Research

The Appalachian Regional Development Act of 1965 is one of the longest serving place-based regional development programs in the U.S., and is the largest in terms of geographic scope. I use county-level data from the 1960 thru 2000 Decennial Censuses to evaluate the effect of ARDA on poverty rates and real per capita incomes in Appalachia. The intent to treat parameter is identified in a difference-in-difference-in-difference framework by comparing outcomes in Appalachia to her border counties. Additional knowledge of which counties were solely eligible for highway development funds under ARDA from those counties eligible for both highway as well as human development programs helps isolate the average treatment effect on the treated. The results suggest that the ARDA reduced Appalachian poverty between 1960 and 2000 by 4.2 percentage points relative to border counties, or about 10 percent on the baseline 1960 poverty rate, and real per capita incomes grew about 4 percent faster. Comparing grant eligible to grant ineligible counties suggests that about half of poverty reduction can be attributed to highway development programs, and the other half to human development programs. These anti-poverty gains were concentrated exclusively in the Central and Southern Appalachian regions.

Evidence indicates that domestic violence has negative consequences on victims’ employment; yet employers lag in recognizing this as a workplace issue. To address the problem, some states have established several policy solutions. To understand the scope of the public sector’s response to domestic violence as a workplace issue, a content analysis of state-level employment protection policies for domestic violence victims (N=369) was conducted. Results indicate three broad policy categories: 1) policies that offer work leave for victims; 2) policies that aim to reduce employment discrimination of domestic violence victims; and 3) policies that aim to increase awareness and safety in the workplace. Sub-categories emerged within each of these three categories. Implementation of employment protection policies varies significantly across states. Implications for workplaces, practitioners and policy leaders are discussed.

This article extends research on the consequences of mass imprisonment and the factors shaping population health and health inequities by considering the effects of the imprisonment rate on population health and black-white inequality in population health using state-level panel data from the United States (1980-2004). My results imply that increases in the imprisonment rate harm population health, though the effects on the infant mortality rate and female life expectancy are more consistent than are the effects on male life expectancy. My results also imply that these health effects are concentrated among blacks, implicating mass imprisonment in the persistence of black-white inequities in population health. The effects, moreover, are substantial. According to my estimates, if the American imprisonment rate had remained at its 1980 level, black life expectancy at birth would have been 0.8 years longer in 2004, and black-white inequality in the infant mortality rate would have been 23 percent smaller. My results also indicate, however, that increases in the imprisonment rate are associated with decreases in the mortality rates of young black men. Although imprisonment’s long-term effects on health and health inequities are mostly negative, imprisonment may, in the short-run, have some health benefits for young black men.

Using data from the 2000 Census, this study examines the relationship between household living arrangements and economic resources among Mexican immigrant families with children. I model separately the relationships between family income and household structure and proportion of total household income contributed and household structure. The results show that families that coreside with extended kin and non-kin have higher incomes, all else equal, relative to those that reside in single-family households. In addition, Mexican immigrant families that reside in extendedhousehold living arrangements contribute about three quarters of total household income. While families may gain some economic efficiency through extended household living arrangements, the results are consistent with expectations that Mexican immigrant families expend scarce resources in support of the migration and settlement of extended kin. The Mexican delayed assimilation thesis suggests such support inadvertently diverts resources away from immigrant children and slows intergenerational progress.

During the 1990 congressional redistricting many states were mandated to create additional majority minority-resident districts in order to elect more minorities to Congress. Civil rights groups and Republicans cheered. The Party views Democratic districts stripped of Black voters as opportunities to repaint blue districts red. The academic literature agrees, attributing the Republican return to House control in 1994 to race based redistricting. However, this literature generally focuses on the district as the unit of analysis, a focus that is too narrow, as some districts gain Black residents while others lose them. I focus on states, the level at which redistricting occurs. By comparing congressional delegations of states under greater pressure to create majority minority districts with those under less pressure in a difference-in-difference framework, I find no evidence that the creation of majority minority districts leads to more conservative House delegations. In fact point estimates indicate that states that increased their share of majority Black districts saw their delegations grow increasingly liberal. I find similar results for Latino districts in the southwest. Thus I find no evidence of the alleged tradeoff between having minority representatives and representatives who support minorities’ preferred policies.

Because of their different geographical distribution, US households are exposed to different levels and trends in cost of living. One contribution of this paper is to document that, as a consequence, the conditional difference between the wage of skilled workers and of unskilled workers is significantly lower in real terms than in nominal terms and has grown less. In 2000, the level of the college premium is 60% in nominal terms and only 51% in real terms. More importantly, the increase in the college premium between 1980 and 2000 in real terms is significantly smaller than the increase in nominal terms. Specifically, at least 22% of the documented increase in the college premium between 1980 and 2000 is accounted for by differences in the cost of living.

This paper provides the first detailed empirical evidence of the labor-market returns to community college diplomas and certificates. Using detailed administrative data from Kentucky, we estimate panel-data models that control for differences among students in pre-college earnings and educational aspirations. Associate’s degrees and diplomas have quarterly earnings returns of nearly $2,000 for women, compared to returns of approximately $1,500 for men. Certificates have small positive returns for men and women in most specifications. There is substantial heterogeneity in returns across fields of study. Degrees, diplomas, and certificates all correspond with higher levels of employment.

More than 40 years ago, the U.S. government adopted a policy of funding domestic family planning services, and the effects of these programs have been debated ever since. Within an event-study framework, I exploit community-level variation in the timing of federal grants for family planning services under the Economic Opportunity Act (1965 to 1974) and Title X (1970 to 1980) to evaluate their impact. The results provide robust evidence that federal family planning grants reduced birth rates in funded communities by four percent within six years. I find no evidence that family planning grants reduced maternal or infant mortality rates.

The important points from our analyses are two-fold. First, the implications of family change for family poverty appeared to be larger in Appalachia than in non-Appalachian areas, independent of regional differences in employment opportunities, industrial structure, demographic variables, and unobserved state and county variables. Second, family effects, notably those associated with changing female headship, were estimated to be larger than those for conventional economic and human capital variables. Our simulations in fact suggested that family poverty would have been roughly 10 to 15 percent lower than the observed poverty rate if Appalachian families had not changed since 1990.

In these notes, I provide some general ideas on how to conceptualize poverty traps and speculate on their applicability to understanding Appalachian poverty. My goal is to stimulate thinking on Appalachia that exploits contemporary perspectives in economics on the sources of persistent poverty and inequality. To do this, I focus on both the theory of poverty traps as well as issues in the econometric assessment of their empirical salience.