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Whose Job Is It Anyway? Co-Ethnic Hiring in New U.S. Ventures
March 2021
Working Paper Number:
CES-21-05
We explore co-ethnic hiring among new ventures using U.S. administrative data. Co-ethnic hiring is ubiquitous among immigrant groups, averaging about 22.5% and ranging from 2% to 40%. Co-ethnic hiring grows with the size of the local ethnic workforce, greater linguistic distance to English, lower cultural/genetic similarity to U.S. natives, and in harsher policy environments for immigrants. Co ethnic hiring is remarkably persistent for ventures and for individuals. Co-ethnic hiring is associated with greater venture survival and growth when thick local ethnic employment surrounds the business. Our results are consistent with a blend of hiring due to information advantages within ethnic groups with some taste-based hiring.
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What Caused Racial Disparities in Particulate Exposure to Fall? New Evidence from the Clean Air Act and Satellite-Based Measures of Air Quality
January 2020
Working Paper Number:
CES-20-02
Racial differences in exposure to ambient air pollution have declined significantly in the United States over the past 20 years. This project links restricted-access Census Bureau microdata to newly available, spatially continuous high resolution measures of ambient particulate pollution (PM2.5) to examine the underlying causes and consequences of differences in black-white pollution exposures. We begin by decomposing differences in pollution exposure into components explained by observable population characteristics (e.g., income) versus those that remain unexplained. We then use quantile regression methods to show that a significant portion of the 'unexplained' convergence in black-white pollution exposure can be attributed to differential impacts of the Clean Air Act (CAA) in non-Hispanic African American and non-Hispanic white communities. Areas with larger black populations saw greater CAA-related declines in PM2.5 exposure. We show that the CAA has been the single largest contributor to racial convergence in PM2.5 pollution exposure in the U.S. since 2000 accounting for over 60 percent of the reduction.
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Predicting the Effect of Adding a Citizenship Question to the 2020 Census
June 2019
Working Paper Number:
CES-19-18
The addition of a citizenship question to the 2020 census could affect the self-response rate, a key driver of the cost and quality of a census. We find that citizenship question response patterns in the American Community Survey (ACS) suggest that it is a sensitive question when asked about administrative record noncitizens but not when asked about administrative record citizens. ACS respondents who were administrative record noncitizens in 2017 frequently choose to skip the question or answer that the person is a citizen. We predict the effect on self-response to the entire survey by comparing mail response rates in the 2010 ACS, which included a citizenship question, with those of the 2010 census, which did not have a citizenship question, among households in both surveys. We compare the actual ACS-census difference in response rates for households that may contain noncitizens (more sensitive to the question) with the difference for households containing only U.S. citizens. We estimate that the addition of a citizenship question will have an 8.0 percentage point larger effect on self-response rates in households that may have noncitizens relative to those with only U.S. citizens. Assuming that the citizenship question does not affect unit self-response in all-citizen households and applying the 8.0 percentage point drop to the 28.1 % of housing units potentially having at least one noncitizen would predict an overall 2.2 percentage point drop in self-response in the 2020 census, increasing costs and reducing the quality of the population count.
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IMMIGRANT ENTREPRENEURS AND INNOVATION IN THE U.S. HIGH-TECH SECTOR
February 2019
Working Paper Number:
CES-19-06
We estimate differences in innovation behavior between foreign versus U.S.-born entrepreneurs in high-tech industries. Our data come from the Annual Survey of Entrepreneurs, a random sample of firms with detailed information on owner characteristics and innovation activities. We find uniformly higher rates of innovation in immigrant-owned firms for 15 of 16 different innovation measures; the only exception is for copyright/trademark. The immigrant advantage holds for older firms as well as for recent start-ups and for every level of the entrepreneur's education. The size of the estimated immigrant-native differences in product and process innovation activities rises with detailed controls for demographic and human capital characteristics but falls for R&D and patenting. Controlling for finance, motivations, and industry reduces all coefficients, but for most measures and specifications immigrants are estimated to have a sizable advantage in innovation.
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Nonemployer Statistics by Demographics (NES-D): Using Administrative and Census Records Data in Business Statistics
January 2019
Working Paper Number:
CES-19-01
The quinquennial Survey of Business Owners or SBO provided the only comprehensive source of information in the United States on employer and nonemployer businesses by the sex, race, ethnicity and veteran status of the business owners. The annual Nonemployer Statistics series (NES) provides establishment counts and receipts for nonemployers but contains no demographic information on the business owners. With the transition of the employer component of the SBO to the Annual Business Survey, the Nonemployer Statistics by Demographics series or NES-D represents the continuation of demographics estimates for nonemployer businesses. NES-D will leverage existing administrative and census records to assign demographic characteristics to the universe of approximately 24 million nonemployer businesses (as of 2015). Demographic characteristics include key demographics measured by the SBO (sex, race, Hispanic origin and veteran status) as well as other demographics (age, place of birth and citizenship status) collected but not imputed by the SBO if missing. A spectrum of administrative and census data sources will provide the nonemployer universe and demographics information. Specifically, the nonemployer universe originates in the Business Register; the Census Numident will provide sex, age, place of birth and citizenship status; race and Hispanic origin information will be obtained from multiple years of the decennial census and the American Community Survey; and the Department of Veteran Affairs will provide administrative records data on veteran status.
The use of blended data in this manner will make possible the production of NES-D, an annual series that will become the only source of detailed and comprehensive statistics on the scope, nature and activities of U.S. businesses with no paid employment by the demographic characteristics of the business owner. Using the 2015 vintage of nonemployers, initial results indicate that demographic information is available for the overwhelming majority of the universe of nonemployers. For instance, information on sex, age, place of birth and citizenship status is available for over 95 percent of the 24 million nonemployers while race and Hispanic origin are available for about 90 percent of them. These results exclude owners of C-corporations, which represent only 2 percent of nonemployer firms. Among other things, future work will entail imputation of missing demographics information (including that of C-corporations), testing the longitudinal consistency of the estimates, and expanding the set of characteristics beyond the demographics mentioned above. Without added respondent burden and at lower imputation rates and costs, NES-D will meet the needs of stakeholders as well as the economy as a whole by providing reliable estimates at a higher frequency (annual vs. every 5 years) and with a more timely dissemination schedule than the SBO.
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Factors that Influence Change in Hispanic Identification: Evidence from Linked Decennial Census and American Community Survey Data
October 2018
Working Paper Number:
CES-18-45
This study explores patterns of ethnic boundary crossing as evidenced by changes in Hispanic origin responses across decennial census and survey data. We identify socioeconomic, cultural, and demographic factors associated with Hispanic response change. In addition, we assess whether changes in the Hispanic origin question between the 2000 and 2010 censuses influenced changes in Hispanic reporting. We use a unique large dataset that links a person's unedited responses to the Hispanic origin question across Census 2000, the 2010 Census and the 2006-2010 American Community Survey five-year file. We find that most of the individuals in the sample identified consistently as Hispanic regardless of changes in the wording of the Hispanic origin question. Individuals who changed in or out of a Hispanic identification, as well as those who consistently identified as non-Hispanic (of Hispanic ancestry), differed in socioeconomic and cultural characteristics from individuals who consistently reported as Hispanic. The likelihood of changing their Hispanic origin response is higher among U.S.-born individuals, those reporting mixed Hispanic and non-Hispanic ancestries, those who speak only English at home, and those who live in tracts that are predominantly non-Hispanic. Racial identification and detailed Hispanic background also influence changes in Hispanic origin responses. Finally, changes in mode and relationship to the reference person in the household are associated with changes in Hispanic origin responses, suggesting that data collection elements also can influence Hispanic origin response change.
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Race and Economic Opportunity in the United States: An Intergenerational Perspective
September 2018
Working Paper Number:
CES-18-40R
We study the sources of racial and ethnic disparities in income using de-identified longitudinal data covering nearly the entire U.S. population from 1989-2015. We document three sets of results. First, the intergenerational persistence of disparities varies substantially across racial groups. For example, Hispanic Americans are moving up significantly in the income distribution across generations because they have relatively high rates of intergenerational income mobility. In contrast, black Americans have substantially lower rates of upward mobility and higher rates of downward mobility than whites, leading to large income disparities that persist across generations. Conditional on parent income, the black-white income gap is driven entirely by large differences in wages and employment rates between black and white men; there are no such differences between black and white women. Second, differences in family characteristics such as parental marital status, education, and wealth explain very little of the black-white income gap conditional on parent income. Differences in ability also do not explain the patterns of intergenerational mobility we document. Third, the black-white gap persists even among boys who grow up in the same neighborhood. Controlling for parental income, black boys have lower incomes in adulthood than white boys in 99% of Census tracts. Both black and white boys have better outcomes in low-poverty areas, but black-white gaps are larger on average for boys who grow up in such neighborhoods. The few areas in which black-white gaps are relatively small tend to be low-poverty neighborhoods with low levels of racial bias among whites and high rates of father presence among blacks. Black males who move to such neighborhoods earlier in childhood earn more and are less likely to be incarcerated. However, fewer than 5% of black children grow up in such environments. These findings suggest that reducing the black-white income gap will require efforts whose impacts cross neighborhood and class lines and increase upward mobility specifically for black men.
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Understanding the Quality of Alternative Citizenship Data Sources for the 2020 Census
August 2018
Working Paper Number:
CES-18-38R
This paper examines the quality of citizenship data in self-reported survey responses compared to administrative records and evaluates options for constructing an accurate count of resident U.S. citizens. Person-level discrepancies between survey-collected citizenship data and administrative records are more pervasive than previously reported in studies comparing survey and administrative data aggregates. Our results imply that survey-sourced citizenship data produce significantly lower estimates of the noncitizen share of the population than would be produced from currently available administrative records; both the survey-sourced and administrative data have shortcomings that could contribute to this difference. Our evidence is consistent with noncitizen respondents misreporting their own citizenship status and failing to report that of other household members. At the same time, currently available administrative records may miss some naturalizations and capture others with a delay. The evidence in this paper also suggests that adding a citizenship question to the 2020 Census would lead to lower self-response rates in households potentially containing noncitizens, resulting in higher fieldwork costs and a lower-quality population count.
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Using Linked Data to Investigate True Intergenerational Change: Three Generations Over Seven Decades
August 2018
Working Paper Number:
carra-2018-09
It is widely thought that immigrants and their families undergo profound cultural and socioeconomic changes as a consequence of coming into contact with U.S. society, but the way this occurs remains unclear and controversial due in large part to data limitations. In this paper, we provide proof of concept for analyses using linked data that allow us to compare outcomes across more 'exact' family generations. Specifically, we are able to follow immigrant parents and their children and grandchildren across seven decades using census and survey data from 1940 to 2014. We describe the data and linkage methodology, evaluate the representativeness of the linked sample, test a method for adjusting for biases that arise from non-representative linkages, and describe the size, diversity, and socioeconomic characteristics of the linked sample. We demonstrate that large sample sizes of linked data will likely permit us to compare several national origin groups across multiple generations.
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Individual Changes in Identification with Hispanic Ethnic Origins: Evidence from Linked 2000 and 2010 Census Data
August 2018
Working Paper Number:
carra-2018-08
Population estimates and demographic profiles are central to both academic and public debates about immigration, immigrant assimilation, and minority mobility. Analysts' conclusions are shaped by the choices that survey respondents make about how to identify themselves on surveys, but such choices change over time. Using linked responses to the 2000 and 2010 Censuses, our paper examines the extent to which individuals change between specific Hispanic categories such as Mexican origin. We first examine how changes in identification affect population change for national and regional origin groups. We then examine patterns of entry and exit to understand which groups more often switch between a non-Hispanic, another specific origin, or a general Hispanic identification. Finally, we profile who is most likely to change identification. Our findings affirm the fluidity of ethnic identification, especially between categories of Hispanic origin, which in turn carries important implications for population and compositional changes.
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