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Employment and Earnings Trajectories of HUD Program Participants
May 2026
Working Paper Number:
CES-26-31
Federal housing assistance programs, such as those run by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), have been shown to reduce rent burden and improve housing stability for program participants, which may in turn have downstream impacts on their labor market attachment and career trajectories. However, existing studies from individual cities or states provide mixed evidence on the association of housing assistance with labor market outcomes. By linking HUD administrative records to matched employee-employer earnings records from the Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) program, we document how the labor market trajectories of program participants change as they enter and exit federal housing assistance programs, examining outcomes over a 14-year window surrounding entry or exit. In our analysis of entry, we find that the employment rates and earnings of first-time HUD program participants begin to increase upon entering a HUD program, which represents a reversal of prior declining trends in these outcomes. Suggestive of a positive association, these increases in employment and earnings trends exceed those of low-income non-participants from the American Community Survey (ACS). In our analysis of exits, we find that program participants who eventually leave a HUD program have increasing pre-exit trends in employment and earnings that then flatten upon exiting. Comparing these negative changes in trend to the relatively stable trajectories of those who remain in HUD programs throughout the analysis suggests that exits are associated with diminished employment and earnings trajectories.
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How Do Neighborhoods and Firms Affect Intergenerational Mobility?
March 2026
Working Paper Number:
CES-26-18
We use data from the Longitudinal Employer Household Dynamics linked to the 2000 Census to study intergenerational earnings mobility in the United States. We augment the standard intergenerational transmission model relating children's log earnings to those of their parent with an additional term representing mean log parent earnings in the childhood neighborhood. The between-neighborhood intergenerational relationship is twice as strong as the within-neighborhood relationship, even after adjusting for measurement error in parents' earnings. Moreover, mean earnings of the parents in a neighborhood capture over 80% of the variation in unrestricted neighborhood effects that reflect differences in 'absolute mobility'. Next, we use an AKM framework to decompose parents', children's, and neighboring parents' earnings into person effects and establishment premiums. Children's person effects are mainly influenced by parents' and neighbors' person effects, whereas children's establishment premiums are mainly influenced by parents' and neighbors' establishment premiums. These patterns point to separate channels for human capital and access to jobs in the intergenerational transmission process. Finally, we explore the implications for the Black-white earnings gap. Neighborhoods explain 30% of the Black-white gap in children's earnings conditional on parents' earnings, operating largely through gaps in average person effects. Conditional on neighborhood average earnings, children from neighborhoods with higher Black shares achieve higher adult earnings.
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Careers of Minimum Wage Workers
January 2026
Working Paper Number:
CES-26-07
We characterize the careers of minimum wage workers by merging SIPP panels covering 1992-2016 into the LEHD. A long-run analysis shows strong earnings growth for these workers in subsequent decades, becoming indistinguishable from peers earning modestly more initially. Most of this growth is due to the steep earnings trajectories of young workers. Older workers earning minimum wages show a modest dip in earnings at that moment compared to earlier and later periods. Increases in state minimum wages do not significantly alter the future careers of workers who are on the minimum wage when the increases occur.
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Creating High-Opportunity Neighborhoods: Evidence from the HOPE VI Program
January 2026
Working Paper Number:
CES-26-02
We study whether low-economic-mobility neighborhoods can be transformed into high-mobility areas by analyzing the HOPE VI program, which invested $17 billion to revitalize 262 distressed public housing developments. We estimate the program's impacts using a matched difference-in-differences design, comparing outcomes in revitalized developments to observably similar control developments using anonymized tax records. HOPE VI reduced neighborhood poverty rates by attracting higher-income families to revitalized neighborhoods, but had no causal impact on the earnings of adults living in public housing units. Children raised in revitalized public housing units earn more, are more likely to attend college, and are less likely to be incarcerated. Using a movers exposure design and sibling comparisons, we show that these improvements were driven by changes in neighborhoods' causal effects on children's outcomes. The improvements in neighborhood causal effects were driven in large part by changes in social interaction: HOPE VI increased interaction between public housing residents and peers in surrounding neighborhoods and increased earnings more for subgroups with higher-income peers. Many low-income families in the U.S. currently live in neighborhoods that are as socially isolated as the HOPE VI developments were prior to revitalization. We conclude that it is feasible to create high-opportunity neighborhoods and that connecting socially isolated areas to surrounding communities is a cost-effective approach to doing so.
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School-Based Disability Identification Varies by Student Family Income
December 2025
Authors:
Quentin Brummet,
Andrew Penner,
Emily Penner,
Leah R. Clark,
Michelle Spiegel,
Paul Y. Yoo,
Paul Hanselman,
Nicholas J. Ainsworth,
Christopher Cleveland,
Jacob Hibel,
Andrew Saultz,
Juan Camilo Cristancho
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-74
Currently, 18 percent of K-12 students in the United States receive additional supports through the identification of a disability. Socioeconomic status is viewed as central to understanding who gets identified as having a disability, yet limited large-scale evidence examines how disability identification varies for students from different income backgrounds. Using unique data linking information on Oregon students and their family income, we document pronounced income-based differences in how students are categorized for two school-based disability supports: special education services and Section 504 plans. We find that a quarter of students in the lowest income percentile receive supports through special education, compared with less than seven percent of students in the top income percentile. This pattern may partially reflect differences in underlying disability-related needs caused by poverty. However, we find the opposite pattern for 504 plans, where students in the top income percentiles are two times more likely to receive 504 plan supports. We further document substantial variation in these income-based differences by disability category, by race/ethnicity, and by grade level. Together, these patterns suggest that disability-related needs alone cannot account for the income-based differences that we observe and highlight the complex ways that income shapes the school and family processes that lead to variability in disability classification and services.
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The Hidden Costs of Decline: Health Disparities in America's Diminishing Micropolitan Areas
September 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-70
This study examines the relationship between long-term population change and health outcomes in U.S. micropolitan areas, with a focus on life expectancy and mortality disparities. Using a county typology based on the historical population trajectories of micropolitan cores from 1940 to 2020, this analysis reveals that health outcomes are substantially worse in places that experienced sustained decline. These disparities persist even after controlling for demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, suggesting that population loss itself is a key driver of poor public health. Declining micropolitan areas are older, less educated, and report high rates of behavioral risk factors, including smoking, excessive drinking, and physical inactivity. By linking historical demographic trends to tract-level data, this analysis highlights the distinct challenges facing the urban cores of shrinking micropolitan areas. Population decline emerges not only as a demographic trend, but as a marker of structural disadvantage with measurable consequences for community health.
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Receipt of Public and Private Food Assistance Across the Rural-Urban Continuum Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Analysis of Current Population Survey Data
August 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-51
Background: The nutrition safety net in the United States is critical to supporting food security among households in need. Food assistance in the United States includes both government-funded food programs and private community-based providers who distribute food to in need households. The COVID-19 pandemic impacted experiences of food security and use of private and public food assistance resources. However, this may have differed for households residing in urban versus rural areas. We explored receipt of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits or food from community-based emergency food providers across a detailed measure of the rural-urban continuum before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Methods: We linked restricted use Current Population Survey Food Security Supplement data to census-tract level United States Department of Agriculture Rural-Urban Commuting Area codes to estimate prevalence of self-reported SNAP participation and receipt of emergency food support across temporal (2015-2019 versus 2020-2021) and socio-spatial (urban, large rural city/town, small rural town, or isolated rural town/area) dimensions. We report prevalences as point estimates with 95% confidence intervals, all weighted for national representation.
Results:
The weighted prevalence of self-reported SNAP participation was 8.9% (8.7-9.2%) in 2015-2019 and 9.1% (8.5-9.5%) in 2020-2021 in urban areas, 11.4% (10.8-12.2%) in 2015-2019 and 11.6% (10.5-12.9%) in 2020-2021 in large rural towns/cities, 13.4% (12.3-14.6%) in 2015-2019 and 12.3% (10.5-14.5%) in 2020-2021 in small rural towns, and 9.7% (8.6-10.9%) in 2015-2019 and 10.9% (8.8-13.4% )in 2020-2021 isolated rural towns. The weighted prevalence of self-reported receipt of emergency food was 4.9% (4.8-5.1%) in 2015-2019 and 6.2% (5.8-6.5%) in 2020-2021 in urban areas, 6.8% (6.2-7.4%) in 2015-2019 and 7.6% (6.6-8.6%) in 2020-2021 in large rural towns/cities, 8.1% (7.3-9.1%) in 2015-2019 and 7.1% (5.7-8.8%) in 2020-2021 in small rural towns, and 6.8% (5.9-7.7%) in 2015-2019 and 8.5% (6.7-10.6%) in 2020-2021 isolated rural towns.
Conclusion: Households in rural communities use public and private food assistance at higher rates than urban areas, but there is variation across communities depending on the level of rurality.
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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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The Effects of Eviction on Children
May 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-34
Eviction may be an important channel for the intergenerational transmission of poverty, and concerns about its effects on children are often raised as a rationale for tenant protection policies. We study how eviction impacts children's home environment, school engagement, educational achievement, and high school completion by assembling new data sets linking eviction court records in Chicago and New York to administrative public school records and restricted Census records. To disentangle the consequences of eviction from the effects of correlated sources of economic distress, we use a research design based on the random assignment of court cases to judges who vary in their leniency. We find that eviction increases children's residential mobility, homelessness, and likelihood of doubling up with grandparents or other adults. Eviction also disrupts school engagement, causing increased absences and school changes. While we find little impact on elementary and middle school test scores, eviction substantially reduces high school course credits. Lastly, we find that eviction reduces high school graduation and use a novel bounding method to show that this finding is not driven by differential attrition. The disruptive effects of eviction appear worse for older children and boys. Our evidence suggests that the impact of eviction on children runs through the disruption to the home environment or school engagement rather than deterioration in school or neighborhood quality, and may be moderated by access to family support networks.
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Peer Income Exposure Across the Income Distribution
February 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-16
Children from families across the income distribution attend public schools, making schools and classrooms potential sites for interaction between more- and less-affluent children. However, limited information exists regarding the extent of economic integration in these contexts. We merge educational administrative data from Oregon with measures of family income derived from IRS records to document student exposure to economically diverse school and classroom peers. Our findings indicate that affluent children in public schools are relatively isolated from their less affluent peers, while low- and middle-income students experience relatively even peer income distributions. Students from families in the top percentile of the income distribution attend schools where 20 percent of their peers, on average, come from the top five income percentiles. A large majority of the differences in peer exposure that we observe arise from the sorting of students across schools; sorting across classrooms within schools plays a substantially smaller role.
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