A standard object of empirical analysis in labor economics is a modified Mincer wage function in which an individuals log wage is a function of education, experience, and race. We analyze this approach in a context where individuals live and work in different locations (thus facing different housing prices and wages). Our model justifies the traditional approach, but with the important caveat that the regression should include location-specific fixed effects. Empirical analysis of men in U.S. labor markets demonstrates that failure to condition on location causes us to significantly overstate the decline in black-white wage disparity over the past 60 years.

This paper estimates labor supply elasticities of married men and women allowing for heterogeneity among couples (by educational attainments of husbands and wives) and modeling explicitly how household members interact and make their labor supply decisions. We find that the labor supply decisions of husbands and wives depend on each other, unless both spouses are highly educated (college or above). For high-educated couples, the labor supply decisions of husband and wife are jointly determined only if they have pre-school children. We also find that labor supply elasticities differ greatly among households. The participation own wage elasticity is largest (0.77) for low-educated women married to low-educated men, and smallest (0.03) for high-educated women married to low-educated men. The own wage elasticities for low-educated women married to high-educated men are similar and fall between these two extremes (about 0.30). For all types of couples, participation elasticity of non-labor family income is small. We also find that cross wage elasticities for married women are relatively small (less than -0.05) if they are married to low education med are larger (-0.37) if they are married to high-educated men. Allowing for heterogeneity across couples yields an overall participation wage elasticity of 0.56, a cross wage elasticity of -0.13 and an income elasticity of -0.006 for married women. The analysis in this paper provides a natural framework to study how changes in education attainments and household structure affect aggregate labor supply elasticities.

Nearly three-quarters (73 percent) of enrollments in Americas major public benefits programs are from working families. But many of them work in jobs that pay wages so low that their paychecks do not generate enough income to provide for lifes basic necessities. Low wages paid by employers in the fast-food industry create especially acute problems for the families of workers in this industry. Median pay for core front-line fast-food jobs is $8.69 an hour, with many jobs paying at or near the minimum wage. Benefits are also scarce for front-line fast-food workers; an estimated 87 percent do not receive health benefits through their employer. The combination of low wages and benefits, often coupled with part-time employment, means that many of the families of fast-food workers must rely on taxpayer-funded safety net programs to make ends meet.

Studies have linked cross-national variations in occupational gender segregation with various economic, social and normative characteristics of countries. This study contributes to the research on the role of normative or 'cultural' characteristics by examining the influence of the level of technical progress, professionalization and Christian religion on cross-national variations in occupational gender segregation. The analysis is based on a sample of 33 countries. Variations in gender distribution are assessed using a reliable measure of occupational segregation, marginal matching. The analysis uses recent survey data (collected between 2002 and 2006) and a differentiated occupational classification scheme at the ISCO-88 3-digit level. Controlling for other confounding influences, the study finds higher occupational segregation of sexes in countries with higher levels of technical progress and in countries where Catholicism or Protestantism is a dominant religion.

Multifamily development patterns remain an overlooked aspect of the research examining urban growth and morphology. This study examines multifamily development patterns in the Kansas City Metropolitan Statistical Area from 1990 to 2010. Additionally, this study examines patterns of multifamily infill in order to determine (1) the growth rate of multifamily development within four infill scenarios, (2) whether high density neighborhoods receive disproportionate amounts of multifamily development, and (3) the rates of development in inner city, inner-ring, and outerring neighborhoods. This study found that rates of multifamily development were grew at up to twice the rate of single-family development in certain infill areas. Additionally, it found that multifamily development was dispersed throughout the metropolitan region, with prominent development taking place in inner city, inner-ring, outer-ring, and sprawling areas.

Woody invasive plants are an increasing component of the New England flora. Their success and geographic spread are mediated in part by landscape characteristics. We tests whether woody invasive plant richness was higher in landscapes with many forest edges relative to other forest types and explained land use/land cover and forest fragmentation patters using socioeconomic and physical variables. our models demonstrated that woody invasive plant richness was higher in landscapes with more edge forest relative to patch, perforates, and especially core forest types. Using spatially-explicit, hierarchical Bayesian, compositional data models we showed that infrastructure and physical factors, including road length and elevation range, and time-lagged socioeconomic factors, primarily population, help to explain development and forest fragmentation patterns. Our social-ecological approach identified landscape patterns driven by human development and linked them to increased woody plant invasions. Identifying these landscape patterns will aid ongoing efforts to use current distribution patterns to better predict where invasive species may occur in unsampled regions under current and future conditions.

Understanding how families make economic decisions about how to allocate scarce household resources is crucial for the development and implementation of effective development policy. This dissertation investigates three specific questions related to this broad area of research. The first chapter demonstrates the importance of information asymmetries in transnational households, where physical distance between family members can make information barriers especially acute. I implement an experiment among 1,300 Salvadoran migrants in Washington, DC and their family members in El Salvador that examines how (1) changing the ability of participants to monitor each other and (2) revealing migrant preferences can affect the sending and spending of remittances. Migrants make an incentivized decision about how much of a cash windfall to keep and how much to send home, and recipients decide how to allocate the spending of a remittance. Migrants remit significantly more when their choice is observed by recipients, and this effect is concentrated among pairs where recipient ability to punish migrants is plausibly high. The results support a model of remittance sending where migrants react strategically to being monitored, but only when recipients can enforce remittance agreements. Recipients make spending choices closer to the migrants preferences when they are revealed, suggesting that recipients choices may be inadvertently affected by imperfect information on migrant preferences. Together, these results indicate that information imperfections in families are varied and can affect resource allocation in both strategic and inadvertent ways.

This dissertation is comprised of three essays, which study how public policy affects child and family violence. In addition to evaluating the efficacy of existing policies, this dissertation seeks to understand where there might be opportunities for interventions to reduce family violence. Specifically, the first two papers investigate the effects of existing policies state-level pro-arrest policies and the federal Gun Control Act Expansion of 1996 - on domestic homicide rates. The third paper uses New York State as a case study to understand how county level unemployment rates affect county level child abuse referral rates.

Too many infants in the United States are delivered with unhealthy weights. Low birth weight is a noteworthy public health problem because it is a major risk factor for infant mortality. It consumes a disproportionately high level of health care resources and its prevalence continues to rise despite investment of public resources aimed toward improving birth outcomes. One solution has been to ensure satisfactory maternal health by preventing unintended pregnancy and promoting optimal birth spacing. Federal and state governments have responded to the need for managing the timing of conception using public policy to assure access to family planning services, particularly for low–income residents who might not otherwise be able to access or afford them. Policy implementation at the state level has relied on the Medicaid program to finance and deliver contraceptive medical care to populations who would not ordinarily be eligible for basic program enrollment, using Section 1115 family planning waivers. A policy question relevant to the problem of low birth weight is whether states with Section 1115 family planning waivers in effect exhibit significantly better infant birth weight rates as a result. This study evaluated the extent to which these rates varied in response to implementation of waiver policies, while controlling for inter–state differences in population demographic composition, labor force factors, and other non–medical determinants of health. Public use data from the U.S. Natality files and the Current Population Survey were used to construct a panel data set including observations for 50 states and the District of Columbia for each year from 1990 through 2010. Multivariate linear regression models including state and year fixed–effects consistently produced ordinary least squares (OLS) coefficients on the policy intervention PREVIEW variable that were statistically insignificant and substantively small in all but non–Hispanic Black populations. Estimated effects observed for this sub–group suggest that implementation of Section 1115 family planning waivers is associated with significantly higher low birth weight rates, an unanticipated outcome. Results produced by this study failed to support the research hypothesis that Medicaid family planning waivers are effective in lowering the prevalence of infants that weigh 2,500 g or less at birth, when measured as a percent of total live births. Waivers may nevertheless be functioning to reduce the number of infants at healthy and unhealthy weights alike, for all populations studied except non–Hispanic Black. It is critical to note that although low birth weight rates were significantly higher for non–Hispanic Black populations following policy implementation, it seems unlikely that absolute prevalence increased. These results are more likely a measurement artifact related to an overall decline in birth rates combined with possible changes in composition of the full birth weight distribution. Nevertheless, ensuring access to contraceptive medical care appears to be an effective approach to mitigate low birth weight prevalence by reducing the number of these births, but policy alternatives other than subsidized contraceptive medical care ought to be considered for reducing the proportion of total births that are under 2,500 g.

This article estimates trends in the poverty rates in Wisconsin for the overall population, for children, and for the elderly between 2008 and 2010, using an alternative poverty measure. Our measure is similar to the federally implemented Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) but customized to reflect the place-specific needs and resources of Wisconsin. Unlike the official poverty measure, the Wisconsin Poverty Measure (WPM) considers tax credits and noncash benefits and adjusts for work-related and medical care expenses and relative living costs statewide and across substate regions. Using the American Community Survey and Wisconsin administrative data, the WPM shows essentially no change in state poverty rates between 2008 and 2009 and a decline between 2009 and 2010, although state poverty levels calculated via the official measure continued to increase between 2008 and 2010. We discuss the policy implications of results and how the WPM compares to the SPM and other local poverty measures.

This dissertation consists of three quantitative papers addressing contemporary issues in health policy. The first paper draws on a survey of 2,678 adults from the United States and four European countries to assess demand for a hypothetical early medical test for Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Overall, 67% of respondents reported that they would be “very” or “somewhat” likely to get the test if it were available. Through logistic regression analysis, we find that interest was higher among those worried about developing AD, with an immediate blood relative with AD, and who have provided care for AD patients. Knowing that AD is fatal did not influence demand, except among those with an affected blood relative. We expect that a test becoming available could precipitate the creation of a large constituency of asymptomatic, diagnosed adults, affecting a range of health policy decisions. The second paper utilizes Current Population Survey data to explore state-level Medicaid enrollment rates among eligible parents between 2003 and 2010, focusing on the interaction of race and ethnicity and political ideology. Using logistic regression analysis, we find that average take-up for Hispanics in conservative states was 23%, whereas take-up was 38% for both whites and blacks in those states, adjusting for state and individual demographics. These differences abated in liberal and moderate states. Among eligible Hispanics, enrollment rates were less than half as high in conservative states than in liberal states (23% versus 61%). Adjusting for differences in state Medicaid policies narrowed these disparities significantly, highlighting the importance of new provisions aimed at streamlining enrollment procedures across all states. The last paper draws on public and private data from 2007 to 2010 to analyze how administrative spending by health insurers and providers varied across states with different levels of insurance and hospital market concentration. Using regression analysis, we find that in provider offices, high levels of insurance concentration were associated with lower administrative costs. If all states were as concentrated as the most concentrated state in our sample, we would expect nationwide savings of $3.6 billion in administrative expenses. However, market concentration did not reduce administrative spending by insurers or hospitals.

Current literature is mixed on immigrations effect on native wages in the United States. Some researchers find positive wage effects, while others find mixed or negative effects. The lack of consensus is due to variance in sampling, assumptions, and functional forms. This paper seeks to determine what relationship, if any, exists between immigration and wages for native-born Hispanics. We find that the ratio of immigrants to the labor force is a statistically significant variable at the national level, as well as for native Hispanics and white non-Hispanic workers. However, this variable translates to very few changes in the wages for these groups. This suggests that there is some other factor shielding natives from immigrations effect, such as language ability.

We analyze to which extent social inequality aversion differs across nations when controlling for actual country differences in labor supply responses. Towards this aim, we estimate labor supply elasticities at both extensive and intensive margins for 17 EU countries and the US. Using the same data, inequality aversion is measured as the degree of redistribution implicit in current tax-benefit systems, when these systems are deemed optimal. We find relatively small differences in labor supply elasticities across countries. However, this changes the cross-country ranking in inequality aversion compared to scenarios following the standard approach of using uniform elasticities. Differences in redistributive views are significant between three groups of nations. Labor supply responses are systematically larger at the extensive margin and often larger for the lowest earnings groups, exacerbating the implicit Rawlsian views for countries with traditional social assistance programs. Given the possibility that labor supply responsiveness was underestimated at the time these programs were implemented, we show that such wrong perceptions would lead to less pronounced and much more similar levels of inequality aversion.

The Handbook illuminates complex facets of the economic and social provisioning process across the globe. The contributors – academics, policy analysts and practitioners from wide-ranging areas of expertise – discuss the methodological approaches to, and analytical tools for, conducting research on the gender dimension of economic life. They also provide analyses of major issues facing both developed and developing countries. Topics explored include civil society, discrimination, informal work, working time, central bank policy, health, education, food security, poverty, migration, environmental activism and the financial crisis.

This paper uses a sample of adoptees to study the genetic mechanisms underlying intergenerational associations in chronic health conditions. I begin by estimating baseline intergenerational models with a sample of over 100,000 parent-child pairs, and find that children with a parent who has a specific chronic health condition are at least 100% more likely to have the same condition themselves. To assess the role of genetic mechanisms in generating these strong correlations, I estimate models using a sample of approximately 2,200 adoptees, and find that genetic transmission accounts for only 20%-30% of the baseline associations. As falsification tests, I repeat this exercise using health measures with externally established levels of genetic determination (height and chicken pox), and the results suggest that comparisons of biological and adopted children are a valid method of isolating genetic effects in my sample. Finally, to corroborate these adoptee-based estimates, I examine health correlations among monozygotic twins, which provide an upper bound estimate of genetic influences, and find a similarly modest role for genetic transmission. I conclude that intergenerational health transmission is an important hindrance to overall socioeconomic mobility, but that the majority of transmission occurs through environmental factors or gene-environment interactions, leaving scope for interventions to effectively mitigate health persistence.

The following study is concerned with the problems posed by contemporary unemployment—especially the U.S. but also globally to some extent. The most immediate problem is the dominance of neoclassical models, which routinely neglect the deeper issues raised by contemporary mass unemployment. To go beyond these inadequacies, the study also assesses the performance of sociological interpretations. One key finding is that sociological analyses also largely fail to provide a compelling theory of unemployment and, moreover, that most perspectives implicitly adopt problematic assumptions from neoclassical economics. This highlights the dual nature of the problems posed by unemployment: on one hand, it is an urgent social issue; and, on the other hand, it exemplifies significant weakness within most sociological paradigms. In order to address the challenges posed by unemployment, the narrative centers on the resolution of three key anomalies of unemployment: 1) persistent unemployment; 2) so-called “jobless recoveries;” and 3) the rise of worker precariousness. The anomalies v are taken as evidence of paradigmatic contradictions within neoclassical economics and, to some extent, sociology. The main theoretical contribution of the study is a careful reconstruction of Marx’s classical theory of the reserve army of labor (part of “The General Law of Accumulation”), which has inspired all critical sociological perspectives on labor markets to date. The investigation highlights distinctive characteristics of “political-economic sociology,” a term that refers to economic sociologists who draw heavily on notions of class and power reminiscent of classical political economy and classical sociology, forming an important bridge with heterodox economic approaches. The theory of the reserve army is in need of “renewal,” however, because even political-economic sociologist have failed to carry the analysis forward and build upon the firm foundation provided by Marx. The study’s conclusion is that the reserve army framework has enormous potential to strengthen existing work within political-economic sociology.

This report was prepared for use by the Generation Next College and Career Readiness Network in developing their plans to improve college and career readiness of Minneapolis and Saint Paul students. Generation Next is an initiative committed to closing the achievement gap among Twin Cities low-income students and students of color. It is an unprecedented partnership of key education, community, government, and business organizations dedicated to accelerating educational achievement for all our children from early childhood to early college and career. The Generation Next model includes a shared community vision, evidence-based decision making, collaborative action, and investment and sustainability.

This study evaluates CUNYs Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP) from a benefit-cost perspective. ASAP is designed to accelerate degree completion within three years at community colleges. This report builds on the CUNY evaluations of ASAP, which provide consistent evidence for the dramatic success of ASAP on increasing the timely completion of associate degrees. Although ASAP requires more resources per student than the traditional associate program, the cost per graduate was found to be lower because of its much higher effectiveness in producing graduates.

The conventional wisdom in the immigration literature is that firms are uniformly pro-immigration and have a relatively out-sized influence over immigration policy. If this is true, why do we see increasing immigration restrictions throughout the world? In this paper, I argue that firms are not uniformly pro-immigration. Instead, their preferences depend on their need for unskilled labor, their exposure to trade and their ability to move production overseas. Using a formal model, I show that increasing the capital/ skill intensity or productivity of production leads to a decreased need for migrant labor; that trade exposure leads firms that use immigrant labor to exit the market, decreasing the demand for immigrant labor in the economy, and that increasing the ability to move overseas reduces firms incentives to lobby for open immigration. Using a case study of an agricultural trade group and a textile trade group, I show that firm behave as the model predicts.

The living arrangements of children appear to be diverging according to social class. Although children of college educated parents enjoy relatively stable family lives, children of less educated parents tend to have experienced more family changes in recent decades (McLanahan, 2004; Cherlin, 2010). This profile presents trends since 1980 in maternal relationship status and education from the perspective of minor children. In addition, it illustrates how changes over the past 30 years in mothers relationship status varied depending on mothers educational attainment.