This chapter argues that money manager capitalism in the United States, which has resulted in greater income inequality and erosion of the middle class, has contributed much to the political polarization of recent years. It also argues the consequences of that capitalism have necessitated strengthening labor market institutions and coordinating the public and private sectors in ways that increase economic opportunity and protect working families. The chapter presents data showing the consequences of money manager capitalism are more visible in "blue" states than "red" states, making blue-state residents generally more open to pro-worker public policy reforms than red-state residents. Blue-state residents may have experienced a greater increase in economic insecurity in recent decades, but red-state residents may be experiencing greater economic anxiety. The task ahead is to craft and build support for policy changes that could unify red and blue voters by shoring up the middle class and improving worker well-being.

The body of this dissertation is three empirical essays concerning social forces affecting urban U.S. religious congregations. The chief source of the results is an original dataset of the life histories of the religious congregations in Manhattan from 1939 to 1999. Broadly, I argue that urban congregations are affected by sociodemographic changes in the local population of people, by changes in the population of congregations nearby them, and by their own innate characteristics. The first essay (chapter 3) measures how the population of religious congregations in Manhattan changed during the 1939–1999 period and theorizes how some of the most dominant urban trends of that period may have driven the change. I argue that White flight and increasing Black wealth led the number of congregations per capita in Manhattan to increase from 1939 through the mid-1960s despite a declining population and a falling number of immigrants. From the mid-1960s onward, as depopulation and urban decay prevented Black wealth in Manhattan from continuing to rise, the number of congregations per capita stagnated. A substantial increase in immigration owing to the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 prevented congregations per capita from dropping. There is reason to believe that many of the findings in this essay may apply to various other large U.S. cities as well. The second essay (chapter 4) is a test of a central tenet of the theory of religious economies: religious competition. Existing empirical tests of that theory are limited by one or more of the following two problems: (1) ambiguity regarding which religious groups are expected to compete with which other groups, and (2) a neglect of the local level (competition among congregations). Event-history analyses indicate the following: (1) the more congregations there were nearby a given congregation that were theologically dissimilar to that congregation, the less likely that congregation was to advertise; (2) when there was an increase over time in the number of nearby congregations that were theologically similar to the focal congregation, that congregation became more likely to advertise; and (3) when there was an increase over time in the number of nearby congregations that were theologically dissimilar to the focal congregation, that congregation became less likely to advertise. Implications include critiques of religiouseconomies theory yet also a defense from attempts to dispense with the theory wholesale. The third essay (chapter 5) adjudicates between two opposing predictions regarding the survival chances of ethnic organizations. Numerous empirical studies document the pernicious effects of racial and ethnic discrimination on individuals. Recent scholarship implies that racialized organizations may face similar disadvantages, but empirical evidence is lacking. On the other hand, there are strands of research on Black and immigrant religious congregations arguing that these congregations are sources of solidarity, which implies durability. An eventhistory analysis shows that, on average, Black congregations were less likely to survive a given year than congregations of any other racial/ethnic category. However, once other variables are accounted for, White nonethnic congregations had the highest mortality rate. This quantitative finding of lower mortality among ethnic congregations supports and extends qualitative findings of solidarity and strength within ethnic organizations.

Many low-income countries are in the process of scaling up health insurance with the goal of achieving universal coverage. However, little is known about the usage and financial sustainability of mandatory health insurance. This study analyzes 26 million claims submitted to the Tanzanian National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF), which covers two million public servants for whom public insurance is mandatory, to understand insurance usage patterns, cost drivers, and financial sustainability. We find that in 2016, half of policyholders used a health service within a single year, with an average annual cost of 33 US$ per policyholder. About 10% of the population was responsible for 80% of the health costs, and women, middle-age and middle-income groups had the highest costs. Out of 7390 health centers, only five health centers are responsible for 30% of total costs. Estimating the expected health expenditures for the entire population based on the NHIF cost structure, we find that for a sustainable national scale-up, policy makers will have to decide between reducing the health benefit package or increasing revenues. We also show that the cost structure of a mandatory insurance scheme in a low-income country differs substantially from high-income settings. Replication studies for other countries are warranted.

Recently, huge public expenditures have been devoted to financing Unemployment Insurance (UI) programs, reviving the age-old debate on the social costs and benefits of such programs that can either disincentivise work or revitalise the labor market through a better allocation of its resources. We sought to analyse heterogeneity in responses to UI in terms of unemployment duration and their evolution over time in the US context. We use fixed-effects models on Current Population Survey data and implement interactions between unemployment benefits and different groups of individuals divided into several classes of age, gender, education, race, geographic origin, and period. We find a greater sensitivity of women and the more educated to the generosity of UI. Above all, we discovered a hitherto little-documented reality, which is that despite the increasing generosity of Unemployment Insurance, individuals' responses to it gradually decrease over the years and drastically from the end of the 1980s. It therefore appears that the disincentive to work has become very negligible. Future research could study the determinants of this temporal decrease in the effects of UI. A major interest could be given to non-monetary motivations for returning to work or to the search for possible structural changes in the labour market. Keywords : Unemployment Insurance, unemployment, unemployment duration, responses to Unemployment Insurance.

I examine changes in Medicaid coverage and insurance status surrounding a work requirement policy implemented within the Arkansas Medicaid demonstration waiver. The policy applied to able-bodied, childless adults, aged 30 to 49, not enrolled as students, and was effective from 2018 to 2019. Eligibility was conditional on policy compliance. Taking a sample from the IPUMS American Community Survey database, I use triple-differences modeling to compare Arkansans subject to the policy with unaffected Arkansans and individuals from a set of control states. I find that the policy pilot group in Arkansas was less likely to be insured or have Medicaid coverage in the two years after the work requirement took effect, compared with controls. In 2018 and 2019 respectively, I estimate increases in uninsurance for the pilot group, compared with non-pilot Arkansans, were 7.3 and 10.8 percentage points greater than those experienced by the hypothetical pilot and non-pilot groups from the control states. Similarly, I estimate declines in Medicaid coverage for pilot versus non-pilot-group Arkansans were 6.2 and 10.2 percentage points greater in magnitude, compared with the hypothetical pilot and non-pilot groups from the control states in 2018 and 2019 respectively. In tandem with a series of robustness checks, I outline how asymmetric information, unobservable government intervention, and contemporaneous policies could affect my results.

The Latino and Hispanic communities in the United States continue to experience health disparities despite being one of the continuously growing populations. The study aims to identify significant contributing factors that give rise to health disparities. To then propose a strategy for addressing these factors to reduce health disparities. IPUMS Health Survey, an online database, was used to identify correlations between factors including an individual's health status, income, education, transportation, and health care services. Correlations between variables were considered using participants' responses in the United States who identify as either Hispanic or non-Hispanic. An analysis of data from Hispanic and non-Hispanic respondents showed a strong positive correlation between delayed care because they lacked transportation and saw/talked to a general doctor in the past 12 months, suggesting that changes in the transportation systems must be made. Delaying care, for example, can deteriorate an individual's health because of a lack of transportation. Providing transportation services at a low cost can help to solve the transportation problem. For future studies, it would be beneficial to conduct surveys in hospitals in the U.S. to assess patients' experiences from booking an appointment to being assisted by a doctor to identify factors during this process that contribute to health disparities within the Hispanic community.

The location choice of an individual is shaped by the trade-off between job opportunities, prices, and access to amenities. I provide evidence that the determinants of this trade-off change over the individual’s life cycle: the productivity of a location is more valuable for workers than retirees, and changes in spending patterns with age imply that younger and older individuals value different types of local amenities. To study the allocation of younger and older individuals across cities, I develop and quantify an overlapping generations spatial equilibrium model with location choices for both work and retirement periods. I show that differences in local exogenous productivities and amenities for the young and the old lead to the geographic sorting by age, which is further amplified by an endogenous adjustment of amenities and productivities to the location’s age composition. I estimate that the reduction in mobility frictions observed between 1960 and 2010 allowed individuals to increasingly separate locations for work and retirement, which generated welfare gains of around 6.3 percent. Using the calibrated model, I evaluate local and aggregate effects of place-based policies that promote the reallocation of retirees to less productive cities.

Utilizing the patterns in settlement of Scots-Irish in the United States, this study examines the effects of honor culture on corporate control contests. This culture is characterized by the importance of building a personal reputation and maintaining this reputation at all cost. We find that bidding and target firms from an honor culture are less likely to initiate conflict with one another, as reflected by a lower likelihood of the bid being unsolicited and the bid turning hostile. Once the bid has become hostile, we find that targets from honor states are more defensive, as reflected by a smaller likelihood for the bid to be completed. If completed, such bids tend to have a longer deal duration, especially if the bidder is also from such a culture. These findings advance our understanding of the reasons behind takeover resistance above and beyond managerial incentives and regulatory provisions.

Selecting the top-k highest scoring items under differential privacy (DP) is a fundamental task with many applications. This work presents three new results. First, the exponential mechanism, permute-and-flip and report-noisy-max, as well as their oneshot variants, are unified into the Lipschitz mechanism, an additive noise mechanism with a single DP-proof via a mandated Lips-chitz property for the noise distribution. Second, this new generalized mechanism is paired with a canonical loss function to obtain the canonical Lipschitz mechanism, which can directly select k-subsets out of d items in O(dk + d log d) time. The canonical loss function assesses subsets by how many users must change for the subset to become top-k. Third, this composition-free approach to subset selection improves utility guarantees by an Ω(log k) factor compared to one-by-one selection via sequential composition, and our experiments on synthetic and real-world data indicate substantial utility improvements.

What is the role of data in urban life – and by extension in a city museum? Through the case study of Who We Are: Visualizing NYC by the Numbers, an exhibition presented at the Museum of the City of New York in 2019-2020, this paper investigates the power of data in a city museum context. It argues that clearly and compellingly presented data can connect residents and other museum visitors to important but often unseen and /or abstract aspects of the city. Artists can play a special role in this, by interpreting and problematizing data and making it emotionally as well as intellectually accessible. The paper emphasises that selfaware problematization of numbers is key and that museums need to be explicit about their methods, and to call attention to the hazards as well as the power of using data to characterise cities and urban issues.

Concurrent crises in 2020 accelerated conversations about how historical discrimination has and continues to exclude marginalized groups of people from equitable outcomes and opportunities. In the Executive Order On Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government | The White House, President Joe Biden (2021) discussed how the “federal government should pursue a comprehensive approach to advancing equity for all, including people of color and others who have been historically underserved, marginalized, and adversely affected by persistent poverty and inequality.” The paradigm shift and highlighted focus on equity has created a window of opportunity to simultaneously: 1) evaluate federal workforce program performance; 2) measure equity and determine if certain groups of program participants have been disproportionately impacted; and 3) identify best practices for diversity, equity, and inclusion. In partnership with Northern Illinois University-Center for Governmental Studies (NIU-CGS), the Colorado Department Labor and Employment Workforce Development Programs (CDLE-WDP) developed and implemented an evaluation model for Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) programs in Colorado. The sequential mixed methods model evaluated program performance, measured equitable outcomes for WIOA Title I participants, and identified best practices for continuous program improvement.

Purpose : Quantify the misclassification of abortion accessibility resulting from calculations based on block groups, census tracts, ZCTAs, or counties versus census blocks. Methods We included 850 facilities from the 2018 ANSIRH Facility Database and Planned Parenthood website. Accessibility was the proportions of 18–44 year-old women living within a 30-, 60-, and 90-minute drive from an abortion-providing facility. We calculated accessibility using five different geographic units: census blocks, block groups, census tracts, ZCTAs, and counties. We estimated the potential magnitude of abortion accessibility misclassification resulting by calculating the difference between accessibility calculated using each geographic unit, respectively, for each drive time as compared to census blocks. Results In this analysis, counties, the largest geographic unit considered, underestimated national abortion accessibility compared with census blocks by up to 24.21 percentage points; while block group-, census tract, or ZCTA-based national estimates of abortion accessibility in the US resulted in small underestimates relative to estimates constructed using census blocks. Conclusions Studies of population accessibility should use the smallest feasible geographic unit of analysis. While this study focused on abortion accessibility, our findings likely apply to other health services, particularly those with distributions like abortion care.

As households immigrate to the United States, persistent food preferences or challenges in producing desired foods may affect their ability to achieve food security. Alternatively, some immigrants may excel in their new environment allowing them to be more food secure than their native counterparts. Using the Current Population Survey Food Security Supplement, we compare food security levels between Chinese, Indian, Mexican, and West African immigrant households with matched native households. We find that immigrants from Mexico and West Africa are less food secure than their native counterparts, whereas immigrants from China and India are more food secure. We demonstrate how these findings are the result of immigrant selection which favors certain groups.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends that all people aged 6 months or older receive influenza vaccination each year.1 Although influenza vaccinations are readily available and cost-effective, barriers to influenza vaccination coverage exist.1-3 Influenza vaccination coverage rates in the United States are only 62.6% among children and adolescents aged 6 months to 17 years and 45.3% among adults aged ≥18 years.1 Among adults, rates of influenza vaccination coverage vary. For example, in 2018-2019, influenza vaccination coverage among adults aged ≥65 years was 68.1%, whereas the percentage for adults aged 18-49 years was 34.9%.1 In addition to these observed differences among age groups, disparities in influenza vaccination coverage were also seen among races and ethnicities during the same period.1 Influenza vaccination coverage rates were 48.7% for non-Hispanic White adults and 44.0% for Asian adults compared with 37.1% and 39.4% for Hispanic and non-Hispanic Black adults, respectively.

The economic analysis of racial discrimination in public accommodations is remarkably limited. To study this issue, we construct a national dataset of non-discriminatory establishments from the Negro Motorist Green Books, a travel guide published from 1936 to 1966 to aid Black Americans in finding non-discriminatory retail and service establishments. We document patterns in the geographic spread and evolution of Green Book establishments, as well as the correlates of Green Book presence. We find economic and social measures, as well as state laws relating to racial discrimination and anti-discrimination, were correlated with the provision of non-discriminatory services. We then use the Green Book data to test whether market conditions and White consumer discrimination led businesses to bar Black customers prior to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. We use plausibly exogenous variation from White WWII casualties and Black migration patterns to isolate the effect of a change in the racial composition of consumers on the growth of non-discriminatory businesses. We find that the share of non-discriminatory establishments grew faster in locations with larger increases in the share of the Black population, but the magnitudes were small. These results highlight the importance of federal legislation in ending racial discrimination in public accommodations.

The underemployment rate, the percent of employed people who are working part-time but prefer to be working full-time, moves closely with the unemployment rate, rising during recessions and falling during expansions. Following the Great Recession, the underemployment rate had stayed persistently elevated when compared to the unemployment rate, that is, until the COVID-19 recession. Since then, it has been consistent with its pre-2008 levels. We find that changes in relative industry size account for essentially none of the underemployment rate increase after the Great Recession nor the underemployment rate decrease after the COVID-19 recession. Based on this finding, we do not expect the underemployment rate to revert to its pre-COVID-19 levels if industry composition reverts to its pre-COVID-19 structure.

Health care workers earning low wages in the United States are positioned squarely at the intersection of class, race, gender, and migration fault lines. Commitment to health equity demands higher pay, improved benefits, and more workplace protections for these workers. Clinicians with higher status jobs must help dismantle stratifications created by racist, sexist, and classist histories of exclusion. Health equity is impossible without systemic and organizational responses to the needs of members of the health care workforce with low wages.

Organisms reduce risk exposure through short-term avoidance-flight. However, this flight strategy may not be equally accessible throughout a population. We combine cellphone movements, satellite-based wildfire smoke plumes, and Census data to document substantial heterogene-ity/inequity in communities' tendencies to out-migrate to avoid smoke. Higher-income and whiter populations travel out of their counties at significantly higher rates during smoke events. These results suggest that the same populations who face social and environmental injustice on many other measures are less able to avoid wildfire smoke-underscoring equity concerns for wildfire damages and climate adaptation.

Since most census data is geographic in nature, it lends itself well to geographic analysis. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are collections of software and data for conducting geographic analyses and making maps. Special GIS data files called vector files store coordinates to form geometries that represent points, lines, and areas. Each file represents a particular type of feature that covers a specific extent: a file for counties for the US, a file of census tracts for a state, or a file of roads for a particular county. The files are georeferenced, which means they are drawn to scale using a specific spatial reference system that ties them to real locations on the earth. These reference systems allow GIS data files from multiple sources to be overlaid in a GIS project. In addition to the vector files, a different format called a raster represents continuous surfaces as a series of grid cells of equal size, where each cell has a value that represents something about the surface. Rasters are also georeferenced, and satellite imagery, air photos, and scanned paper maps such as topographic maps are stored in the raster format. For census mapping applications, rasters are useful as base maps to provide context for vectors.