-Hispanic, non-Arab Whites (NHNAWs); Blacks; and Hispanics.Methods. We conducted a study using population-based data. We linked new cancers diagnosed in 2000 from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Program (SEER) to an Arab surname database. We used standard SEER definitions and methodology for calculating rates. Population estimates were extracted from the 2000 US Census. We calculated incidence and rate ratios.Results. Arab American men and women had similar incidence rates across the 3 geographic regions, and the rates were comparable to NHNAWs. However, the thyroid cancer rate was elevated among Arab American women compared with NHNAWs, Hispanics, and Blacks. For all sites combined, for prostate and lung cancer, Arab American men had a lower incidence than Blacks and higher incidence than Hispanics in all 3 geographic regions. Arab American male bladder cancer incidence was higher than that in Hispanics and Blacks in these regions.Conclusions. Our results suggested that further research would benefit from the federal recognition of Arab Americans as a specified ethnicity to estimate and address the cancer burden in this growing segment of the population.

In recent years, immigration has emerged as a highly contentious local issue in the United States, particularly in non-traditional settlement areas like new metropolitan gateways and suburban communities. This paper uses survey data from the Pew Research Center to analyse how geographic context within and across metropolitan gateways influences both perceptions of the local impacts of immigration, as well as respondents' attitudes toward immigration as a national issue. While immigrant concentration is positively associated with perceptions of immigration as a local problem, a relative absence of immigrants in a respondent's community predicts negative attitudes towards immigrants at the national level. Further, areas that respond unfavourably to immigration at the local level do not always coincide with the areas that are most opposed to immigration to the United States more generally. As such, this analysis identifies tangible differences between immigration as a local and national issue, suggesting a distinct unevenness in the multi-scalar politics of US immigration.

We present a heterogeneous agent model with occupational choice and endogenous accumulation of skills to examine the organization of production both within and across countries. Quality and quantity of workers are imperfect substitutes. The span of con- trol is endogenously determined by the quality of workers assigned to an entrepreneur. We calibrate the model to match certain features of the US economy. It yields a number of empirical implications for firm heterogeneity, occupational choice and the life cycle dynamics of firm size and earnings. Varying the aggregate efficiency of economies, we find that entrepreneur and worker human capital can substantially improve our under- standing of various empirical regularities pertaining to the organization of production across countries.

This study examines how associations between socioeconomic status (SES) and lung and pancreatic cancer mortality have changed over time in the U.S. The fundamental cause hypothesis predicts as diseases become more preventable due to innovation in medical knowledge or technology, individuals with greater access to resources will disproportionately benefit, triggering the formation or worsening of health disparities along social cleavages. We examine socioeconomic disparities in mortality due to lung cancer, a disease that became increasingly preventable with the development and dissemination of knowledge of the causal link between smoking cigarettes and lung cancer, and compare it to that of pancreatic cancer, a disease for which there have been no major prevention or treatment innovations. County-level disease-specific mortality rates for those ≥45 years, adjusted for sex, race, and age during 1968–2009 are derived from death certificate and population data from the National Center for Health Statistics. SES is measured using five county-level variables from four decennial censuses, interpolating values for intercensal years. Negative binomial regression was used to model mortality. Results suggest the impact of SES on lung cancer mortality increases 0.5% per year during this period. Although lung cancer mortality rates are initially higher in higher SES counties, by 1980 persons in lower SES counties are at greater risk and by 2009 the difference in mortality between counties with SES one SD above compared to one SD below average was 33 people per 100,000. In contrast, we find a small but significant reverse SES gradient in pancreatic cancer mortality that does not change over time. These data support the fundamental cause hypothesis: social conditions influencing access to resources more greatly impact mortality when preventative knowledge exists. Public health interventions and policies should facilitate more equitable distribution of new health-enhancing knowledge and faster uptake and utilization among lower SES groups.

The increase in wage inequality since 1980 in the United States has been more pronounced in large cities, even after accounting for differences in the composition of the workforce across locations. Using Census of Population and Census of Manufacturers data aggregated to the local labor market level, this paper examines the importance of changes in the factor bias of agglomeration economies, capital-skill complementarity, changes in the relative supply of skilled labor, and mutual interactions for understanding the more rapid increases in wage inequality in larger cities between 1980 and 2007. Parameter estimates of a production function that incorporates each of these mechanisms indicate strong evidence of capital-skill complementarity, increasing skill bias of agglomeration economies and and declining capital bias of agglomeration economies. Immigration shocks serve as a source of exogenous variation across metropolitan areas in changes to the relative supply of skilled labor versus unskilled labor. The direct relative demand effect of the increasing skill bias of agglomeration economies rationalizes 79-91 percent of the more rapid increase in wage inequality in more populous local labor markets. Interactions between capital-skill complementarity and changes in the factor bias of agglomeration economies have generated outward and inward shifts in the relative demand for skilled labor in larger cities that almost offset.

Using data from the IPUMS-USA, the present research focuses on trends in the gender earnings gap in the United States between 1970 and 2010. The major goal of this article is to understand the sources of the convergence in mens and womens earnings in the public and private sectors as well as the stagnation of this trend in the new millennium. For this purpose, we delineate temporal changes in the role played by major sources of the gap. Several components are identified: the portion of the gap attributed to gender differences in human-capital resources; labor supply; sociodemographic attributes; occupational segregation; and the unexplained portion of the gap. The findings reveal a substantial reduction in the gross gender earnings gap in both sectors of the economy. Most of the decline is attributed to the reduction in the unexplained portion of the gap, implying a significant decline in economic discrimination against women. In contrast to discrimination, the role played by human capital and personal attributes in explaining the gender pay gap is relatively small in both sectors. Differences between the two sectors are not only in the size and pace of the reduction but also in the significance of the two major sources of the gap. Working hours have become the most important factor with respect to gender pay inequality in both sectors, although much more dominantly in the private sector. The declining gender segregation may explain the decreased impact of occupations on the gender pay gap in the private sector. In the public sector, by contrast, gender segregation still accounts for a substantial portion of the gap. The findings are discussed in light of the theoretical literature on sources of gender economic inequality and in light of the recent stagnation of the trend.

Background Potentially harmful workplace conditions have been linked to occupationally-related illness and injury, costing billions of dollars in health care and lost wages. This study compares workers in the same jobs to see whether demographic differences in exposures persist. Methods Data were from the 2010 National Health Interview Survey. Descriptive analyses and logistic regression models controlling for job assessed differences in three exposures: 1) skin contact with chemicals, 2) vapors, gas, dust, and fumes, and 3) second-hand smoke among non-smokers. Results Comparing workers in the same jobs, women and college graduates experienced a lower risk of exposure. White workers experienced the highest risks of exposure, except for the heightened risk of second-hand smoke exposure faced by black non-smokers. Conclusion Disparities in exposure to chemicals, vapors, and second-hand smoke persist by sex, race/ethnicity, and educational attainment, even within the same jobs. Workplace policies should ensure safety equally for all employees.

This article uses data on prisoners incarcerated for misdemeanors in late-nineteenth-century U.S. cities to assess a three-part argument that asserts that threats to white dominance prompted efforts of social control directed against African Americans and foreign-born whites: (1) For African Americans, competition with whites for jobs instigated efforts by whites to enforce the racial barrier. (2) For the foreign-born, upward mobility became associated with white identity, which allowed those who became white to be seen as less threatening. We thus expect the threat from foreign-born whites to be highest where their concentration in poverty was greatest. (3) We suggest that violence against a given boundary raises the salience of group threat, so a positive relationship should exist between prior violence against a group and its level of incarceration for misdemeanors. Using panel analyses of cities from 1890 through 1910, we find supporting evidence for the first two arguments and partial support for the third.

We follow the inverted optimal tax approach to characterize and compare “tax-benefit revealed” social preferences in 17 EU countries and the US. Following Bargain et al. [2013], we invert the optimal income taxation model on the distributions of net and gross incomes and use labor supply elasticities consistently estimated on the same data. The present paper focuses on new outputs of particular interest for the current policy debate on in-work versus traditional social transfers. Results are as follows: We find that revealed marginal social welfare functions verify minimal consistency checks and, notably, respect Paretianity overall. An exception is due to the treatment of the working poor in countries with standard, demogrant transfers. We illustrate for some countries how the recent policy trend in Continental and Nordic Europe tends to correct this “anomaly” through redistributive reforms in favor of the working poor. Finally, we compare revealed and stated social preferences using direct survey information and suggest explanations for the apparent discrepancies.

We study the evolution in remaining life expectancy and healthy life expectancy of the U.S. population from 1972 to 2020, distinguished by genders. We propose a methodology to forecast life expectancy and healthy life expectancy by incorporating the joint future developments of age-specific mortality and health prevalence rates, GDP, and the unemployment rate. We also quantify the uncertainties of (healthy) life expectancy taking into account the joint evolution of mortality, health, and macroeconomic variables. Finally, we make a comparison with the corresponding models without GDP and the unemployment rate or without taking into account the joint development of mortality and health.

We compare two large-scale policy interventions aimed at reducing crime: subsidizing high school completion and increasing the length of prison sentences. To this purpose we use a life-cycle model with endogenous education and crime choices. We apply the model to property crime and calibrate it to U.S. data. We find that targeting crime reductions through increases in high school graduation rates entails large efficiency and welfare gains. These gains are absent if the same crime reduction is achieved by increasing the length of sentences. We also find that general equilibrium effects explain roughly one half of the reduction in crime from subsidizing high school.

Because homeownership continues to be a key mechanism underlying racial inequality in America, recent developments that led to the foreclosure crisis bring to the forefront issues concerning minority homeowners' ability to sustain ownership. This article uses longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to examine racial differences in the likelihood of homeownership exit over the last four decades. We find that black homeowners are at a significantly higher risk of transitioning to renter status than are white homeowners, even after accounting for life-course, socioeconomic, and housing characteristics, and the selection into homeownership. Most importantly, we show that the racial gap in ownership exit has widened substantially over time, especially among owners who purchased their homes in the 1990s or later. These findings are consistent with arguments that the nature of racial stratification in U.S. housing markets has shifted over time from overt market exclusion to market exploitation.