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In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, large parts of the economy were locked down and, as a result, households' income risk rose sharply. At the same time, policy makers put forward the largest stimulus package in history. In the United States it amounted to $2 trillion, a quarter of which represented transfer payments to households. To the extent that such transfers were (i) announced in advance and (ii) conditional on recipients being unemployed, they mitigated income risk associated with the lockdown—in contrast to unconditional transfers. We develop a baseline scenario for a COVID-19 recession in a medium-scale heterogeneous agent new Keynesian model and use counterfactuals to quantify the impact of transfers. For the short run, we find large differences in the transfer multiplier: it is negligible for unconditional transfers and about unity for conditional transfers. Overall, we find that the transfers reduced the output loss due to the pandemic by some two percentage points at its trough. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the relationship between financial stress and the working class in the USA. Employing a financial stress index created from the Survey of Consumer Finances, I show that working class households are nearly twice as likely to be financially stressed than wealthier non-working class households from 1992 to 2016. A possible explanation of this result could be that the financial expropriation of personal income among the working class has the effect of increasing that group's financial stress relative to wealthier classes. Working class households in the USA have struggled to afford means of subsistence in lieu of lacklustre wage growth and a tattered safety net. Financial expropriation of these households has operated in tandem with this precarity, increasing financial stress in a time of financialised capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The outbreak of the financial crisis in 2008 witnessed a significant contraction in US consumption spending, as households began deleveraging following a period marked by historically high levels of household borrowing. These events call into question the canonical life-cycle theory of consumption, with its benign view of debt as a neutral instrument of optimal intertemporal expenditure smoothing. This paper draws attention to an alternative, post-Keynesian account of consumption spending in which current income, household borrowing and household indebtedness all affect current consumption. Central to the analysis is an empirical investigation of US consumption spending since the 1950s. The results of this inquiry cast doubt on the life-cycle hypothesis, but are congruent with the alternative, post-Keynesian account of consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

It is widely recognized that, on average, children from poorer backgrounds have worse educational outcomes than their better-off peers. There is less evidence on how this relationship has changed over time and, indeed, what exactly leads to these inequalities. In this paper we demonstrate that the correlation between family background (as measured by family income) and educational attainment has been rising between children born in the late 1950s and those born two decades later. We then consider the extent to which these associations are due to the causal effects of income rather than the result of other dimensions of family background. We review the approaches taken to answering this question, drawing mainly on the US literature, and then present our own evidence from the UK, discussing the plausible range for the true impact of income on education. Our results indicate that income has a causal relationship with educational attainment. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In many countries, student grants, tuition fees, and subsidized loans depend on parental income. This paper examines the efficiency and distributional effects of such conditioning, and assesses whether it is optimal practice when the government wants to reduce after-tax income inequality in the most efficient manner. Increasing the mean level of education among the work-force compresses wage differentials by level of education and thereby the pre-tax income distribution. Hence, subsidizing education may be part of an optimal redistribution policy. However, education subsidies mainly benefit high-ability students, limiting their redistributive virtues. Conditioning education subsidies on parental income may enable the government to reduce inframarginal subsidies, mainly benefiting high-ability students, while preserving the marginal subsidy, and thus the favourable effect on the mean education level which leads to wage compression. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the family income—college enrolment relationship and the evidence on credit constraints in post–secondary schooling. We distinguish short run liquidity constraints from the long term factors that promote cognitive and noncognitive ability. Long run factors crystallised in ability are the major determinants of the family income — schooling relationship, although there is some evidence that up to 8% of the total US population is credit constrained in a short run sense. Evidence that IV estimates of the returns to schooling exceed OLS estimates is sometimes claimed to support the existence of substantial credit constraints. This argument is critically examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper documents changing inequality in employer-provided fringe benefits in the United States using much more comprehensive data than previously available. Inequality growth in broader measures of compensation slightly exceeds wage inequality growth over the 1981–1997 period. Employer costs due to paid leave, pensions, and health insurance fell for low wage labor and rose for high wage labor over this period. The findings suggest income effects as a contributory factor in the relative decline of fringe benefits among low wage workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper combines income tax returns with macroeconomic household balance sheets to estimate the distribution of wealth in the United States since 1913. We estimate wealth by capitalizing the incomes reported by individual taxpayers, accounting for assets that do not generate taxable income. We successfully test our capitalization method in three micro datasets where we can observe both income and wealth: the Survey of Consumer Finance, linked estate and income tax returns, and foundations' tax records. We find that wealth concentration was high in the beginning of the twentieth century, fell from 1929 to 1978, and has continuously increased since then. The top 0.1% wealth share has risen from 7% in 1978 to 22% in 2012, a level almost as high as in 1929. Top wealth-holders are younger today than in the 1960s and earn a higher fraction of the economy's labor income. The bottom 90% wealth share first increased up to the mid-1980s and then steadily declined. The increase in wealth inequality in recent decades is due to the upsurge of top incomes combined with an increase in saving rate inequality. We explain how our findings can be reconciled with Survey of Consumer Finances and estate tax data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Skin color has been proposed to contribute to race-based health disparities in the United States because of differences in ultraviolet (UV) light–induced vitamin D synthesis. The prediction of this hypothesis, herein named the UVD hypothesis, is that racial disparities in health outcomes are correlated with UV light availability. This paper investigates whether UV light availability is associated with disparities in the rates of low birth weight (LBW) and preterm birth (PTB) between whites and blacks, because these outcomes are thought to be influenced by vitamin D status and to shape disease risk in later life. Data on LBW and PTB from 2007 (n = 2,825,620 births) were compared with data on UV light exposure across the United States. Contrary to the predictions of the UVD hypothesis, LBW and PTB rate disparities were greatest in states with the highest UV light exposure. Notably, income inequality was positively and significantly related to LBW and PTB disparities, even after controlling for UV light availability. The results of this analysis demonstrate that there is a significant environmental gradient in racial disparities in birth outcomes in the United States, but other social or environmental factors associated with living in the southern United States are likely stronger contributors to disparities in birth outcomes than UV light–induced vitamin D status. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, we expand on the seminal work of Altonji and Shakotko (1987) and Topel (1991) and reinvestigate the returns to seniority in the United States. We begin with the same wage equation as in previous studies. We extend the model of Hyslop (1999) and explicitly model the participation/employment and inter-firm mobility decisions, which, in turn, define the individual's experience and seniority. We introduce into the wage equation a summary of the workers' entire career path. The three-equation system is estimated simultaneously using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). We find that for each of the three education groups studied the returns to seniority are larger than those previously found in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is complementary to the recent cross-country studies of Jeffrey Sachs (1979), and William Branson and Julio Rotemberg (1980), which document the contrast between nominal wage inertia in the postwar United States and real wage inertia in Europe and Japan, and examine the theoretical and policy implications of this contrast. Here I begin with another procedure for documenting the difference in nominal wage behaviour among the United Kingdom, United States and Japan, and then concentrate on explaining its causes rather than its consequences. Real wage inertia plays no role in my analysis, reflecting my finding that the real wage rate in quarterly postwar data for the United Kingdom and Japan displays more variability than in the United States. The basic argument of this paper comes down to three main points: (1) Macroeconomic instability in the United States has been aggravated by the unusually sluggish behaviour of nominal wages during the postwar era. Whether measured as the standard deviation of wages relative to hours worked, or the ratio of the respective response coefficients of wages and hours worked to changes in nominal GNP, wages in Britain and Japan are five to ten times more responsive than in the United States. Thus, of any given fluctuation in aggregate nominal demand, a larger fraction takes the form of a change in real output and employment in the United States than in the United Kingdom or Japan. (2) The drastic decline of American wage responsiveness in the postwar period as compared to the years between 1892 and 1940, together with the 1948 invention of the three-year staggered wage contract in the American unionised industrial sector, seems to be more than coincidental. It is not only the long duration of US contracts, but also their staggered nature, that makes wage changes relatively unresponsive to expansions or contractions in nominal GNP growth. (3) Japanese labour market institutions look much more like those suggested a... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The poor economic position of single-mother households is a result of three factors: women's generally lower wages, lower economic support from men, and a relatively great need for income. This paper examines the relative importance of the last two of these factors. Data from the Luxembourg Income Study show that single-mother households in West Germany and the United States have high rates of poverty while their situation in Sweden is considerably better. The remainder of the analysis concentrates on the economic risks which would be faced by married parents if they were to separate tomorrow, and on the insurance transfer incomes provide against such risks. It is shown, first, that the costs of breaking one household into two are considerable, and that single-mother households will be worse off economically, unless a substantial increase in family income takes place. Second, that the economic dependence of married mothers places many in a `high risk' situation, where they will lose a high proportion of their economic resources if the support from a spouse disappears. Finally, the analysis shows that transfer income respresents a poor insurance against the risk resulting from women's economic dependence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates wealth trends from 1983 to 2010. The most telling finding is that median wealth plummeted over the years 2007–10 by 47 per cent. The inequality of net worth, after almost two decades of little movement, was up sharply between 2007 and 2010. Relative indebtedness continued to expand during the late 2000s for the middle class, though the proximate causes were declining net worth and income, rather than an increase in absolute indebtedness. The sharp fall in median net worth and the rise in its inequality from 2007 to 2010 are traceable to the high leverage of middle-class families and the high share of homes in their portfolio. The racial and ethnic disparity in wealth holdings, after remaining more or less stable from 1983 to 2007, widened considerably between 2007 and 2010. Hispanics, in particular, got hammered by the Great Recession in terms of net worth and net equity in their homes. Households under age 45 also got pummelled by the Great Recession, as their relative and absolute wealth declined sharply from 2007 to 2010. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Over the past half century, Americans spent a rising share of total economic resources on health and enjoyed substantially longer lives as a result. Debate on health policy often focuses on limiting the growth of health spending. We investigate an issue central to this debate: Is the growth of health spending a rational response to changing economic conditions — notably the growth of income per person? We develop a model based on standard economic assumptions and argue that this is indeed the case. Standard preferences — of the kind used widely in economics to study consumption, asset pricing, and labor supply — imply that health spending is a superior good with an income elasticity well above one. As people get richer and consumption rises, the marginal utility of consumption falls rapidly. Spending on health to extend life allows individuals to purchase additional periods of utility. The marginal utility of life extension does not decline. As a result, the optimal composition of total spending shifts toward health, and the health share grows along with income. In projections based on the quantitative analysis of our model, the optimal health share of spending seems likely to exceed 30 percent by the middle of the century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we study the evolution of lifetime labour income inequality by constructing present value life cycle measures that incorporate both earnings and employment risk. We find that, even though lifetime income inequality is 40% less than earnings inequality, the total increase in lifetime income inequality over the past 20 years is the same as earnings inequality. While the total increase is the same, the pathways there differ with earnings inequality experiencing a steady increase and lifetime income inequality increasing in spurts particularly in the latter half of the 1990s. Finally, we find the changes in lifetime income inequality are primarily driven by changes in earnings mobility and changes in the earnings distribution itself, changes in employment risk and the composition of the sample, such as the shift toward attaining more education and the ageing population, do not play a large role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With unprecedented increases, mortality trends in the United States have received significant attention in recent years. To date, research on this topic has emphasized specific causes of death and proximal behavioral or physiological determinants. In this commentary, I consider novel contributions of Zheng and Echave (Am J Epidemiol. 2021;190(11):2242–2255) in examining trends in mental health, health behaviors, and physiological dysregulation. I then discuss broader developments in related research and make a case for: 1) not allowing recent health trends among Whites to overshadow the urgent work that needs to be done to mitigate persistent racial inequities, 2) further investigation of what accounts for increases in income inequality and its life-span health consequences, and 3) broadening the scope of mechanisms considered to include underdiscussed topics such as the role of increases in social media use or environmental toxicant exposures. Underlying several potential explanations for observed trends in health and mortality is the fact that substantial change has occurred on multiple fronts in US society and that policy responses to these changes have been insufficient. An enhanced emphasis on innovative population health research will be essential to provide the evidence base needed for policy makers to rise to these urgent challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)-sanctioned prevention strategies have included frequent handwashing with soap and water, covering the mouth and nose with a mask when around others, cleaning and disinfecting maintaining a distance of at least 6 feet from others, etc. Although many of these recommendations are based upon observation and past infection control practices, it is important to combine and explore public data sets to identify predictors of infection, morbidity and mortality to develop more finely honed interventions, based on sociodemographic factors. Method Cross-sectional study of both states in the US and counties in NY state. Results Population density was found to be significantly associated with state-level coronavirus infection and mortality rate (b  = 0.49, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.34, 0.64, P  < .0001). States that have lower socioeconomic status, lower mean age and denser populations are associated with higher incidence rates. In regard to NY state, counties with a higher percentage of minority residents had higher COVID-19 mortality rates (b  = 2.61, 95% CI: 0.36, 4.87, P  = 0.023). Larger population cohorts were associated with lower COVID-19 mortality rates after adjusting for other variables in the model (b  = −1.39, 95% CI: −2.07, −0.71, P  < 0.001). Population density was not significantly associated with COVID-19 mortality rates after adjustment across counties in the NY state. Public ridership was not indicative of cases or mortality across states in the USA; however, it is a significant factor associated with incidence (but not mortality) in NY counties. Conclusion Population density was the only significant predictor of mortality across states in the USA. Lower mean age, lower median household incomes and more densely populated states were at higher risk of COVID-19 infection. Population density was not found to be a significant independent variable compared to minority status and socioeconomic factors in the New York epicenter. Meanwhile, public ridership was found to be a significant factor associated with incidence in New York counties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past two decades the widely reported personal saving rate in the United States has dropped from double digits to below zero. First, we attempt to account for the decline in the National Income and Product Accounts (NIPA) saving rate. The macroeconomic literature suggests that 40-50 per cent of the drop since 1988 can be attributed to households spending stock-market capital gains. Another 30 per cent is accounting transfers from personal saving into government and corporate saving because of the way pensions and capital gains taxes are treated in the NIPA. Second, while NIPA saving measures are well suited to measuring the supply of new funds for investment and capital accumulation, it is not clear that they should be the target of government saving policies. Finally, we emphasize that the NIPA saving rate is not useful in judging whether households are preparing for retirement or other contingencies. Many households have accumulated significant wealth, primarily through retirement saving vehicles and capital gains, even as the saving rate slid. There remains a segment of the population who save little and whose behaviour appears untouched either by the stock-market boom or the slide in personal saving. We explore reasons and policy options for their puzzling low saving rate. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Hispanic and Latino (HL) cancer survivors are at a critical disadvantage compared with non‐Hispanic White (NHW) patients regarding sociodemographic adversities and access to equitable treatment options. By 2030, there will be about four million HL cancer survivors in the U.S., representing nearly 20% of survivors in this country. Hispanics and Latinos are subjected to significant challenges in accessing and receiving equitable care relative to NHWs. Hispanics and Latinos also experience lower rates of health insurance and financial resources, limiting health care options. These disparities often originate from disparate social determinants of health, including lower funding for education and school programs, greater neighborhood stressors and violence, lower access to healthy and affordable food, and greater barriers to community health and exercise opportunities. Even among HL cancer survivors with proper access to health care, they experience disparate treatment options, including low inclusion in clinical trials and/or access to experimental therapies. A solution to these barriers necessitates complex and systemic changes that involve, for example, investing in public health programs, increasing the diversity and cultural awareness of the medical workforce, and promoting research opportunities such as clinical trials that are inclusive of HLs. Only through meaningful reform will equitable cancer care be available for all in the U.S. regardless of racial and/or ethnic background. This article reviews some of the critical social determinants of health and biases relevant to HL cancer survivors and provides recommendations for achieving cancer health equity. Implications for Practice: Hispanics and Latinos experience a significant and often disproportionate cancer‐related burden compared with non‐Hispanic and Latino White individuals and other racial and ethnic groups. Meaningful reform to achieve health equity in oncology should focus on approaches to gaining trust among diverse patients, cultural and community sensitivity and engagement in oncology care and research, diversifying the workforce, and improving inclusion in clinical trial participation. Taken together, these recommendations can lead to exemplary and equitable care for all patients. This article examines the contextual and systemic factors that contribute to and exacerbate disparities in cancer care for Hispanic and Latino cancer patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an empirical test of the "declining significance of race" interpretation of the situation of blacks in the United States. Wilson (1980) argued that class has superseded race as the most important explanatory factor. Other scholars (e.g., Willie 1978) have claimed that race is still an important determinant of life chances for blacks, regardless of social class. This study tests both the "race" and "class" perspectives in regard to racial differences in personal income using data from the 1968 and 1988 Current Population Surveys (March). In both 1968 and 1988, significant differences in personal income between blacks and whites remained after controlling for social class and other demographic variables. However, there was a 5.5 percentage point reduction of the racial effect from 1968 to 1988. Contrary to the assumptions of the declining significance of race thesis, blacks with higher levels of education and occupational status were found to be worse off than less educated, lower status blacks when compared to similar whites. Continuing discrimination across class lines is offered as the best explanation of the findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contrary to the belief that capital over-accumulation is impossible in an economy with land-i.e. a non-reproducible factor of production, this paper shows that the possibility of dynamic inefficiency depends on the income share of land, and examines the historical tendencies of the income share of land in the U.S. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides evidence that financial markets can directly affect economic growth by studying the relaxation of bank branch restrictions in the United States We find that the rates of real, per capita growth in income and output increase significantly following intrastate branch reform We also argue that the observed changes in growth are the result of changes in the banking system Improvements in the quality of bank lending, not increased volume of bank lending, appear to be responsible for faster growth [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the rise of lump-sum payments and profit-sharing plans in the United States. Micro-level evidence on the impacts of shifts from base wage adjustments to lump-sum payments and profit sharing on labor costs and employment in unionized companies in the country are taken into account. Reasons the empirical analysis is important are discussed. It has been show that profit sharing cuts labor cost growth at companies that embraced lump-sum payments and profit-sharing plans, by around 5% per annum.

Attempts have recently been made to assign inequality contributions to various components of income. This paper discusses the issues involved in such assignments and highlights the problems that follow from having a number of possible decomposition rules. U. S. data on the distribution of family incomes are used to examine the relative influence of these income components and to evaluate empirically the performance of different decomposition rules. A wide range of inequality contributions can be obtained, even when restricted to only ‘naturally’ derived decomposition rules. Some of the results are plainly absurd and serve to warn against the indiscriminate use of decomposition formulae without first investigating their properties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT The degree of change in the hierarchy of occupations over long periods is the focus of this paper. Our concern is with the mechanism by which the hierarchy changes. Taxable wealth of incumbents of detailed occupations from 1789 Philadelphia is related to income data from the last three dicennial censuses. Several models of how change might occur are evaluated. We conclude that (1) change in occupational reward differentials is slower than previous estimates, and (2) the first-order causal mechanism by which change in the hierarchy has been presumed to take place is implausible. We also note within-occupation variability in assets of approximately the same magnitude in the two periods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Metropolitan communities in the United States are interdependent. Each metropolis serves the economy through its key functions while at the same time it depends on other metropolises and systems for some of its own needs. Using 1960 data for SMSAs, this paper demonstrates that a community's position in this differentiated system influences the characteristics of its population. Two perspectives for determining a metropolitan community's key functions are used: one considers economic activities one at a time; the other considers the entire configuration of these activities at once. These two procedures are compared in their ability to identify groups of communities having distinctive social structures, as indicated by occupational and educational composition, income level, age and sex structure, and ability to attract and hold migrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how product innovations led to inflation inequality in the United States from 2004 to 2015. Using scanner data from the retail sector, I find that annual inflation for retail products was 0.661 (std. err. 0.0535) percentage points higher for the bottom income quintile relative to the top income quintile. When including changes in product variety over time, this difference increases to 0.8846 (std. err. 0.0739) percentage points a year. In CEX-CPI data covering the full consumption basket, the annual inflation difference is 0.368 (std. err. 0.0502) percentage points. I investigate the following hypothesis: (i) the relative demand for products consumed by high-income households increased because of growth and rising inequality; (ii) in response, firms introduced more new products catering to such households; (iii) as a result, the prices of continuing products in these market segments fell due to increased competitive pressure. Using a shift-share research design, I find causal evidence that increasing relative demand leads to increasing product variety and lower inflation for continuing products. A calibration indicates that the hypothesized channel accounts for a large fraction (over 50%) of observed inflation inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using new narrative measures of exogenous variation in marginal tax rates associated with postwar tax reforms in the United States, this study estimates short-run tax elasticities of reported income of around 1.2 based on time series from 1946 to 2012. Estimated elasticities are larger in the top 1% of the income distribution but are also positive and statistically significant for other income groups. Previous time series studies of tax returns data have found little evidence for income responses to taxes outside the top of the income distribution. The different results in this article arise because of additional efforts to account for dynamics, expectations, and especially the endogeneity of tax policy decisions. Marginal rate cuts lead to increases in real GDP and declines in unemployment. There is also evidence that the responses are to marginal tax rates rather than average tax rates. Counterfactual tax cuts targeting the top 1% alone are estimated to have short-run positive effects on economic activity and incomes outside of the top 1%, but to increase inequality in pretax incomes. Cuts for taxpayers outside of the top 1% also lead to increases in incomes and economic activity, but with a longer delay. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A value-added approach for valuing household production is presented with application to household processing of foods into meals. Data are from the 1977-1978 USDA Household Food Consumption Survey. The cost of input (food) is subtracted from estimates of the value of output (meals) to yield value added within households. This amounts to an estimated 7 percent of the U.S. GNP that is unaccounted for. Value added was negatively associated with female employment. Household size, household income, and age of householder had small but statistically significant positive associations with value added. The mean net value added through meal preparation was $33.82 per week when fuel and capital charges were subtracted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multiple classification analysis is used to examine the relative importance of physical/structural, socioeconomic, and demographic factors in shaping household responses to changes in the cost and availability of energy. Two coping strategies analyzed are switching to alternative and less-expensive fuels for space heating and investing in home retrofitting. Results show that physical/structural characteristics of the familial microenvironments are more important than socioeconomic and family factors in molding consumption levels and behavioral adaptations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines working-wife (WW) and nonworking-wife (NWW) family purchases of, and amount spent for, time-saving durables, other durables, hobby and recreation items, vacations, and college education. Size of total family income and whether the family moved recently to a different house in which they had some equity were important variables in the purchase decisions. Wife's labor force behavior, however, was not important in the purchase decisions. Income and assets, but not wife's labor force behavior, were significant in the expenditure decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We estimate the causal effect of each county in the United States on children’s incomes in adulthood. We first estimate a fixed effects model that is identified by analyzing families who move across counties with children of different ages. We then use these fixed effect estimates to (i) quantify how much places matter for intergenerational mobility, (ii) construct forecasts of the causal effect of growing up in each county that can be used to guide families seeking to move to opportunity, and (iii) characterize which types of areas produce better outcomes. For children growing up in low-income families, each year of childhood exposure to a one standard deviation (std. dev.) better county increases income in adulthood by 0.5%. There is substantial variation in counties’ causal effects even within metro areas. Counties with less concentrated poverty, less income inequality, better schools, a larger share of two-parent families, and lower crime rates tend to produce better outcomes for children in poor families. Boys’ outcomes vary more across areas than girls’ outcomes, and boys have especially negative outcomes in highly segregated areas. Areas that generate better outcomes have higher house prices on average, but our approach uncovers many “opportunity bargains”—places that generate good outcomes but are not very expensive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We introduce permanently shifting income shares into a growth model with workers and capital owners. The model exactly replicates the US time paths of the top quintile income share, capital's share of income and key macroeconomic variables from 1970 to 2014. Welfare effects depend on changes in the time pattern of agents’ consumption relative to a counterfactual scenario that holds income shares and the transfer‐output ratio constant. Short‐run declines in workers’ consumption are only partially offset by longer‐term gains from higher transfers and more capital per worker. The baseline simulation delivers large welfare gains for capital owners and significant welfare losses for workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both early life and adult socioeconomic status (SES) predict late-life level of memory; however, evidence is mixed on the relationship between SES and rate of memory decline. Further, the relative importance of different life-course periods for rate of late-life memory decline has not been evaluated. We examined associations between life-course SES and late-life memory function and decline. Health and Retirement Study participants (n = 10,781) were interviewed biennially from 1998-2012 (United States). SES measurements for childhood (composite score including parents' educational attainment), early adulthood (high-school or college completion), and older adulthood (income, mean age 66 years) were all dichotomized. Word-list memory was modeled via inverse-probability weighted longitudinal models accounting for differential attrition, survival, and time-varying confounding, with nonrespondents retained via proxy assessments. Compared to low SES at all 3 points (referent), stable, high SES predicted the best memory function and slowest decline. High-school completion had the largest estimated effect on memory (β = 0.19; 95% confidence interval: 0.15, 0.22), but high late-life income had the largest estimated benefit for slowing declines (for 10-year memory change, β = 0.35; 95% confidence interval: 0.24, 0.46). Both early and late-life interventions are potentially relevant for reducing dementia risk by improving memory function or slowing decline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Sepsis may contribute to more than 200 000 annual deaths in the USA. Little is known about the regional patterns of sepsis mortality and the community characteristics that explain this relationship. We aimed to determine the influence of community characteristics upon regional variations in sepsis incidence and case fatality.Methods: We performed a retrospective analysis of data from the REasons for Geographic and Racial Differences in Stroke (REGARDS) cohort. Using US sepsis mortality data, we used two strategies for defining geographic regions: (i) Sepsis 'Belt' vs Non-Belt and (ii) Sepsis 'Cluster' vs Non-Cluster. We determined sepsis incidence and case fatality among REGARDS participants in each region, adjusting for participant characteristics. We examined the mediating effect of community characteristics upon regional variations in sepsis incidence and case fatality.Results: Among 29 680 participants, 16 493 (55.6%) resided in the Sepsis Belt and 2958 (10.0%) resided in a Sepsis Cluster. Sepsis incidence was higher for Sepsis Belt than Non-Belt participants [adjusted hazard ratio (HR) = 1.14; 95% confidence interval (CI) = 1.02-1.24] and higher for Sepsis Cluster than Non-Cluster participants (adjusted HR = 1.18; 95% CI = 1.01-1.39). Sepsis case fatality was similar between Sepsis Belt and Non-Belt participants, as well as between Cluster and Non-Cluster participants. Community poverty mediated the regional differences in sepsis incidence.Conclusions: Regional variations in sepsis incidence may be partly explained by community poverty. Other community characteristics do not explain regional variations in sepsis incidence or case fatality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The Strengthening Families Programme for youth aged 10-14 and parents/carers (SFP10-14) is a family-based prevention intervention with positive results in trials in the United States. We assessed the effectiveness of SFP10-14 for preventing substance misuse in Poland. Methods: Cluster randomized controlled trial with 20 communities (511 families; 614 young people) were allocated to SFP10-14 or a control arms. Primary outcomes were alcohol, smoking and other drug use. Secondary outcomes included parenting practices, parent-child relations, and child problem behaviour. Interview-based questionnaires were administered at baseline and at 12- and 24-months post-baseline, with respective 70.4 and 54.4%, follow-up rates. Results: In Bayesian regression models with complete case data we found no effects of SFP10-14 for any of the primary or secondary outcomes at either follow-up. For example at 24-months, posterior odds ratios and 95% credible intervals for past year alcohol use, past month binge drinking, past year smoking, and past year other drug use, were 0.83 (0.44-1.56), 0.83 (0.27-2.65), 1.94 (0.76-5.38) and 0.74 (0.15-3.58), respectively. Although moderate to high attrition rates, together with some evidence of systematic attrition bias according to parent education and family disposable income, could have biased the results, the results were supported in further analyses with propensity score matched data and 40 multiple imputed datasets. Conclusion: We found no evidence for the effectiveness of SFP10-14 on the prevention of alcohol or tobacco use, parenting behaviour, parent-child relations or child problem behaviour at 12- or 24-month follow-up in a large cluster randomized controlled trial in Poland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We evaluate the impact of increased income uncertainty and financial liberalisation in the US on consumption volatility and household welfare. We estimate Euler equations and measure the volatility of unpredictable changes in consumption as the squared residuals. We directly control for liquidity constraints using Survey of Consumer Finances data on access to credit, and document that despite the increase in household debt between 1983 and 2007, there was no decline in the proportion of liquidity constrained households. Consumption volatility increased significantly over this period, especially for liquidity constrained households, indicating substantial welfare losses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Cancer survivors may face barriers to accessing health insurance and experience financial hardship because of medical expenditures. We examined potential improvements in access to insurance for cancer survivors through adult Medicaid expansions and premium tax credits in the new insurance marketplaces under the Affordable Care Act (ACA).Methods: Eligibility for Medicaid and premium tax credits was simulated for cancer survivors age 18 to 64 years in the 2008 to 2010 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey using a detailed deterministic model. Financial hardship was determined as: 1) delays or unmet need for medical, prescription, or dental care because of cost or insurance issues and/or 2) family out-of-pocket medical spending that was 20% or more of gross income. Descriptive analyses were stratified by whether the state of residence chose to expand Medicaid by January 2015. All statistical tests were two-sided.Results: Overall, 14.7% of 9.44 million cancer survivors were uninsured, with 18% reporting financial hardship. Under the ACA, 19% overall, 30% of the uninsured, and 39% of those reporting financial hardship would be Medicaid eligible. An additional 10% would be eligible for premium tax credits, with the remainder able to participate in the Marketplace without tax credits. However, 21% of uninsured cancer survivors in states not expanding Medicaid would be ineligible for assistance with coverage.Conclusions: Under the ACA, many of the uninsured and a larger proportion of survivors facing financial hardship will be eligible for Medicaid or premium tax credits in the Marketplaces. ACA implementation will dramatically enhance insurance availability and is likely to reduce financial hardship for vulnerable cancer survivors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban form—the structure of the built environment—can influence physical activity, yet little is known about how walkable design differs according to neighborhood sociodemographic composition. We studied how walkable urban form varies by neighborhood sociodemographic composition, region, and urbanicity across the United States. Using linear regression models and 2000–2001 US Census data, we investigated the relationship between 5 neighborhood census characteristics (income, education, racial/ethnic composition, age distribution, and sex) and 5 walkability indicators in almost 65,000 census tracts in 48 states and the District of Columbia. Data on the built environment were obtained from the RAND Corporation's (Santa Monica, California) Center for Population Health and Health Disparities (median block length, street segment, and node density) and the US Geological Survey's National Land Cover Database (proportion open space and proportion highly developed). Disadvantaged neighborhoods and those with more educated residents were more walkable (i.e., shorter block length, greater street node density, more developed land use, and higher density of street segments). However, tracts with a higher proportion of children and older adults were less walkable (fewer street nodes and lower density of street segments), after adjustment for region and level of urbanicity. Research and policy on the walkability-health link should give nuanced attention to the gap between persons living in walkable areas and those for whom walkability has the most to offer. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Does the concentration of recent Latino immigrants into occupational linguistic niches—occupations with large numbers of other Spanish speakers—restrict their wage growth? On the one hand, it is possible that Latino immigrants who are concentrated in jobs with large numbers of Spanish speakers may have less on-the-job exposure to English, which may isolate them socially and linguistically and limit their subsequent economic mobility. On the other hand, working in linguistic niches can also be beneficial for upwardly mobile immigrants if it allows them to gain a foothold in the United States while they improve their English skills and develop labor market experience. Using data from the 1996, 2001 and 2004 panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), we test for the effect of working in occupational linguistic niches on wages and wage growth. The results show that while workers in linguistic niche occupations earn lower wages on average, they do not experience lower rates of wage growth over time. Moreover, we find that about 20 percent of workers who start the 4-year SIPP panel in linguistic niches experience occupational mobility that reduces the percentage of workers speaking Spanish in their occupation by over 10 percent over the course of the study, and these “movers” have higher levels of wage growth than other workers in the sample. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Income inequality has been increasing in the United States, and intraoccupational processes are partly responsible (Kim and Sakamoto 2008; Mouw and Kalleberg 2010). To date, scholars have focused on suboccupational divisions, such as specialty areas, to understand why some members of an occupation earn more than others. In this article we theorize, operationalize, and assess the economic effect of another way in which members of the same profession can be distinguished: by the extent to which they specialize. Using two large secondary datasets on lawyers in the United States, we find that lawyers who specialize earn more. This effect arises partly through two mechanisms—individual productivity and firm size—and depends upon specialty area prestige: lawyers in low-prestige areas actually benefit more from specializing. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Policy reforms and rising income inequality transformed educational and economic opportunities for Americans approaching midlife in the 1990s. Rising income inequality may have reduced mobility, as income gaps increased between rich and poor children. Against the effects of rising inequality, Civil Rights reforms may have increased mobility, as opportunities expanded across cohorts of black students and workers. We compare educational and income mobility for two cohorts of black and white men, the older born in the late 1940s and the younger born in the early 1960s. We find that educational mobility increased for black men, but income mobility declined for both races. Economic mobility declined despite unchanged or improved educational mobility because of increased returns to schooling and increased intergenerational income correlations, independent of schooling. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the effect that postsecondary education has on earnings and the duration of time spent in the Social Security disability programs for young persons who are deaf or hard of hearing. Our hypothesis is that investments in postsecondary training increase the likelihood of employment for persons who are deaf or hard of hearing and thus reduce dependency on disability-related income support programs. A longitudinal data set based upon records from the National Technical Institute for the Deaf and Social Security administrative records is used for this analysis. We find that those who graduate, even those who graduate with vocational degrees, experience significant earnings benefits and reductions in the duration of time spent on federal disability programs when compared with those who do not graduate with a degree. This finding suggests that reductions in the duration of time spent on Social Security programs are not limited to those with the highest level of scholastic aptitude and that investments in post-secondary education can benefit a broad group of deaf and hard-of-hearing persons. In addition, the data show that individuals who attend college, but withdraw before graduation, fair no better economically than individuals who never attended college. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Background: Literature on the socio-economic 'gradient' in health often asserts that income is associated with better health not only for the very poor, but also across the entire income distribution. In addition, changes in the shape of the association between incomes during a period of increasing economic inequality have not been previously studied. The goal of the current study was to estimate and compare the shape of the relationship between income and mortality in the USA for the 1970s, the 1980s and the 1990s.Methods: Using income and mortality data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics for respondents aged 35-64 years, we used a Bayesian Cox Model with regression splines to model the risk of mortality over three 10-year follow-up periods. To identify whether income was more strongly associated with mortality at different parts of the income distribution, we treated income as a linear spline with an unknown knot location.Results: The shape of the association between income and mortality was quite non-linear, with a much stronger association at lower levels of income. The relationship between income and mortality in the USA was also not invariant across time, with the increased risk of death associated with lower income applying to an increasing proportion of the US population over time (9th percentile of income in 1970-79, 20th percentile in 1980-89 and 32nd percentile in 1990-99).Conclusions: Our analyses do not support the claim that income is associated with mortality throughout the income distribution, nor is the association between income and mortality the same across periods. Based on our analyses, a focus on the bottom 30% of the income distribution would seem to return the greatest benefits in reducing socio-economic inequalities in health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Epidemiologic studies seldom include wealth as a component of socioeconomic status. The authors investigated the associations between wealth and 2 broad outcome measures: mortality and self-rated general health status. Data from the longitudinal Panel Study of Income Dynamics, collected in a US population between 1984 and 2005, were used to fit marginal structural models and to estimate relative and absolute measures of effect. Wealth was specified as a 6-category variable: those with ≤0 wealth and quintiles of positive wealth. There were a 16%–44% higher risk and 6–18 excess cases of poor/fair health (per 1,000 persons) among the less wealthy relative to the wealthiest quintile. Less wealthy men, women, and whites had higher risk of poor/fair health relative to their wealthy counterparts. The overall wealth–mortality association revealed a 62% increased risk and 4 excess deaths (per 1,000 persons) among the least wealthy. Less wealthy women had between a 24% and a 90% higher risk of death, and the least wealthy men had 6 excess deaths compared with the wealthiest quintile. Overall, there was a strong inverse association between wealth and poor health status and between wealth and mortality. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The relevance of family income .for religious participation in the United States has been largely ignored in recent decades. Addressing this neglect, we focus our attention primarily upon white Catholics, the poorer of whom we reason have fewer options to participate in the context of an increasingly middle-class Church. Analyzing the 1972 2006 cumulative General Social Survey data, we show that net of all other factors low- income white Catholics attend church less often than other white Catholics, although social integration mechanisms significantly moderate the effects of income. Additional analyses suggest that the effects of income on church attendance are greatest for the younger white Catholic cohort. In contrast, the role of income in Latino Catholics' attendance is relatively weak. In our conclusion, we attempt to integrate our most puzzling finding -- having children in the home does not increase the church attendance of low-income white Catholics -- with our main theoretical line of argument concerning the central role of social integration in understanding the impact of income on religious participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research suggests that community-level poverty is associated with access to health care net of individual-level characteristics, but no research investigates whether this association differs by individual-level income. Using data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Surveys, the U.S. Census Bureau and the Health Resource and Services Administration, I find that the negative relationship between the prevalence of poverty in communities and access to health care is much stronger for middle- and high-income individuals than for those in lower-income groups. I suggest that individuals may benefit from living among those in similar economic circumstances because they face similar obstacles to obtaining medical are. For poor individuals, the collective knowledge and experience embedded in poor communities may compensate for the otherwise negative influence of community-level poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyse the relationship between functional income distribution and economic growth in Austria, France, Germany, the Netherlands, the UK and the USA from 1960 until 2005. The analysis is based on a demand-driven distribution and growth model for an open economy inspired by Bhaduri and Marglin, which allows for either profit- or wage-led growth. We find that growth in France, Germany, the UK and the USA has been wage-led, whereas Austria and the Netherlands have been profit-led. In the case of Austria a domestically wage-led economy changes to profit-led when including the effect of distribution on external trade. The Netherlands, however, are already profit-led without external trade. Our results so far only partially confirm Bhaduri and Marglin's theoretical conclusion that wage-led growth becomes less feasible when the effects of distribution on foreign trade are taken into account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are sizeable earnings differentials by gender and race in the U.S. labor market, with women earning less than men and most racial/ethnic minority groups earning less than whites. It has been proposed in the previous literature that the effects of gender and race on earnings are additive, so that minority women suffer the full disadvantage of each status. We test this proposition for a broad range of minority groups in the United States. We find that women of all minority groups suffer a smaller gender penalty than white women (relative to same-race men). Exploring the potential role of racial variation in gender role specialization in producing such differentials, we find some empirical evidence suggesting that white families specialize more than families of most other races. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The identification of aggregate human-capital externalities is still not fully understood. The existing (Mincerian) approach confounds positive externalities with wage changes due to a downward sloping demand curve for human capital. As a result, the Mincerian approach yields positive externalities even when wages equal marginal social products. We propose an approach that identifies human-capital externalities, whether or not aggregate demand for human capital slopes downward. Another advantage of our approach is that it does not require estimates of the individual return to human capital. Applications to U.S. cities and states between 1970 and 1990 yield no evidence of significant average-schooling externalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]