Early-life conditions are associated with mortality in men, but not studied to the same extent in women. We add new evidence by studying a cohort of women born between 1916 and 1931 and followed for mortality between 1986 and 2013. Our sample from Iowa includes a significant number of rural women, from both farms and small towns. The long-term effects of growing up in a rural area were mixed: farmers’ daughters lived longer than women growing up off-farm in rural areas. Daughters of farm laborers and skilled or semi-skilled trades workers fared worst, when considering early-life socioeconomic status. We also find evidence that migrating to small-town Iowa was associated with lower life expectancy after age fifty-five. Considering social class and farm-nonfarm status is important for understanding the health of rural America.

Research on the effects of federal housing assistance programs on children’s outcomes has produced mixed results. Although housing assistance programs provide a rare source of affordable and stable housing for low-income families, there remains concern that living in public housing developments increases children’s risk of poor health. This paper uses a unique survey-administrative linked dataset to examine the effect of living in public housing on children’s risk of health problems, including frequent diarrhea, headaches, skin allergies, asthma, and fair/poor health status. Children living in public housing have more health problems than children who do not live in public housing. However, the analysis develops several comparison groups to demonstrate that the excess health problems reflect unobserved selection into public housing. The main selection adjustment compares children living in public housing to children who enter public housing in the near future. Results indicate that public housing does not increase the risk of child health problems, and it is important to consider selection into public housing on factors that are correlated with health. The effects of public housing may be mixed, but policymakers should not confuse the economic and health challenges of public housing residents for the effects of the program itself.

Using a broad panel of advanced economies, we document that increases in GDP per capita are associated with a systematic shift in the composition of value added to sectors that are intensive in high-skill labour, a process we label as skill-biased structural change. It follows that further development in these economies leads to an increase in the relative demand for skilled labour. We develop a quantitative two-sector model of this process as a laboratory to assess the sources of the rise of the skill premium in the U.S. and a set of ten other advanced economies, over the period 1977 to 2005. For the U.S., we find that the sector-specific skill neutral component of technical change accounts for 18–24% of the overall increase of the skill premium due to technical change, and that the mechanism through which this component of technical change affects the skill premium is via skill-biased structural change.

The current research proposes to incorporate vocational interests into the study of adverse impact (i.e., differential hiring/selection rates between minority and majority groups in employment settings). In the context of high stakes testing (e.g., using cognitive and personality tests), we show how race gaps in vocational interests would correspond to differential rates of job attraction (the attraction process) and various personnel selection outcomes (the selection process), in patterns that are not always intuitive. Using findings from various meta-analyses, we construct a combined correlation matrix of race, vocational interests, cognitive ability, and Conscientiousness; and provide mathematical formulas to assess the role of vocational interests in determining subgroup differences on predictors in applicant pools. Results and empirical examples suggest: (a) applicant attraction based on vocational interests can reduce adverse impact potential when the interest favors the minority [majority] group and is negatively [positively] related to the predictor; (b) attraction effects of vocational interests on adverse impact potential are modest; (c) if the vocational interest subgroup mean difference is small relative to other predictors in use, personnel selection on the interest will reduce adverse impact potential; (d) attraction effects tend to dampen or remove the selection effects of vocational interests on adverse impact potential, due to variance restriction on interests in the applicant pool; and (e) selection effects tend to be much stronger than attraction effects. These findings have implications for how adverse impact might differ systematically across job types, partly due to attraction and selection effects involving race differences in vocational interests. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

Most monopsony research leaves out the employer as an active agent. The cause of monopsony rests solely on the workers: Their idiosyncratic preferences, their lack of information, and their geographical isolation create the monopsony conditions. Employers are viewed as mainly passive and only choose to exploit their monopsony potential when the conditions allow. The theoretical passivity of employers leaves out a whole class of behaviors necessary to identify and understand the persistence of monopsony. For instance, the models consider gender as a monopsony factor because wives and mothers are presumed to have intensely inelastic labor supply functions. Women’s attachment to children and the children’s schools and to their husband’s locational decisions means women are less likely to leave a geographical area to pursue a competitor’s better offer. Again, it is the woman’s idiosyncratic choices that allow for monopsony exploitation. However, it is likely employers consciously use race and gender stratification to segregate and divide workers to create differential labor supply elasticities and, thus, create monopsony conditions to the firm. A firm would maintain practices that use race to allocate jobs and separate men from women workers to maintain divisions among the workforce. Moreover, government policies that make it difficult for workers to unionize, keep minimum wages low, and subsidize low-paid work through the earned income tax credit help employers create and maintain monopsony power among subaltern groups, non-White workers, and women. Future research on monopsony should focus on specific employers’ practices that create monopsony conditions such as providing firm specific childcare, perpetuating occupational segregations, limiting opportunities of promotion for women and non-White workers, and lobbying for the wage subsidy programs such as the earned income tax credit.

In the fall of 2020, school districts across the country reopened under a variety of instructional modes. Some districts returned to in-person instruction and some operated remotely. Others reopened under hybrid models, wherein students alternated times, days, or weeks of in-person instruction. To capture this variation, we developed the Elementary School Operating Status (ESOS) database. ESOS provides data on elementary school districts’ primary operating status in the first grading period of the 2020–2021 school year, covering 24 million students in more than 9,000 school districts in all states. In this research note, we introduce these data and offer two analyt ical examples. We show that school districts with greater representation of Black and Hispanic students were less likely to offer in-person instruction than were districts with greater representation of White students. These racial disparities remained after accounting for geographic locale and COVID-19 prevalence. We also show that the number of in-person elementary school instruction days was associated with mothers’ labor force participation relative to fathers and to women without children—that is, the fewer days of instruction, the less likely that mothers were employed. ESOS is a critical data source for evaluating the mid-and long-term implications for students who experienced reduced in-person learning and for mothers who exited employment in the absence of in-person instruction and care.

Prior research has identified a number of factors that are related to voter turnout, including socio-economic status, race, age, and sex. A substantial literature also suggests the existence of a positive relationship between length of residence and likelihood of voting. However, these studies use data from before 2016. The present study fills that gap in the literature by estimating the relationship between length of residence and the probability of voting using the most recent data from the United States Census Bureau Current Population Survey Voting Supplement. More specifically, I estimate the influence of length of residence on the probability of voting in the 2020 U.S. general election. Consistent with earlier studies, I find evidence of a small, positive, and statistically significant association between length of residence in the same home and the likelihood of voting in the November 2020 elections. Given that political participation is widely regarded as an indicator of a healthy and fully-functioning democracy, policymakers interested in preserving American democracy should look favorably on policies that facilitate length of residence at the same address.

We draw upon the life-course perspective and examine whether Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) moderates the age pattern of adult mortality using data from the 2007 and 2012 National Health Interview Survey Sample Adult File linked to National Death Index data through 2015. Overall, 7.0% of respondents died by 2015. Discrete-time hazard analysis indicates that the log odds of mortality were significantly lower among 18 and 19 year old adults ever diagnosed with ADHD and significantly higher among 46 to 64 year old adults ever diagnosed with ADHD, with a crossover occurring at age 33. Results were similar among men and women. It is not known specifically which risks drive changes in the risk of mortality documented among persons with ADHD during the transition to adulthood, the increased risk of mortality in midlife, or whether some risks operate more or less at particular ages. Additional research can lead to targeted, age- and life-course stage-focused interventions for specific risks and contribute to the reduction of ADHD-related mortality.

Over the early twentieth century, urban centers adopted full-time public health departments. We show that opening full-time administration had little observable impact on mortality. We then attempt to determine why health departments were ineffective. Our results suggest that achievements in public health occurred regardless of health department status. Further, we find that cities with and without a full-time health department allocated similar per capita expenditures towards health administration. This health department funding also better predicts infant mortality declines. Our conclusions indicate that specific campaigns, public health systems, and funding may have been more meaningful for local health over this era.

This paper studies the impact of knowledge specialization on earnings losses following displacement. We develop a novel measure of the specialization of human capital, based on how concentrated the knowledge used in an occupation is. Combining our measure with individual labor histories from the NLSY 79-97 and Norway’s LEED, we show that workers with more specialized human capital suffer larger earnings losses following exogenous displacement. A one standard deviation increase in pre-displacement knowledge specialization increases the earnings losses post-displacement by 3 to 4 pp per year in the US, and by 1.5 to 2 pp per year in Norway. In the US, the negative effect of higher pre-displacement knowledge specialization on post-displacement earnings is driven by the negative impact of knowledge specialization on well-paid outside opportunities. By contrast, this association between outside opportunities and knowledge specialization plays no role in post-displacement earnings losses in Norway, where the negative effect of specialization is in part explained by its association with the routine content and the offshoring probability of the occupation.

We examine the causes and consequences of an important cultural and psychological trait: the extent to which one views the world in zero-sum terms-i.e., that benefits to one person or group tend to come at the cost of others. We implement a survey among approximately 15,000 individuals living in the United States that measures zero-sum thinking, political and policy views, and a rich set of characteristics about their ancestry. We find that a more zero-sum view is strongly correlated with several policy views about the importance of government, the value of redistributive policies, the impact of immigration, and one's political orientation. We find that zero-sum thinking can be explained by experiences of an individual's ancestors (parents and grandparents), including the amount of intergenerational upward mobility they experienced, the degree of economic hardship they suffered, whether they immigrated to the United States or were exposed to more immigrants, and whether they had experiences with enslavement. These findings underscore the importance of psychological traits, and how they are transmitted inter-generationally, in explaining current political divides in the United States.

Coethnics often work in the same industries. How does this ethnic clustering affect individuals’ political loyalties amid industrial growth and decline? Focusing on migrant groups, the author contends that ethnic groups’ distribution across industries alters the political allegiances of their members. When a group is concentrated in a growing industry, economic optimism and resources flow between coethnics, bolstering migrants’ confidence in their economic security and dissuading investments in local political incorporation. When a group is concentrated in a declining industry, these gains dissipate, leading migrants to integrate into out-groups with greater access to political rents. Analyses of immigrants near US coal mines in the early twentieth century support this theory. The article shows how ethnic groups’ distribution across industries shapes the evolution of group cleavages and illuminates how decarbonizing transitions away from fossil fuels may reshape identity conflicts.

Women have long suffered in both academia and industry from lower status, underrepresentation, unequal treatment, and other challenges based on gender. This paper explores whether a gender-neutral name is associated with the research impact of a scientist by examining three years of citations. The data for this study are derived from publications indexed in ISI's Web of Science (WoS) database from 2009 to 2015. By assigning a name neutralization index score to each author, we investigate the relationship between the neutralization index and citations and find the following results: (1) generally, the more neutral the name, the more citations the publications received; (2) the neutral effect was more pronounced for authors with feminine names than for authors with masculine names.

Building on recent advantages in inverse probability weighted identification and estimation of counterfactual distributions, the authors examine the history of wage earnings for women and their potential wage distributions in the United States. These potentials are two counterfactuals, what if women received men's market "rewards" for their own "skills" and what if they received the women's rewards but for men's characteristics? Using the Current Population Survey data from 1976 to 2013, the authors analyze the entire counterfactual distributions to separate the "structure" and human capital "composition" effect. In contrast to Maasoumi and Wang (2019), the reference outcome in these decompositions is women's observed earnings distribution, and inverse probability methods are employed, rather than the conditional quantile approaches. The authors provide decision theoretic measures of the distance between two distributions, to complement assessments based on mean, median, or particular quantiles. We assess uniform rankings of alternate distributions by tests of stochastic dominance in order to identify evaluations robust to subjective measures. Traditional moment-based measures severely underestimate the declining trend of the structure effect. Nevertheless, dominance rankings suggest that the structure ("discrimination"?) effect is bigger than human capital characteristics.

The 2019 issue of the Painting the Current Picture: A National Report on Treatment Courts in the United States (hereafter referred to as PCP) represents the sixth time an in-depth analysis of treatment court programs across the United States has been conducted. The current version was conducted by the National Drug Court Resource Center (NDCRC), located at the University of North Carolina Wilmington (UNCW). All previous iterations of this survey (2004, 2005, 2008, 2011, 2016) were conducted by the National Association of Drug Court Professionals (NADCP). The monograph has continued the long-standing tradition of providing a detailed snapshot of the treatment court field within the United States. Especially noteworthy is that these data provide the authors with the ability to monitor trends and to highlight similarities and differences in the findings obtained over time. The monograph also provides a synopsis of the most recent scholarly literature on treatment courts. Summaries of the extant literature for each treatment court type include a brief overview of the history and structure, best practice standards, guiding principles, effectiveness and cost-benefit findings, and directions for future research. New to the 2019 PCP monograph is an organization of information by treatment court type. While aggregate data regarding all treatment court programs is provided, several interesting trends are revealed when examining data by program type and age group served. Similar to the 2014 PCP, there are important lessons for the field to consider and on which action should be taken. These lessons include: First, the type and quality of data being gathered regarding treatment courts varies greatly across states/ territories. Data availability and quality have great implications for the type of research questions we can answer about treatment courts, our ability to monitor trends over time, and to obtain an accurate picture of what is happening in the field. Second, racial/ethnic disparities in both enrollment in and graduation from treatment courts continues to be an issue within the treatment court field. This finding was highlighted in the 2014 PCP monograph. In 2019, the National Association of Drug Court Professionals and National Center for State Courts published the Equity & Inclusion: Equivalent Access Assessment & Toolkit, with support from the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP). In the same year, American University, with BJA funding, launched the Racial & Ethnic Disparities (RED) Assessment Tool. Both of these tools are designed to assist jurisdictions with identifying and addressing disparities. Third, for the past 10-15 years much attention and resources have been paid to the opioid epidemic and how treatment courts are well-positioned to address the needs of high-risk/high-need individuals with an opioid use disorder. However, what has received less attention is the fact that in some regions/jurisdictions, stimulant use has been and continues to be the prevalent drug of use among individuals. A small body of research has demonstrated that treatment courts are effective in addressing the needs of this population of individuals as well (Farrell et al 2019; Jones et al 2019; Lanier & DeVall, 2017). These issues represent opportunities for the field to continue the legacy of using data to make informed decisions in order to advance the mission of treatment courts. These issues are not insurmountable. With a commitment to excellence in mind and the necessary resources, improvements can be made. Strategies are currently being implemented to address these areas for needed enhancements.

Before sea to shining sea. Before spacious skies were pierced by purple mountains. Before the uniting of one nation. Black women learned to rise. In POWER: THE RISE OF BLACK WOMEN IN AMERICA, award-winning journalist and digital media executive Charity C. Elder posits that there has never been a better time to be a Black woman in the United States. POWER is an incisive disquisition on Black womanhood weaving theoretical frameworks of history and sociology with poignant interviews, ethnographic observation, and anecdotes gleaned from history, social media, pop culture, and the author’s lived experiences. Using data, the author substantiates the triumph of Black women. Original analysis of eighty years of US census data, prepared by the University of Minnesota and analyzed by Dr. Constance F. Citro, documents the remarkable ascension of Black women since the early twentieth century. An exclusive national survey conducted in partnership with the Marist Poll in 2021 not only reveals that 70 percent of Black women say they have been successful in life, but also that most believe they have the power to succeed. POWER does not shy away from the realities of structural oppression identified by the late Black feminist scholar bell hooks; rather it illuminates how Black women exercise agency to create meaningful lives. Success is not an anomaly, but a defining characteristic. Black women have amassed power—now, Elder posits, they need to acknowledge it and then wield the hell out of it.

We conduct a benefit-cost analysis of a U.S. child allowance, based on a systematic literature review of the highest quality available causal evidence on the short-and long-term effects of cash and near-cash transfers. In contrast to the previous studies we synthesize, which tend to measure a subset of benefits and costs available in a particular dataset, we establish a comprehensive accounting of potential effects and secure estimates of each. We produce core estimates of the benefits and costs per child and per adult of increasing household income by $1,000 in one year; these can be applied to value any cash or near-cash program that increases household income. Using microsimulation, we then apply these estimates to determine net aggregate benefits of three child allowance policies, including the expanded Child Tax Credit as enacted for the year 2021 in the American Rescue Plan (ARP). Our estimates indicate that making that expansion permanent would cost $97 billion per year and generate social benefits with net present value of $982 billion per year. Sensitivity analyses indicate that our estimates are robust to alternative assumptions and that all three child allowance policies we evaluate produce very high net returns for the U.S. population.

Background: While foodwork (tasks required to access food, including home food preparation) in the UK declined toward the end of the 20th century, it is not known whether this trend has continued into the 21st century. While evidence suggests many people feel they lack the time to cook, it is not known whether this is attributable to increasing demands on their time. Methods: Analysis of repeat cross-sectional data from three UK time use surveys: 1983, 2000 and 2014; participants aged 19+ (N = 14,810). We analysed changes in foodwork participation across survey years using linear regression, adding interaction terms to determine whether trends varied between different socio-demographic groups. We categorized time use over 24 h into eight parts, forming a composition: (1) personal care; (2) sleep; (3) eating; (4) physical activity; (5) leisure screen time; (6) work (paid and unpaid); (7) socialising and hobbies; and (8) foodwork. We examined whether the time-use composition varied across survey years, testing for interactions with socio-demographic characteristics. Results: Foodwork declined significantly between 1983 and 2014. However, a concurrent increase in time spent on work was not observed. Instead, time spent on sleep and screen time increased significantly. The decline in foodwork was significant among women but not among men. Conclusion: While many people in the UK continue to allocate time to foodwork on a daily basis, foodwork has continued to decline into the 21st century, though there was no concurrent increase in time being allocated to work, suggesting external and non-discretionary demands on time have not increased. Practitioners seeking to address a lack of time as a barrier to foodwork may wish to accommodate a broad definition of what this could mean.

Although tornadoes are considered to be one of the deadliest natural disasters in the United States, there exists limited evidence on how such economic shocks may induce disparities in energy-related expenditures across socioeconomic groups and geographical locations. This article shows that a 10 percent increase in tornado-induced fatalities in the same county where a household resides causes a 1.5 percent decrease in annual expenditures allocated to electricity and a 1.1 percent decline in annual expenditures allocated to home heating fuel. Findings indicate that the low income-high cost (LIHC) measure of energy poverty induced by tornadoes is strong, negative and statistically significant among US households. Results further demonstrate that the severity of tornadoes exacerbates disparities in energy consumption between (i) whites and non-whites, and (ii) English speaking and non-English speaking households. Among 22 states where tornadoes caused at least one fatality, white households in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, Arkansas and Iowa experience decreases in home heating fuel expenditures. Declines in electricity expenditures induced by tornadoes are pronounced among non-white households in Pennsylvania, Indiana, Missouri, Louisiana, Kentucky, Oklahoma and New Hampshire. These findings can help policymakers determine which socioeconomic groups to target, and design policies to address energy-related needs in areas affected by natural disasters.

This paper investigates the question of whether and how restrictive immigration policies affect the earnings of Latinxs who are not the target of these policies—that is, Latinx citizens. Focusing on policies at the state (E-Verify) and county (287(g)) level, we investigate possible spillover on Latinx citizen earnings from 2006 through 2016. We use multiple sources of data, merging policy and census data with two national probability samples of Latinx citizens. Our results show that E-Verify and 287(g) affect earnings similarly. Laws leave wage-employed workers unaffected and instead exclusively shape the earnings of self-employed respondents. Among self-employed, policy effects depend on the type of county respondents live in. Once laws like 287(g) or E-Verify go into effect, Latinx self-employed see dramatic earnings losses when living outside of ethnic enclaves, while seeing earnings gains when living within predominantly-Latinx counties.