This study uses a sample of the civilian labor force aged 16-64 constructed from the Decennial Census and American Community Survey, along with data from the HUD dataset Picture of Subsidized Households, to compare the likelihood for job earnings in relation to public housing developments in the New Orleans MSA before and after Hurricane Katrina. Results from a series of hierarchical linear models (HLM) indicate significant relationships are altered between time periods, including those from public and mixed-income developments, suggesting a fluid relationship between neighborhoods and economic outcomes during physical, demographic and economic restructuring.
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How Does Geography Matter in Ethnic Labor Market Segmentation Process? A Case Study of Chinese Immigrants in the San Francisco CMSA
March 2007
Working Paper Number:
CES-07-09
In the context of continuing influxes of large numbers of immigrants to the United States, urban labor market segmentation along the lines of race/ethnicity, gender, and class has drawn considerable growing attention. Using a confidential dataset extracted from the United States Decennial Long Form Data 2000 and a multilevel regression modeling strategy, this paper presents a case study of Chinese immigrants in the San Francisco metropolitan area. Correspondent with the highly segregated nature of the labor market as between Chinese immigrant men and women, different socioeconomic characteristics at the census tract level are significantly related to their occupational segregation. This suggests the social process of labor market segmentation is contingent on the immigrant geography of residence and workplace. With different direction and magnitude of the spatial contingency between men and women in the labor market, residency in Chinese immigrant concentrated areas is perpetuating the gender occupational segregation by skill level. Whereas abundant ethnic resources may exist in ethnic neighborhoods and enclaves for certain types of employment opportunities, these resources do not necessarily help Chinese immigrant workers, especially women, to move upward along the labor market hierarchy.
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The Children of HOPE VI Demolitions: National Evidence on Labor Market Outcomes
November 2020
Working Paper Number:
CES-20-39
We combine national administrative data on earnings and participation in subsidized housing to study how the demolition of 160 public housing projects'funded by the HOPE VI program'affected the adult labor market outcomes for 18,500 children. Our empirical strategy compares children exposed to the program to children drawn from thousands of non-demolished projects, adjusting for observable differences using a flexible estimator that combines features of matching and regression. We find that children who resided in HOPE VI projects earn 14% more at age 26 relative to children in comparable non-HOPE VI projects. These earnings gains are strongest for demolitions in large cities, particularly in neighborhoods with higher pre-demolition poverty rates and lower pre-demolition job accessibility. There is no evidence that the labor market gains are driven by improvements in household or neighborhood environments that promote human capital development in children. Rather, subsequent improvements in job accessibility represent a likely pathway for the results.
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Neighborhood Income and Material Hardship in the United States
January 2022
Working Paper Number:
CES-22-01
U.S. households face a number of economic challenges that affect their well-being. In this analysis we focus on the extent to which neighborhood economic conditions contribute to hardship. Specifically, using data from the 2008 and 2014 Survey of Income and Program Participation panel surveys and logistic regression, we analyze the extent to which neighborhoods income levels affect the likelihood of experiencing seven types of hardships, including trouble paying bills, medical need, food insecurity, housing hardship, ownership of basic consumer durables, neighborhood problems, and fear of crime. We find strong bivariate relationships between neighborhood income and all hardships, but for most hardships these are explained by other household characteristics, such as household income and education. However, neighborhood income retains a strong association with two hardships in particular even when controlling for a variety of other household characteristics: neighborhood conditions (such as the presence of trash and litter) and fear of crime. Our study highlights the importance of examining multiple measures when assessing well-being, and our findings are consistent with the notion that collective socialization and community-level structural features affect the likelihood that households experience deleterious neighborhood conditions and a fear of crime.
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Does Rapid Transit and Light Rail Infrastructure Improve Labor Market Outcomes?
April 2024
Working Paper Number:
CES-24-22
Public transit has often been proposed as a solution to the spatial mismatch hypothesis but the link between public transit accessibility and employment has not been firmly established in the literature. Los Angeles provides an interesting case study ' as the city has transformed from zero rail infrastructure before the 1990s to a large network consisting of subway, light rail, and bus rapid transit servicing diverse neighborhoods. I use confidential panel data from the American Community Survey, treating route placement as endogenous, which is then instrumented by the distance from the centroid of each tract in LA to a hypothetical Metro route. Overall, I find proximity to Metro stations increases employment for residents, which is robust to using both a binary and continuous measure of distance. Additionally, I find evidence that increased job density in neighborhoods near new transit stations is contributing to the employment increase.
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Who are the people in my neighborhood? The 'contextual fallacy' of measuring individual context with census geographies
February 2018
Working Paper Number:
CES-18-11
Scholars deploy census-based measures of neighborhood context throughout the social sciences and epidemiology. Decades of research confirm that variation in how individuals are aggregated into geographic units to create variables that control for social, economic or political contexts can dramatically alter analyses. While most researchers are aware of the problem, they have lacked the tools to determine its magnitude in the literature and in their own projects. By using confidential access to the complete 2010 U.S. Decennial Census, we are able to construct'for all persons in the US'individual-specific contexts, which we group according to the Census-assigned block, block group, and tract. We compare these individual-specific measures to the published statistics at each scale, and we then determine the magnitude of variation in context for an individual with respect to the published measures using a simple statistic, the standard deviation of individual context (SDIC). For three key measures (percent Black, percent Hispanic, and Entropy'a measure of ethno-racial diversity), we find that block-level Census statistics frequently do not capture the actual context of individuals within them. More problematic, we uncover systematic spatial patterns in the contextual variables at all three scales. Finally, we show that within-unit variation is greater in some parts of the country than in others. We publish county-level estimates of the SDIC statistics that enable scholars to assess whether mis-specification in context variables is likely to alter analytic findings when measured at any of the three common Census units.
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A Warm Embrace or the Cold Shoulder: Wage and Employment Outcomes in Ethnic Enclaves
April 2008
Working Paper Number:
CES-08-09
This paper examines how immigrant enclaves influence labor market outcomes. We examine the effect of ethnic concentration on both immigrant earnings and employment in high immigration states using the non-public use, 1-in-6 sample of the 2000 U.S. Census. Although we find that there is some variability in the estimated enclave effects, they exhibit an overall negative impact. Male and female immigrants from several ethnic groups tend to earn lower wages when residing in areas with larger ethnic concentrations. Similarly, for employment, most of the statistically significant effects are negative, although much smaller than the enclave impacts on earnings.
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Neighborhood Racial Status and White Out-Mobility
March 2026
Working Paper Number:
CES-26-19
Drawing on American Community Survey data, this study examines how whites' relative socioeconomic standing vis-'-vis nonwhite neighbors affects the association between minority presence and white out-mobility. Moving beyond the racial preferences versus racial proxy debate, we integrate group competition and contact theories with status theory to conceptualize 'racial status' as whites' first-order income rank relative to the subgroup status of Black, Hispanic, and Asian residents at the census tract level. Multilevel linear probability models show that whites lacking advantaged status are generally more likely to move. However, the positive association between Black or Asian concentration and white departure is weaker among status-disadvantaged whites, while the negative association with Hispanic concentration is stronger. These patterns lend greater support to contact theory than to group competition theory. By foregrounding relative status, the study demonstrates that racial and socioeconomic mechanisms are intertwined in shaping white residential mobility.
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The Decline of Volunteering in the United States: Is it the Economy?
June 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-41
This article investigates the complex interactions between local and national economic contexts and volunteering behavior. We examine three dimensions of local economic context'economic disadvantage (e.g., the percentage of families living in poverty), income inequality, and economic growth (e.g., the change in median household income) and the impact of a national/global economic jolt'the Great Recession. Analysis of data from the Current Population Survey's (CPS) Volunteering Supplement (2002-2015) reveals. Individuals who live in places characterized by economic disadvantage and economic inequality are less likely to volunteer than individuals in more advantaged, equitable communities. The recession had a dampening effect on volunteering overall, but it had the largest dampening effect on individual volunteering in communities with above average rates of income equality and higher rates of economic growth. While individuals living in rural communities were more likely to volunteer than their urban counterparts before the recession, rural/urban differences disappear after the recession.
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Income Packaging and Economic Disconnection: Do Sources of Support Differ from Other Low-Income Women?
December 2013
Working Paper Number:
CES-13-61
Income packaging, or piecing together cash and non-cash resources from a variety of sources, is a common financial survival strategy among low-income women. This strategy is particularly important for economically disconnected women, who lack both employment income and public cash assistance receipt. Using data from the confidential Census Bureau versions of the Survey of Income and Program Participation, this study compares the use of public and private supports between disconnected and connected low-income women, controlling for differences in state welfare rules and county unemployment rates. Findings from bivariate comparisons and multilevel logistic regressions indicate that disconnected women utilize public non-cash supports at similar rates to connected women, but rely more heavily on private sources. Conclusions focus on the policy implications for outreach and program development.
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Whose Neighborhood Now? Gentrification and Community Life in Low-Income Urban Neighborhoods
June 2024
Working Paper Number:
CES-24-29
Gentrification is a process of urban change that has wide-ranging social and political impacts, but previous studies provide divergent findings. Does gentrification leave residents feeling alienated, or does it bolster neighborhood social satisfaction? Politically, does urban change mobilize residents, or leave them disengaged? I assess a national, cross-sectional sample of about 17,500 respondents in lower-income urban neighborhoods, and use a structural equation modeling approach to model six latent variables pertaining to local social environment and political participation. Amongst the full sample, gentrification has a positive association with all six factors. However, this relationship depends upon respondents' level of income, length of residency, and racial identity. White residents and those with shorter length of residency report higher levels of social cohesion as gentrification increases, but there is no such association amongst racial minority groups and longer-term residents. This finding aligns with a perspective on gentrification as a racialized process, and demonstrates that gentrification-related amenities primarily serve the interests of white residents and newcomers. All groups, however, are more likely to participate in neighborhood politics as gentrification increases, drawing attention to the agency of local residents as they attempt to influence processes of urban change.
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