Browsing by Author "Darity, William A, Jr"

While there is a common understanding that artists find it hard to make a living through their artistic activities, research is silent on how artists view and understand their lived experiences. “Creative wealth”, which is accumulated through artistic activities, is part of an untapped, unmeasured, and invisible economy (Kabanda, 2018). This qualitative, exploratory study examines the complexities of creative wealth through the lens of fifteen African and Afro-descendant performance, visual, literary, digital, and applied artists. Using a thematic analysis of semi-structured interview data, I present two conceptual themes: artistic challenges and artistic opportunities. The challenges focus on (1a) the trade-offs involved in the production and distribution of one’s art, and (1b) the lack resources to produce art, lack ownership of art, and lack of avenues to display or investigate art. The opportunities focus on (2a) how artistic activity can foster innovation and (2b) how artistic activity can be used as an individual-level and a communal-level tool of expression or "exchange of experience". The findings of this study indicate that artists perceive their artistic endeavors to be simultaneously impeded and elevated by conditions of scarcity, and they understand that these conditions are unique to their African ancestral identity. Drawing on insights and recommendations from the artists themselves, this research sheds light on how creative wealth can improve lives – both monetarily and non-monetarily.

This dissertation consists of three essays on the topic of education policy. In the first essay, I evaluate the impacts of a teacher quality equity law that was enacted in California in the fall of 2006 prohibiting superintendents from transferring a teacher into a school in the bottom three performance deciles of the state's academic performance index if the principal refuses the transfer. The primary mechanism through which the policy should affect student outcomes is through the mix of the quality of teachers in the school. Using publicly available statewide administrative education data, and two quasi-experimental methodologies, I assess whether the policy had an effect on the district-wide distribution of teachers with varying levels of experience, education and licensure and on student academic performance. I extend the analysis by examining whether the policy has differential effects on subgroups of schools classified as having high-poverty or high-minority student populations. I find that, as a result of the teacher quality equity law, low-performing schools experienced a relative increase in fully-credentialed teachers and more highly educated teachers, but that did not necessarily translate to an increase in academic performance. I also find evidence that the dimension along which the policy was most effective was in improving teacher pre-service qualifications in schools with high minority student populations.

In the second essay, I estimate racial, ethnic, gender and socioeconomic differences in teacher reports of student absenteeism and tardiness while controlling for administrative records of actual absences. Subjective perceptions that teachers form about students' classroom behaviors matter for student academic outcomes. Given this potential impact, it is important to identify any biases in these perceptions that would disadvantage subgroups of students. I use longitudinal data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-99 in conjunction with longitudinal, student-level data from the North Carolina Education Data Research Center to employ a variation of a two sample instrumental variables approach in which I instrument for actual eighth grade absences with simulated measures of eight grade absences. I find consistent evidence that teacher reports of the attendance of poor students are negatively biased and that math teacher reports of male attendance are positively biased. There is mixed evidence with regard to student race and ethnicity.

The third essay is a co-authored work in which we employ a quasi-experimental estimation strategy to examine the effects of state-level job losses on fourth- and eighth-grade test scores, using federal Mass Layoff Statistics and 1996-2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress data. Results indicate that job losses decrease scores. Effects are larger for eighth than fourth graders and for math than reading assessments, and are robust to specification checks. Job losses to 1 percent of a state's working-age population lead to a .076 standard deviation decrease in the state's eighth-grade math scores. This result is an order of magnitude larger than those found in previous studies that have compared students whose parents lose employment to otherwise similar students, suggesting that downturns affect all students, not just students who experience parental job loss. Our findings have important implications for accountability schemes: we calculate that a state experiencing one-year job losses to 2 percent of its workers (a magnitude observed in seven states) likely sees a 16 percent increase in the share of its schools failing to make Adequate Yearly Progress under No Child Left Behind.

Protecting public health is the most legitimate use of zoning, and yet there is minimal progress in applying it to the obesity problem. Zoning could potentially be used to address both unhealthy and healthy food retailers, but lack of evidence regarding the impact of zoning and public opinion on zoning changes are barriers to implementing zoning restrictions on fast food on a larger scale. My dissertation addresses these gaps in our understanding of health zoning as a policy option for altering built, food environments.

Chapter 1 examines the relationship between food swamps and obesity and whether spatial mapping might be useful in identifying priority geographic areas for zoning interventions. I employ an instrumental variables (IV) strategy to correct for the endogeneity problems associated with food environments, namely that individuals may self-select into certain neighborhoods and may consider food availability in their decision process. I utilize highway exits as a source of exogenous variation .Using secondary data from the USDA Food Environment Atlas, ordinary least squares (OLS) and IV regression models were employed to analyze cross-sectional associations between local food environments and the prevalence of obesity. I find even after controlling for food desert effects, food swamps have a positive, statistically significant effect on adult obesity rates.

Chapter 2 applies theories of message framing and prospect theory to the emerging discussion around health zoning policies targeting food environments and to explore public opinion toward a list of potential zoning restrictions on fast-food restaurants (beyond moratoriums on new establishments). In order to explore causality, I employ an online survey experiment manipulating exposure to vignettes with different message frames about health zoning restrictions with two national samples of adult Americans age 18 and over (N1=2,768 and N2=3,236). The second sample oversamples Black Americans (N=1,000) and individuals with high school as their highest level of education. Respondents were randomly assigned to one of six conditions where they were primed with different message frames about the benefits of zoning restrictions on fast food retailers. Participants were then asked to indicate their support for six zoning policies on a Likert scale. Subjects also answered questions about their food store access, eating behaviors, health status and perceptions of food stores by type.

I find that a message frame about Nutrition and increasing Equity in the food system was particularly effective at increasing support for health zoning policies targeting fast food outlets across policy categories (Conditional, Youth-related, Performance and Incentive) and across racial groups. This finding is consistent with an influential environmental justice scholar’s description of “injustice frames” as effective in mobilizing supporters around environmental issues (Taylor 2000). I extend this rationale to food environment obesity prevention efforts and identify Nutrition combined with Equity frames as an arguably universal campaign strategy for bolstering public support of zoning restrictions on fast food retailers.

Bridging my findings from both Chapters 1 and 2, using food swamps as a spatial metaphor may work to identify priority areas for policy intervention, but only if there is an equitable distribution of resources and mobilization efforts to improve consumer food environments. If the structural forces which ration access to land-use planning persist (arguably including the media as gatekeepers to information and producers of message frames) disparities in obesity are likely to widen.

The goal of this study is to understand how residents may benefit from living in a mixed income, HOPE VI development in the South. This analysis focuses on a former housing project and its immediate neighborhood in the aftermath of HOPE VI revitalization. I conducted a case study by utilizing original data collected from in-depth, semi-structured interviews and unstructured interviews, along with administrative records, evaluation data, media accounts, observation, and casual encounters. A unique contribution of this study of a HOPE VI development is that it also addresses the surrounding neighborhood. Furthermore, this case study offers a unique lens for examining contemporary black gentrification in a publicly constructed space.

A major finding of this study is that complex intra-racial social dynamics among African American community members may stem from HOPE VI intervention. Specifically, there may be limited positive interaction among residents in the development, and between them and residents of the proximate exterior neighborhood. Further, the nature of constrained interaction manufactures divisive processes for claiming space and community identity that may potentially have negative consequences for renters.

These consequences stem from a reproduction of space and community, which shapes social control, policing, and exclusion contests, among other tensions. Overall, this study brings to bear some unimagined consequences of HOPE VI that potentially neutralize anticipated benefits of mixed income living for the poor, based on real and perceived alterations of class, mobility, and shared identity in and around the development site.

This dissertation consists of three papers, which together examine whether policies meant to address inequality, succeed in mitigating the impact of traditional institutions such as caste and enable ethnic minorities to claim their rights. Using experimental and quasi-experimental methods with data from a variety of primary and secondary sources, this dissertation analyzes whether policies meant to empower vulnerable groups in India have succeeded in doing so. The findings suggest that while legislations in the form of mandated political representation or freedom of information laws are necessary in terms of increasing the accountability of government towards citizens, they may not be sufficient in ensuring adequate and uniform delivery of public services, especially to citizens belonging to marginalized groups. Further, empowering citizens – especially those belonging to groups that have faced historic discrimination – to actively participate in civic and political life may require more active and intensive policy and programmatic interventions.