Papers Containing Tag(s): 'American Community Survey'
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Viewing papers 1 through 10 of 285
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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 PaperExpectations versus Reality in Business Formation
February 2026
Working Paper Number:
CES-26-11
Using administrative data on 17 million U.S. business applications linked to outcomes, we compare potential entrants' expectations about employer entry and first-year employment with realizations. On average, applicants overestimate employment, mainly because many expect to enter but do not. Among those who expect and achieve entry, employment is typically underestimated. Expected employment predicts entry and realized employment, but conditional on entry realized employment rises less than one-for-one with expectations. Expectation errors are highly heterogeneous and systematically related to application characteristics and local economic conditions, and they predict near-term employment outcomes. A parsimonious model with heterogeneous priors, learning, and pre-entry selection rationalizes these patterns.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 PaperNon-Random Assignment of Individual Identifiers and Selection into Linked Data: Implications for Research
January 2026
Working Paper Number:
CES-26-06
The U.S. Census Bureau's Person Identification Validation System facilitates anonymous linkages between survey and administrative records by assigning Protected Identification Keys (PIKs) to person records. While PIK assignment is generally accurate, some person records are not successfully assigned a PIK, which can lead to sample selection bias in analyses of linked data. Using the American Community Survey (ACS) and the Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement (CPS ASEC) between 2005 and 2022, we corroborate and extend existing findings on the drivers of PIK assignment, showing that the rate of PIK assignment varies widely across socio-demographic subgroups. Using earnings as a test case, we then show that limiting a survey sample of wage earners to person records with PIKs or successful linkages to W-2 wage records tends to overestimate self-reported wage earnings, on average, indicative of linkage-induced selection bias. In a validation exercise, we demonstrate that reweighting methods, such as inverse probability weighting or entropy balancing, can mitigate this bias.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperCreating 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.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
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Working PaperThe 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.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperOptimal Stratified Sampling for Probability-Based Online Panels
September 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-69
Online probability-based panels have emerged as a cost-efficient means of conducting surveys in the 21st century. While there have been various recent advancements in sampling techniques for online panels, several critical aspects of sampling theory for online panels are lacking. Much of current sampling theory from the middle of the 20th century, when response rates were high, and online panels did not exist. This paper presents a mathematical model of stratified sampling for online panels that takes into account historical response rates and survey costs. Through some simplifying assumptions, the model shows that the optimal sample allocation for online panels can largely resemble the solution for a cross-sectional survey. To apply the model, I use the Census Household Panel to show how this method could improve the average precision of key estimates. Holding fielding costs constant, the new sample rates improve the average precision of estimates between 1.47 and 17.25 percent, depending on the importance weight given to an overall population mean compared to mean estimates for racial and ethnic subgroups.View Full Paper PDF
