Safety net programs provide resources to households that are in financial distress during times of increased need, but evidence of their effects on consumer financial health is scarce. Economists Tatiana Homonoff and Katherine Meckel will examine the effects of participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) on financial distress among low-income households in California.
Rates of criminal justice contact and criminal victimization differ considerably across racial groups in the U.S. and Americans of different races and income levels reside in neighborhoods that, on average, differ dramatically in their characteristics and conditions. Economists Felipe Gonçalves and Emily Weisburst will examine the impact of residential segregation in neighborhood crime and arrest exposure across racial groups. They will analyze newly constructed data on 911 calls, crime reports, and arrests for their study.
While the climate science of sea level rise (SLR) is well established, less is known about the social and economic consequences of SLR. Economist Jonathan Colmer will examine which populations are exposed to projected SLR and how the risk of this exposure has evolved over time. He will develop and enhance the Census Environmental Impacts Frame, a new micro data infrastructure, for his study.
Research has estimated how school spending on teacher and other staff salaries and other costs affect test scores, home values, and later life outcomes. Less attention has been paid to the impacts of investments in a school’s physical facilities on these outcomes. Economists Elizabeth Cascio and Ethan Lewis will examine the extent to which racial inequality in school facilities narrowed in the 1950s and the impact of infrastructure investments on school attainment and home values.
Increasing the economic opportunities of disadvantaged individuals remains a pressing policy concern. Alexander Bartik and Bryan Stuart will evaluate the effects of an Internet job search tool being developed by the Department of Human Services in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania on the employment outcomes of the unemployed and workers with low earnings. They will conduct a randomized controlled trial of the job search tool for their study.
This grant is co-funded with the Carnegie Corporation.
This grant is co-funded with the Carnegie Corporation.
Pay transparency laws are viewed as a means to reduce wage inequality by increasing transparency among incumbent workers. However, few studies have estimated the effects of pay transparency in job postings on the labor market. Economists Simon Quach and David Arnold, in collaboration with Bladi Taska of Lightcast, will examine the labor market effects of disclosing salary information in job postings. They will analyze data from Glassdoor and Lightcast and administrative matched employer-employee data from the state of Colorado for their study.
A key process through which labor markets can adjust to changing technology, markets, and populations is the creation of “new work” (e.g., a Data Warehouse Architect) and the shedding of “disappearing work” (e.g., a Newsboy). Economists Giovanni Peri and Gueyon Kim with graduate student researcher Cassandra Merritt will examine the ways in which work is being re-shaped by new technologies, new markets, and population changes.
More than 83-percent of online job advertisements posted between 2010 and 2022 exclude information on wages, yet most research focuses on the minority of ads with posted wages. At the same time, most firms operate in highly concentrated labor markets. Economists Matthew Knepper, Ian Schmutte, and Leonard Goff will examine the relationship between labor market concentration and the percentage of job postings that omit information on wages. They will analyze data from 107 million job advertisements and will conduct a series of natural experiments for their study.