Who Shall Live and Who Shall Die? An Analysis of Prisoners on Death Row in the United States

Using data on the entire population of prisoners under a sentence of death in the U.S. between 1977 and 1997, this paper investigates the probability of being executed on death row in any given year, as well as the probability of commutation when reaching the end of death row. The analyses control for personal characteristics and previous criminal record of the death row inmates. We link the data on death row inmates to a number of characteristics of the state of incarceration, including variables which allow us to assess the degree to which the political process enters into the final outcome in a death penalty case. Inmates with only a grade school diploma are more likely to receive clemency, and those with some college attendance are less likely to have their sentence commuted. Blacks and other minorities are less likely to get executed in comparison to white inmates. Female death row inmates and older inmates are also less likely to get executed. If an inmate's spell on death row ends at a point in time where the governor is a lame duck, the probability of commutation is higher in comparison to a similar inmate whose decision is made by a governor who is not a lame duck. If the governor is female, she is more likely to spare the inmate's life; and if the governor is white, the likelihood of dying is higher in comparison to the case where the decision is made by a minority governor.

Consequences of the obesity epidemic for immigrants

Upon arrival in a host country, immigrants often have lower obesity rates (as measured for instance by BMI—body mass index) than their native counterparts do, but these rates converge over time. In light of the worldwide obesity epidemic and the flow of immigrants into host countries with higher obesity rates, it is important to understand the consequences of such assimilation. Policymakers could benefit from a discussion of the impact of immigrant obesity on labor market outcomes and the use of public services. In particular, policies could find ways to improve immigrants’ access to health care for both the prevention and treatment of obesity

The Effect of Family Size on Education: New Evidence from China's One Child Policy

Social scientists theorize that the inverse relationship between socio-economic status and family size represents a trade-off between the quality and quantity of children. Evaluating this hypothesis empirically requires addressing the simultaneity of the quality and quantity decisions. Researchers have used the unanticipated birth of twins as exogenous variation in family size or the sex composition of the first two children as an instrument for family size with mixed results. We exploit a different source of exogenous variation in family size. The One Child Policy (OCP) in China dramatically reduced Chinese fertility and we examine how the OCP has affected the educational attainment of Chinese migrants to the U.S. Using data from the American Community Survey (2009-2012) and a difference-in-differences strategy our results support the quality-quantity tradeoff theory. We find that education increased more for Chinese migrants born after the OCP than their counterparts from other East Asian countries

Immigration, obesity and labor market outcomes in the UK

We estimate the dual effects of immigration and obesity on labor market outcomes in the UK. There is only one other paper that has estimated these dual effects on a sample of immigrants to the US. We use the British Household Panel Survey, which contains information on height and weight for 2004 and 2006, along with immigration status and labor market outcomes. This was a period of increased immigration to the UK resulting in large part from the accession of new EU member states, though our sample includes both recent arrivals and those who have been in the UK for decades. We first analyze an immigrant-only sample and then expand the sample to compare the experience of these immigrants to natives with similar weight and other observable characteristics. We find support for the healthy immigrant hypothesis that suggests that immigrants are less likely to be obese than natives, and also evidence of an assimilation effect in which immigrants' weight increases with their time in the UK. The results indicate a wage premium and higher proportions of white collar work for immigrant men, but a wage penalty and lower proportions of white collar work for overweight and obese immigrant men. We find weaker but still negative associations between weight and labor market outcomes for immigrant women. Data limitations preclude efforts to address endogeneity, so these findings should be viewed as associations that support the need for better data for additional analysis of the dual effects of immigration and obesity on labor market outcomes

LEGISLATING LOVE: The Effect of Child Support and Welfare Policies on Father–child Contact

Reducing non-marital childbearing and making nonresidential fathers take greater responsibility for their children were identified as goals of numerous policy changes since the 1980s. Child-support award rates for children born to unmarried parents have been quite low historically, leading lawmakers to focus on increasing both award and payment rates for this group. Nonmarital fathers are also much less likely to have contact with their children. Although evidence suggests that policy efforts increase child support awards and receipt, the link between child support policies, child support outcomes, and father-child contact has received less attention. This paper uses data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation on children born between 1985–1997 to investigate the relationship between child-support award and receipt and the amount of contact that fathers have with their non-residential children. Since it is likely that both of these behaviors are, in part, determined by unobservable characteristics of the father, we estimate an instrumental variables Tobit model. The model is identified by our assumption that child support policy variables can impact child support awards and payments, but father-child contact cannot be directly legislated. Our results suggest that there are unintended, but desirable effects of child support establishment and collection. Policies to collect child support not only increase financial resources to families, but through their impact on payments increase visitation and contact between these children and their fathers. The estimated impact of receiving child support on contact is more than 27 days per year. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 2004child support, father-child contact, nonmarital fathers, IV Tobit,

Replication data for: "Are Minimum Wages a Silent Killer? New Evidence on Drunk Driving Fatalities"

Replication data for: "Are Minimum Wages a Silent Killer? New Evidence on Drunk Driving Fatalities