U.S. family planning policy has grown increasingly controversial over the last decade. This paper assembles new evidence on family plannings shorter and longer-term effects on child outcomes by leveraging two policy experiments during the 1960s and 1970s: (1) the state-level legal restrictions on the sales of contraception and effective repeal through Griswold v. connecticut in 1965 and (2) the early, community-based development of U.S. family planning programs. Building upon previous research that has focused on these policies fertility effects, I present new evidence that family planning policies induce significant improvements in child health at birth and the economic resources of children.

We analyze the effect of rising Chinese import competition between 1990 and 2007 on U.S. local labor markets, exploiting cross-market variation in import exposure stemming from initial differences in industry specialization and instrumenting for U.S. imports using changes in Chinese imports by other high-income countries. Rising imports cause higher unemployment, lower labor force participation, and reduced wages in local labor markets that house import competingmanufacturing industries. In our main specification, import competition explains one-quarter of the contemporaneous aggregate decline in U.S. manufacturing employment. Transfer benefits payments for unemployment, disability, retirement, and healthcare also rise sharply in more trade-exposed labor markets

The Coase Theorem, with low transaction costs, shows the independence of e$fficiency and initial allocations in a market, while the recent "market design" literature stresses the importance of getting initial allocations right. We study the dynamics of land-use in the two centuries following the opening of the frontier in the U.S. state of Georgia, which - in contrast with neighboring states - was opened up to settlers with a pre-surveyed and pre-allocated grid in waves with diff ering parcel sizes. Using di fference-in-di fference and regression-discontinuity methods, we measure the e ffect of initial parcel sizes (as assigned by the surveyors' grid) on the evolution of farm sizes decades after the land was opened. Initial parcel size predicts farm size essentially one-for-one for 50-80 years after land opening. This e ffect of initial conditions attenuates gradually, and only disappears after 150 years. We estimate that the initial misallocation depressed the area's land value by 20% in the late 19th century. This episode suggests the relevance of the Coase Theorem in the (very) long run, but that bad market design can induce signi cant distortions in the medium term (over a century in this case).

This paper examines the e ffect of income tax diff erentials on commuting times within MSAs that straddle state borders. We demonstrate that theoretically commuting costs are larger in the low-tax side of the interstate MSA than in the high-tax side. An increase in the average income tax rate in only one part of the MSA will result in out-migration to the other portion of the MSA, which contracts the boundary of the MSA in the high-tax state and expands the boundary of the MSA in the low-tax state. This eff ect contrasts with standard monocentric city models in the presence of taxes, where tax policy within the MSA is uniform and the eff ect of taxes arises because of di fferences in the marginal tax rates. Using micro-data from the American Community Survey (ACS) and TAXSIM, we determine the tax rate of a sample of urban households and we determine what their counter-factual tax rate would be had they resided in the other state of their MSA. Exploiting tax discontinuities resulting from the state border, we are able to show that commute times are one minute longer(5% of the average commute) on the side of the MSA with the higher average tax rate. We identify large eff ects for a$ffluent households and for households that recently moved into the MSA, for whom tax differentials are most salient. We also show empirically that increases in marginal tax rates, relative to the neighboring state, will lower the implicit value of time and results in a more sprawling city on the high marginal tax rate side of the border.

The extent to which older and younger people do different activities when they are with others and when they are alone is examined in this article. I leverage interpersonal data in combination with information on activities from the American Time Use Survey to shed light on the long held finding that older people have less social contact than younger people. The results show that, net of intervening factors, age is associated with declines in time spent with others for virtually all types of time use. However, the variety of activities that older and younger people do also differs. Using leisure activities to probe this finding reveals that, when older people spend time with others it tends to be during activities that are sui generis social activitiessuch as attending partiesbut that this is not necessarily the case for younger people. The literature on time use and aging is discussed in light of these findings and a new hypothesis on agency in the life course is proposed.

The U.S. labor market has changed dramatically over the past 100 years. Consider, for example, the effects of increased female labor force participation, the college premium, unionization, and immigration. In this essay, we explore the counterintuitive fact that the average life cycle earnings profile for college graduates of morerecent birth cohorts is flatter than that for older birth cohorts. That is, over their working lifetimes, college graduates who entered the workforce many decades ago experienced a much greater increase in wages than college graduates who entered the workforce in recent decades. We also explore a theoretical link between a measure of ability and the life cycle earnings profile and suggest an explanation for the flatter life cycle earnings profile for recent birth cohorts.

Past research on the determinants of self-employment in the United States has emphasized the importance of ethnicity. In particular, self-employment rates for Blacks lag far behind those of other racial groups for comparable individuals. This research examines two related issues: Does the dummy variable coefficient associated with the Black–White self-employment gap exhibit intra-race heterogeneity? Second, does this variable have diminished or increased impact across generations? We decompose the sample into subgroups and find that the size of the Black–White self-employment gap varies within subgroups of African-Americans.

Nearly half of U.S. employers test job applicants and workers for drugs. I use variation in the timing and nature of drug testing regulation to study discrimination against blacks related to perceived drug use. Black employment in the testing sector is suppressed in the absence of testing, consistent with ex ante discrimination on the basis of drug use perceptions. Adoption of pro-testing legislation increases black employment in the testing sector by 7–30 percent and relative wages by 1.4–13.0 percent, with the largest shifts among low skilled black men. Results suggest that employers substitute white women for blacks in the absence of testing.

This paper assembles new evidence on some of the longer-term consequences of U.S. family planning policies, defined in this paper as those increasing legal or financial access to modern contraceptives. The analysis leverages two large policy changes that occurred during the 1960s and 1970s: first, the interaction of the birth control pills introduction with Comstock-era restrictions on the sale of contraceptives and the repeal of these laws after Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965; and second, the expansion of federal funding for local family planning programs from 1964 to 1973. Building on previous research that demonstrates both policies effects on fertility rates, I find suggestive evidence that individuals access to contraceptives increased their childrens college completion, labor force participation, wages, and family incomes decades later.

I exploit a major, unanticipated reform of the California teachers' pension to provide quasi-experimental evidence on the link between pension features and retirement timing. Using two large administrative data sets, I conduct a reduced-form analysis that leverages the nonlinearities in the return to work generated by the pension features and the reform-induced shifts of these nonlinearities for identification. The implied estimates of the elasticity of lifetime labor supply with respect to the return to work are centered around 0.04 in the medium-run and are less than 0.1 in the long-run.

Many Americans are wondering (and maybe worrying) about the impact of the growing Latino population. That's not surprising: in 1970 where were only 9 million Latinos (4.5% of the nation's population) but today they're 50 million strong - and by 205, that number is projected to grow to ninety-five million. So maybe it's time to reflect on this important trend, not by isolating Latinos but by considering their role within the larger national context

Fertility rates in industrialized economies, including the United States, have trended to below replacement rate, which prevents undue population growth, but may result in an insufficient future labor force, creating potential for increased social pressures on the shrinking working age population. Conversely, certain demographics may trend toward higher than sustainable fertility. Determinants of fertility are important to understand in order to create or expand social programs for security of the aging, as well as to recognize the demographic characteristics that tend toward very high or very low fertility. This recognition may aid in implementation and utility of programs aimed at cultivating current and future public wellbeing. These may include educational assistance programs in areas of high fertility and low educational attainment, or identification of areas where child care programs may assist in increasing labor force participation of women, potentially decreasing welfare program needs. These steps can only be effectively taken if the unique factors influencing fertility in the United States are understood.

We study the local effects of a federal program that helped cities clear areas for redevelopment, rehabilitate structures, complete city plans, and enforce building codes. We use an instrumental variable strategy to estimate the program's effects on city-level measures of income, property values, employment and poverty rates, and population. The estimated effects on income, property values, and population are positive and economically significant. They are not driven by changes in demographic composition. Estimated effects on poverty reduction and employment are positive but imprecise. The results are consistent with a model in which local productivity is enhanced.

In South Los Angeles, like in many low-income urban communities throughout the country, Latino immigrants are moving into historically African-American urban neighborhoods. This results in some real and some perceived competition for government resources, jobs, and political power. In such contexts, religious institutions can play a powerful role in building alliances between African-American and Latino immigrant residents. This case study aims to inform how the Second Baptists Church of Los Angeles, a historically African-American church and leader in civil rights, can begin developing ties with its Latinoneighbors. Drawing on analyses of publicly available administrative data and original needs assessment data, we identify issues that might unite African-Americans and Latinos around a common agenda. This study presents a replicable model for a research-based approach to promoting multi-racial alliances in neighborhoods experiencing demographic transitions.

This paper applies a locally weighted scatterplot smoothing (loess) method to estimate the spatially heterogeneous wages of demographic groups of workers across precisely defined US labor markets. We estimate a location choice model using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79) using these estimates of labor market specific wages for men and women as determinants of their place of residence. We compare estimates of this model to a model using more aggregated measures of wages and locations from CPS. We show that potential wages based on these more refined definitions of labor markets and demographic groups provide more explanatory power in a simple migration model than do those based upon less detailed definitions of labor markets and demographic groups.

We assess the relationship between skin color and educational attainment for native-bornnon-Hispanic Black and White men and women, using data from the Coronary Artery RiskDevelopment in Young Adults (CARDIA) Study. CARDIA is a medical cohort study withtwenty years of social background data and a continuous measure of skin color, recordedas the percent of light reflected off skin. For Black men and women, we find a one-stan-dard-deviation increase in skin lightness to be associated with a quarter-year increase ineducational attainment. For White women, we find an association approximately equalin magnitude to that found for Black respondents, and the pattern of significance acrosseducational transitions suggests that skin color for White women is not simply a proxyfor family background. For White men, any relationship between skin color and attainmentis not robust and, analyses suggest, might primarily reflect differences in family back-ground. Findings suggest that discrimination on the basis of skin color may be less specificto race than previously though

We use data on Mexican and Chinese immigrants in the US to calculate the average marginal effects of residential and occupational segregation on immigrants' ability to speak English, and similarly the effects of English fluency of family members. Our results confirm that residential segregation is generally inversely related to English language proficiency of immigrants, except for skilled Chinese immigrants. Allowing for occupational fixed effects, the minority population share at the place of work is relevant for proficiency in English among skilled Chinese, but not for Mexicans and unskilled Chinese. We also find that the presence of English-speaking adults in the household increases the probability of immigrants' proficiency in English.

I investigate how changes in fees paid to Medicaid physicians affect take-up among children in low-income families. The existing literature suggests that the low level of Medicaid fee payments to physicians reduces their willingness to see Medicaid patients, thus creating an access-to-care problem for these patients. For the identical service, current Medicaid reimbursement rates are only about 65 percent of those covered by Medicare. Increasing the relative payments of Medicaid would increase its perceived value, as it would provide better access to health care for Medicaid beneficiaries. Using variation in the timing of the changes in Medicaid payment across states, I find that increasing Medicaid generosity is associated with both an increase in take-up and a reduction in uninsured rate. These results provide a partial answer to the puzzling question of why many low-income children who are eligible for Medicaid remain uninsured.