Mark Duggan, Stanford University

CCPR Seminar Room 4240 Public Affairs Building, Los Angeles, CA, United States

"To Work for Yourself, for Others, or Not at All? How Disability Benefits Affect The Employment Decisions of Older Veterans "

ABSTRACT
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Disability Compensation (DC) program provides disability benefits to nearly one in five military veterans in the US and its annual expenditures exceed $60 billion. We examine how the receipt of DC benefits affects the employment decisions of older veterans. We make use of variation in program eligibility resulting from a 2001 policy change that increased access to the program for Vietnam veterans who served with “boots on the ground” in the Vietnam theater but not for other veterans of that same era. We find that the policy-induced increase in program enrollment decreased labor force participation and induced a substantially larger switch from wage employment to self-employment. This latter finding suggests that an exogenous increase in income spurred many older veterans to start their own businesses. Additionally, we estimate that one in four veterans who entered the DC program due to this policy change left the labor force, estimates in the same range as those from recent studies of the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) program.

Jere R. Behrman, University of Pennsylvania

CCPR Seminar Room 4240 Public Affairs Building, Los Angeles, CA, United States

"Early-Life Undernourishment in Developing Countries: Prevalence, Impacts over the Life Cycle and Determinants"

ABSTRACT

Early-life undernourishment is a widespread phenomenon in many developing countries, with an estimated 170 million children under 5 years of age stunted, the standard indicator of chronic malnutrition. This presentation summarizes an ongoing work program on this topic, with reference to the prevalence, impacts and determinants of such undernutrition.

Marcella Alsan, Stanford University

CCPR Seminar Room 4240 Public Affairs Building, Los Angeles, CA, United States

"Tuskegee and the Health of Black Men"

ABSTRACT
For forty years, the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male passively monitored hundreds of adult black males with syphilis despite the availability of effective treatment. The study's methods have become synonymous with exploitation and mistreatment by the medical community. We find that the historical disclosure of the study in 1972 is correlated with increases in medical mistrust and mortality and decreases in both outpatient and inpatient physician interactions for older black men. Our estimates imply life expectancy at age 45 for black men fell by up to 1.4 years in response to the disclosure, accounting for approximately 35% of the 1980 life expectancy gap between black and white men.

Shahryar Minhas, Duke University

CCPR Seminar Room 4240 Public Affairs Building, Los Angeles, CA, United States

The Center for Social Statistics Presents: Predicting the Evolution of Intrastate Conflict: Evidence from Nigeria url: http://css.stat.ucla.edu/event/shahryar-minhas/ The endogenous nature of civil conflict has limited scholars' abilities to draw clear inferences about the drivers of conflict evolution. We argue that three primary features characterize the complexity of intrastate conflict: (1) the interdependent relationships of conflict between […]

Research Ethics: The Use of Big Data

CCPR Seminar Room 4240 Public Affairs Building, Los Angeles, CA, United States

The use of big data has become increasingly common in social and health research, raising a series of new and difficult questions about research ethics.  In this informal workshop, a panel of investigators using big data for their research will describe issues that they have faced and other potential problems.  As background to this workshop, […]

Randall Akee, UCLA

CCPR Seminar Room 4240 Public Affairs Building, Los Angeles, CA, United States

"Reservation Employer Establishments: Data from the U.S. Census Longitudinal Business Data Set"

Abstract: The presence of employers and jobs on American Indian reservations has been difficult to analyze due to limited data. We are the first to geocode confidential data on employer establishments from the U.S. Census Longitudinal Business Database (LBD) to identify location on or off American Indian reservations. We identify the per-capita establishment count and jobs in reservation-based employer establishments for most federally recognized reservations. Comparisons to nearby non-reservation areas in the lower 48 states across 18 industries, reveal that reservations have a similar sectoral distribution of employer establishments but have significantly fewer of them in nearly all sectors, especially when the area population is below 15,000 (as it is on the vast majority of reservations and for the majority of the reservation population). By contrast, total jobs provided by reservation establishments are, on average, at par with or somewhat higher than in nearby county areas but are concentrated among casino-related and government employers. An implication is that average employment per establishment are higher in these sectors on reservations, including those with populations below 15,000, while the rest of the economy is sparser in reservations (in firm count and jobs per capita) Geographic and demographic factors such as population density and per capita income statistically account for some but not all of these differences.

2017-2018 CCPR Welcome and Introductions

CCPR Seminar Room 4240 Public Affairs Building, Los Angeles, CA, United States

Please come join us to learn all about the California Center for Population Research!

Roland Rau, University of Rostock

CCPR Seminar Room 4240 Public Affairs Building, Los Angeles, CA, United States

"The challenges of estimating mortality in small areas -- using German counties as a case study"

Abstract: We develop and analyze Bayesian models that produce good estimates of complete mortality schedules for small areas, even when the expected number of deaths is very small. The models also provide estimates of uncertainty about local mortality schedules. The TOPALS relational model is the primary building block, used to model age-specific mortality rates within each small area. TOPALS models produce estimates for single-year ages from a small number of local parameters. We experiment with Bayesian models for smoothing and ‘borrowing’ mortality information across space, using two alternative specifications. First we test a Bayesian model with conditional autoregressive (CAR) priors for TOPALS parameters. CAR priors assign higher probability to parameters that are similar across adjacent areas, thus emphasizing spatial smoothness in estimated rates. Second, we test a hierarchical Bayesian model, which assigns higher probability to parameters that are similar for locations that are close in terms of political geography.

David Chae, Auburn University

CCPR Seminar Room 4240 Public Affairs Building, Los Angeles, CA, United States

"Getting Under the Skin: Socio-Psychobiological Pathways and Racial Disparities in Health"

Abstract: Racism is physically embodied through social, behavioral, and psychobiological mechanisms. In this talk, David H. Chae, will discuss the utility of a social-ecological and developmental lens to examine how racism is biologically embedded. He will discuss his research on multiple levels of racism and the channels through which they compromise health throughout the lifecourse.

Mark Kaplan, UCLA

CCPR Seminar Room 4240 Public Affairs Building, Los Angeles, CA, United States

"The Impact of Socioenvironmental Stressors on Alcohol-Linked Suicides: A Nationwide Postmortem Study"

Abstract: Not only is suicide a major public health problem, but also, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 8,179 deaths and 273,206 years of potential life lost resulted from alcohol attributable suicides in 2006-10 (the latest years available). Since 2011, Professor Kaplan and his colleagues have worked with the National Violent Death Reporting System Restricted Access Database on two projects funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, focusing on acute alcohol use immediately prior to suicide. This presentation will show that nearly a third of suicide decedents nationwide were intoxicated at the time of death. Furthermore, Prof. Kaplan will describe the effects of the 2008-09 economic contraction and other adverse socioenvironmental conditions on rates of suicide involving acute alcohol intoxication.

Rodrigo Soares, Columbia University

CCPR Seminar Room 4240 Public Affairs Building, Los Angeles, CA, United States

"Does Universalization of Health Work? Evidence from Health Systems Restructuring and Maternal and Child Health in Brazil"

Abstract: We investigate restructuring of the health system in Brazil motivated to operationalize universal health coverage. Using administrative data from multiple sources and an event study approach that exploits the staggered rollout of programmatic changes across municipalities, we find large reductions in maternal, foetal, neonatal and postneonatal mortality, and fertility. We document increased prenatal care visits, hospital births and other maternal and child hospitalization, which suggest that the survival gains were supply-driven. We find no improvement in the quality of births, which may be explained by endogenous shifts in the composition of births towards higher-risk births.

Victoria Baranov, University of Melbourne

CCPR Seminar Room 4240 Public Affairs Building, Los Angeles, CA, United States

"Mental health and women's choices. Experimental evidence from a Randomized Control Trial"

Abstract: We evaluate the long-term impact of treating maternal depression on women's financial empowerment and parenting decisions by exploiting experimental variation induced by a cluster-randomized control trial which provided psychotherapy to perinatally depressed mothers in rural Pakistan. The trial, which is the largest psychotherapy trial in the world, was highly successful at reducing depression rates of mothers. We relocate mothers 6 years after the intervention concluded to evaluate the effects of the intervention on women's financial empowerment, parental investments, fertility, as well as children development. We find that treating maternal depression increased women's empowerment, particularly control over spending, both in the short-run and in the long-run. Consistent with the reports of increased control over spending, we find persistent effects of the intervention on both time- and monetary-intensive parental investment. We do not find any detectable effect on children development. The long-run treatment effects are concentrated among girls.

Jennifer Skeem, UC Berkeley

CCPR Seminar Room 4240 Public Affairs Building, Los Angeles, CA, United States

“What works” for justice-involved people with mental illness

Abstract: Each year, over 2 million people with serious mental illness are booked into U.S. jails. These people typically stay longer in jail than those without mental illness—and, upon release, are more likely to be reincarcerated. Today, over 300 counties have resolved to “step up” their efforts to reduce the number of people with mental illness in jail. In this presentation, I highlight research on “what works” to reduce re-offending among justice-involved people with mental illness. Programs must avoid the traditional assumption that mental illness is the direct cause of the problem, and linkage with psychiatric services is the solution. Evidence-based, cost-effective programs look beyond psychiatric explanations to address robust risk factors that are shared by people with- and without mental illness.

Jessica Ho, USC

CCPR Seminar Room 4240 Public Affairs Building, Los Angeles, CA, United States

"Contemporary Trends in American Mortality: International Comparisons and Emerging Challenges"

Abstract: The decades surrounding the turn of the 21st century have been a challenging period for American mortality. The United States is currently facing a large-scale opioid epidemic, and life expectancy barely increased between 2010 and 2015. This talk will cover various dimensions of contemporary trends in American mortality including the contribution of drug overdose to educational gradients in life expectancy, an analysis of the contemporary drug overdose epidemic in international perspective, and how the U.S.’s recent life expectancy stagnation has impacted its standing in international life expectancy rankings relative to other high-income countries.

Nathaniel Osgood, University of Saskatchewan, “Dynamic modeling for health in the age of big data”

CCPR Seminar Room 4240 Public Affairs Building, Los Angeles, CA, United States

Abstract: Traditional approaches to public health concerns have conferred great advances in the duration and quality of life. Public health interventions – from improved sanitation efforts, to vaccination campaigns, to contact tracing and environmental regulations – have helped reduce common risks to health throughout many areas of the world. Unfortunately, while traditional methods from the […]

Nathaniel Osgood, University of Saskatchewan, “Using Smartphones and Wearables for Public Health Insight: A Hands-On Introduction”

CHS 61-269

Abstract: Acquisition of evidence-based understanding of human health behavior and exposure to environments forms a central focus of health research, and a critical prerequisite for effective health policy. The use of mobile devices to study health behavior via cross-linked sensor data and on-device self-reporting and crowdsourcing offer compelling advantages to complement traditional techniques. Data collected […]

Doug Massey, Princeton University

CCPR Seminar Room 4240 Public Affairs Building, Los Angeles, CA, United States

"Train Wreck: US Immigration and Border Policy 1965-2010."

Abstract: Despite the massive increase in border enforcement after 1986, undocumented population growth did not decrease, but rose. In this talk I undertake a systematic analysis of border enforcement as a policy for immigration control. Empirical results explain not only why it failed, but how and why it backfired. In the end, the militarization of the border did not increase the probability of apprehension at the border or reduce the likelihood of unauthorized entry; but it did dramatically change the geography of border crossing, increase the costs of undocumented migration, and elevate the physical risks of border crossing. Ironically, these trends had no effect on the likelihood of undocumented departure for the United States, but instead reduced the probability undocumented returns back to Mexico, thereby increasing the net volume of undocumented migration and accelerating undocumented population growth.
*Co-Sponsored with the Center for the Study of International Migration and the Social Stratification, Inequality, and Mobility working group. 

Diversion in the Criminal Justice System: Regression Discontinuity Evidence on Court Deferrals: Kevin Schnepel, University of Sydney, School of Economics

CCPR Seminar Room 4240 Public Affairs Building, Los Angeles, CA, United States

The historically unprecedented size of the U.S. criminal justice system has necessitated the development of diversion programs to reduce caseloads as a cost containment strategy. Court deferrals, which allow felony defendants to avoid formal convictions through probation, are one example. Using two discontinuities in deferral rates in Harris County, Texas, separated by 13 years, we find consistent evidence that diversion reduces reoffending and unemployment among first-time felony defendants. Similar benefits are not observed for repeat offenders suggesting felony record stigma as a key mechanism. Young, African American men drive the total effect, a pattern consistent with over-targeting by law enforcement.

Chenoa Flippen, University of Pennsylvania

Bunche 10383 Los Angeles, CA

"The Uphill Climb: A Transnational Perspective on Wealth Accumulation among Latino Immigrants in Durham, NC"

Abstract: Wealth accumulation is a key dimension of ethno-racial stratification, and, among immigrants, an important indicator of incorporation. Dramatically low assets among immigrant Latinos is thus a pressing concern, necessitating a better understanding of the social forces that shape wealth assimilation. Drawing on a survey of Latino immigrants in Durham, NC, I argue for the importance of a transnational perspective on wealth for immigrant populations. Nationally representative surveys designed to assess inequality among the general population generally lack information on wealth held abroad, which accounts for the lion’s share of assets held by immigrants in our sample. Likewise, these data sources rarely have information on factors salient to immigrants, particularly legal status and informal employment. Finally, I show that the socio-demographic characteristics central to life-cycle wealth models operate in different ways for U.S. and foreign assets, and for men and women. For instance, while household earnings and duration of Durham residence are associated with greater U.S. assets among Durham’s Latino migrants, they fail to predict wealth held abroad. Likewise, low educational attainment and informal employment are associated with lower U.S., but not foreign, wealth. Instead, the key predictors of wealth abroad relate to family structure. I further document structural barriers to immigrant Latino wealth accumulation, such as employment marginality and lack of access to mainstream financial institutions.
*Co-Sponsored with the Center for the Study of International Migration