Where you live
Winning Pays: High School Football Championships and Property Values
Andrew Friedson & Alexander Bogin
Journal of Housing Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
A large literature explores the effect of schooling characteristics on property values, but touches little on non-academic attributes of schools. This study demonstrates the capitalization of high school football championships into school district property values using a model that controls for a series of fixed effects. Winning a state football championship increases property values by 1.65% in the year following the championship, exerting its strongest effect immediately after the championship is won. The effect is biggest in the AA division, the largest and most competitive division.
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A Dynamic Model of Subprime Mortgage Default: Estimation and Policy Implications
Patrick Bajari et al.
NBER Working Paper, February 2013
Abstract:
The increase in defaults in the subprime mortgage market is widely held to be one of the causes behind the recent financial turmoil. Key issues of policy concern include quantifying the role of various factors, such as home price declines and loosened underwriting standards, in the recent increase in subprime defaults and predicting the effects of various policy instruments designed to mitigate default. To address these questions, we estimate a dynamic structural model of subprime borrowers' default behavior. We prove that borrowers' time preference is identified in our model and propose an easily implementable semiparametric plug-in estimator. Our results show that principal writedowns have a significant effect on borrowers' default behavior and welfare: a uniform 10% reduction in outstanding mortgage balance for the pool of borrowers in our sample would reduce the overall default probability by 22%, and borrowers' average willingness to pay for the principal writedown would be $16,643.
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Phuong Do, Lu Wang & Michael Elliott
Social Science & Medicine, forthcoming
Abstract:
Extant observational studies generally support the existence of a link between neighborhood context and health. However, estimating the causal impact of neighborhood-effects from observational data has proven to be a challenge. Omission of relevant factors may lead to overestimating the effects of neighborhoods on health while inclusion of time-varying confounders that may also be mediators (e.g., income, labor force status) may lead to underestimation. Using longitudinal data from the 1990-2007 Panel Study of Income Dynamics, this study investigates the link between neighborhood poverty and overall mortality risk. A marginal structural modeling strategy is employed to appropriately adjust for simultaneous mediating and confounding factors. To address the issue of possible upward bias from the omission of key variables, sensitivity analysis to assess the robustness of results against unobserved confounding is conducted. We examine two continuous measures of neighborhood poverty - single-point and a running average. Both were specified as piece-wise linear splines with a knot at 20 percent. We found no evidence from the traditional naïve strategy that neighborhood context influences mortality risk. In contrast, for both the single-point and running average neighborhood poverty specifications, the marginal structural model estimates indicated a statistically significant increase in mortality risk with increasing neighborhood poverty above the 20 percent threshold. For example, below 20 percent neighborhood poverty, no association was found. However, after the 20 percent poverty threshold is reached, each 10-percentage point increase in running average neighborhood poverty was found to increase the odds for mortality by 89 percent [95% CI=1.22, 2.91]. Sensitivity analysis indicated that estimates were moderately robust to omitted variable bias.
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Local Public Goods and the Demand for High-Income Municipalities
Leah Platt Boustan
Journal of Urban Economics, July 2013, Pages 71-82
Abstract:
Affluent towns often deliver high-quality public services to their residents. I estimate the willingness to pay to live in a high-income suburb, above and beyond the demand of wealthy neighbors, by measuring changes in housing prices across city-suburban borders as the income disparity between the two municipalities changes over time. I find that a $10,000 increase in town-level median income is associated with a seven percent increase in housing values at the border. The estimated demand for high-income municipalities is primarily driven by school quality and lower property tax rates.
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Lending Patterns in Poor Neighborhoods
Francisca Richter & Ben Craig
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, forthcoming
Abstract:
Concentrated poverty has been said to impose a double burden on those that confront it. In addition to an individual's own financial constraints, institutions and social networks of poor neighborhoods can further limit access to quality services and resources for those that live there. This study contributes to the characterization of subprime lending in poor neighborhoods by including a spatial dimension to the analysis, in an attempt to capture social - endogenous and exogenous interaction - effects differences in poor and less poor neighborhoods. The analysis is applied to 2004-2006 census tract level data in Cuyahoga County, home to Cleveland, Ohio, a region that features urban neighborhoods highly segregated by income and race. The patterns found in poor neighborhoods suggest stronger social effects inducing subprime lending in comparison to less poor neighborhoods.
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Katherine Theall et al.
Social Science & Medicine, May 2013, Pages 50-58
Abstract:
Our objective was to explore the utility of salivary telomere length (sTL) as an early indicator of neighborhood level social environmental risk during child development. We therefore tested the hypothesis that sTL would be associated with markers of social stress exposure in children. Children age 4-14 from 87 neighborhoods were recruited through five urban schools in New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S. Data were collected at the level of the child, family/household, and neighborhood. DNA was obtained from saliva using commercially available kits and sTL was determined for 104 children using quantitative PCR. Analysis was performed on 99 children who had complete data including sTL, social environmental stress, and additional covariates. The mean sTL value was 7.4 T/S (telomere signal/single copy signal) ratio units (± 2.4, range=2.5-18.0), and 4.7% of the variance in sTL was attributed to differences across neighborhoods. Children living in neighborhoods characterized by high disorder had an sTL value 3.2 units lower than children not living in high disordered environments (p<0.05) and their odds of having low relative sTL (defined as < 1 standard deviation below standardized z score mean) values was 3.43 times that of children not living in high disorder environments (adjusted OR=3.43, 95% CI=1.22, 9.62). Our findings are consistent with previous studies in adults demonstrating a strong link between psychosocial stress and sTL obtained from peripheral blood, consistent with previous studies in youth demonstrating an association between early life stress and sTL obtained from buccal cell DNA and offer increased support for the hypothesis that sTL represents a non-invasive biological indicator of psychosocial stress exposure (i.e., neighborhood disorder) able to reflect differences in stress exposure levels even in young children.
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Race/Ethnicity and the Relationship Between Homeownership and Health
Selena Ortiz & Frederick Zimmerman
American Journal of Public Health, April 2013, Pages e122-e129
Objectives: We investigated whether race/ethnicity moderates the association between homeownership and health and whether this association is the same for racial/ethnic minorities as for non-Latino Whites.
Methods: With data on US-born Latinos, African Americans, and non-Latino Whites from the 2003, 2005, 2007, and 2009 California Health Interview Survey, we used weighted multivariate regression techniques in fully adjusted models, controlling for socioeconomic and demographic factors, to test the association between homeownership and number of psychological health conditions, number of general health conditions, self-perceived health status, and health trade-offs.
Results: Race/ethnicity significantly moderates the effect of homeownership on self-perceived health status, incidence of general health conditions, and health trade-offs, including delays in accessing medical care and delays in obtaining prescription medication. Although homeownership was a robust, independent predictor for each health outcome in the non-Latino White population, the association disappeared in statistical significance for racial/ethnic minorities.
Conclusions: The mechanisms that create a significant association between homeownership and health seem not to be operative for racial/ethnic minorities or are countervailed by other processes, such as possible housing insecurity, that may create an adverse association. Homeownership provides a baseline for future investigations.
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Population Trends as a Counterweight to Central City Decline, 1950-2000
Leah Boustan & Allison Shertzer
Demography, February 2013, Pages 125-147
Abstract:
The share of metropolitan residents living in central cities declined dramatically from 1950 to 2000. We argue that cities would have lost even further ground if not for demographic trends such as renewed immigration, delayed childbearing, and a decline in the share of households headed by veterans. We provide causal estimates of the effect of children on residential location using the birth of twins. The effect of veteran status is identified from a discontinuity in the probability of military service during and after the mass mobilization for World War II. Our results suggest that these changes in demographic composition were strong enough to bolster city population but not to fully counteract socioeconomic factors favoring suburban growth.
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Ronald Pitner, ManSoo Yu & Edna Brown
Race and Social Problems, March 2013, Pages 57-64
Abstract:
This study investigated predictors of community care and vigilance among 70 African American residents living in high-crime, low-income neighborhoods. A stratified random sampling procedure was employed to select residents who completed a 20-item questionnaire assessing their sense of community care and vigilance and perceptions of perceived neighborhood physical and social disorder. We used police crime reports to assess the levels of property and violent offenses in the targeted neighborhoods. Our goal was to determine which of these variables best predicted community care and vigilance. The results of this study showed that social disorder and violent offenses negatively predicted community care and vigilance. Interestingly, the results also indicated that residents who reported the lowest income expressed the highest levels of community care and vigilance. Implications for community practice are discussed.
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Kathryn Browne-Yung, Anna Ziersch & Fran Baum
Social Science & Medicine, May 2013, Pages 9-17
Abstract:
People on low-income living in low socio-economic neighbourhoods have poorer health in comparison with those living in advantaged neighbourhoods. To explore neighbourhood effects on health and social capital creation, the experiences of low-income people living in contrasting socio-economic neighbourhoods were compared, in order to examine how low-income status and differing levels of neighbourhood resources contributed to perceived health and wellbeing. Quantitative and qualitative data were analysed: survey data from 601 individuals living in contrasting socio-economic areas and in-depth interviews with a new sample of 24 individuals on low-incomes. The study was guided by Bourdieu's theory of practice, which examines how social inequalities are created and reproduced through the relationship between individuals' varying resources of economic, social and cultural capital. This included an examination of individual life histories, cultural distinction and how social positions are reproduced. Participants' accounts of their early life experience showed how parental socio-economic position and socially patterned events taking place across the life course, created different opportunities for social network creation, choice of neighbourhood and levels of resources available throughout life, all of which can influence health and wellbeing. A definition of poverty by whether an individual or household has sufficient income at a particular point in time was an inadequate measure of disadvantage. This static measure of ‘low income' as a category disguised a number of different ways in which disadvantage was experienced or, conversely, how life course events could mitigate the impact of low- income. This study found that the resources necessary to create social capital such as cultural capital and the ability to socially network, differed according to the socio-economic status of the neighbourhood, and that living in an advantaged area does not automatically guarantee access to potentially beneficial social networks.
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Raymond Swisher & Tara Warner
Journal of Research on Adolescence, forthcoming
Abstract:
Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, this study examines individual and neighborhood predictors of adolescent and young adult survival expectations - their confidence of surviving to age 35. Analyses revealed that within-person increases in depression and violent perpetration decreased the odds of expecting to survive. Individuals who rated themselves in good health and received routine physical care had greater survival expectations. Consistent with documented health disparities, Black and Hispanic youth had lower survival expectations than did their White peers. Neighborhood poverty was linked to diminished survival expectations both within and between persons, with the between-person association remaining significant controlling for mental and physical health, exposure to violence, own violence, and a wide range of sociodemographic factors.
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City size, network structure and traffic congestion
Theodore Tsekeris & Nikolas Geroliminis
Journal of Urban Economics, July 2013, Pages 1-14
Abstract:
This paper presents an alternative approach for analyzing the relationship between land use and traffic congestion by employing the Macroscopic Fundamental Diagram (MFD). The MFD is an empirically observed relationship between traffic flow and traffic density at the level of an urban region, including hypercongestion, where flow decreases as density increases. This approach is consistent with the physics of traffic and allows the parsimonious modeling of intra-day traffic dynamics and their connection with city size, land use and network characteristics. The MFD can accurately measure the inefficiency of land and network resource allocation due to hypercongestion, in contrast with existing models of congestion. The findings reinforce the ‘compact city' hypothesis, by favoring a larger mixed-use core area with greater zone width, block density and number of lanes, compared to the peripheral area. They also suggest a new set of policies, including the optimization of perimeter controls and the fraction of land for transport, which constitute robust second-best optimal strategies that can further reduce congestion externalities.
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Determinants of Neighborhood Change: A Multilevel Analysis
Hee-Jung Jun
Urban Affairs Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study hypothesizes that neighborhood change is produced by interactions of factors at the neighborhood, municipal, and metropolitan scales. I present a multilevel analysis of neighborhood change in 35 metropolitan areas between the years 1990 and 2000. The results show that factors at all three scales are relevant to neighborhood change. While the municipal context has been missing in the literature, this study finds that neighborhoods stay economically healthier in smaller and more homogeneous cities in terms of race/ethnicity and family type.