Public education in the dynamic city: lessons from New York City

This article was presented at a conference organized by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in April 2005, "Urban Dynamics in New York City." The goal of the conference was threefold: to examine the historical transformations of the engine-of-growth industries in New York and distill the main determinants of the city's historical dominance as well as the challenges to its continued success; to study the nature and evolution of immigration flows into New York; and to analyze recent trends in a range of socioeconomic outcomes, both for the general population and recent immigrants more specifically.Education - New York (N.Y.) ; Immigrants - New York (N.Y.) ; Federal Reserve District, 2nd

Cigarettes and Alcohol: Substitutes or Complements?

Taxation of cigarettes and alcohol can raise revenue and reduce consumption of goods with negative external effects. Despite medical and psychological evidence linking their consumption, little previous work has investigated the significance of cross-price effects in cigarette and alcohol consumption. We use individual-level data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System to investigate cigarette and alcohol consumption in the US, estimating both own and cross-price elasticities. Results suggest significant cross-price effects. Specifically, we find that higher alcohol prices decrease both alcohol consumption and smoking participation (suggesting a complementarity in consumption), while higher cigarette prices tend to decrease smoking participation but increase drinking. The significance of these findings suggests that further work is warranted to better understand the social and economic relationship between cigarette and alcohol consumption.

WHOSE MONEY IS IT?

FORUM ON MARRIED WOMEN AND THE INCOME TAX: MARRIAGE PENALTIES AND MARRIAGE BONUSES OF THE 105 H CONGRESS PANEL I: OBSERVING MONEY, MARRIAGE AND TAXATIO

Infrastructure in a Structural Model of Economic Growth

Researchers, commentators, and politicians have devoted steadily more attention to infrastructure in response to claims that inadequate accumulation of public capital has contributed to substandard U.S. economic growth. Despite this, the link between infrastructure and productivity growth remains controversial. In this regard, it is somewhat surprising that infrastructure research has developed in isolation from the large literature on economic growth. We develop a neoclassical growth model that explicitly incorporates infrastructure and is designed to provide a tractable framework within which to analyze the empirical importance of public capital accumulation to productivity growth. We find little support for claims of a dramatic productivity boost from increased infrastructure outlays. In a specification designed to provide an upper bound for the influence of infrastructure, we estimate that raising the rate of infrastructure investment would have had a negligible impact on annual productivity growth between 1971 and 1986.

Housing production subsidies and neighborhood revitalization: New York City's ten-year capital plan for housing

This paper was presented at the conference "Policies to Promote Affordable Housing," cosponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and New York University's Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy, February 7, 2002. It was part of Session 3: The Impact of Housing on People and Places.Housing - New York (N.Y.) ; Construction industry - New York (N.Y.) ; Housing subsidies ; Federal Reserve District, 2nd ; Housing - Finance

Does Proximity to Fast Food Increase the Incidence of Childhood Obesity?

Living near fast food has a greater impact on younger children who attend neighborhood schools. Proximity to fast food restaurants increases the probability of childhood obesity or overweight

The Academic Effects of Chronic Exposure to Neighborhood Violence

We estimate the causal effect of repeated exposure to violent crime on test scores in New York City. We use two distinct empirical strategies; value-added models linking student performance on standardized exams to violent crimes on a student’s residential block, and a regression discontinuity approach that identifies the acute effect of an additional crime exposure within a one-week window. Exposure to violent crime reduces academic performance. Value added models suggest the average effect is very small; approximately -0.01 standard deviations in English Language Arts (ELA) and mathematics. RD models suggest a larger effect, particularly among children previously exposed. The marginal acute effect is as large as -0.04 standard deviations for students with two or more prior exposures. Among these, it is even larger for black students, almost a 10th of a standard deviation. We provide credible causal evidence that repeated exposure to neighborhood violence harms test scores, and this negative effect increases with exposure

Towering Intellects? Sizing Up the Relationship Between Height and Academic Success

Do tall students do better in school? While a robust literature documents higher earnings among taller people, we know little about the potential academic origins of the height earnings gradient. In this paper, we use unique student-level longitudinal data from New York City (NYC) to examine the link between height and academic outcomes, shedding light on underlying mechanisms. The centerpiece of our empirical work is a regression linking academic outcomes to height, measured as a z-score normalized to same grade/sex peers within schools. We estimate a meaningful height gradient for both boys and girls in ELA and math achievement in all grades 3-8. Controlling for observed student characteristics, a one standard deviation (sd.) increase in height for grade is associated with a 3.5% (4.6%) sd. increase in math (ELA) score for boys and 4.1% (4.8%) sd. for girls. The height gradient is not explained by contemporaneous health, while time-invariant student characteristics correlated with height and achievement explain roughly half of the relationship for boys (3/4 for girls). We also find evidence that ordinal height rank relative to peers may have a small effect on achievement conditional on cardinal height. This paper contributes to a long-standing literature on the effect of age-within-grade on achievement. Our estimates suggest that failing to account for relative height may upwardly bias the relationship between relative age and achievement by up to 25%

Let Them Eat Lunch: The Impact of Universal Free Meals on Student Performance

This paper investigates the impact of extending free school lunch to all students, regardless of income, on academic performance in New York City middle schools. Using a difference-in-difference design and unique longitudinal, student level data, we derive credibly causal estimates of the impacts of “Universal Free Meals” (UFM) on test scores in English Language Arts (ELA) and mathematics, and participation in school lunch. We find UFM increases academic performance by as much as 0.059 standard deviations in math and 0.083 in ELA for non-poor students, with smaller, statistically significant effects of 0.032 and 0.027 standard deviations in math and ELA for poor students. Further, UFM increases participation in school lunch by roughly 11.0 percentage points for non-poor students and 5.4 percentage points for poor students. We then investigate the academic effects of school lunch participation per se, using UFM as an instrumental variable. Results indicate that increases in school lunch participation improve academic performance for both poor and non-poor students; an additional lunch every two weeks increases test scores by roughly 0.08 standard deviations in math and 0.07 standard deviations in ELA. Finally, we explore potential unintended consequences for student weight outcomes, finding no evidence that UFM increases probability of obesity or overweight, or BMI. Results are robust to an array of alternative assumptions about sample and specifications

Does Proximity to Fast Food Cause Childhood Obesity? Evidence from Public Housing

We examine the causal link between proximity to fast food and the incidence of childhood obesity among low-income households in New York City. Using individual-level longitudinal data on students living in public housing linked to restaurant location data, we exploit the naturally occurring within-development variation in distance to fast food restaurants to estimate the impact of proximity on obesity. Since the assignment of households to specific buildings is based upon availability at the time of assignment to public housing, the distance between student residence and retail outlets—including fast food restaurants, wait-service restaurants, supermarkets, and corner stores—is plausibly random. Our credibly causal estimates suggest that childhood obesity increases with proximity to fast food, with larger effects for younger children who attend neighborhood schools