The promise of open data and statistics for sharing and integrating data from multiple sources is great. It is especially hopeful for combining data from different disciplines to explore the interaction of human activity and the environment. However, without adequate infrastructure to support a clear linkage along spatial and temporal dimensions, the researcher is left on their own to develop these all important relationships. The difficulties are great, for example, data without clear spatial boundaries, statistics representing dissimilar points in time or averages of multiple points in time, inconsistent data availability over time, or mismatched spatial boundaries between data sources. As the research focuses in on smaller areas, urban, suburban , and regional statistics, the problems increase. The Minnesota Population Center (MPC) at the University of Minnesota is dedicated to addressing these issues. Known primarily for its large integrated collection of worldwide census microdata, IPUMS, the MPC has also made available historical collections of U.S. Census and other aggregate statistics along with the spatial boundary files associated with those geographies in the National Historical Geographic Information System (NHGIS). The NHGIS is currently increasing its usability by creating time series for common statistical tables. A new project funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, Terra Populus, brings together population, environmental, land use, climate, and areal data through location-based integration. The project will provide an organization and technical frame work to preserve, integrate, disseminate, and analyze global-scale spatiotemporal data describing population and the environment.

Are moderates in the United States Senate powerbrokers or weak legislators? While modern political science theories like the Pivotal Politics Model of Lawmaking would argue in favor of the idea of powerful moderates, this dissertation argues that previous theories neglect the electoral circumstances of moderates in the modern Senate era, and as such, overestimate their legislative power. I argue that unlike their ideological counterparts that are elected from states that share their ideological identity, moderates are elected from one of two constituencies: states that have a partisan lean to one party but have enough “swing voters” to vote in a moderate from the opposite party, or states that are nearly evenly divided in terms of partisanship. Because of this, moderate senators must avoid active participation on bills (by amending or even speaking in favor of them) so as to maintain their weak coalitions. In my empirical analysis of these states, in which I examine ideology and partisanship using survey and Census data, I have found that there indeed are true swing states as well as states with partisan advantages that elect moderates in addition to a large number of states that are partisan enough to never elect a moderate . This puts moderates in an undesirable position of having to appease two distinct constituencies in order to remain competitive for reelection. With the weak position that these moderates are in, their legislative behavior will differ from what other legislative theories propose. As a result, I argue that centrists focus more on avoiding traceability and maximizing ideological flexibility than maximizing policy outcomes. I test this by examining legislative behavior on two bills, the Affordable Care Act of 2009 and the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003. I find that for both pieces of legislation, the senators that were most active were not moderates, but ideologues. These findings suggest that moderates are indeed conflicted as they become less active on highly salient and controversial bills. They nearly disappear on legislative action, offer speeches that defer power to others, and even go as to vote against their own preferences in an effort to avoid news media attention. These conclusions have broad implications to the policymaking process. Lawmaking would need to be reevaluated to being much more variable and less moderating than previous theories supposed as the process relies less on the work of moderates and more on party leaders.

Putnam (1995)'s seminal work was one of the first to describe the decline of social capital in the US after the 1960s, a period that saw a large increase in the flow of immigrants into the US. Using the Volunteer Supplement of the September Sample of the Current Population Survey (CPS) between 2004 and 2011, we examine the relationship between immigration and social capital in the US, measured by membership of organizations, volunteering and hours volunteered. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper to address this question. Once we correct for immigrants' self-selection to different destinations using a supply-push instrumental variable, we find that a one standard deviation increase in the number of immigrants decreases volunteering by 0.08 to 0.12 standard deviations, or that the 8.7 million legal immigrants who entered the US between 2005 and 2011 reduced the probability Americans volunteered between 27.8% and 35.7%. From our robustness checks we argue that the reduction in volunteering by natives is driven by the the fact that new immigrants have a lower social capital, reducing the benefits of volunteering. Our results have important implications for public policy. We show that migrants' social capital has an impact on receiving communities. Therefore immigrants' social capital (such as having relatives living at the receiving community) should be taken into consideration. Future research should focus on what is the optimal weight to give to the presence of family members versus, for instance, educational level of the immigrants.

Federal and state governments in the United States make extensive use of student poverty rates in compensatory aid programs like Title I. Unfortunately, the measures of student poverty that drive funding allocations under such programs are biased because they fail to reflect geographic differences in the cost of living. In this study, we construct alternative poverty income thresholds based on regional differences in the wage level for low-skilled workers. We then examine the distribution of Title I revenues after adjusting poverty rates for geographic differences in the cost of living and adjusting Title I revenues for geographic differences in the purchasing power of school districts. Our findings turn conventional wisdom on its head. We find that when we fully adjust for regional differences, Title I funding patterns disproportionately favor rural school districts in low cost-of-living states. We conclude with policy recommendations for revising Title I funding formulas.

The statewide Census GIS datasets were created to streamline the process for completing demographic assessments for NCDOT projects. The Census GIS datasets were created using both the decennial and American Community Survey (ACS) data from the U.S. Census Bureau. In addition to the Census GIS datasets, a corresponding Demographic Excel Tool is included, which is comprised of the most commonly used tables in reporting by the NCDOT Community Studies.

This dissertation consists of three essays in Housing and Family Economics. In the first chapter, I analyze the interstate migration patterns of families and the effect of labor force attachment of women on joint migration decisions. I show that as the earned income of spouses become similar, the probability of migration falls substantially. This observation is robust in the sense that 1) it holds even after controlling for a rich set of factors that are strongly correlated with relative income, 2) it yields qualitatively similar results when I model the incidence of attrition as another exit, 3) it consistently disappears for the shorter distance moves. I also find that the negative relationship between income similarity of couples and interstate migration is especially strong for supposedly more settled families and couples that have similar labor market characteristics beyond income levels. In the second chapter, I quantify the contribution of women's labor force attachment to the declining trend in interstate migration. I first document that for families in which both spouses have similar incomes, the propensity to migrate is significantly lower than for families with unequal spousal earnings. I then construct a labor search model in which households make location, marriage, and divorce decisions. I calibrate the model to match aggregate U.S. statistics on mobility, marriage and labor flows and use it to quantify the effect of a fall in the gender wage gap on interstate migration. Narrowing the gender wage gap increases women's contribution to total family income; it induces a higher share of families with both spouses working and more couples with similar incomes. The model predicts that the observed change in the gender wage gap accounts for 35% of the drop in family migration since 1981. Finally, in the third chapter, I examine the effects of homeownership on individuals' unemployment durations in the USA. I take into account that an unemployment spell can terminate with a job or with a non-participation transition. The endogeneity of homeownership is addressed through the estimation of a full maximum likelihood function which jointly models the competing hazards and the probability of being a homeowner. Unobserved factors contributing to the probability of being a homeowner are allowed to be correlated with unobservable heterogeneity in the hazard rates. Tentative results suggest that unemployed homeowners are less likely to find a job which is especially stronger for outright owners. I also find that homeowners' nonparticipation hazard does not significantly differ from that of renters' although having a mortgage lowers the chance of exiting the labor force.

Health care coverage is a major topic of debate in the United States. The cost of American health care continues to increase and currently exceeds that of any other nation. This factor may affect health care providers, employers, and the general population. The United States remains alone among the economic developed countries in not providing health care coverage to its entire population. This has become a national dilemma resulting in hospitalizations and expensive treatments for diseases that, if detected early through preventative medical services, could have possible been prevented. The purpose of the current quantitative, comparative study was to analyze the utilization of preventive medical services rendered to the adult population of the United States age 18 and older, depending on the type of health care coverage, for the years 2003 to 2007. The data were compiled from two national public domain repositories, the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey and the National Health Interview Survey. The Chi-square test was performed to determine the relationship between the health coverage and the utilization of preventive medical services. The Bonferroni correction method was used to decrease the possibility of inflated Type I error. The majority of the findings indicated a statistically significant relationship between access to medical care and utilization of preventive services. This study outlined the importance of medical coverage and provided great insight into its association with utilization of preventative services.

This dissertation consists of two chapters. In the first chapter, I explain changes in the life-cycle earnings profile for different birth cohorts. The second chapter assess the quantitative importance of federal aid for college education in explaining college premium.

Understanding poverty in terms of time use is not a new phenomenon. A 1977 article by Vickery theorizes a generalized definition of poverty using both income and time dimensions. She uses time diary data to identify families who are income poor, time poor, and both and highlights the importance of a time dimension to poverty, particularly as it relates to different household configurations. Under her generalized definition of poverty,"...the 1973 poverty population would have increased the number of poor female-headed families with children by 14 percent and increased the proportion of all families in poverty from .008 to .093 (35)." This paper uses the American Time Use Survey (ATUS-X) and the Current Population Survey (CPS) Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC) from 2003 to 2011 to update Vickery's analysis. We estimate poverty rates from 2003-2011 by income, time, and a combination of both for diverse household configurations. We also estimate the effect of household configuration on changes to the definition of poverty, controlling for a variety of socio-demographic factors such as age, race, and education.

This edited volume provides a comprehensive and critical review of what we know about military service and the life course, what we dont know, and what we need to do to better understand the role of military service in shaping people's lives. It demonstrates that the military, like colleges and prisons, is a key social institution that engages individuals in early adulthood and shapes processes of cumulative (dis)advantage over the life course. The chapters provide topical synthesizes of the vast but diffuse research literature on military service and the life course, while the volume as a whole helps to set the agenda for the next generation of data collection and scholarship. Chapter authors pay particular attention to how the military has changed over time; how experiences of military service vary across cohorts and persons with different characteristics; how military service affects the lives of service members spouses, children, and families; and the linkages between research and policy.

In partnership with the Center for Urban Epidemiologic Studies, and in collaboration with diverse institutions and individuals, the Center for Community Problem Solving completed a study of the health of 431 undocumented Mexicans in New York City. Informed by a robustly democratic rebellious vision of problem solving and by a decidedly unorthodox rival theory of undocumented Mexican migra- tion, the study reveals patterns that, if fortified by further investigation, might well change how we think about the health of undocumented Mexicans, how we allocate resources, and how we target interventions. In this Article, Professor Gerald P. López analyzes how this study – more accurately, the effort of which the study is a part – aims at once to close two gaps: the gap between what we now know and what we might learn about the health of undocumented Mexicans in New York City, and the gap between what we typically do now through our practices and what we might do through a rebellious vision of problem solving.

In this paper, we present a spatial equilibrium model where search frictions hinder the immediate reallocation of workers both within and across local labour markets. Because of the frictions, firms and workers find themselves in bilateral monopoly positions when determining wages. Although workers are not at each instant perfectly mobile across cities, in the baseline model we assume that workers flows are sufficient to equate expected utility across markets. We use the model to explore the joint determination of wages, unemployment, house prices and city size (or migration). A key role of the model is to clarify conditions under which this type of spatial equilibrium setup can be estimated. We then use U.S. data over the period 1970-2007 to explore the fit of model and it quantitative properties of the model. Our main goal is to highlight forces that influence spatial equilibria at 10 year intervals.

This study estimates the short-run e ects of the structure of the local economy on high school dropout rates in agricultural areas in the United States from 2000 to 2010. Repeated cross-sections of census data are matched to state-level agricultural price indices and data on the regional composition of employment. Some authors theorise that human capital and land are substitutes, and increasing returns to land-intensive activities may lower human capital investments. I do not fi nd empirical evidence of this in the rural United States. In fact, I fi nd some evidence that as agriculture becomes more lucrative young people in areas with very high levels of agricultural employment become more likely to stay in school, not less, relative to those in areas with little or no agriculturewithin each state.

This report explores the unique features of the Mexican community in the state of Hawaiʻi, identifying the challenges and prospects faced by a population that has increased significantly over the past two decades. The report draws on a qualitative survey, in-depth interviews, and an analysis of the most recent years of data from the US Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS). In the report, the authors present a detailed demographic, socioeconomic, and cultural profile of the Mexican-origin population (or Mexicans for short, which comprises people who are Mexicans either by birthplace, origin, or ancestry) in Hawaiʻi. Interestingly, Mexicans in Hawaiʻi differ from their counterparts on the continental United States in terms of human capital, citizenship, legal status, and labor market characteristics, as well as the socioeconomic context in which they build their community. This newcomer population also is unlike other immigrantorigin groups in Hawaiʻi, who are mostly Asian, have a much longer history of residence in the state, and are able to access comparatively well-developed community infrastructure and social support.

Analyses of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) have suggested that the mortality rate (MR) associated with obesity has decreased over calendar time. However, there has been conflicting evidence about the apparent change in the obesity-MR over calendar time. This dissertation investigates some of the empirical and methodological issues involved in assessing the longitudinal change in the obesitymortality associations. In the first manuscript, Obesity and Mortality: Are the Risks Declining? Evidence from Multiple Prospective Studies in the U.S., a multiple longitudinal design is proposed and implemented to evaluate whether the obesity-mortality associations have declined over calendar time after controlling for age related effect-modification, length of followup, stable study level-factors and recency. The U.S. Hispanic population has increased substantially over calendar time. The second manuscript, Does Obesity Associate with Mortality among Hispanic Persons?: Results from the National Health Interview Survey, provides estimates of obesitymortality associations in the U.S. Hispanic population. The third paper, Plausible Nuisance Contributors to the Appearance of a Decreasing Deleterious Association of Overweight and Obesity with Mortality Rate over Calendar Time is about the role of plausible nuisance contributors in the apparent change in obesity-MR relationship. Simulations were used to evaluate whether changes in BMI distribution over calendar iv time coupled with the use of broad BMI categories (< 18.5, 18.5 to <25, 25 to <30, 30 to <35 and 35 or greater) could contribute to the apparent change in obesity-MR association. The fourth paper, Comparing Predictive Accuracies of Competing Non-Nested Parametric Survival Models, presents significance tests to evaluate differences in the predictive accuracy of non-nested models based on loss functions (absolute and quadratic). Years of life lost and deaths attributable to obesity, predicted using BMI, influence the attitude of policy makers and health care providers. The proposed tests, for example, can be used in evaluating whether the accuracy in predicting longevity can be improved by departing away from standard BMI categories to a continuous form of BMI.

What explains the current low rate of employment in the US? While there has been substantial debate over this question in recent years, we believe that considerable added insight can be derived by focusing on changes in the labor market at the turn of the century. In particular, we argue that in about the year 2000, the demand for skill (or, more specifically, for cognitive tasks often associated with high educational skill) underwent a reversal. Many researchers have documented a strong, ongoing increase in the demand for skills in the decades leading up to 2000. In this paper, we document a decline in that demand in the years since 2000, even as the supply of high education workers continues to grow. We go on to show that, in response to this demand reversal, high-skilled workers have moved down the occupational ladder and have begun to perform jobs traditionally performed by lower-skilled workers. This de-skilling process, in turn, results in high-skilled workers pushing low-skilled workers even further down the occupational ladder and, to some degree, out of the labor force all together. In order to understand these patterns, we offer a simple extension to the standard skill biased technical change model that views cognitive tasks as a stock rather than a flow. We show how such a model can explain the trends in the data that we present, and offers a novel interpretation of the current employment situation in the US.

This paper proposes an extension of Wellesley Colleges recently introduced Quick College Cost Estimator to other higher-education institutions. The estimator is designed to overcome the sticker shock that many students experience when the only price of attendance they know is the stated level of tuition. The lack of information regarding the true cost of attendance often acts as a major impediment for students in the college decision-making process. The purpose of the estimator is to provide greater clarity regarding the true cost of attendance, increasing access for students from families that are less affluent. It provides prospective students with an estimate of what they might expect to pay based on just six basic financial inputs; students need just a few minutes to complete it. It is a tool that could easily be used at many other colleges and universities through collaboration with the College Board and affected universities. The ultimate goal is to allow students and their families to make more-informed choices about where they should apply to college.

One of the drivers of housing demand is the rate of new household formation, which has been well below trend in recent years, leading to persistent weakness in the housing market. This paper studies the determinants of household formation in the United States, including demographic and behavioral changes, and how they evolve over the long and short runs. There are three main ndings: First, because older adults tend to live in smaller households, the aging of the U.S. population over the past 30 years has reduced the average household size, or equivalently, pushed up the headship rate and household formation. Second, after stripping out the e ects of the aging population, the residual behavioral component of the headship rate has declined over time, thanks largely to rising housing costs. This shift has reduced household formation, all else equal. Finally, the short-run dynamics of headship and household formation reflect the e ffects of the business cycle. In particular, I find that poor labor market outcomes have played an important role in depressing the headship rate in recent years. Consequently, household formation could increase substantially as the labor market recovers and the headship rate returns to trend.

This thesis explores at the causal relationship between music and gentrification in two New York City neighborhoods. The first case study discusses CBGB-centered punk rock scene in the 1970s, which led to the development of the Lower East Side in the 1980s. The second case study discusses how indie rock acted as a catalyst for the emergence of Williamsburg and Brooklyn as the center of hipster cool over the last fifteen years. The commonality between both case studies is the successful courting of the emerging Creative Class, who brought economic capital and skyrocketing rents into each neighborhood. By looking at Census tract data from the last five censuses, the changes of each neighborhood can be tracked as bachelors attainment rates, (inflation-adjusted) median household income, and percentage of 20-34 residents, have increased incrementally over time. Thus, ethnic enclaves and lower-income residents that had called the neighborhood home for generations have been forced to move to outlying areas, disrupting their professional and personal lives.