Browsing by Author "Gibson-Davis, Christina M"
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Item Open Access A New Approach to Housing Choice Voucher Implementation in Durham, North Carolina(2020-04-08)The Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) program is the largest federal rental housing program in the United States, providing housing subsidies for over 2.2 million low-income households at an annual cost of approximately $18.4 billion. However, even with substantial funding and bipartisan support, the HCV program does not do an optimal job at meeting its potential to give low-income households the opportunity to move into high-opportunity neighborhoods. While there is some existing evidence around creative approaches to improve HCV implementation in larger cities across the country, there is little research around implementation in midsized, southern cities like Durham, North Carolina. The following case study evaluates strategies implemented by housing authorities in Durham, North Carolina; Charlotte, North Carolina; and Richmond, Virginia. It also looks at two HCV implementation strategies that are growing in popularity across the country: source-of- income laws and Small Area Fair Market Rent (SAFMR). Altogether, the case study evaluation highlights demand-side and supply-side innovations and evaluates them against a set of criteria to determine whether the Durham Housing Authority (DHA) should consider implementation. This analysis gives way to a set of near-term and long-term recommendations. In the near-term, I recommend that the DHA... • Apply for Moving to Work (MTW) designation. This has been critical in enabling Charlotte’s housing authority, INLIVIAN, to test out new approaches to HCV implementation, many of which have been successful. In Durham, it is likely to have a similar impact. • Extend the time frame to find rental units. DHA should extend the time to find a unit to at least 120 days, a time frame that would make it more feasible for HCV recipients to find adequate units. This time frame is comparable to what is in practice in both Charlotte and Richmond. • Seek opportunities for local partnerships. Funding will be a significant barrier to implementing creative approaches to HCV administration. As such, DHA should seek out nonprofit partners who can support landlord recruitment efforts, serve as a conduit between landlords and tenants, and provide clear and consistent communication to both landlords and tenants. • Streamline landlord processes. DHA should seek out ways in which it can ease bureaucratic burdens for landlords and develop actionable solutions to implement these changes. This will reduce disincentives in the HCV program for landlord participation and will help increase the supply of landlords willing to rent to HCV recipients. In the long-term, I recommend that the DHA... • Adopt Small Area Fair Market Rents (SAFMRs). SAFMRs are growing in popularity across the country. As Durham continues to grow and housing prices continue to rise, SAFMRs have the potential to provide all voucher families with access to high- opportunity, low-poverty neighborhoods. In order to be intentional about program roll- out, DHA should consult with other PHAs which have rolled out SAFMRs to understand lessons learned from program implementation.Item Open Access Are Refugees and Immigrants Different? Gauging the Correlation Between Refugee Status and Economic and Educational Success(2015-12-15) Westfall, MatthewLittle previous research has analyzed the long-term economic and educational trajectories of refugee and immigrant arrivals in the U.S. Studies have found that refugees outperform immigrants in long-term earnings and economic outcomes because their inability to return to their countries of origin forces them to invest in country-specific human capital. This study revisits this research with a new methodology that increases the sensitivity of identifying refugees. The analysis uses American Community Survey data taken from 2001-2013 and focuses on immigrants and refugees who arrived in the U.S. from 1989-2000. Refugee status was correlated with 11-13% lower earnings relative to immigrants and lower levels of occupational prestige for males but higher earnings and occupational prestige for females. Refugees who arrive as children seem to outperform immigrant children. Disadvantages stemming from sending-country conditions may account for adult refugee under-performance relative to immigrants while refugee services may assist refugee children in outperforming comparablesituated immigrants.Item Open Access Breastfeeding and the child cognitive outcomes: a propensity score matching approach.(Matern Child Health J, 2011-11) Jiang, Miao; Foster, E Michael; Gibson-Davis, Christina MTo estimate the effect of breastfeeding initiation and duration on child development outcomes. 3,271 children and their mothers participating in the Child Development Supplement of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics provide data for these analyses. Main outcomes include Woodcock Johnson Psycho-Educational Battery-Revised (WJ-R) test score (letter word, passage comprehension, applied problem, and broad reading), and Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised (WISC-R) test score at the 2002 survey. Controlled variables include family, maternal, and child characteristics, many of which can be traced back to the year the child was born. The analytic technique is propensity score matching with multiple imputations. After using propensity scores to adjust for confounding factors, breastfeeding initiation showed statistically significant effects but the practical scale remains small. Breastfeeding duration showed a non-linear effect on those outcomes and most of the effects are not significant. The effects of breastfeeding on child's cognitive outcomes are modest in practical terms. The non-linear effects suggest that selection into breastfeeding may account for the increased score of children who are breastfed.Item Open Access Effects of statewide job losses on adolescent suicide-related behaviors.(Am J Public Health, 2014-10) Gassman-Pines, Anna; Ananat, Elizabeth Oltmans; Gibson-Davis, Christina MOBJECTIVES: We investigated the impact of statewide job loss on adolescent suicide-related behaviors. METHODS: We used 1997 to 2009 data from the Youth Risk Behavior Survey and the Bureau of Labor Statistics to estimate the effects of statewide job loss on adolescents' suicidal ideation, suicide attempts, and suicide plans. Probit regression models controlled for demographic characteristics, state of residence, and year; samples were divided according to gender and race/ethnicity. RESULTS: Statewide job losses during the year preceding the survey increased girls' probability of suicidal ideation and suicide plans and non-Hispanic Black adolescents' probability of suicidal ideation, suicide plans, and suicide attempts. Job losses among 1% of a state's working-age population increased the probability of girls and Blacks reporting suicide-related behaviors by 2 to 3 percentage points. Job losses did not affect the suicide-related behaviors of boys, non-Hispanic Whites, or Hispanics. The results were robust to the inclusion of other state economic characteristics. CONCLUSIONS: As are adults, adolescents are affected by economic downturns. Our findings show that statewide job loss increases adolescent girls' and non-Hispanic Blacks' suicide-related behaviors.Item Open Access Examining Family Separation Through Narratives of Family, Migration, and Separation Among Deported Mexican-U.S. Family Members(2019-12-06) Kopp, TylerFamily separation entered the U.S. political mainstream in the spring of 2018 when the Trump administration began separating thousands of migrant families at the U.S.-Mexico border. While this policy is the first of its kind to deliberately use family separation as immigration enforcement in contemporary U.S. history, the U.S. has a much more extensive history of separating families, especially Mexican-U.S. families, through deportation. This research examines how deportation-induced family separation of Mexican-U.S. family members impacts familial relationships, as told through the narratives of deported family members in Mexico. These narratives suggest that family can be a broad and dynamic community that often includes people outside one’s biological or adopted family network. They also present a conception of family through the lens of mutually supportive relationships and shared experiences with family members. The narratives suggest that the physical aspects of family separation inhibit one’s ability to fully serve one’s familial role of support and to share experiences with one’s family members. For these reasons, family separation often stagnates or deteriorates familial relationships. Transnational and national policy reform can end family separation in the U.S. and Mexico, reunite families that have been separated, and allow the U.S. to come to terms with its past of family separation and address the victims of separation.Item Open Access Farmworker Perceptions of Work Safety, Work Hours, and Living Conditions(2021-02-10) Doherty, CarolineFarmworkers are integral to the functioning of society in the US. Farmworkers are invisible heroes, and they deserve their voices to be heard, their experiences to be shared, and their perspectives to be intentionally incorporated into policymaking. Migrant farmworkers in North Carolina are guaranteed rights under the Occupational Safety and Health Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act, and the NC Migrant Housing Act. These acts define farmworker work safety conditions, work hours and compensation, and living conditions. This paper investigates farmworker perspectives of these three acts through analyzation of 16 semi-structured interviews done with farmworkers in eastern North Carolina. NVivo was used to analyze the interviews and identify major themes that inform farmworkers’ perspectives of the manifestation of the three acts in their workplace. Lack of knowledge and training of rights was found to be one of the main factors contributing to farmworkers’ perspectives. Fear of grower retaliation was discovered to be a significant deterrent against reporting violations. The lack of an effective, reliable, and accessible violation reporting mechanism that protects the complainant was also found to influence farmworkers’ exertion of their rights. These results imply that farmworkers do not have adequate levels of awareness or understanding of their rights so there is a lack of demand for improved conditions. Increased farmworker training of their rights combined with an effective, reliable, and accessible violation reporting mechanism may help ensure that farmworkers will be able to exercise their rights without fear.Item Open Access ¿Feminicidio? Media Framing of Ciudad Juárez Feminicidios(2020-11-30) Diaz, AlysonAlthough the brutal murders of the women in Ciudad Juárez have captured the attention of the international media and human rights organizations, little research has been conducted on the local media’s reporting about the gender-based murders known as feminicidios. This thesis will investigate whether local media sources recognize feminicidio as a phenomenon in Ciudad Juárez and how feminicidios were portrayed between the years of 2001 and 2005. First, the articles that view the murders of women in Ciudad Juárez as feminicidios were identified, then the articles were categorized by the dominant frame. The difference between the number of articles that recognize and do not recognize feminicidio in this sample reflects the debate present within local media about the incidence of feminicidios in the city. Likewise, the dominant frames in this dataset, the government impunity frame and narrative of crime frame, demonstrate that from inside Ciudad Juárez, feminicidio has been seen as an issue of the government’s incompetence and contextualized as a social problem in the city.Item Open Access Life and Liberty: Economic, Political and Ethical Issues Arising from 21st Century Quarantines for Influenza(2017-04-24) Serat, SimoneQuarantine is a word that elicits fear among many. However, it is also a long-utilized and important policy tool for controlling the spread of infectious diseases. This thesis considers the role of quarantine for influenza outbreaks during the twenty-first century. I thematically review scientific literature on the ethical, social and political, and economic issues that have arisen from or have the potential to arise from quarantines for influenza. After identifying these issues, I make policy recommendations targeted at mitigating them. I then compare these with the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Influenza Preparedness and Response Guidance to determine where our recommendations overlap and diverge. I propose a set of five additional recommendations to the WHO Guidance for governments considering implementing quarantines for influenza: develop of a body of experts and stakeholders for policymaking, use least-restrictive policy measures first, establish a duty to treat and its limits, determine who will be prioritized during cases of scarcity, and establish support and compensation mechanisms for quarantined individuals. My research contributes to the discourse around quarantine for influenza by identifying a broad scope of consequences of quarantine for influenza. It also contributes to the existing literature on quarantine design for influenza by proposing policies targeted at addressing the issues I identify. While this research is a start, there is still a great need for further research to prepare for and learn from influenza outbreaks. My recommendations fit well alongside existing influenza pandemic preparedness plans such as the WHO’s Pandemic Influenza Preparedness and Response Guidance during an influenza outbreak to develop robust disease control policy for influenza outbreaks.Item Open Access Military Service and Civilian Labor Market Outcomes: Comparing Employment of Post-9/11 Veterans and Nonveterans(2016-01-05) Ordway, MatthewVeterans struggle to enter the civilian labor market following military service. Since the September 11 terrorist attacks, over 3.2 million Americans have served in the military. Upon returning home, these veterans are twenty percent more likely to be unemployed than nonveterans (7.2% vs 6%, respectively). This study investigates the association between military service and employment outcomes (employment status and weekly earnings) for post-9/11 veterans, a heretofore understudied group. Data was obtained from the Current Population Survey (CPS) Veteran Supplement. Linear probability models and OLS regressions were utilized to compare employment outcomes between veterans and nonveterans of similar age, education and race/ethnicity (“veteran effect”). Findings suggest that the veteran effect on employment is negative while the veteran effect on earnings, given employment, is positive. This is likely because of selection bias; the most productive veterans find employment and therefore command higher wages. Veteran effects differ by race and ethnicity, length of military service and time since service. Policymakers should tailor transition programs to the most vulnerable veterans, such as long-term military personnel.Item Open Access Three Essays on Population Studies(2019) Zang, XiaoluThis dissertation comprises three essays on population studies. I begin with a paper that is the first to investigate the short- and long-term effects of a recent change in Chinese divorce laws on married women’s and men’s well-being. The 2011 Chinese divorce reform transfers ownership of the family home to the registered buyer, most often the husband, in the event of a divorce. Prior to this legal change, the family home was considered joint property. Adopting a quasi-experimental study design and using data from the China Family Panel Studies, I found that this legal change led to gendered consequences. For a typical Chinese household where only the husband’s name is on the deed of the family home, it decreased women’s well-being while men’s well-being did not change.
In the second study, I have examined the effect of the husband’s retirement on the wife’s health in China. The large increase in the probability of retirement at the legal retirement age for Chinese workers in the formal sectors enables me to exploit this discontinuity as a source of exogenous variation in retirement. Using data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Survey, I implement a fuzzy regression discontinuity design to compare the health outcomes of wives whose husbands just retired with those of wives whose husbands are about to retire. Results show that the husband’s retirement significantly improves the wife’s health.
In the third study coauthored with Scott M. Lynch, we develop an extension of the Bayesian approach to making multistate life tables (MSLTs) introduced in Lynch and Brown (2005). Among all extant methods, the Bayesian approach developed by Lynch and Brown (2005) offers several key advantages over other approaches, including the ability to incorporate prior information, direct and probabilistic interpretations of estimates, and the flexibility to incorporate model changes to handle idiosyncratic data. However, this approach has been limited to only two states, such as “healthy” vs. “unhealthy”, and cannot handle partially absorbing states. The main contribution of our method is to allow high dimensional state spaces with partially absorbing states.