Population downscaling and interpolation methods are required to produce data which correspond to spatial units used in urban planning, demography, and environmental modeling. Population data are typically aggregated at census enumeration units, which can have arbitrary, temporally-evolving boundaries. Previous approaches to imperviousness-based dasymetric mapping ignore cell-level patterning of imperviousness within a spatial unit of prediction, which potentially serve as a strong indicator of population. Landscape metrics derived from imperviousness data offer a promising approach to capture these patterns. In this study, we incorporate landscape metrics derived from impervious cover percentage maps into intelligent dasymetric mapping to downscale population from census tracts to block groups in four states with varying population densities: Connecticut, South Carolina, West Virginia, and New Mexico. We compare the performance of the landscape metrics-based models against two baseline models in all four states across three different time periods. The results show that intelligent dasymetric mapping using landscape metrics generally outperforms the two baseline models. We further compare the performance of landscape metrics as an ancillary source of information for dasymetric mapping against other traditionally-used datasets (e.g., land use, roads, nighttime lights data) in three states (Connecticut, South Carolina, and New Mexico) in 2000. We find that class area, landscape shape index, and number of patches consistently achieve lower error rates than other ancillary datasets in all the three states.

We describe how ethnic disparities in the labor market between prime aged Hispanic and non-Hispanic white men have evolved over the last 50 years. Using data from the March CPS, the Census, and the ACS, we examine several employment and earning outcomes. Hispanics have experienced sizable gains to employment: from a negative 2% prior to 1990 to a positive 4% after 2010 compared to non-Hispanics. In terms of earnings, Hispanics face a substantial negative disparity between 20% and 30% with some improvement after 2000. Most of the employment gain is driven by those with less than a high school degree, while the earnings disparity increases with education. Comparing Hispanic immigrants with natives reveals much of the employment and earnings gains are attributable to Hispanic immigrants, particularly immigrants not fluent in English.

I investigate race and gender differences in entrepreneurship participation in the US. I first confirm a finding from the previous literature that, among VC-backed firms, the proportion of females among Asian entrepreneurs is higher than the corresponding proportion among White entrepreneurs. I extend this finding to all types of entrepreneurs, including non-VC-backed ones. However, after controlling for basic non-race demographic variables, such as age, education, and marital status, I find no significant difference in entrepreneurship participation between Asian and White females. Instead, the difference is due to White males being more likely to be entrepreneurs than Asian males and White females. Moreover, exposure to an individualistic culture has a positive effect on male entrepreneurship participation, but no effect on female entrepreneurship participation.

This article documents risks and disparities among older workers in the labor force and in retirement preparedness and explores the links between labor market challenges facing older workers and retirement insecurity. We use survey data from the Current Population Survey (CPS), the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), and the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) to update and expand upon previous research on issues including retirement plan coverage and retirement account balances, as well as older workers’ labor force participation and employment, job quality, and job security. We show that while many older workers have little to nothing saved for retirement and cannot afford to retire, the advances in their employment prospects and job quality have been slow and unequal. Our findings reframe improving access to decent jobs as a complement to, rather than substitute for, retirement readiness.

Leveraging the capabilities of the Historical Spatial Data Infrastructure (HSDI) and composite indices we explore the importance of children's built and social environments on health. We apply contemporary GIS methods to a set of 2000 historical school records contextualized within an existing HSDI to establish seven variables measuring the relative quality of each child's built and social environments. We then combined these variables to create a composite index that assesses acute (short-term) health risks generated by their environments. Our results show that higher acute index values significantly correlated with higher presence of disease in the home. Further, higher income significantly correlated with lower acute index values, indicating that the relative quality of children's environments in our study area were constrained by familial wealth. This work demonstrates the importance of analyzing multiple activity spaces when assessing built and social environments, as well as the importance of spatial microdata.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) reduces food insecurity but is underused among many households. To increase SNAP participation, twenty-one states have adopted the standard medical deduction (SMD), which simplifies administrative requirements for eligible households (those with older adults or people with disabilities). However, to offset the costs of the SMD, states have reduced SNAP benefits elsewhere, raising concerns of negative spillover effects. Using national data from the period 2004–19 and a fixed-effects estimator, we found that the SMD was associated with increased SNAP participation among SMD-eligible households, in terms of aggregate household counts (20 percent) and as a share of households receiving SNAP (5 percentage points). Moreover, estimated annual SNAP benefits per state increased for SMD-eligible households but decreased (although not statistically significantly) for ineligible households. Offsetting SNAP costs may have benefited households with older adults and households with people with disabilities at the expense of others.

This paper investigates how donors to food assistance charities respond to exogenous changes in recipients' unmet needs. When food insecurity rises by one percentage point, the average food assistance charity increases fundraising by 0.9 %. Without this response, private contributions would have fallen by at least 0.2 %. These results are consistent with a model in which economic inequality simultaneously raises the donor's marginal benefit of giving and reduces their awareness of the recipient's circumstances. Charitable fundraising plays a key role in maintaining the charity's revenues at a time when they are most needed.

Most US school districts draw "attendance boundaries" to define catchment areas that assign students to schools near their homes, often recapitulating neighborhood demographic segregation in schools. Focusing on elementary schools, we ask: how much might we reduce school segregation by redrawing attendance boundaries? Combining parent preference data with methods from combinatorial optimization, we simulate alternative boundaries for 98 US school districts serving over 3 million elementary-aged students, minimizing White/non-White segregation while mitigating changes to travel times and school sizes. Across districts, we observe a median 14% relative decrease in segregation, which we estimate would require approximately 20\% of students to switch schools and, surprisingly, a slight reduction in travel times. We release a public dashboard depicting these alternative boundaries (https://www.schooldiversity.org/) and invite both school boards and their constituents to evaluate their viability. Our results show the possibility of greater integration without significant disruptions for families.

We evaluate progress in the War on Poverty as President Johnson defined it, which established a 20 percent baseline poverty rate and adopted an absolute standard. While the official poverty rate fell from 19.5 percent in 1963 to 10.5 percent in 2019, our absolute Full-income Poverty Measure, which uses a fuller income measure and updates thresholds only for inflation, fell from 19.5 to 1.6 percent. However, we also show that relative poverty reductions have been modest. Additionally, government dependence increased over this time, with the share of working-age adults receiving under half their income from market sources more than doubling.

Since 2014, 17 states have allowed DACA recipients to acquire occupational or professional licenses. This policy change benefits DACA recipients, eases the labor shortage, and boosts the economy. This paper evaluates the impacts of this policy change on labor market outcomes of DACA recipients, using the generalized synthetic control method to create counterfactuals for treated units using control group information. Our results suggested that granting licensing increases the wages of DACA recipients. Moreover, granting licensing seems to raise education attainment, such as more DACA recipients finishing associate degrees. However, these positive effects are only shown in the short term (the first two to three years after the policy change). Then, gradually, we find no differences in the labor market outcomes of DACA recipients in the treated group relative to its control. In conclusion, even though access to licenses does improve labor market outcomes for DACA recipients, we are still questioning how effective this policy change is.

A key part of an engineer’s purpose is to create products and services that benefit society, or, in other words, to create products with a positive social impact. While engineers have many predictive models to aid in making design decisions about the functional performance or safety of a product, very few models exist for estimating or planning for the wide range of social impacts an engineered product can have. To model social impact, a model must contain representations of both the product and society. Agent-based modeling is a tool that can model society and incorporate social impact factors. In this paper, we investigate factors that have historically limited the usefulness of product adoption agent-based models and predictive social impact models through a systematic literature review. Common themes of limiting factors are identified, steps are presented to improve the usefulness of agent-based product adoption models and predictive social impact models, and a general process for the creation of agent-based social impact models is presented. Improving the usefulness of these predictive models can aid engineers in making better design decisions. Predictive social impact models can help identify areas in the design space to improve the social impact of products. When coupled with existing design methods, agent-based predictive social impact models can help increase the probability that a product achieves positive social impact.

By investigating a range of group comparisons, ranging from educational attainment to city of residence, this report reveals that White people as a group always have better employment outcomes than similar Black people. The report investigated the following categories and found that White preferences persisted across them: veterans, people with disabilities, people who are formerly incarcerated, foreign-born people. All fare better in finding employment if they are White, and even when educational attainment, skills, and city of residence are the same, Black job-seekers do worse.

This paper examines the impact of automation on employment, wages, and migration of both native-born and foreign-born individuals. Employing an instrumental variable strategy that leverages variations in local industry employment shares and industry-level national robot adoption, we find that automation equally reduced the employment and wages of foreign-and native-born workers across US commuting zones. Robot adoption induced higher migration in immigrants than in native-born individuals, with immigrants' movements accounting for 19% of the employment difference between high and low robot-exposed commuting zones. We also find that immigrant mobility did not reduce the incidence of automation on native-born workers' employment or wages, such that the impact of automation on native-born workers is similar in high and low immigrant areas.

Atwood analyzes the effects of the 1963 U.S. measles vaccination on long-run labor market out- comes, using a generalized difference-in-differences approach. We reproduce the results of this paper and perform a battery of robustness checks. Overall, we confirm that the measles vaccination had positive labor market effects. While the negative effect on the likelihood of living in poverty and the positive effect on the probability of being employed are very robust across the different specifications, the headline estimate—the effect on earnings—is more sensitive to the exclusion of certain regions and survey years.

Background Residential proximity to greenspace is associated with various health outcomes. Objectives We estimated associations between maternal residential proximity to greenspace (based on an index of vegetation) and selected structural birth defects, including effect modification by neighborhood-level factors. Methods Data were from the National Birth Defects Prevention Study (1997–2011) and included 19,065 infants with at least one eligible birth defect (cases) and 8925 without birth defects (controls) from eight Centers throughout the United States. Maternal participants reported their addresses throughout pregnancy. Each address was systematically geocoded and residences around conception were linked to greenspace, US Census, and US Department of Agriculture data. Greenspace was estimated using the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI); average maximum NDVI was estimated within 100 m and 500 m concentric buffers surrounding geocoded addresses to estimate residential NDVI. We used logistic regression to estimate odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals comparing those in the highest and lowest quartiles of residential NDVI and stratifying by rural/urban residence and neighborhood median income. Results After multivariable adjustment, for the 500 m buffer, inverse associations were observed for tetralogy of Fallot, secundum atrial septal defects, anencephaly, anotia/microtia, cleft lip ± cleft palate, transverse limb deficiency, and omphalocele, (aORs: 0.54–0.86). Results were similar for 100 m buffer analyses and similar patterns were observed for other defects, though results were not significant. Significant heterogeneity was observed after stratification by rural/urban for hypoplastic left heart, coarctation of the aorta, and cleft palate, with inverse associations only among participants residing in rural areas. Stratification by median income showed heterogeneity for atrioventricular and secundum atrial septal defects, anencephaly, and anorectal atresia, with inverse associations only among participants residing in a high-income neighborhood (aORs: 0.45–0.81). Discussion Our results suggest that perinatal residential proximity to more greenspace may contribute to a reduced risk of certain birth defects, especially among those living in rural or high-income neighborhoods.

This study used a differences-in-differences strategy with national time diary data from 2003 to 2018 to examine the effects of minimum wage changes on parents’ time with children and in child-related activities. Findings indicate that a $1 increase in the minimum wage was associated with a small increase (2.6%) in the likelihood parents with one or more children under age 16 spent time actively caring for or helping children on weekends, and in more total time with children (a 2% increase in secondary child care time). In general, coefficients were larger for mothers’ time use, particularly non-employed mothers, with potential implications for gender disparities in caregiving. Unmarried parents and parents of color showed increases in their time spent in activities related to children’s health (~55% increase). Mothers showed an increase (8%) in the likelihood they spent any time in child education-related activities, and increases in child care time appeared concentrated among parents whose youngest child was 6–15 years of age. Findings suggest that increases in state minimum wages may lead to small increases in parents’ time investments in children, with some variation among subgroups.

We study the long-run consequences of losing a low-wage job using linked employer-employee wage records and household surveys. For full-time workers earning $15 per hour or less, job loss due to an idiosyncratic, firm-wide contraction generates a 13% reduction in earnings six years later and over $40,000 cumulative lost earnings. Most of the long-run decrease stems from reductions in employment and hours as opposed to wage rates: job losers are twice as likely to report being unemployed and looking for work. By contrast, workers initially earning $15-$30 per hour see comparable long-run earnings losses driven primarily by reductions in hourly wages. Calibrating a dynamic job ladder model to the estimates implies that the rents from holding a full-time $15 per hour job relative to unemployment are worth more than seven times monthly earnings.

Despite significant gains made over the last decades, women—and mothers in particular—are still disadvantaged in the labor market. For example, women are less likely to be employed in the most prestigious occupations, such as managerial and professional occupations (MPOs), especially those that have been historically dominated by men. Moreover, women are more likely than men to reduce their work hours or exit the labor market after the transition to parenthood. Consequently, women more often work in position with lower levels of autonomy, lower salaries, and less beneficial working conditions. In this dissertation, I examine social change in women’s participation in (male-dominated) MPOs and illuminate two prevalent factors that past research has identified as impacting women’s participation in those occupations: motherhood and overwork. In addition, I investigate the role of the male partner’s involvement in domestic work on women’s employment after the transition to parenthood among heterosexual couples. My findings suggest that women are more likely to work in historically male-dominated MPOs with each successive cohort, although participation rates for MPOs overall have been stalling among the youngest cohorts. The prevalence of motherhood does not differ between male-dominated MPOs, non-male iii dominated MPOs, and other types of occupations, but women working in historically maledominated MPOs are less likely to have more than one child. My findings further show that overwork is more prevalent in male-dominated MPOs throughout time and across all cohorts, and may be a barrier for having more than one child. Lastly, my results demonstrate that mothers who are most disadvantaged on the labor market benefit most from their partner’s involvement in child care in terms of their labor force participation. Taken together, my findings show a positive development in terms of women’s participation in the most prestigious occupations—i.e., historically male-dominated MPOs—but also suggest that gendered assumptions in the home and in the workplace still create barriers for women’s employment participation. Lastly, my results indicate that the prevalence and impact of those gendered norms varies by women’s labor market (dis)advantages.

An ongoing body of research documents that women empowerment is associated with improved outcomes for children. However, little is known about the long‐run effects on health outcomes. This paper adds to this literature and studies the association between maternal exposure to suffrage reforms and children's old‐age longevity. We utilize changes in suffrage laws across US states and over time as a source of incentivizing maternal investment in children's health and education. Using the universe of death records in the US over the years 1979–2020 and implementing a difference‐in‐difference econometric framework, we find that cohorts exposed to suffrage throughout their childhood live 0.6 years longer than unexposed cohorts. Furthermore, we show that these effects are not driven by preexisting trends in longevity, endogenous migration, selective fertility, and changes in the demographic composition of the sample. Additional analysis reveals that improvements in education and income are candidate mechanisms. Moreover, we find substantial improvements in early‐adulthood socioeconomic standing, height, and height‐for‐age outcomes due to childhood exposure to suffrage movements. A series of state‐level analyses suggest reductions in infant and child mortality following suffrage law change. We also find evidence that counties in states that passed the law experienced new openings of County Health Departments and increases in physicians per capita.

This article revisits the campaign to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the United States Constitution to argue that amendment adversaries fought over the future of women's economic security. Post-war US economic growth stalled in the 1970s, bringing the family-wage ideal of male breadwinning and female homemaking down with it. In these unsettled years, how female economic dependence would be addressed was an open question: would it be by propping up male breadwinning, as ERA opponents wanted, or by combining good jobs with fairly compensated domestic labour and government assistance, as supporters believed the ERA promised? A revisionist interpretation of the ERA battle, this article shifts attention from conflict over gender identity and cultural values to economics and capitalist transformation. It examines arguments presented in pamphlets, the media and to Congress about how homemaking women could achieve security in the face of changing economic reality. The ERA's defeat was a Pyrrhic victory for conservatives. The threat to government-sanctioned male breadwinning appeared to have been vanquished. But the family-wage system was truly on the rocks, and supporters’ vision of a working-family norm, with roles based on function, not gender, won out. Without the ERA, however, working mothers shouldered the consequences.