Papers Containing Tag(s): 'Decennial Census'
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Viewing papers 1 through 10 of 172
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Working PaperWho Hires Whom? Entrepreneurial Backgrounds and Labor Market Opportunities
July 2026
Working Paper Number:
CES-26-45
What are the implications of unequal access to entrepreneurial careers for labor markets? Using data from the U.S. Census and LinkedIn profiles, we document that entrepreneurs are significantly more likely to hire workers from similar social backgrounds (gender, race, age, education, etc.). These effects are quantitatively large across several demographic dimensions. For example, female employee share at female-founded startups is 36.4pp higher after controlling for industry-by-metro area-by-cohort fixed effects, with corresponding estimates of 51.2pp for Blacks, 37.3pp for Hispanics, and 11.3pp for non-college individuals. Large effects are present in high-growth startups, across industries and occupations, and remain stable across new firm cohorts. In addition, we find that these differences persist out to at least 20 years. We use wage data and an AKM research design to untangle whether the relative differences are driven by labor demand or labor supply effects. We find that demand drives the differences: group-specific wage decompositions show that new firms pay higher relative wages to individuals from similar backgrounds to the entrepreneur. Using these estimates, we calibrate a model of entrepreneurship with heterogeneous ability and production functions, and assess the impacts on relative wage from reducing access barriers to entrepreneurship.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperAccess to the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) at the State and Substate Levels: Meaning and Measurement
July 2026
Working Paper Number:
CES-26-44
This study estimates eligibility and access rates for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) administrative data linked with American Community Survey (ACS) data. This study is one result of a long-term research collaboration among USDA's Economic Research Service; the U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census; USDA's Food and Nutrition Service (FNS); and participating state WIC agencies.'By analyzing WIC participation at the state and substate levels, the report provides insights into program reach and demographic differences. The findings confirm that the Census Bureau estimates meet high statistical reliability standards, providing valuable data for program officials and managers, and other stakeholders, to enhance program outreach and effectiveness. A key focus of the report is the comparison between Census Bureau and USDA, FNS estimates, which differ in methodology and measurement scope.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperExperimental Capture/recapture Estimation Using Census and Administrative Data
June 2026
Working Paper Number:
CES-26-38
This report expands upon the innovation of utilizing administrative records and third-party data implemented in the 2020 Census. The 2020 Census used administrative records and third-party data in address canvassing and nonresponse followup operations. The Census Bureau also has a long history of using administrative records of births, deaths, and other information to produce Demographic Analysis coverage estimates. Since 1980, the Census Bureau has produced capture-recapture coverage estimates by conducting an independent post-enumeration survey and utilizing dual system estimation approaches. This report presents the research results of attempting to see if administrative records and third-party data could be utilized to produce capture-recapture coverage estimates. This work uses an Expectation Maximization Log Linear Modeling approach previously researched by Statistics Netherlands and Statistics New Zealand. This report documents some of the experimental results from an evaluation that was part of the 2020 Census Program for Evaluation, Experiments, and Assessments.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperEmployment 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.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperLands of Opportunity: Differences in the Geography of Wealth and Income Mobility in the United States
May 2026
Working Paper Number:
CES-26-30
We provide new county-level estimates of intergenerational mobility, covering multiple economic concepts: total income, labor income, homeownership, housing wealth, and total wealth. This is possible via small-area estimation techniques and linked survey and administrative data covering millions of U.S. children born between 1978 and 1986. We find that relative mobility in wealth concepts shows less spatial clustering and more spatial variation than relative mobility in income concepts. Many cities and their suburbs exhibit lower relative mobility (i.e. higher intergenerational persistence) in wealth concepts than in income concepts. Next, we show that various local characteristics are associated with some concepts of economic mobility but not with others. For example, we estimate a strong negative association between the local severity of the Great Recession and child income, regardless of parent position in the income distribution. However, the negative association between recession severity and wealth only exists among children from poorer families. We provide a public-use data package on census.gov to facilitate further research.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperA Shock by Any Other Name? Reconsidering the Impacts of Local Demand Shocks
February 2026
Working Paper Number:
CES-26-10
Over the last decade, research on labor market adjustment following local demand shocks has expanded to explore a wide variety of measured shocks. However, the worker adjustments observed in response to these shocks are not always consistent across studies. We create a harmonized set of annual commuting-zone-level shocks following the major approaches in the literature to investigate these differences. As one might expect, shocks of different types exhibit different geographic and temporal patterns and are generally weakly correlated with each other. We find they also generate different employment and migration responses, with trade-related shocks showing little response on either margin, while more general Bartik-style shocks are associated with economically meaningful changes in both employment and migration.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperLife-Cycle Effects of Women's Education on their Careers and Children
January 2026
Working Paper Number:
CES-26-09
We study the causal effect of women's education on their wages, non-wage job amenities, and spillovers to children. Using a regression discontinuity at the school entry birthdate cutoff, we find that women born just before the cutoff are more likely to complete some college, and experience multi-dimensional career gains that grow over the life cycle: greater employment and earnings, as well as more professional and higher-status jobs, more socially meaningful work, and better working conditions. Children's early-life health and prenatal inputs improve in tandem with career improvements, consistent with professional advances spurring'not hindering'infant investments. Career gains are concentrated in jobs that require exactly some college, the same schooling margin shifted by the cutoff, which indicates that increased post-secondary education is the primary channel for these effects. Together, the results show that women's college attendance generates large career returns'from both wages and amenities'that strengthen over time and produce meaningful benefits for children.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperPositioned at Extremes: Future Job Placements of Immigrant Students at U.S. Colleges
January 2026
Working Paper Number:
CES-26-08
Immigrant students who attend U.S. colleges are disproportionately employed in either large firms'especially multinationals'or small firms and self-employment. Using linked Census and longitudinal employment data, we trace the jobs taken by college students in 2000 during the 2001-20 period and evaluate four mechanisms shaping sector and firm size placement: geographic clustering, degree specialization, firm capabilities/visas, and ethnic self-employment specialization. Degree fields predict large firm and MNE placement, while ethnic specialization explains small firm sorting. Immigrant students who remain in the U.S. earn more than their native peers, suggesting the segmentation reflects productive sorting rather than blocked opportunity.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperIntegrating Multiple U.S. Census Bureau Data Assets to Create Standardized Profiles of Program Participants
January 2026
Working Paper Number:
CES-26-01
The Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act of 2018 (Evidence Act) directed federal agencies to systematically use data when making policy decisions. In response, the U.S. Census Bureau established the Evidence Group within its Center for Economic Studies (CES). With an interdisciplinary team of economists, sociologists, and statisticians, the Evidence Group can support the broader federal government in their efforts to use existing data to improve program operations without increasing respondent burden. For federal agencies administering social safety net and business assistance programs in particular, the team provides a no-cost evidence-building service that links program records to Census Bureau data assets and creates a series of standardized tables describing participants, their economic outcomes prior to program entry, and the communities where they live. These tables provide partner agencies with the detailed information they need to better understand their participants and potentially make their programs more accountable and effective in reaching their target populations. In this working paper, we describe the standardized tables themselves as well as the data assets available at the Census Bureau to create these tables, the data files produced by the table production process, and the methodology used to merge and harmonize data on participants and subsequently calculate unbiased and accurate estimates. We conclude with a brief discussion of steps taken to ensure confidentiality and data security. This documentation is intended to facilitate proper use and understanding of the standardized tables by partner agencies as well as researchers who are interested in leveraging these tools to explore characteristics of their samples of interest.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperParental Death, Inheritance, and Labor Supply in the United States
December 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-71
We are the first to study how inheritances affect labor supply in the U.S. using large-scale administrative data. Leveraging federal tax and Social Security records, we estimate event studies around parental death to investigate impacts on adult children. Our results indicate that the death of a last parent causes sizable gains in investment income'our main proxy for inheritances'and proportionate reductions in labor supply. On average, annual per-adult investment income at the tax unit level increases by about $300 (45 percent) and annual per-adult wage earnings decrease by $600 (2 percent). These earnings responses are large relative to the implied wealth transfer. Income effects are the dominant channel through which parental death reduces earnings, with children of wealthier parents exhibiting larger earnings reductions. Over six years, inheritances slightly equalize the distribution of investment income.View Full Paper PDF
