Social Science in the Age of Genomics

The cost of genetic information has been dropping at a rate faster than that of Moore's law in microcomputing.  As a result, the science of genetic prediction has improved by leaps and bounds in recent years, and with it has emerged a novel field: sociogenomics.  Sociogenomics seeks to integrate genetic and environmental information to obtain a more robust, complete picture of the causes of human behavior.  This talk will highlight some recent examples of sociogenomic research, touching upon issues such as adolescent peer effects, racial discrimination, assortative mating, and fertility patterns.  The talk will conclude by discussing the social and policy implications of genetic prediction.   

Co-sponsored with the Public Policy and Applied Social Science Seminar Series 

Making Sense of Sensitivity: Extending Omitted Variable Bias

We extend the omitted variable bias framework with a suite of tools for sensitivity analysis in regression models that: (i) does not require assumptions about the treatment assignment nor the nature of confounders; (ii) naturally handles multiple confounders, possibly acting non-linearly; (iii) exploits expert knowledge to bound sensitivity parameters; and, (iv) can be easily computed using only standard regression results. In particular, we introduce two novel sensitivity measures suited for routine reporting. The robustness value describes the minimum strength of association unobserved confounding would need to have, both with the treatment and the outcome, to change the research conclusions. The partial R2 of the treatment with the outcome shows how strongly confounders explaining all the residual outcome variation would have to be associated with the treatment to eliminate the estimated effect. Next, we offer graphical tools for elaborating on problematic confounders, examining the sensitivity of point estimates, t-values, as well as “extreme scenarios”. Finally, we describe problems with a common “benchmarking” practice and introduce a novel procedure to instead formally bound the strength of confounders based on comparison to observed covariates. We apply these methods to a running example that estimates the effect of exposure to violence on attitudes toward peace.

Immigration Restrictions as Active Labor Market Policy: Evidence from the Mexican Bracero Exclusion

An important class of active labor market policy has received little impact evaluation: immigration barriers intended to raise wages and employment by shrinking labor supply. Theories of endogenous technical advance raise the possibility of limited or even perverse impact. We study a natural policy experiment: the exclusion of almost half a million Mexican bracero farm workers from the United States to improve farm labor market conditions. With novel labor market data we measure state-level exposure to exclusion and model the absent changes in technology or crop mix. We fail to reject zero labor market impact, inconsistent with this model.

Co-sponsored with the Public Policy and Applied Social Sciences Seminar 

Abortion utilization in Ohio’s changing legislative context

Changes in Ohio, most notably legislation and policy changes since 2011, likely have impacted women’s access to abortion. Many abortion clinics in Ohio have closed in the past seven years, and several others are currently engaged in litigation and are at risk of closure. Clinic closures influence the distance that women travel when seeking abortion. Coupled with the impact of an Ohio law that mandates a 24-hour waiting period after a woman’s initial abortion consultation, loss of a nearby clinic may put abortion out of reach for many women. Other legislation limits where abortions can and cannot be performed and to what gestational stage abortions are performed. This presentation will provide preliminary findings about population-level shifts in abortion utilization, with special attention to change over time, geographic variation, and groups of women who may be underserved.

Co-sponsored with The Bixby Center

Measuring Reproductive Autonomy: Are the questions different for Adolescents and Young Adults?

Ushma Upadhyay, PhD, MPH will discuss her previous work developing the Reproductive Autonomy Scale, which has been mainly used among adults. Her current work focuses on understanding reproductive empowerment among young people, and the development of a new psychometric measure of Sexual Health and Reproductive Empowerment for Young Adults (The SHREYA Scale).

Co-sponsored with The Bixby Center 

Neural mechanisms lie behind the emergence of dyadic affective reciprocity and transitive closure in human groups

This talk considers a set of findings from socializing cognitive social neuroscience that captures neural and social network data at multiple time points for a group of students who volunteered to organize workers in very difficult social situations on the 50th anniversary of Freedom Summer, in the Summer of Respect project. We identify a neural mechanism for the emergence of affective reciprocity, the building block of social solidarity. We show that we can predict from neural signatures who group members will like five months in the future. We extend this work to a discussion of transitivity, or balance. Time permitting, we discuss how a neural signature of self-enhancement (narcissism) predicts becoming peripheral in small groups, supporting the idea that there is "no I in team".

Co-sponsored by the Sociology Department

The Reversal of the Gender Gap in Education and Family Dynamics in Europe

Although men tended to receive more education than women in the past, the gender gap in education has reversed in recent decades in most Western and many non-Western countries. In this talk, I will discuss the main results of a major research project that aimed to investigate the implications of the reversal of the gender gap in advanced education for family life across European countries. I highlight the results about union formation and assortative mating, discuss our findings about union stability as well as about husbands’ and wives’ relative earnings. Finally, I present some first results from research about implications for fertility behavior. To conclude, I will reflect on implications for conventional theories used in family sociology and demography.

Individual and Neighborhood Vulnerability over the Latin American Immigrant Health Experience

The state of Latino health seemingly defies the way in which the historical disadvantages faced by people of color in the United States get under the skin, and how place matters in reflecting or further reproducing these disparities. Hispanics –especially foreign-born individuals with lower socioeconomic statuses– have more favorable health than other race/ethnic groups –notably, U.S.-born non-Hispanic whites– in a limited but very important set of health outcomes such as cardiovascular function, some cancers and mortality across much of the life course.

In this talk, I discuss the mechanisms/phenomena driving the Hispanic immigrant health advantage, which is likely tied to processes of self-selection as well as to protection and resilience likely operating particularly well in heavily-concentrated Latino neighborhoods and enclaves. Throughout, I present my empirical research aimed at disentangling self-selection processes from the protection that immigrants might draw from fellow neighborhood and/or community members. I further discuss these findings in the context of how immigrants adapt in the longer term: these advantages and resilience eventually erode as immigrants spend more time in the United States –as well as across immigrant generations– through a series of processes by which immigrant and Latino vulnerability become somatized.

I conclude by speculating on the likely future of Latino and immigrant health, discussing how the resilience and vulnerability of Latino immigrants might evolve given recent major shifts U.S. immigration and social policies and practices, and due to important changes in the dynamics of migration between Mesoamerica and the United States.

Immigrants’ Economic Assimilation: Evidence from Matched Administrative Records

Immigrants’ ability to succeed in the labor market and achieve economic parity with natives has significant long-term implications for their well-being and that of their children. In this talk I will present findings from two studies examining immigrants’ economic assimilation using a dataset that links respondents of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) to their individual tax records. The first study examines the lifetime earnings trajectories of immigrants and measures the extent and speed with which they are able to reduce the earnings gap with natives. Findings from this study address key debates regarding ethnoracial and cohort differences in immigrants’ earnings trajectories. First, we find a racially differentiated pattern of earnings assimilation: black and Hispanic immigrants are less able to catch up with native whites’ earnings compared to white and Asian immigrants, but they are almost able to reach earnings parity with natives of their same race and ethnicity. Second, contrary to previous studies we find no evidence that recent immigrant cohorts are experiencing lower earnings growth. The second study examines immigrants’ job instability. We find that foreign-born men, particularly those who are undocumented, were at higher risk of losing their job and becoming involuntarily underemployed during the Great Recession even after controlling for demographic factors and job characteristics.

Small steps with Big Data: Using Machine Learning in Resource Economics

This talk looks at how recent developments in Big Data and Machine Learning are being used in conjunction with randomized controlled trials and large population level program evaluations to design, implement and measure efforts to change consumer behavior. We will explore the role played by very detailed consumption data (often at 15 minute intervals), as well as recent techniques such as deep learning to help us better understand individual and population behaviors, and which insights from behavioral sciences are effective at changing behaviors in areas such as energy conservation and efficiency.

Population Vulnerability and Spatial Analytics

There has been a transition from population studies that were relatively data poor to the present day where digital data is plentiful on many fronts. The “Smart City” is fed by sources of information coming from all directions, where sensors observe things about the movement of vehicles and people, infrastructure conditions, air quality, weather, etc. The challenge is to make use of this digital data, and this is precisely the value added offered by a range of big data spatial analytics. This paper examines aspects of population vulnerability, focusing on particular types of risks and hazards in urban areas.

Prep School for Poor Kids: The Long-Run Impacts of Head Start on Human Capital and Economic Self-Sufficiency 

This paper evaluates the long-run effects of Head Start using large-scale, restricted 2000-2013 Census-ACS data linked to date and place of birth in the SSA’s Numident file. Using the county-level rollout of Head Start between 1965 and 1980 and state age-eligibility cutoffs for school entry, we find that participation in Head Start is associated with increases in adult human capital and economic self-sufficiency, including a 0.29-year increase in schooling, a 2.1-percent increase in high-school completion, an 8.7-percent increase in college enrollment, and a 19-percent increase in college completion. These estimates imply sizable, longterm returns to investing in large-scale preschool programs.

Live Births and Fertility amidst the Zika Virus Epidemic in Brazil

Abstract: In late 2015, the Brazilian Ministry of Health classified the increase in congenital malformations associated with the Zika Virus (ZIKV) a public health emergency. The risk of ZIKV-related congenital syndrome posed an exogenous threat to reproductive outcomes that could result in declining numbers of live births and potentially fertility. Using 2014-2016 monthly microdata on live births from the Brazilian Information System on Live Births, in this talk I examine live births and fertility trends amidst the ZIKV epidemic in Brazil. Findings suggest a decline in live births that is stratified across socioeconomic status and geographic lines, especially nine months after the call for pregnancy postponement. While declines in total fertility rates were small, fertility trends estimated by age and socioeconomic status suggest important differences in how Zika might have impacted Brazil’s fertility structure. Further findings using monthly data by municipality suggest that the epidemic resulted in a significant decline in fertility even when controlling for characteristics of the municipality. The findings highlight the importance of understanding how exposure to the risk of a health threat directed at fetuses has led to declines in fertility.

Please join us to hear our residents interesting research and give feedback for their upcoming PAA presentations. Presenters: Amanda Gonzalez, "Do You Need to Pay for Quality Care? Exploring Associations […]

Understanding China's Low Fertility in a Gender and Development Approach

Without a surge of new born babies after the Chinese government relaxed the 40-year-long strict one-child family planning policy in 2013 and 2015, the focus of debates regarding China’s declining fertility has shifted from policy to economic and social forces. Different from the mainstream demographers in China, we propose a gender and development approach to understand low fertility in post-reform China. During China's transition from the socialist planned economy to market economy, the old danwei system collapsed and the public and private spheres are increasingly separating, resulting in women's intensified work-family conflicts. Emphasizing on women's dual roles regarding material production and social reproduction, we argue that sustainable fertility, gender equality and economic development can either create a virtuous circle or be trapped in a vicious circle.

With a certain degree of gender equality in both the labor market and the private families, adult women can fully exert their talents at work which can both contribute to economic growth, and also empower them at home. This can help them realize their fertility desires. With unsatisfying or uneven gender equality in the two spheres, either some Chinese women can be pushed out of the labor market to have a second child, or young women may choose to focus on personal development, and postpone or forgo marriage/fertility. We also propose a multi-party-participation social mechanism to address the long term low fertility in China, encouraging individual men and women, family, business and government to all share the duty of social reproduction.

Leveraging big data to assess health effects of changes in physical and social environments, and policy and program implementation

In the era of big data there are opportunities to answer policy-relevant health questions in ways that are timely and cost-efficient. This talk will describe coordination of health data resources for health monitoring and to address questions about the health effects of policies in California. Examples of health effect assessments, including those related to gun shows and the Mental Health Services Act (MHSA), will be presented.