The relationship of residential segregation with neighborhood crime has been well established with many studies finding segregation was positively associated with neighborhood crime. Research has begun to explore the importance of neighborhood community for the relationship of segregation with crime, but few studies were able to incorporate explicit measures of social capital. The current study engages with this limitation by examining the relationship of segregation with violent crime in post-Katrina New Orleans controlling for neighborhood social capital (or what we term collective resources). Results suggest collective resources related to social trust and civic engagement can be protective against violent crime, but we find very limited evidence that such resources mediate the relationship of segregation with crime.

Little is known about the financial security of Vietnam-era veterans now that most are over 65 and have left the labor force. Using 2018 survey data, we found that, on average, Vietnam-era veterans aged 63 to 78 had slightly less income than nonveterans of their ages: US$63,500 and US$65,000, respectively. Those veterans received more money from Social Security and retirement plans; nonveterans had more earnings and investment income. About 1.3 million Vietnam-era veterans collected an average of US$17,600 in disability compensation from the Department of Veterans Affairs, lifting their average total income above other veterans’ by about US$5,000. Overall, veterans were less likely to be poor or very wealthy than were nonveterans. Information on income provides insight to Congress and the public about the economic stability and, by extension, overall well-being of Vietnam-era veterans as they age.

We describe a “union advantage” in health insurance coverage and access to care. Using multiple statistical models and data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey for 1996–2019, we show that—compared to non-union workers—union workers are more likely to have health insurance coverage (98% vs. 86%), more likely to have a regular care provider (83% vs. 74%), visited office-based providers 31% more often (5.64 vs. 4.27 visits), spend $832 more on healthcare annually, and pay a lower share of their expenditures out-of-pocket (26% vs. 37%). When we control for demographic characteristics across variety of specifications, these differences almost always remain at a statistically significant level. Further, we show that the union advantage is greater for low-income workers. Next, we demonstrate that—although the Affordable Care Act (ACA) appears to have reduced the union advantage in health insurance coverage by increasing coverage rates among non-union workers—a substantial union advantage in access to care remains after the ACA’s main provisions become effective. Finally, we explore how the ACA interacted with the trade union  goal of maintaining employer-based health insurance. We show that unionized workers are less likely to contribute to “enrollment shifting,” which occurs when individuals shift from existing employer-based insurance to a new government funded program. This suggests that union bargaining over fringe benefits may have positive externalities in the form of cost reductions to the public sector.

Since at least the early 1990s, economists have found substantial evidence of “job lock” in the United States: workers who get health insurance from their employer are less likely to switch jobs. Early work showed stronger job lock among groups that place a higher value on health insurance, whereas more recent work has focused on measuring the effect of specific policies on job lock. We combine these approaches by replicating some of the classic group comparisons (job switching among the more versus less healthy, and among those whose spouses do or do not have their own health insurance) over a much longer time period, using data from the Current Population Survey and the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey. This enables us to document the evolution of job lock over time, with a particular focus on how it changed when policies such as the Affordable Care Act (ACA) took effect. Estimates based on a difference-in-differences methodology indicate that job lock remains substantial, and that ACA has not significantly affected job mobility.

Background There is a need to assess neighborhood-level factors driving COVID-19 disparities across racial and ethnic groups. Objective To use census tract-level data to investigate neighborhood-level factors contributing to racial and ethnic group-specific COVID-19 case rates in California. Design Quasi-Poisson generalized linear models were used to identify neighborhood-level factors associated with COVID-19 cases. In separate sequential models for Hispanic, Black, and Asian, we characterized the associations between neighborhood factors on neighborhood COVID-19 cases. Subanalyses were conducted on neighborhoods with majority Hispanic, Black, and Asian residents to identify factors that might be unique to these neighborhoods. Geographically weighted regression using a quasi-Poisson model was conducted to identify regional differences. Main Measures All COVID-19 cases and tests reported through January 31, 2021, to the California Department of Public Health. Neighborhood-level data from census tracts were obtained from American Community Survey 5-year estimates (2015–2019), United States Census (2010), and United States Department of Housing and Urban Development. Key Results The neighborhood factors associated with COVID-19 case rate were racial and ethnic composition, age, limited English proficiency (LEP), income, household size, and population density. LEP had the largest influence on the positive association between proportion of Hispanic residents and COVID-19 cases (− 2.1% change). This was also true for proportion of Asian residents (− 1.8% change), but not for the proportion of Black residents (− 0.1% change). The influence of LEP was strongest in areas of the Bay Area, Los Angeles, and San Diego. Conclusion Neighborhood-level contextual drivers of COVID-19 burden differ across racial and ethnic groups.

Diet quality varies widely across geographic areas in the United States and is a critical component of community well-being. Community food security (CFS) relates to the availability, stability, and access to food at the community level, and how these issues connect to the community food production system. This study explores the joint relationship between community social capital, economic capital, and individual diet quality. Hierarchical generalized linear mixed model regression using publicly available data from 2005–2009. The sample consisted of 216,381 adult respondents nested within 283 micro/metropolitan counties. After controlling for individual level factors, social network density was significantly associated fruit and vegetable consumption (FVC), but not obesity. However, income inequality was associated with greater rates of FVC and lower likelihood of obesity. County-level poverty rates were not associated with FVC but had a negative relationship with probability of obesity. Household size, a proxy for household social capital, was positively associated with FVC and negatively related to probability of obesity. Findings from this study suggest a strong role for social capital and economic factors in CFS. This study also reinforces the importance of strengthening theoretical explanations of the role social capital at the community and household levels play in CFS to guide practice and evaluation for community well-being initiatives.

Using loan-level data, this analysis attempts to connect the events of the subprime home loan boom to the current vacancy crisis in St. Louis, Missouri. Borrowers in Black areas in the north of St. Louis City and St. Louis County received subprime home loans at higher frequencies during the subprime boom period of 2003-2007 than those in White areas, with differences in balloon loans especially stark. Specifically, borrowers in Black neighborhoods received subprime loans more frequently than those with equal FICO scores in White neighborhoods. As a result of these differential loan terms, North City and inner ring “First Suburb” areas saw more foreclosure and borrower payment delinquency, which in turn were highly associated with home vacancy, controlling for other risk factors. However, foreclosure was no longer a significant predictor of home vacancy after controlling for demographic factors and FICO score, indicating that the unequal loan terms may have driven much of the increase in home vacancy in the St. Louis area since the Great Recession.

Despite recognized positive congestion and environmental impacts, cordon pricing has sometimes been criticized from a social equity perspective. This paper examines the impact of cordon pricing on three key equity indicators in New York City: traffic, public transportation access, and environmental concerns. The share of congested links, accessibility to the subway, and the population-weighted mean exposure to PM2.5 emissions are among the metrics used to measure equity indices. We show that implementing cordon pricing in Manhattan's Central Business District (CBD) would considerably improve traffic, and environmental metrics for the population inside the cordon area with no significant changes in other boroughs. The CBD will experience a reduction of congested links between 2.1% and 3.6% and a reduction of PM2.5 concentration of 18%. In terms of accessibility to the subway, cordon pricing would mostly affect the non-Hispanic population as well as residents of Queens. The rates of reduction in the average emissions exposure to PM2.5 will vary across racial groups. The pricing strategies will disproportionately help to reduce the negative health outcomes of exposure to traffic related air pollution of residents of Manhattan's CBD.

Using data from the 2010 to 2017 National Health Interview survey, bivariate and multivariate regression analyses were utilized to estimate the percentage and odds of having multiple chronic conditions (two or more, three or more) among U.S. adults ages 65 and over with and without disabilities, controlling for sociodemographic factors and presence of psychological distress. Older adults with and without disabilities in the United States most frequently reported having hypertension, arthritis, and diabetes. Regression results indicate that older adults with disabilities are significantly more likely to experience two or more and three or more chronic conditions than older adults without disabilities, controlling for sociodemographic factors and health behaviors. These findings highlight a need for improvement in coordinated care that considers both disability and multiple chronic conditions in the management of patient health to support well-being in aging.

This dissertation focuses on microeconomic topics in the fields of public, labor and education. Particularly, this dissertation evaluates state policies in higher education and develops a global measure for job quality. Chapter 1 studies how state merit aid programs affect undergraduate degrees earned in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields. State merit aid (SMA) programs have grown in popularity in recent decades as a mechanism to improve college attainment and reduce state out-migration by allocating awards based on student grade point average. A potential unintended consequence of SMA programs is substitution away from majors with traditionally lower GPAs to majors with traditionally higher GPAs. Using data from the American Community Survey, I estimate event study models that use variation in the timing of SMA implementation to identify the effect of SMA programs on the production of undergraduate STEM degrees. I find that SMA programs reduce the likelihood of graduating in a STEM degree by 1.18 percentage points or 5.9%, on average. A back of the envelope calculation suggests that SMA programs reduced the stock of STEM graduates by about 39,000 in the 2018-2019 academic year. The effect is stronger for females where the average reduction in STEM degree production is 10.3% compared to 3.5% for males. Chapter 2 studies how state merit aid programs affect homeownership. SMA programs may work as a substitute for debt, affording recipients the financial flexibility to purchase a home earlier in their life cycle. Using data from the American Community Survey, I estimate event study models that use variation in the timing of SMA implementation to identify the effect of SMA programs on the proportion of individuals that own a home. I find that SMA programs have statistically and economically insignificant impacts on homeownership. Chapter 3 is joint work with colleagues at the World Bank, and in this paper we measure the quality of employment across developing countries. Measuring job quality has been challenging due to data availability constraints within countries, and comparability constraints across countries. As a result, much work relies on proxyindicators of job quality, such as formality or wages. This paper contributes to the policy discussion by proposing a global measure of job quality for wage employment. We assemble a harmonized dataset of labor force and household surveys, across 40 developing countries, and create a measure of job quality across four dimensions: income, employment benefits, stability, and working conditions. Results show there is significant variation in job quality across countries, economic sectors, and demographic characteristics. Countries in the Latin America and the Caribbean region have relatively higher levels of job quality, while countries in Sub-Saharan Africa display the lowest levels of job quality. Most workers in the finance and business services, public administration, and utilities sectors have, on average, better quality jobs. Higher education matters for securing job quality in earnings, benefits, and job stability. Finally, the average job quality of wage employment is relatively similar between males and females in all dimensions but income.

In 2019, 61% of all nonelderly adults in the US obtained their health insurance coverage through an employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) plan.1 Women often have higher health care needs than men, as well as specific challenges to accessing and affording health care.2 Health care policy changes2 and recent economic trends may have had differential effects on health care affordability for men and women.3,4 We examined reported differences between men and women with ESI in obtaining affordable health care over the last 2 decades.

Despite the notable progress that has been made in bridging the gap between women and men in the world of work, women are still underrepresented in several occupations. In this article, the effect of gender norms on whether women enter male-dominated occupations is analysed using differences in gender equality among early-arrival migrants. The variations in gender norms according to the cultural backgrounds of those migrants by country of origin are exploited to identify their impact on occupational choices. Using data from the American Community Survey, it is found that greater gender equality in the country of origin reduces the gender gap in maledominated occupations. Suggestive evidence is further shown on the roles of job flexibility and women’s relative preferences for family-friendly jobs in shaping gender-based sorting across occupations.

By stimulating consumer spending, unconditional cash transfers may increase price levels. In Alaska, residents have received an unconditional cash transfer every year since 1982: the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend. We measure the impact of the dividend using a synthetic control method, which matches Alaska with similar states prior to the introduction of the dividend. The method does not find a good control group for Alaska, likely because of unusual inflation dynamics around 1982. While there is suggestive evidence of positive inflation and price effects, much uncertainty remains regarding the causal effect of unconditional cash transfers on Alaskan inflation and prices.

How does banking competition affect credit provision and growth? How does it affect financial stability? In order to identify the causal effects of banking competition, we exploit a discontinuity in bank capital requirements during the nineteenth-century National Banking Era. We show that banks operating in markets with lower entry barriers extend more credit. The resulting credit expansion, in turn, is associated with additional real economic activity. However, banks in markets with lower entry barriers also take more risk and are more likely to default. Thus, we provide causal evidence that banking competition can cause both growth and financial instability.

In recent decades, the share of U.S. adults with felony-level criminal records has risen and the growth in the employment rate has slowed. Sociological theories of labeling and stigmatization, as well as economic theories of statistical discrimination, suggest a possible causal connection between the two phenomena. Surveys of employers have shown increasing reliance on criminal background checks, for example, and audit studies reveal explicit discrimination against people with felony-level criminal records. This paper draws on novel, state-level annual measures of individuals with felony-level records to estimate pooled cross-sectional, panel models predicting changes in aggregate employment rates. Estimates from these models indicate that a 1 percentage point increase in the share of a state's adult population with a felony history is associated with 0.3 percentage point increase in non-employment (being unemployed or not in the labor force) among those aged 18 to 54. Subgroup analysis shows that effects are stronger for women and whites. These results suggest that the stigma of a felony record may play an important part in aggregate employment rates as well as in individual hiring practices.

California is home to more than 9 million precious children and youth who—through their diverse identities, languages, and experiences—embody extraordinary potential. As a state, we must provide rich opportunities for young people to understand and tap into these cultural resources. We have a responsibility to enhance their creative and intellectual capabilities and foster their respect for and deep connection to one another and the land that sustains us all. And, because young people today face heightened political division and unprecedented social and environmental challenges, it is imperative that they develop the civic skills and commitments necessary to build complex alliances, address shared problems and envision a more promising future. In short, we must educate toward a multiracial democracy.

Anti-scientific attitudes can impose substantial costs on societies. Can schools be an important agent in mitigating the propagation of such attitudes? This paper investigates the effect of the content of science education on anti-scientific attitudes, knowledge, and choices. The analysis exploits staggered reforms that reduce or expand the coverage of evolution theory in US state science education standards. I compare adjacent cohorts in models with state and cohort fixed effects and conduct fine-grained placebo tests to rule out scientific, religious and political confounders. There are three main results. First, expanded evolution coverage increases students’ knowledge about evolution. Second, the reforms translate into greater evolution belief in adulthood, but do not crowd out religiosity or affect political attitudes. Third, the reforms affect high-stakes life decisions, namely the probability of working in life sciences.

This paper identifies how changing postwar demographics in American cities caused their suburbs to adopt a form of land use control still widespread today-minimum lot sizes. I develop an algorithm detecting bunching on lot sizes, observable when govern-ments' lot size controls bind developers from building denser housing. Applying the algorithm to national assessor records, I estimate which lot size controls first came into effect and their impact on new homes over time for 7,000 local governments. Most suburbs adopted lot size controls from 1945-1970, the same period when four million Black Amer-icans left the South for opportunities in American cities. I then use the "Second Great Mi-gration" as a natural experiment that shifted central cities' racial composition toward Black Americans. From 1940-1970, the rise in central city Black composition in non-Southern central cities modestly accelerated minimum lot size adoption while further explaining binding density controls applied to at least 600,000 housing units. Migration of lower-income whites into the same cities yields null effects on suburban lot size outcomes. In states that passed early legislation to desegregate public schools, Black migration had the largest effects on lot size restrictiveness. Together, the results indicate that local governments designed land use controls to exclude Black migrants from neighborhoods and public goods.

School segregation has been a topic of significant sociological research in the United States. Less attention has been devoted to understanding the relationship between school district inequalities and secession, a political tool that forms new boundaries after a formal withdrawal from an existing school district. This paper analyzes the school district secession attempts that have occurred since the year 2000 using national data and builds upon qualitative research and case studies focused on a single region or metropolitan area. Drawing on social closure theory, I explore the community characteristics associated with secession attempts. To do so, I create a measure of social imbalance that leverages the geographic variation between places attempting a secession and the school districts they are nested within. Results indicate that the percentage of residents with a college degree is among the strongest predictors of secession attempts, highlighting the salience of educational attainment at the population-level for selecting into the use of this political tool. Results also indicate that school districts successfully created through secession cleave onto racial and economic divides for both the residential and student populations, driven by secessions located in the South. School district secession processes elucidate the many pathways by which school segregation is produced and perpetuated, including micro-level school and neighborhood selection decisions, jurisdictional restructuring of district boundaries, and the national and state-level legal landscape.

The first chapter studies how low-skilled immigrant entry can explain the falling labour unionization rate in the U.S. economy. This paper argues that the entry of immigrants has significantly altered the incentives of native-born workers to join labour unions and for firms to hire unionized workers, prompting a fall in unionization. The chapter uses spatial variation in immigrant entry to show that a higher entry of immigrants leads to a higher fall in unionization rates across regions in the U.S. It develops a search-theoretic framework to bear out the mechanism and test some over-identifying predictions. The model is further calibrated and finds that low-skilled immigrant entry can explain 48-55% of the total fall in union density. The second chapter exploits plausibly exogenous changes in exchange rates across source countries for immigrants in Canada to evaluate how these changes impact their earnings. It presents evidence that Canadian immigrants, in response to a 10 per cent depreciation of the home currency relative to the Canadian dollar, reduce their annual earnings by 0.36 per cent, mainly by reducing hours worked. The effect is greater for recent male immigrants, who are less educated and their spouses abroad. They also tend to be from lower-income countries and located in immigrant enclaves. Crucially, remittance senders are more affected, but these exchange rate fluctuations do not affect the amount of remittance sent. Thus, suggesting that immigrants tend to be target earners and react accordingly to exchange rate fluctuations. The third chapter examines how immigrants’ labour market conditions at the point of entry affect their earnings, labour market outcomes, and reverse migration decisions both in the short and long run. Using administrative tax data, this chapter finds that it takes 12-15 years for an initial adverse effect of entering the labour market when unemployment is high to dissipate completely. It further documents the heterogeneity existing in this impact based on age, gender, marital status, country of origin, and education. The chapter provides novel insights into the outmigration behaviour of immigrants and how it depends on the initial conditions they face postarrival.