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A Unified Framework for Measuring Preferences for Schools and Neighborhoods
October 2007
Working Paper Number:
CES-07-27
This paper develops a comprehensive framework for estimating household preferences for school and neighborhood attributes in the presence of sorting. It embeds a boundary discontinuity design in a heterogeneous model of residential choice to address the endogeneity of school and neighborhood attributes. The model is estimated using restricted-access Census data from a large metropolitan area, yielding a number of new results. First, households are willing to pay less than one percent more in house prices ' substantially lower than previous estimates ' when the average performance of the local school increases by five percent. Second, much of the apparent willingness to pay for more educated and wealthier neighbors is explained by the correlation of these sociodemographic measures with unobserved neighborhood quality. Third, neighborhood race is not capitalized directly into housing prices; instead, the negative correlation of neighborhood race and housing prices is due entirely to the fact that blacks live in unobservably lower quality neighborhoods. Finally, there is considerable heterogeneity in preferences for schools and neighbors: in particular, we find that households prefer to selfsegregate on the basis of both race and education.
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Social, Economic, Spatial, and Commuting Patterns of Self-Employed Jobholders
April 2007
Working Paper Number:
tp-2007-03
A significant number of employees within the United States identify themselves as selfemployed,
and they are distinct from the larger group identified as private jobholders. While
socioeconomic and spatial information on these individuals is readily available in standard
datasets, such as the 2000 Decennial Census Long Form, it is possible to gain further information
on their wage earnings by using data from administrative wage records. This study takes
advantage of firm-based data from Unemployment Insurance administrative wage records linked
with the Census Bureau's household-based data in order to examine self-employed jobholders -
both as a whole and as subgroups defined according to their earned wage status - by their
demographic characteristics as well as their economic, commuting, and spatial location
outcomes. Additionally, this report evaluates whether self-employed jobholders and the defined
subgroups should be included explicitly in future labor-workforce analyses and transportation
modeling. The analyses in this report use the sample of self-employed workers who lived in Los
Angeles County, California.
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Social, Economic, Spatial, and Commuting Patterns of Informal Jobholders
April 2007
Working Paper Number:
tp-2007-02
A significant number of employees within the United States can be considered "informal" or
"off-the-books" workers. These workers, who by definition do not appear in administrative wage
records, are distinct from the larger group of private jobholders who do appear in administrative
records. However, while socioeconomic and spatial information on these individuals is readily
available in standard datasets, such as the 2000 Decennial Census Long Form, it is not possible
to identify the informal workers by only using such data because of the lack of accurate, formal
wage records. This study takes advantage of firm-based data that originates in Unemployment
Insurance administrative wage records linked with the Census Bureau's household-based data in
order to examine informal jobholders by their demographic characteristics as well as their
economic, commuting, and spatial location outcomes. In addition this report evaluates whether
informal jobholders should be included explicitly in future labor-workforce analyses and
transportation modeling. The analyses in this report use the sample of workers who lived in Los
Angeles County, California.
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Social, Economic, Spatial, and Commuting Patterns of Dual Jobholders
April 2007
Working Paper Number:
tp-2007-01
Individuals who hold multiple jobs have complex working lives and complex commuting
patterns. Economic and spatial information on these individuals is not readily available in
standard datasets, such as the 2000 Decennial Census Long Form, because the survey questions
were not designed to collect details on multiple jobs. This study takes advantage of firm-based
data from the Unemployment Insurance administrative wage records, linked with the Census
Bureau's household-based data, to examine multiple jobholders - and specifically a sentinel
group of dual jobholders. The study uses a sample from Los Angeles County, California and
examines the dual jobholders by their demographic characteristics as well as their economic,
commuting, and spatial location outcomes. In addition this report evaluates whether multiple
jobholders should be included explicitly in future labor-workforce analyses and transportation
modeling.
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Resident Perceptions of Crime: How Similar are They to Official Crime Rates?
March 2007
Working Paper Number:
CES-07-10
This study compares the relationship between official crime rates and residents' perceptions of crime in census tracts. Employing a unique dataset that links household level data from the American Housing Survey metro samples over a period of 25 years (1976-2000) with official crime rate data for census tracts in selected cities during selected years, this large sample provides considerable ability to generalize the findings. I find that residents' perception of crime is most strongly related to official rates of tract violent crime. Models simultaneously taking into account both violent and property crime consistently found that property crime actually has a negative effect on perceived crime. Among types of violent crime, the robbery rate is consistently related to higher levels of perceived crime in the tract, whereas it appears a structural shift occurred in the mid-1980s in which aggravated assault and murder rates now impact perceptions of crime, even when taking into account the robbery rate.
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Stability and Change in Individual Determinants of Migration: Evidence from 1985-1990 and 1995 to 2000
November 2006
Working Paper Number:
CES-06-27
In this paper, we compare the reliability of migration estimates from two rather different macroeconomic periods in recent U.S. history. One of these periods, 1985-1990 coincides with the culmination of a vast industrial restructuring which saw a significant decline in manufacturing employment. The other period, 1995-2000, encompasses a time of robust economic growth and tight labor markets driven by productivity gains associated with new technologies. Our interest here is in the stability of common individual-level predictors of migration in these rather disparate macroeconomic contexts. Using confidential internal versions of the 1990 and 2000 Census long-form data, we estimate logistic models of the likelihood that individuals will migrate. The geographic detail in the internal Census data permits us to measure migration in ways that are not possible with public-domain Census data on persons. We develop migration definitions that distinguish between local residential mobility likely associated with life course transitions from migration out of the labor market area that may be driven more by employment and other socioeconomic considerations. Using logistic modeling, we find that the same individual attributes predict migration reasonably well during both periods. We also compute some illustrative probabilities of migration that show temporal stability in migration predictors could be lessened by certain changes in population composition.
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What Has Been Capitalized into Property Values: Human Capital, Social Capital, or Cultural Capital?
October 2005
Working Paper Number:
CES-05-25
Urban amenities can be capitalized into land values or property values. However, little attention has been paid to the capitalization of social amenities. This paper classifies three types of social-interaction-based social amenities: human capital, social capital, and cultural capital at residential neighborhood levels. We use the restricted version of the 1990 Massachusetts Census data and estimate hedonic housing models with social amenities. The findings are as follows: (1) Human capital has significant positive effects on property values. This tests the Lucas conjecture. (2) Different types of social capital have different effects on property values: an increase in the percentage of new residents has significant positive effects on property values, probably due to the strength of weak ties. However, an increase in the percentage of single-parent households has negative effects on property values. An increase in the home ownership rate has positive effects at large geographic levels. (3) Cultural capital effects vary from high to low geographic levels, the effects of English proficiency and racial homogeneity are positive at and beyond the tract level, but insignificant at the block level. This may imply that cultural capital is more important in social interactions at large geographic scale.
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Place of Work and Place of Residence: Informal Hiring Networks and Labor Market Outcomes
October 2005
Working Paper Number:
CES-05-23
We use a novel dataset and research design to empirically detect the effect of social interactions among neighbors on labor market outcomes. Specifically, using Census data that characterize residential and employment locations down to the city block, we examine whether individuals residing in the same block are more likely to work together than those in nearby blocks. We find evidence of significant social interactions operating at the block level: residing on the same versus nearby blocks increases the probability of working together by over 33 percent. The results also indicate that this referral effect is stronger when individuals are similar in sociodemographic characteristics (e.g., both have children of similar ages) and when at least one individual is well attached to the labor market. These findings are robust across various specifications intended to address concerns related to sorting and reverse causation. Further, having determined the characteristics of a pair of individuals that lead to an especially strong referral effect, we provide evidence that the increased availability of neighborhood referrals has a significant impact on a wide range of labor market outcomes including employment and wages.
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Networking Off Madison Avenue
October 2005
Working Paper Number:
CES-05-15
This paper examines the effect on productivity of having more near advertising agency neighbors and hence better opportunities for meetings and exchange within Manhattan. We will show that there is extremely rapid spatial decay in the benefits of having more near neighbors even in the close quarters of southern Manhattan, a finding that is new to the empirical literature and indicates our understanding of scale externalities is still very limited. The finding indicates that having a high density of commercial establishments is important in enhancing local productivity, an issue in Lucas and Rossi-Hansberg (2002), where within business district spatial decay of spillovers plays a key role. We will argue also that in Manhattan advertising agencies trade-off the higher rent costs of being in bigger clusters nearer 'centers of action', against the lower rent costs of operating on the 'fringes' away from high concentrations of other agencies. Introducing the idea of trade-offs immediately suggests heterogeneity is involved. We will show that higher quality agencies are the ones willing to pay more rent to locate in greater size clusters, specifically because they benefit more from networking. While all this is an exploration of neighborhood and networking externalities, the findings relate to the economic anatomy of large metro areas like New Yorkthe nature of their buzz.
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Is the Melting Pot Still Hot? Explaining the Resurgence of Immigrant Segregation
August 2004
Working Paper Number:
CES-04-10
This paper uses decennial Census data to examine trends in immigrant segregation in the United States between 1910 and 2000. Immigrant segregation declined in the first half of the century, but has been rising steadily over the past three decades. Analysis of restricted access 1990 Census microdata suggests that this rise would be even more striking if the native-born children of immigrants could be consistently excluded from the analysis. We analyze panel and cross-sectional variation in immigrant segregation, as well as housing price patterns across metropolitan areas, to test four hypotheses of immigrant segregation. Immigration itself has surged in recent decades, but the tendency for newly arrived immigrants to be younger and of lower socioeconomic status explains very little of the recent rise in immigrant segregation. We also find no evidence of increased nativism in the housing market. Evidence instead points to changes in urban form, particularly the tendency for ethnic enclaves to form as suburbanizing households leave older neighborhoods, as a central explanation for the new immigrant segregation.
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