Taller workers are paid higher wages. A prominent explanation for this pattern is that physical growth and cognitive development share childhood inputs, inducing a correlation between adult height and two productive skills: strength and intelligence. This paper explores the relative roles of strength and intelligence in explaining the labor market height premium in Mexico. While cognitive test scores account for a limited share of the height premium, roughly half of the premium can be attributed to the educational and occupational choices of taller workers. Taller workers obtain more education and sort into occupations with greater intelligence requirements and lower strength requirements, suggesting that the height premium partly reflects a return to cognitive skill.

High temperature and humidity conditions are associated with short-term elevations in the mortality rate in many United States cities. Previous research has quantified this relationship in an aggregate manner over large metropolitan areas, but within these areas the response may differ based on local-scale variability in climate, population characteristics, and socio-economic factors. We compared the mortality response for 48 Zip Code Tabulation Areas (ZCTAs) comprising Philadelphia County, PA to determine if certain areas are associated with elevated risk during high heat stress conditions. A randomization test was used to identify mortality exceedances for various apparent temperature thresholds at both the city and local scale. We then sought to identify the environmental, demographic, and social factors associated with high-risk areas via principal components regression. Citywide mortality increases by 9.3% on days following those with apparent temperatures over 34C observed at 7:00 p.m. local time. During these conditions, elevated mortality rates were found for 10 of the 48 ZCTAs concentrated in the west-central portion of the County. Factors related to high heat mortality risk included proximity to locally high surface temperatures, low socioeconomic status, high density residential zoning, and age.Within the larger Philadelphia metropolitan area, there exists statistically significant fine-scale spatial variability in the mortality response to high apparent temperatures. Future heat warning systems and mitigation and intervention measures could target these high risk areas to reduce the burden of extreme weather on summertime morbidity and mortality.

My dissertation examines the issue of housing affordability and its interaction with other economic variables in the context of urban economics. In the first essay, I focus on characterizing the affordability conditions experienced by rental households in the United States by doing a comparative analysis nationally, regionally and at the metropolitan area levels for different income groups over time. In the second essay, I analyze the effect of housing supply regulation on housing affordability over time considering the dynamics in both the housing market and the local labor market. Specifically, I asked whether differences in housing regulation across metropolitan areas cause differences in the impact of employment growth on housing affordability. Finally, in the third essay I examine the effect of housing supply regulation on the responsiveness of metropolitan area labor markets to an exogenous shock to employment.

In the U.S. South, a free labor market rapidlyalthough, in some cases, only nominallyreplaced the plantation system of slave labor in the years following the American Civil War. Drawing on data comprising 75,099 transactions in the antebellum period, as well as 1,378 labor contracts in the postbellum era, I examine how the valuation of black labor was transformed between the 1830s and the years of emancipation. I trace the process of valuation through four markets for labor, moving from slave purchases and appraisals within the plantation economy, to the antebellum system of hiring out, to wage-setting for black labor under the auspices of the Freedmens Bureau. Comparative analysis of labor pricing across these markets reveals systematic differences: slave markets placed price premiums on children and young women, and occupational skills emerged as the most salient influence in the pricing of wage labor. I conclude by theorizing how transvaluation of labor occurs when markets for unfree and free workers are governed by distinct institutional conditions.

Objectives/Hypothesis:To quantify trends in the use of smokeless tobacco in the United States.Study Design:Longitudinal analysis of national population database.Methods:The National Health Interview Surveys for 2000, 2005, and 2010 were analyzed for adult responses to specific questions regarding smokeless tobacco use, which includes chewing tobacco and snuff. Smokeless tobacco lifetime exposure, current use, and frequency of use were determined according to each sampled year, examining for trends over the past decade. Subset analysis for young adults (ages 1844 years) was conducted. Demographic factors associated with smokeless tobacco use were also determined.Results:A total of 86,270 adults were surveyed. Among all adults, the proportions of those who had ever tried chewing tobacco were 7.1 0.2%, 8.5 0.2%, and 9.2 0.2% for 2000, 2005, and 2010, respectively (P < .001). Similarly, the proportions of those who had ever tried snuff were 4.4 0.2%, 7.5 0.2%, and 8.4 0.3%, respectively (P < .001). In aggregate, the proportions who were regular users of chewing tobacco remained stable over the survey years: 1.3 0.1%, 1.1 0.1%, and 1.2 0.1%, respectively (P = .382). In contrast, the percentages who were regular users of snuff tobacco increased significantly over the survey years: 1.4 0.1%, 1.6 0.1%, and 2.0 0.1% (P < .001). The proportion of young adults regularly using snuff rose to 2.8 0.2% (P < .001) in 2010. Male sex, non-Hispanic ethnicity, white race, and less than a high school education were characteristics that were strongly associated with smokeless tobacco use.Conclusions:There was a trend toward increased smokeless tobacco use, mainly snuff, in the United States in the past decade. This trend was more prominent among young adults and likely will have future health-care implications.

This paper calculates the effects of immigration on the wages of native US workers of various skill levels in two steps. In the first step we use labor demand functions to estimate the elasticity of substitution across different groups of workers. Second, we use the underlying production structure and the estimated elasticities to calculate the total wage effects of immigration in the long run. We emphasize that a production function framework is needed to combine own-group effects with cross-group effects in order to obtain the total wage effects for each native group. In order to obtain a parsimonious representation of elasticities that can be estimated with available data, we adopt alternative nested-CES models and let the data select the preferred specification. New to this paper is the estimate of the substitutability between natives and immigrants of similar education and experience levels. In the data-preferred model, there is a small but significant degree of imperfect substitutability between natives and immigrants which, when combined with the other estimated elasticities, implies that in the period from 1990 to 2006 immigration had a small effect on the wages of native workers with no high school degree (between 0.6% and +1.7%). It also had a small positive effect on average native wages (+0.6%) and a substantial negative effect (6.7%) on wages of previous immigrants in the long run.

This report reviews the current and future role of defined contribution plans for state and local government employees and the governments that provide the retirement benefit.

Key Findings Employed wives contribution to total family earnings jumped to 47 percent in 2009 from 45 percent in 2008the largest single-year increase during the past twenty-three yearsand has held steady at 47 percent in 2010 and 2011. Recessions substantially accelerate the trend of increased reliance on wives earnings. In all three recessions since 1988, annual increases in wives share of total family earnings rose substantially. Employed wives share of total family earnings is higher and more responsive to economic downturns when the husband has a high school degree or less compared with a college degree.

We can improve our insights about neighborhood, city, and regional dynamics if we understand them within and acrossmultiple levels, from the individual to the global. Neighborhood and city resilience is threatened by high levels of vulnerability among residents, as amply demonstrated by recent disasters from New Orleans to Port-au-Prince to Peshawar. We know little, however, about the connections between precarious housing conditions, personal vulnerability, and regional resilience. Most work on metropolitan development focuses on neighborhoods within regions, but it is also important to begin at a finer scale of analysispeople and householdsas a foundation for understanding how the concentration of people and housing in space influences regional outcomes.

As of 1710, Virginia law required county courts to convene each month, a routine that with one notable exception persisted through the remainder of the colonial period.2 From 1749 to 1752, Virginians experimented with quarterly courts on a limited basis; six backcountry counties were allowed to schedule court every three months instead of monthly. Backcountry petitioners were confident of the exception’s merits, but influential eastern political leaders disagreed. After a contentious debate over renewing the quarterly act, the House of Burgesses let it lapse and thereafter repeatedly refused renewal. The quarterly court experiment offers fresh insights into mid-eighteenth-century Virginia. At one level, the court calendar issue was a political tussle between backcountry burgesses and Tidewater grandees. The opposition to quarterly courts likely also reflected an overt antipathy toward lawyers by conservative planters like Landon Carter. Most intriguingly, however, close scrutiny of lawsuits from the experimental period suggests that the fight over a quarterly schedule pitted the economic interests of lawyers practicing in backcountry courts against comparable interests of Tidewater merchants.

his paper estimates Local Average Treatment Effects (LATEs) of neighborhood quality from the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) housing mobility experiment in a generalized model with multiple treatment levels. We propose a new approach to identifying parameters that exploits the identification of unobservables in the multi-level model. The variation in neighborhood quality induced by MTO only allows us to identify LATEs of moving from the first to the second decile of the national distribution of quality, but in other applications the approach may allow for the estimation of Marginal Treatment Effects. Estimated LATEs on employment, labor force participation rates, earnings, income, welfare receipt, and body mass index are consistent with standard theories of neighborhood externalities.

Occupational Segregation, the differential distribution of groups of workers across occupations, provides one of the most important mechanisms for creating, maintaining and legitimating social inequality. Despite the importance of occupational segregation for economic inequality, there has been relatively little recent research on racial occupational segregation. To extend our knowledge of occupational race segregation through 2009, the current research examined levels and trends in occupational race segregation from 1980 through 2009. Findings indicate the while occupational race segregation declined dramatically from 1960 through 1980, the decline from 1980 to 2000 was at a much slower pace and had stalled completely after 2000. Segregation levels differ substantially by age, education and sex.

Several cities have recently replaced two-round runoff election systems, in which, if no candidate achieves a majority in the first round, there is a later runoff between the top two candidates, with ranked choice voting (RCV), in which voters rank up to three candidades on a single ballot. Although reformers have argued that this change benefits turnout because participation in second-round run-off voting is often low, the complexity of the RCV system presents its own challenges. Voters from some minority groups do not make full use of their three choices either voting for fewer than three choices or voting for the same candidate multiple times. RCV goes through rounds, dropping the candidate with the fewest votes in each round and transferring votes for that candidate to the next candidate listed on each ballot. Voters who choose only one candidate, or who vote for the same candidate three times, effectively have only one chance to affect the election, and their ballots are therefore more likely to be exhausted, meaning their choices will not be reflected in the later rounds.This thesis examines two questions: (1) does the complexity of rank choice voting deter minorities from going to the polls in the first place; and (2) does RCV disadvantage minority voters because their votes are not as effective as non-minority voters? I measure the effects of RCV on minority and non-minority voting in Oakland, California, which recently held its first RCV election. Using Long Beach, California, as a comparison case, RCV had a negative overall effect on Oakland's turnout in its first RCV election. While Asian and Latino turnout also declined during the transition, the Long Beach counterfactual indicates that RCV actually helped to mitigate the turnout gap for minority groups. In short, the increased complexity of RCV appears not to have discouraged minority turnout. However, the failure of certain minority voters to make full use of their ballot choices counterbalances this positive effect. Voters in 3 high Asian and high Latino precincts generally used their RCV ballots less fully than did voters in precincts with low minority populations. While RCV may not depress minority turnout, it may result in less meaningful participation for some minority groups. With RCV, we must consider not just turnout, but also the extent to which the right to vote is fully exercised.

Changes in intergenerational mobility over time have been the focus of extensive research. However, existing studies have been limited to studying only males and relying on intergenerational correlations in outcome variables that often lack clear welfare implications. This paper introduces a new methodology for measuring intergenerational mobility that relies on health measures rather than occupational measures to assess the strength of the relationship between the outcomes of parents and their children. It introduces a new intergenerational dataset spanning seven decades that is constructed by linking individuals' death certificates to those of their parents. Relying on death certificates data allows for linking both males and females to their parents. Life span calculated from these death certificates provides a measure of welfare that has a consistent interpretation across time and genders. Intergenerational correlations in life span serve as our measure of mobility. We find that a son's life span is strongly correlated with his father's and that this correlation has strengthened over time. Daughter's life span shows a similarly strong relationship with mother's life span that has remained relatively stable over the past century. Differences in life span are shown to correlate with occupational status and occupational transitions from one generation to the next. Abstract Changes in intergenerational mobility over time have been the focus of extensive research. However, existing studies have been limited to studying only males and relying on intergener-ational correlations in outcome variables that often lack clear welfare implications. This paper introduces a new methodology for measuring intergenerational mobility that relies on health measures rather than occupational measures to assess the strength of the relationship between the outcomes of parents and their children. It introduces a new intergenerational dataset spanning seven decades that is constructed by linking individuals' death certificates to those of their parents. Relying on death certificate data allows for linking both males and females to their parents. Life span calculated from these death certificates provides a measure of welfare that has a consistent interpretation across time and genders. Intergenerational correlations in life span serve as our measure of mobility. We find that a son's life span is strongly correlated with his father's and that this correlation has strengthened over time. Daughter's life span shows a similarly strong relationship with mother's life span that has remained relatively stable over the past century. Differences in life span are shown to correlate with occupational status and occupational transitions from one generation to the next.

Immigration policy can be understood as variably conforming to three different philosophies: economic utilitarianism, which is geared toward maximizing wealth; rights liberalism, where policy creates legal protections of human dignity, including that of citizens and migrants alike; and communitarianism, where the preservation of the host states national culture is paramount. The extent to which these philosophies guides policy depends on the policy in question and also on the state making the policy. Although both the United States and Japan face demographic and economic challenges in the future and make economic utilitarian policy for skilled immigrants, the United States tendency toward free-market economic utilitarianism has prepared it for these challenges more so than Japan, where policies more in line with communitarian principles and an economic utilitarianism focused on the costs of low-skilled immigrants have created greater demographic challenges in the future.

This paper seeks to further understand the causes of high crime rates among young black men. I have extended the work of Cutler & Glaeser (1997) who determined that blacks in highly segregated metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) have worse outcomes than blacks in less segregated MSAs. One outcome not included in the study is the likelihood of being incarcerated. By obtaining state-level segregation measures and individual level incarceration data from the U.S. Census (1980-2000), I have determined that there is a correlation between these two measures; that black men age 18-65 who live in more segregated states have a higher probability of being in jail than those living in less segregated states. By using an Instrumental Variable, I can determine that this is in fact a causal relationship. Additionally, I examine the mechanism through which segregation influences life incarceration risks of blacks and how improving these areas can have a significant impact on life-trajectories for young black men.

How much of the geographic clustering of economic activity is attributable to agglomeration spillovers as opposed to natural advantages? I present evidence on this question using data on the long-run effects of large scale hydroelectric dams built in the U.S. over the 20th century, obtained through a unique comparison between counties with or without dams but with similar hydropower potential. Until mid-century, the availability of cheap local power from hydroelectric dams conveyed an important advantage that attracted industry and population. By the 1950s, however, these advantages were attenuated by improvements in the efficiency of thermal power generation and the advent of high tension transmission lines. Using a novel combination of synthetic control methods and event-study techniques, I show that, on average, dams built before 1950 had substantial short run effects on local population and employment growth, whereas those built after 1950 had no such effects. Moreover, the impact of pre-1950 dams persisted and continued to grow after the advantages of cheap local hydroelectricity were attenuated, suggesting the presence of important agglomeration spillovers. Over a 50 year horizon, I estimate that at least one half of the long run effect of pre-1950 dams is due to spillovers. The estimated short and long run effects are highly robust to alternative procedures for selecting synthetic controls, to controls for confounding factors such as proximity to transportation networks, and to alternative sample restrictions, such as dropping dams built by the Tennessee Valley Authority or removing control counties with environmental regulations. I also find small local agglomeration effects from smaller dam projects, and small spillovers to nearby locations from large dams. Lastly, I find relatively small costs of environmental regulations associated with hydroelectric licensing rules.