BACKGROUNDLittle is known about the healthcare experiences of adults on the autism spectrum. Moreover, autistic adults have rarely been included as partners in autism research.OBJECTIVETo compare the healthcare experiences of autistic and non-autistic adults via an online survey.METHODSWe used a community-based participatory research (CBPR) approach to adapt survey instruments to be accessible to autistic adults and to conduct an online cross-sectional survey. We assessed preliminary psychometric data on the adapted scales. We used multivariate analyses to compare healthcare experiences of autistic and non-autistic participants.RESULTSFour hundred and thirty-seven participants completed the survey (209 autistic, 228 non-autistic). All adapted scales had good to excellent internal consistency reliability (alpha 0.820.92) and strong construct validity. In multivariate analyses, after adjustment for demographic characteristics, health insurance, and overall health status, autistic adults reported lower satisfaction with patient-provider communication (beta coefficient -1.9, CI -2.9 to -0.9), general healthcare self-efficacy (beta coefficient -11.9, CI -14.0 to -8.6), and chronic condition self-efficacy (beta coefficient -4.5, CI -7.5 to -1.6); higher odds of unmet healthcare needs related to physical health (OR 1.9 CI 1.13.4), mental health (OR 2.2, CI 1.33.7), and prescription medications (OR 2.8, CI 2.27.5); lower self-reported rates of tetanus vaccination (OR 0.5, CI 0.30.9) and Papanicolaou smears (OR 0.5, CI 0.20.9); and greater odds of using the emergency department (OR 2.1, CI 1.83.8).CONCLUSIONA CBPR approach may facilitate the inclusion of people with disabilities in research by increasing researchers ability to create accessible data collection instruments. Autistic adults who use the Internet report experiencing significant healthcare disparities. Efforts are needed to improve the healthcare of autistic individuals, including individuals who may be potentially perceived as having fewer disability-related needs.

In 2010, approximately 84% of the American population lives in a metropoli- tan area (Wilson et al. 2012). Different metropolitan areas are characterized by distinct labor markets and economies (McCall 2001a; Sassen 1990), housing markets and residential patterns (Flippen 2010; Massey and Denton 1993), socioeconomic and demographic factors (Mellor and Milyo 2002; Frey and DeVol 2000), and according to some, even distinct ‘spirits’ (Bell and de Shalit 2011; Florida 2002). The nature and influence of such structural factors lie at the heart of urban sociology, and have par- ticularly profound effects on patterns of racial and ethnic stratification (Massey and Denton 1993; McCall 2001a; O’Connor 2001b; Sugrue 1996; Wilson 1987, 2009). This dissertation examines new urban structural changes arising within recent decades, and their implications for racial/ethnic stratification. Specifically, I study the tran- sition to the ‘new economy’ and racial/ethnic wage inequality; increases in the level and inequality of housing prices and racial/ethnic stratification in homeownership; and increased income inequality, combined with population aging, and racial/ethnic disparities in disability and poor health. I measure metropolitan-level structural fac- tors and racial/ethnic inequalities with data from 5% samples of the 1980, 1990, and 2000 Censuses; the 2010 American Community Survey (ACS); and the 1999–2001 and 2009–2011 Current Population Surveys (CPS). Cross-sectional multilevel regres- sion models examine the spatial distributions of structural factors and racial/ethnic inequality, and the fixed-effects regression models identify the impact of changes in structural factors over time on observed trends in racial stratification. Additionally, I distinguish between effects on minority-white gaps in resource access, and minori- ties’ levels of resource access. This dissertation also makes novel contributions to the field by empirically documenting complex patterns of inequalities among the country’s four largest racial and ethnic groups. Perhaps most relevant to theories of racial stratification, this dissertation demonstrates seemingly race-neutral structural changes can have racially stratified effects. Chapter 1 describes the foundational literature in urban sociology and racial/ethnic stratification, and provides an overview of the subsequent chapters. Chapter 2 mea- sures the transition to the ‘new economy’ with six structural factors of labor mar- kets: skill-biased technological change, financialization, the rise of the creative class, employment casualization, immigration, and deunionization. Overall, the results in- dicate the observed Latino-white wage gap may be up to 40% larger in 2010 than in the theoretical absence of the new economy, and the black-white wage gap may be up to 31% larger. Chapter 3 focuses on the long-term trend toward higher and more unequally distributed home prices within local housing markets, epitomized by the housing crisis of the late 2000s. Increases in housing market inequality worsen the Asian-white homeownership gap, but narrow the black-white and Latino-white gaps. However, the level of homeownership is reduced for all groups. Chapter 4 empirically tests the frequently-debated Income Inequality Hypothesis, that macro-level income inequality undermines population health, and hypothesizes any negative effect on health is stronger in areas with greater population aging. The results provide no support for the Income Inequality Hypothesis or any of its proposed extensions, but the chapter’s analytic approach may be fruitfully applied to future examinations of structural determinants of health. The theoretical and substantive conclusion of the dissertation is that metropolitan areas represent salient, and changing structural contexts that significantly shape patterns racial/ethnic stratification in America.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations coined the term Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) in 2009 and defines it as agriculture that reduces greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) and increases agricultural adaptation and productivity for national food security and development goals (FAO 2010). Since then, many countries have adopted CSA approaches to national food security and climate resilience policies. For example, the Tanzania Ministry of Agriculture, Food Security and Cooperatives (MAFC) adopted the FAO definition of CSA to develop the Agriculture Climate Resilience Plan (ACRP) 2014-2019. The ACRP addresses increasing economic, social and climatic impacts accelerated by climate change, and invokes CSA as a central approach to increasing yield and mitigating economic shocks at the smallholder farm level (ACRP 2014). Similarly, African policy bodies, such as the East African Community (EAC), through its Programme on Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation, and the NEPAD Agency of the African Union (AU), through the Africa Climate Smart Agriculture Alliance (ACSAA), have also adopted the FAO definition of CSA. The ACSAA has set a target for uptake of CSA by 6 million African smallholder farmers by 2021.

This study investigates whether the increasingly common trend of working long hours ("overwork") perpetuates gender segregation in occupations. While overwork is an expected norm in many male-dominated occupations, women, especially mothers, are structurally less able to meet this expectation because their time is subject to family demands more than is men's time. This study investigates whether the conflicting time demands of work and family increase attrition rates of mothers in male-dominated occupations, thereby reinforcing occupational segregation. Using longitudinal data drawn from the Survey of Income and Program Participation, I show that mothers are more likely to leave male-dominated occupations when they work 50 hours or more per week, but the same effect is not found for men or childless women. Results also show that overworking mothers are more likely to exit the labor force entirely, and this pattern is specific to male-dominated occupations. These findings demonstrate that the norm of overwork in male-dominated workplaces and the gender beliefs operating in the family combine to reinforce gender segregation of the labor market.

Social and economic policies designed to improve working conditions and employee well-being in adulthood have often resulted in the unintentional improvement of the health of children and their parents. Unfortunately, the USA is behind in implementing such policies and is losing ground in the health of its families compared to most other industrialized countries. We present historical patterns of infant mortality and womens life expectancy, both indicators of child and family health, over time and across the USA and other industrialized countries. Using a predominantly ecosocial framework, we review the channels or mechanisms that may link social or economic policy to a physiological change in children and/or their close family members. We continue to review a range of family and labor policies and evidence linking specific family and work policies to child and family health outcomes. We argue that, despite challenges, the identification of social and economic policies that impact the work/family interface and promote family health and well-being is critical and that the conditions which improve health for families will likely require modification in the public policy arena.

Many feature subset selection (FSS) algorithms have been proposed, but not all of themare appropriate for a given feature selection problem. At the same time, so far there israrely a good way to choose appropriate FSS algorithms for the problem at hand. Thus,FSS algorithm automatic recommendation is very important and practically useful. Inthis paper, a meta learning based FSS algorithm automatic recommendation method ispresented. The proposed method first identifies the data sets that are most similar to theone at hand by thek-nearest neighbor classication algorithm, and the distances amongthese data sets are calculated based on the commonly-used data set characteristics. Then,it ranks all the candidate FSS algorithms according to their performance on these similardata sets, and chooses the algorithms with best performance as the appropriate ones.The performance of the candidate FSS algorithms is evaluated by a multi-criteria metricthat takes into account not only the classification accuracy over the selected features, butalso the runtime of feature selection and the number of selected features. The proposedrecommendation method is extensively tested on 115 real world data sets with 22 well-known and frequently-used different FSS algorithms for five representative classifiers. Theresults show the effectiveness of our proposed FSS algorithm recommendation method

In this chapter, we utilize a P-16 framework that incorporates policy analyses from early childhood programming to college access to evaluate the college completion outcomes for low-income and underrepresented students. We begin with a review of the current college-age demography in the USA and then evaluate key policy initiatives in early childhood, kindergarten, high school, the college choice and admissions stage, and finally college completion. We find that some initiatives in early childhood stages have remarkably consistent effects on college access while policies incorporating high school exit exams and some college remediation programming have less consistent outcomes toward the goal of college completion. We comment on the various options for datasets used in this area of educational intervention research. We end with recommendations regarding the use of contemporary data to further disaggregate the roles that diverse demographic characteristics and contexts might have in designing future interventions regarding college success.

The unilateral divorce revolution in the United States that started in late 1960s has been accompanied by a variety of reforms in the divorce law across states. One example is the introduction of the homemaking provision to give recognition to the contribution of homemakers in marriage in the division of property. This paper examines empirically the extent to which this provision affects household specialization and time allocation within marriages. The findings show that this law has significant long term negative impact on spousal labor supply and produced slacking effects in households. Household specialization intensifies prior to divorce with the provision. There is also evidence that the impact of the provision on household behavior is at least partially mitigated over time as shown by the overall stronger responses of couples married prior to the introduction of the homemaking provision. The overall results provide strong evidence for intra-household bargaining.

Women and girls in West Virginia have made some social and economic progress in recent decades, but the need for further improvements remains. Many female residents in the state are vulnerable to challenges such as poverty, limited access to child care, the gender wage gap, and adverse health conditions. In addition, women and girls in West Virginia face stubborn disparities in opportunities and outcomes—including disparities that exist among women and girls from different racial and ethnic groups as well as among those from various geographic areas in the state. Addressing these challenges and disparities is essential to promoting the well-being and vibrancy of West Virginia’s many communities. This report provides comprehensive data to assess the progress of women and girls in West Virginia and identify places where additional improvements are still needed. The report analyzes issues that profoundly affect the lives of women and girls in the state, including employment, earnings, and education; economic security and poverty; and health and well-being. The report also tracks trends in progress in West Virginia (between 2000 and 2010) by comparing its findings with the 2002 report, The Status of Women in West Virginia (IWPR 2002). In addition, the report examines the status of women and girls in five regions of the state (Northern Panhandle, North Central, Eastern Panhandle, South Central, and Southern) as well as in the nation as a whole. The data on women’s and girls’ status that it presents can serve as a resource . . .

This paper builds upon the vast amount of literature on wage gaps and investigates the development of the wage gaps across the United States in the period 2001-2011. It extends the previous research by examining a new time period and by looking at the wage gaps on a state level. To analyze these pay gaps data from the American Community Survey is used. I use two methods to investigate the wage gaps, Oaxaca decomposition and the Juhn Murpy Pierce decomposition, with the focus being on the later. What I find is that the gender wage gap has decreased by 5.5 percent points and the racial wage gap has increased by 4.1 percent points. On a state level most states follow these directions, but with a great deal of variability. For the gender wage gap only two states don’t follow the average direction, i.e. they show an increase in the gender pay gap. For the racial wage gap seven states show a decrease in the pay gap.

Andreas draws an interesting parallel between America’s industrial espionage and intellectual property theft in its early efforts to industrialize and modern-day concerns about Chinese piracy of ideas. He makes the point that, “Only after it had become a mature industrial power did the country vigorously campaign for intellectual property protection—conveniently overlooking its own illicit path to industrialization” (p. 98). The United States’ burgeoning strength also led the nation to a volte-face regarding rights of neutrals in the face of a blockade. Smuggling munitions and accoutrements of war helped succor the Continental army in the War of Independence and the Confederate army four score and seven years later. Great Britain and the United States essentially reversed positions on non-belligerents’ rights between the War of 1812 and the American Civil War. His chapter on smuggling alcoholic beverages to Indian tribes ends rather abruptly before the Civil War. The reader is left to wonder whether the remaining independent tribes received alcohol after the Civil War and what the effects were. Was alcohol a key factor in subduing the Plains tribes? The book does flag near the end, because the scenarios display recurring characteristics: attempts to suppress smuggling . . .

This paper provides a new analysis of the main stylised facts underlying the evolution of labour supply at the extensive and intensive margins in three countries: the United States, the United Kingdom and France. We propose a definition of the extensive and intensive margins corresponding respectively to the employment rate and to hours when employed. This definition is robust to the choice of the reference period and we develop a new statistical decomposition that provides bounds on changes at these margins. We focus on longer-run labour supply changes over the period 1977 to 2007 and abstract from the shorter-run impact of recessions. Examining secular changes over this period, we show that both margins matter in explaining changes in total hours. We then provide a detailed analysis across countries and across time by demographic type. Given the large systematic differences we uncover in the importance of these margins by age and gender, it is unlikely that a single explanation will suffice to account for the macroeconomic evolutions in the three countries.

Single parenthood, resulting from nonmarital births and divorce, is increasingly becoming associated with lower levels of education for women. Cross-sectional comparisons show that children of married parents are less likely to suffer material deprivation. To reduce hardships for children, therefore, some analysts advocate policies that would increase marriage. I argue that alternative approaches offer more chance of success: increasing education levels and reducing the penalty for single parenthood. There is ample evidence to support both approaches. Education levels are increasing, and are associated with lower levels of child hardship net of family structure. And comparative research shows the negative economic consequences of single parenthood are ameliorable through state policy. In contrast, the hundreds of millions of dollars spent promoting marriage, and the reform of national welfare policy intended to compel poor mothers to marry, have produced no discernible effects on marriage rates or child wellbeing.

This paper studies the effects of trade barriers on entrepreneurship. We first reveal a previously unknown fact: the higher the trade costs, the smaller the fraction of entrepreneurs. This fact holds across countries and across industries within the United States. To analyze this fact, we develop a model of international trade with occupational choice, borrowing elements from Lucas (1978) and Melitz (2003). The model delivers three new predictions, refining the relationship between entrepreneurship and trade costs: (i) domestic entrepreneurship increases with the trade costs of exporting from a foreign country to the home country, (ii) domestic entrepreneurship increases with the trade costs of exporting to the foreign country, and (iii) higher levels of entrepreneurship are associated with a lower fraction of exporting firms. We confirm these predictions using crosscountry , cross-industry, and individual-level data.

In this article, I examine the large Black / White fertility gap in the US. I question the "compositional argument" according to which di fferences in socioeconomic characteristics would be the main driver of this gap. Indeed, once controlled for education, other characteristics such as income, employment and marital status do not help to close the gap. I therefore test whether the di effrence could stem from the fact that individuals inherit of race-speci fc fertility norms. I show that Black women who were born in a state where past cohorts of Black women had a high fertility rate tend to have more children. Moreover I have found that this eff ect diminishes as education increases. The transmission of fertility norms therefore seems to be a good candidate to explain racial diff erences in fertility in the US, as it is consistent with larger di fferences for less educated individuals.

As the large Baby Boomer generation, those born between 1946 and 1964, continue to transition out of the workforce, a new labor force landscape is emerging across the United States and in Minnesota. The labor force growth rate, once a once a guaranteed phenomenon for generating more workers to fuel economic growth, will slow down considerably. Our projections indicate slowing labor force growth in Minnesota until the nadir of only .1% average annual growth during the 2020-2025 period.

Economic theory predicts that individual migration decisions for working-age adults will depend on area differences in wages, housing costs, and amenities. While the importance of wages and amenities is well-established from previous empirical studies, evidence regarding housing costs is far less conclusive. We develop and test a new method for representing housing prices in migration analyses. We first provide conditions under which utility-maximizing housing costs can be specified as a function of individual characteristics, similar to a Mincerian wage equation. Using large samples of individuals from the 2000 PUMS, we estimate the relationship between housing costs and individual attributes for each of 291 metropolitan areas in the U.S. Our approach accounts for rental and ownership decisions, the costs of rental and owned properties, and the costs of holding housing capital. We test our housing cost measure using observations of point-to-point migration decisions for a large sample of college-educated males. Our migration model includes additional controls for the wage each individual expects to earn in each area as well as a large set of area amenities. Our key finding is that our proposed housing cost measure yields the expected results (higher housing prices reduce the probability that an area is selected). We re-estimate the model using three alternative metropolitan area measures of housing costs: median house price, average apartment rent, and average urban land rent. These measures consistently produce counterintuitive positive effects of housing costs on area choice.

This paper estimates the net effects of nativity, ethnicity and race on the earnings of Cape Verdean Americans, a small, Afro-European group who speak a Portuguese-based Creole. While in their homeland, most Cape Verdeans identify as mestio, but in America they are usually perceived as black. The data come from the 2000 US Census and the American Community Survey (20002007); Native Born Non-Hispanic Whites and African Americans serve as benchmarks. The results show that, controlling for pre-migration education, foreign birth is not a handicap; indeed, for women it is an advantage. Ethnicity too is never a handicap and occasionally an advantage. Race, on the other hand, penalizes males. Native born Cape Verdean men who identify as Other, Black Other or Black earn significantly less than NBNH Whites. On the other hand, regardless of racial identity, Native born Cape Verdean women earn at least as much as NBNH Whites. Finally, one subgroup of native born Cape Verdean men and women, those who identify racially as Black, earn slightly more than African Americans.

This dissertation combines three studies from East Africa, each investigating a different way in which individuals respond to institutional changes, and how this response shapes the broader impact of these policy levers. Each paper develops and explains one or more theories of individual behavior and combines data from a wide range of sources to test hypotheses generated from the original theories. The first chapter measures the impact of provision of ARVs on risky sexual behavior among young women in Kenya, and estimates how this response will shape future HIV infec- tion rates. Access to antiretroviral (ARV) drugs in Sub-Saharan Africa has rapidly expanded - from fewer than 10,000 people treated in 2000 to more than 8 million in 2011. To measure the impact of this expansion, it is necessary to identify the behavioral response of individuals to drug access. This chapter combines geocoded information about the timing of introduc- tion of ARVs in all Kenyan health facilities with two waves of geocoded population surveys to estimate the impact of proximity to an ARV provider on risky sexual behavior. Using a difference in differences strategy that matches survey clusters geographically across waves, I find a relative increase in risky behavior as reflected in pregnancy rates (increase of 82%) and self-reported recent sexual activity (increase of 40%) among young women in areas in which ARVs were introduced between 2004 and 2008. The full impact of ARV access on new infections is estimated through a simulation procedure that combines estimated behavioral responses to ARVs with medical evidence regarding HIV transmission. An increase in ARV drug access is predicted to reduce the rate of new infections despite the induced increase in risk-taking. The second chapter looks at the impact of corruption on the effectiveness of antiretroviral drugs in preventing deaths due to HIV and the potential channels that generate this rela- tionship. This is based on a unique panel dataset of countries in sub-Saharan Africa, which combines information on all imported antiretroviral drugs from the World Health Organiza- tion’s Global Price Reporting Mechanism with measures of corruption and estimates of the HIV prevalence and the number of deaths in each year and in each country. Countries with higher levels of corruption experience a significantly smaller drop in HIV deaths as a result of the same quantity of ARVs imported. This is followed up with a single case-study from Kenya to illustrate one potential mechanism for the observed effect, demonstrating that disproportionately more clinics begin distributing ARVs in areas that are predominantly represented by the new leader’s ethnic group. The third chapter uses new data on participation to examine how local economic conditions shaped within-country variation in willingness to participate in violent activities during the Rwandan genocide. It discusses and tests the predictions of three sets of theories about the causes of violence. The data provide strong evidence that higher rates of both unem- ployment and education among Hutu are associated with increased participation. I find no evidence that the employment or education of the Tutsi population reduce participation rates. I also find suggestive evidence of a positive association between violence and the inter- action of Hutu unemployment and education both at the commune level and at the individual level. These results are consistent with theories of opportunity costs discouraging violence, and they provide additional evidence of a connection between education, unemployment, and violence.

Efforts to estimate the degree to which local property taxes are capitalized into house values are complicated by any spurious correlation between property taxes and unobserved public services. One public service of particular interest is the provision of local public schools. Not only do public schools bulk large in the local property tax bill, but the inherent difficulty in measuring school quality has potentially undermined earlier attempts at achieving unbiased estimates of property tax capitalization. This particular problem has been of special concern since Oates' (1969) seminal paper. We sidestep the problem of omitted or misspecified measures of school quality by focusing on a segment of the housing market that likely places little-to-no value on school quality: small homes. Because few households residing in small homes have public school children, we anticipate that variations in their value does not account for differentials in public school quality. Using restricted-access microdata provided by the U.S. Census, and a quasi-experimental identification strategy, we estimate that local property taxes are nearly fully capitalized into the prices of small homes.