We assess the likelihood of moderate and severe psychological distress among Black immigrants. We test the region of context framework, which states that Black immigrants from majority-Black and racially mixed regions of origin have better health outcomes than Black immigrants from majority-white contexts. We utilize data from IPUMS Health Surveys, 2000–2018. We employed partial proportional odds models to assess the likelihood of moderate and severe psychological distress among Black immigrants and U.S.-born Black Americans. All immigrant groups, except for Black Europeans, are significantly less likely to be in moderate and severe distress vis-à-vis U.S.-born Black Americans (p < 0.01). Black Africans are about 54–58% less likely to be in severe distressed compared to U.S.-born Black Americans. Black immigrants from racially mixed and majority-Black contexts (Mexico, Central America, Caribbean, South America, and Africa) are significantly less likely to be afflicted with moderate and severe distress than U.S.-born Black Americans.

In this dissertation, I consider two potential sources of racial disparities: racially biased discipline at school and changes to voting rights protections. In the first chapter, I examine patterns of racial disparities in school discipline. Racial gaps in the adjudication of student misconduct are well documented—for similar behaviors, students of color are more likely to be disciplined and discipline tends to be harsher. While students of color do receive harsher punishments, on average, I show that this differential depends on the racial composition of incidents. Consistent with administrators moving toward equal treatment when variation in race is more salient, multi-race incidents evidence no differentials. In fact, when a white student is implicated in the same incident as a student of color, punishments imposed on students of color are indistinguishable from those imposed on white students in all- white incidents. In the second chapter, I turn to the effects of changes to voting rights protections on racial disparities in voter turnout. Existing research shows that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 increased turnout among Black voters, which then generated economic benefits for Black communities. In Shelby County v. Holder (2013), the Supreme Court invalidated the enforcement mechanism responsible for these improvements, prompting concerns that states with histories of discriminatory election practices would respond by suppressing Black turnout. I estimate the effect of the Shelby decision on the racial composition of the electorate using triple-difference comparisons of validated turnout data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study. The data suggest that the Shelby decision did not widen the Black-white turnout gap in states subject to the ruling. This dissertation includes both unpublished co-authored material and previously published solo-authored material.

Abstract - The US Census Bureau uses its decennial census codes for industry and occupation in the monthly Current Population Survey. The Census Bureau has regularly revised these three- and four-digit codes to more accurately reflect the reality of work in the United States. These changes make it difficult to study industries and occupations over time. While limited crosswalks exist, there is currently no way to translate an individual’s coded occupation or industry to every other scheme for long-term comparison by social scientists. This project aims to impute the most likely code for an individual’s occupation and industry into each year’s coding scheme by using random forest models to translate industry and occupation across decades. To our knowledge, this is the first tool that can map industry and occupation at scale with a high degree of accuracy into any year’s scheme.

Economic theory suggests that a binding minimum wage increase may reduce the generosity of employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) or other fringe benefits, yet previous empirical studies reach conflicting conclusions about the existence of a trade-off between minimum wages and ESI. We study whether recent state and federal minimum wage increases affect the level or the source of health insurance coverage for low-income families using the 2005–16 Current Population Survey. Our research design uses state and year fixed effects to isolate within-state minimum wage changes while controlling for Medicaid eligibility and other changes in health policy related to implementation of the Affordable Care Act. Because dependent coverage might also be affected by minimum wage hikes, we examine ESI coverage for both low-wage workers and their dependents. We find robust evidence that minimum wage increases lead to reductions in ESI coverage in families below 300 percent of the federal poverty level, with a nominal $1 increase in the minimum wage reducing the probability of ESI coverage by 0.99 percentage points. Reductions in coverage were observed both for workers and for their dependents.

Background: Since its 2012 inception, the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (HRRP) has espoused cost-effective health-care delivery by financially penalizing hospitals with excessive 30-day readmission rates. In this study, we hypothesized that socioeconomic factors impact readmission rates of patients undergoing spine surgery.Methods: In this study, 2,830 patients who underwent a spine surgical procedure between 2012 and 2018 were identified retrospectively from our institutional database, with readmission (postoperative day [POD] 0 to 30 and POD 31 to 90) as the outcome of interest. Patients were linked to U.S. Census Tracts and ZIP codes using the Geographic Information Systems (ArcGIS) mapping program. Social determinants of health (SDOH) were obtained from publicly available databases. Patient income was estimated at the Public Use Microdata Area level based on U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey data. Univariate and multivariable stepwise regression analyses were conducted. Significance was defined as p < 0.05, with Bonferroni corrections as appropriate.Results: Race had a significant effect on readmission only among patients whose estimated incomes were < $ 31,650 (χ 2= 13.4, p < 0.001). Based on a multivariable stepwise regression, patients with estimated incomes of < $ 31,000 experienced greater odds of readmission by POD 30 compared with patients with incomes of > $ 62,000; the odds ratio (OR) was 11.06 (95% confidence interval [CI], 6.35 to 15.57). There were higher odds of 30-day readmission for patients living in neighborhoods with higher diabetes prevalence (OR, 3.02 [95% CI, 1.60 to 5.49]) and patients living in neighborhoods with limited access to primary care providers (OR, 1.39 [95% CI, 1.10 to 1.70]). Lastly, each decile increase in the Area Deprivation Index of a patient's Census Tract was associated with higher odds of 30-day readmission (OR, 1.40 [95% CI, 1.30 to 1.51]).Conclusions: Socioeconomically disadvantaged patients and patients from areas of high social deprivation have a higher risk of readmission following a spine surgical procedure.Level of Evidence: Prognostic Level IV. See Instructions for Authors for a complete description of levels of evidence.

The topics of inequality, unconditional differences or disproportional rewarding systems are fighting for their place at the top of the interest in public life. In order to fight the inequality present in society, scientists, policymakers, publicly active people and ordinary people are trying to discuss it and find its leading causes. This thesis examines the inequality between men and women in the rewarding system and how the recent pandemic crisis influences it. We analyse the role of many wage gap determinants and try to identify the main ones and how they change with the COVID-19 pandemic. Some of our expectations were confirmed. The pandemic crisis put more burden on women than men. However, the research shows that all the economic sectors suffer from the pandemic; the only difference is by what amount. The results of the decomposition show that change in the determinants of the wage gap is present, but only on the border of the gap. The reason is that even before the pandemic outbreak, the most significant part of the gender wage gap (GWG) was caused by the unexplained gap, i.e., the possible reasons for the GWG are gender discrimination or gender specialisation. After the COVID-19 pandemic began, the unexplained gap strengthened its position.

A rich literature shows that early life conditions shape later life outcomes, including health and migration events. However, analyses of geographic disparities in mortality outcomes focus almost exclusively on contemporaneously measured geographic place (e.g., state of residence at death), thereby potentially conflating the role of early life conditions, migration patterns, and effects of destinations. We use the newly available Mortality Disparities in American Communities (MDAC) dataset, which links respondents in the 2008 ACS to official death records and estimate consequential differences by method of aggregation; the mean absolute deviation of the difference in life expectancy at age 50 measured by state of birth versus state of residence is 0.58 (0.50) years for men and 0.40 (0.29) years for women. These differences are also spatially clustered, and we show that regional inequality in life expectancy is higher based on life expectancies by state of birth, implying that interstate migration mitigates baseline geographical inequality in mortality outcomes. Finally, we assess how state-specific features of in-migration, out-migration, and non-migration together shape measures of mortality disparities by state (of residence), further demonstrating the difficulty of clearly interpreting these widely used measures.

Previous work shows that higher male wage inequality decreases the share of ever married women in their 20s, consistent with the theoretical prediction that greater male wage dispersion increases the return to marital search. Consequently, male wage inequality should be associated with higher husband quality among those “early-mover” women who choose to forgo these higher returns to search. We confirm using U.S. decennial Census and American Community Survey (ACS) data from 1980-2018 that married women ages 22-30 in marriage markets with greater male wage inequality are more likely to marry up in education and in husband’s occupation. We additionally consider whether male wage inequality increases wage uncertainty, leading women to prefer older husbands who can send stronger signals of lifetime earnings. We confirm that higher male wage inequality is also associated with a larger marital age gap.

In this paper we explain how the Data Basis platform helps decisively solve the data access problem for different types of users. We describe its core products: a powerful search engine, a freely accessible data lake featuring a unified schema and hundreds of interoperable tables, and APIs in various programming languages. We exemplify the platform’s utility with discussions of three datasets on labor markets, elections, and local public finances in Brazil. The project is extraordinarily cost-effective: dividing a measure of yearly benefits generated by a conservative estimate of yearly costs to run the organization yields a lower bound social return of 74. We conclude by laying out a roadmap to guide the organization’s future steps.

Background The incidence rate of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is rapidly increasing in Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS). The present study analyzed trends in T2DM incidence rate across the BRICS and associations with age, period, and birth cohort. Methods The incidence rate was estimated by the data obtained from GBD 2019 (Global Burden of Disease Study 2019) and was analyzed with the age-period-cohort framework. Incidence rates of T2DM (1990–2019) were collected for each 5-year age group (from 25 to 29 to 85–89 age group) stratified by gender from the Global Burden of Disease 2019 Study. Results In 2019, the the incidence rate of T2DM was 280.2 per 100,000 across the BRICS. Between 1990 and 2019, the incidence rate of T2DM among the BRICS population increased by 83.3%. In each period, as age increases, the incidence rate of T2DM in China and Russia first increased and then decreased, while the incidence rate of T2DM in Brazil, India and South Africa first increased and then decreased slightly with age group. Deteriorating period and cohort risks for incidence rate of T2DM were generally found across the BRICS. Conclusions The number of diabetic patients in the BRICS countries has continued to increase and the growth rate has been stable in the past 30 years, which is dependent on age and some other environmental factors. Some possible factors influencing T2DM incidence are analyzed and hypotheses generated through the age and period effects.

Contrary to many new initiatives and actions taken, there persists a severe gender wage gap. This is also the case for the profession of economics. When trying to explain this phenomenon we often encounter discussions and research about differences in human capital and family obligations and the fact that women still show a higher rate of workforce interruptions. But in fact, statistical analysis shows these commonly discussed factors account for only a low share of the gender wage gap for economists; the biggest part remains unexplained.* The concept of overtime work and its rewards has the potential to offer a new solution not only for explaining the remaining gap but also for closing it.

Fathers are integral to family processes and children’s well-being. However, major social and economic changes in the United States over the last several decades have had profound impacts on the economic and social well-being of men of lower socioeconomic status (SES) and men of color, specifically Black, Latino, and Indigenous men. These changes have created stark disparities in the ability and capacity of fathers to be involved with their children. Social policies can be effective mechanisms for promoting and ensuring the well-being of fathers, but fathers are rarely the explicit target of policy efforts. Child support enforcement, the only national policy targeting fathers, has produced an inequitable system that disproportionately subjects low-SES fathers and fathers of color to a series of punitive enforcement mechanisms with minimal benefit to children. We provide evidence for the potential of a broad swath of social policies that have not traditionally been targeted at fathers to improve the well-being of fathers and facilitate their engagement with children. We propose that social workers are uniquely positioned to advocate for reforms and expansions to these policies that will improve father, child, and family well-being and promote economic, social, and racial justice.

Climatic variability has been linked to multiple demographic and health outcomes, but few studies have examined its impact on household size. Household size is an important correlate of wellbeing and is driven by multiple demographic processes that may be affected by environmental shocks. This paper describes these links conceptually, and then empirically examines the effects of exposure to climate anomalies on household size and three underlying components: fertility, marriage, and family agglomeration (partition). We examine these relationships by linking harmonized census microdata from eleven sub-Saharan African countries with high-resolution climate data from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) and modeling the effects of recent temperature and precipitation exposures on the outcomes of interest. Our analyses find little evidence that recent temperature and precipitation exposures lead to overall changes in household size. When examining underlying demographic dynamics, however, we find that family agglomeration responds to both temperature and rainfall, marriage responds to rainfall and cold shocks, and higher temperatures are associated with increases in fertility. By studying these outcomes in one unified conceptual and empirical framework, our results suggest that many components of household size are associated with climate exposures, but in a manner that does not translate into significant net changes in household size.

How did Progressive era reforms affect the lives of urban residents across U.S. cities? The historical record is unclear. Some scholars argue that many of the progressive reforms were motivated by nativist and racist animus and explicitly designed to benefit white business elites at the expense of disadvantaged groups. Others point out that reformers often sought to improve urban living and working conditions and expand access to education, which generated new opportunities for social mobility. We inform this debate leveraging new data on 455 U.S. cities from 1900-1940 combining i) dates of adoption of reform-style government, ii) deanonymized census data, iii) data on political participation, and iv) detailed municipal budget data. Using a difference-indifferences design, we document the impact of Progressive reforms on political participation, public goods spending, and the relative socioeconomic well-being of black, immigrant, and working class residents visa -vis whites, natives, and business elites. Despite finding that voter turnout decreased in reformed cities, we uncover only a modest increase in earnings inequality across more and less advantaged groups and no significant differences in expenditure patterns as a consequence of reform. This approach provides a comprehensive portrait of the legacy of Progressive municipal institutions and suggests that, on average, the reforms of this era may have exacerbated political inequality more than economic inequality, at least in the first decades following their adoption.

President Bush imposed safeguard tariffs on steel in early 2002. Using US input-output tables and a generalized difference-in-difference methodology, we analyze the local labor market employment effects of these tariffs depending on the local labor market’s reliance on steel as an input and as part of local production. We find the tariffs did not boost local steel employment but substantially depressed local employment in steel-consuming industries for many years after Bush removed the tariffs. These large and persistent negative effects were concentrated in local labor markets that had low human capital or were strongly specialized in steel-consuming industries.

Background: Asthma disproportionately affects individuals with lower income. High uninsured rates are a potential driver for this disparity. Previous studies have not examined the effect of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) on asthma-related outcomes for individuals with low income. Research Question: What is the impact of insurance status and the ACA on asthma outcomes for adults 18 to 64 years of age in households with low-income status? Study Design and Methods: This study was a pooled cross-sectional observational study using National Health Interview Survey data from 2011 through 2013 and 2016 through 2018. Individuals 18 to 64 years of age with a history of asthma and low income were included. Survey-weighted regression modeling and mediation analysis was used to explore the relationship of insurance status and asthma control. Univariate and multivariate survey-weighted regression modeling then was used to evaluate the correlation of the ACA and asthma outcomes. Results: We identified 4,043 individual observations. Having health insurance was correlated with improved asthma outcomes (OR, 1.25). This relationship was completely mediated by cost barriers to medications and physician visits. Although the ACA resulted in significant changes in insurance status (OR, 2.4), no statistically significant change was found in asthma outcomes. Furthermore, cost barriers to both medications and physician visits persisted in the insured population, 20.7% and 30.0%, respectively. Interpretation: Insurance coverage is associated with improved asthma control for adults 18 to 64 years from households with low socioeconomic status. The ACA reduced the rates of uninsured, but did not have the same magnitude of effect on reducing cost barriers. The persistence of cost barriers may explain in part the lack of population-level improvement in asthma control.

Importance Public assistance policies may play a role in preventing child maltreatment by improving household resources among families of low incomes. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is one of the largest public assistance programs in the US. However, the association of state SNAP policy options to Child Protective Services (CPS) outcomes has not been rigorously examined. Objective To model the association of state SNAP policies with changes in CPS and foster care outcomes in the US over time. Design, Setting, and Participants This cohort study used panel data to examine the association between SNAP policy options and study outcomes from 2004 to 2016 for 50 US states and the District of Columbia in 2-way fixed-effects regression models. The count of SNAP policies was used as an instrument for SNAP caseloads in instrumental variables models. Data analysis was conducted in November 2021. Exposures The adoption of 1 or more state SNAP income generosity policies that improves or stabilizes household resources for SNAP participants. Main Outcomes and Measures Reports of child maltreatment accepted for CPS investigation, children in substantiated reports, and children receiving foster care services for all forms of maltreatment, and specifically for child neglect per 100 000 child population. Results The mean (SD) number of SNAP income generosity policies increased from 1.47 (0.95) in 2004 to 2.37 (0.94) in 2010, to 2.49 (0.86) in 2016 across states; the median increased from 1 to 3 (range, 0-4) over the same period. A count of state income generosity policies was associated with large reductions in reports accepted for CPS investigation (–352.6 per 100 000 children; 95% CI, –557.1 to –148.2). Income generosity policy was associated with –94.8 (95% CI, –155.6 to –34.0) fewer substantiated reports and –77.0 (95% CI, –125.4 to –28.6) fewer reports substantiated for neglect per 100 000. Each additional income generosity policy adopted by a state was associated with –45.1 (95% CI, –71.6 to –18.5) to –42.3 (95% CI, –64.8 to –19.8) fewer total foster care placements per 100 000 children. Conclusions and Relevance State SNAP policies that improve and stabilize household resources appear to be associated with reductions in CPS involvement and use of foster care. The number of policies implemented had cumulative outcomes beyond individual policy outcomes.

Are heterogeneous labor market outcomes a product of markets efficiently allocating resources or the result of structural market failures which should be corrected through well-crafted policy? In order to address this fundamental question in modern economics, we must first understand the forces which shape individuals’ earnings, employment, and occupational choices. This collection of essays provides new evidence to support several novel channels which influence labor markets. First, I evaluate the connection between technological change and labor market outcomes by bringing new data and methods to study the mechanization of American agriculture in the early 20th century. Using an instrumental variables estimation strategy, I find that exogenous increases in exposure to technological change generated occupational displacement for incumbent laborers, increased income inequality, and had important impacts on intergenerational mobility for the children of affected workers. Additionally, I investigate the connection between low-opportunity neighborhoods and public housing residents’ labor market outcomes. Leveraging quasi-random variation in neighborhood quality due to a public housing demolition, I find that residents’ wages increased after moving to higher-opportunity neighborhoods and that more intense supportive services improved post-move employment. Taken together, these essays provide new evidence that both large-scale factors like new technologies and local factors like neighborhood quality contribute to heterogeneity in labor market outcomes both historically and up to the present day.

In this paper, we provide novel evidence of the impact of Covid-induced economic uncertainty on the relative demand for different occupations in the US, according to a wide range of occupational characteristics. We conduct the analysis using monthly online job postings data at the occupation-US state level in January 2020-December 2020 together with data on fixed occupational characteristics and monthly measures of economic uncertainty in the US, which are apportioned to occupation-state pairs based on pre-Covid country-wide occupational employment shares. The analysis reveals that Covid-induced economic uncertainty increased the relative demand for occupations with relatively high non-routine cognitive analytical, non-routine cognitive interactive, and non-routine manual task content-especially when these are also non-essential, as well as occupations that have both relatively high non-routine cognitive analytical and social or interaction task content. This evidence is consistent with the secular phenomenon of routine-biased technological change resulting in job polarisation and the growing complementarity between analytical and social tasks, but also with its episodic aspect implying its acceleration during recessions. Additional evidence, however, shows that Covid-induced economic uncertainty decreased the relative demand for customer-oriented occupations (e.g. food service, personal care and service) and increased the relative demand for essential or contact-intensive occupations with relatively high routine manual or routine cognitive task content, as well as occupations that are both contact-intensive and essential or service-oriented (e.g. healthcare practice and support, protective service, community and social service). This evidence is rationalised by idiosyncratic features of the pandemic shock (e.g. major health crisis, social distancing, lockdown). Further research in this direction could help us to understand whether these effects are temporary or long-lasting.

This dissertation consists of three essays studying two issues of concern in environmental economics. Persistent changes in the climate affect the frequency and intensity of severe weather events worldwide, which impacts households and people as well as induces adaptive behavior in the long run. I look at how natural disasters, especially pluvial floods and air pollution affect household and individual welfare as well as their mitigative strategies. In Chapter 2, I examine how the occurrence of large-scale floods in Tanzania affects households’ value of crop production, income, expenditures, and life satisfaction. I use three-year nationally representative panel microdata from Tanzania, combined with satellite flood data, to analyze the impacts of the shocks using a kernel weighting difference-in-differences approach. I find a 34 percent decrease in the value of crop production for households living in affected villages or clusters two years after the shocks. I find no effects on total expenditures or child nutrition, but a significant negative effect on self-employment income and a persistent decrease in life satisfaction. Finally, access to safety nets or transfer income at baseline, and to forests in a village appears to have important mitigating effects. In chapter 3, I look at how women’s outcomes (i.e., intimate partner violence, fertility preferences) and children’s outcomes (i.e., mortality) are affected after households across Sub-Saharan Africa are exposed to large floods. Combining nationally representative Demographic and Health Surveys with satellite flood data, I find that women living in flooded clusters experience a small but significant decline in emotional violence 2 by 0.04 percentage points, but I find no significant effect on physical violence from their partners. Fertility preferences change in that women decrease their ideal number of children by 5.3%.1 Child mortality increases, but only for children that are less than 6 months old. The results across subgroups show that only the poorest households experience an increase in physical violence, and households where both partners work in agriculture. The drop in fertility preferences is concentrated among women with little or no education. The decrease in female economic empowerment, increase in partner’s alcohol consumption, and a decrease in household wealth appear to be important mediating factors. The results should be treated with caution given the violation of the parallel pre-trends assumption and the presence of heterogeneous treatment effects. Another dimension of the changing climate is environmental pollution. In Chapter 4, I estimate the effects of exposure to ambient air pollution on daily health-related behaviors, weekly labor supply, and workplace productivity among US individuals. Using an individual fixed-effects regression approach, I examine how daily changes in outdoor air quality influence the time spent on daily health-related activities. I find impacts only when the air quality index becomes very unhealthy or hazardous, in which case there is a 21% decrease in the minutes spent on outdoor sports and exercise activities, and a 260% increase in minutes spent watching TV. The decrease in physical activity can have longterm negative health consequences. I also implement an instrumental variable (IV) strategy using wind direction and atmospheric boundary layer height as exogenous shocks to satellite-based aerosols to investigate how changes in air pollution affect weekly labor supply and productivity. I find that increases in the total aerosol optical depth (AOD) have no effect overall on labor supply decisions, both the decision to go to work and weekly hours worked. There are also no significant effects on labor productivity as proxied by weekly earnings. The effects across subgroups also suggest differential effects in avoidance behaviors across the income levels, age groups, occupations, race, and ethnicity, especially when the air quality is very unhealthy or hazardous.