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Working Paper
Unauthorized Mexican Workers in the United States: Recent Inflows and Possible Future Scenarios
The U.S. economy has long relied on immigrant workers, many of them unauthorized, yet estimates of the inflow of unauthorized workers and the determinants of that inflow are hard to come by. This paper provides estimates of the number of newly arriving unauthorized workers from Mexico, the principal source of unauthorized immigrants to the United States, and examines how the inflow is related to U.S. and Mexico economic conditions. Our estimates suggest that annual inflows of unauthorized workers averaged about 170,000 during 1996-2014 but were much higher before the economic downturn that ...
Working Paper
The Effect of Housing First Programs on Future Homelessness and Socioeconomic Outcomes
Housing First programs provide housing assistance without preconditions for homeless individuals as a platform for rehabilitation. Despite the programs’ increasing popularity, limited evidence exists on their effects on socioeconomic outcomes. Using a novel dataset combining administrative records from multiple public agencies in Los Angeles County and a random case manager assignment design, I estimate that Housing First assistance reduces homelessness and crime, increases income and employment, and does not have a detectable effect on healthcare utilization. Cost-benefit analysis implies ...
Working Paper
Can Wealth Explain Neighborhood Sorting by Race and Income?
Why do high-income blacks live in neighborhoods with characteristics similar to those of low-income whites? One plausible explanation is wealth, since homeownership requires some wealth, and black households hold less wealth than white households at all levels of income. We present evidence against this hypothesis by showing that wealth does not predict sorting into neighborhood quality once race and income are taken into account. An alternative explanation is that the scarcity of high-quality black neighborhoods increases the cost of living in a high-quality neighborhood for black households ...
Discussion Paper
Mismatch of Jobs and People: Do Migration Constraints Put Racial Minorities at a Disadvantage?
Using the American Community Survey between 2005 and 2017, this article explores the evidence for potential migration constraints by comparing distributions of people and jobs across race and education. Using the Delta Index of dissimilarity, it illustrates a greater distributional mismatch between workers and jobs among racial minorities, relative to White non-Hispanics. This mismatch suggests greater migration constraints among racial minorities.
Working Paper
The Role of Social Costs in Response to Labor Market Opportunities: Differences across Race
Using the American Community Survey between 2005 and 2019, this paper investigates the role constraints to migration might play in explaining racial/ethnic disparities in the labor market. We find that Black workers are typically less responsive than White workers to changes in job opportunities, but responsiveness increases when those opportunities present themselves in locations with a higher share own-minority population. We construct an education/race specific Bartik shift-share instrument to control for potential endogeneity of growth in job opportunities.
Journal Article
Labor Markets Are Tight, but Conditions Vary across States
A record 4.4 million employees quit their jobs in September 2021, and many businesses are struggling to fill open positions. Although at a national level the labor market appears historically tight, we show that labor market tightness differs widely across states. Most states have tighter labor markets than before the pandemic, but others have struggled to recover.
Working Paper
The Introduction of Formal Childcare Services in Inuit Communities and Labor Force Outcomes
We study the impacts of the introduction of formal childcare services to 28 Inuit communities in Canada's North. We use geographical variation in the timing of the introduction of childcare services in the late 1990s and early 2000s to estimate the impact of increased access to childcare. We combine the 1996, 2001, and 2006 long-form census files with data on the opening dates of childcare centres and the number of childcare spaces in each of the 28 communities over time. We find evidence of impacts on female labour force participation driven by multi-adult households in Quebec. Point ...
Working Paper
Immigrants in the U.S. labor market
Immigrants supply skills that are in relatively short supply in the U.S. labor market and account for almost half of labor force growth since the mid-1990s. Migrant inflows have been concentrated at the low and high ends of the skill distribution. Large-scale unauthorized immigration has fueled growth of the low-skill labor force, which has had modest adverse fiscal and labor market effects on taxpayers and U.S.-born workers. High-skilled immigration has been beneficial in most every way, fueling innovation and spurring entrepreneurship in the high tech sector. Highly skilled immigrants have ...
Working Paper
Does Access to Free Pre-Kindergarten Increase Maternal Labor Supply?
We evaluate the effects of free pre-kindergarten (Pre-K) programs on the labor force participation of mothers. We use variation in Pre-K rules across all U.S. states, including income eligibility requirements in some states. To estimate the causal effects of access to Pre-K on labor supply, we exploit the panel aspect of the monthly Current Population Survey between 2002 and 2019. Specifically, we look at the change in labor market behavior of women when their child becomes age-eligible for Pre-K, controlling for individual factors. We find that access to free Pre-K programs increases overall ...
Working Paper
The Economic Status of People with Disabilities and their Families since the Great Recession
People with disabilities face substantial barriers to sustained employment and stable, adequateincome. We assess how they and their families fared during the long economic expansion thatfollowed the Great Recession of 2007-09, using data from the monthly Current PopulationSurvey (CPS) and the March CPS annual income supplement. We find that the expansionbolstered the well-being of people with disabilities and in particular their relative labor marketengagement. We also find that applications and awards for federal disability benefits fell duringthe expansion. On balance, our results suggest ...