Aida Pacheco-Applegate (University of Chicago) will study the effects of preschool expansion and wage grants on early care and education providers in Chicago to demonstrate how public investments affect provider stability, service distribution, and equitable access. Co-funded with the Russell Sage Foundation. Additional support provided by the Washington Center for Equitable Growth.

Darien Kearney (Howard University) will use longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (2005–2015) and structural modeling to examine how perceived racial discrimination affects labor market outcomes among Black Americans. Co-funded with the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research and the Russell Sage Foundation. Additional support provided by the Washington Center for Equitable Growth.

This project proposes to estimate a structural equilibrium model of the U.S. child care sector to use for counterfactual subsidy design, with the goal of finding an optimal cost-neutral subsidy design. The project consists of two parts. First, the author will evaluate the effect of reimbursement rate policies on local maternal labor force participation, child care worker wages, child care prices, and quality of care. Second, the author will use the estimated model to simulate the effects of counterfactual subsidy policies on parent utility, worker wages, mark-ups, and the distribution of quality.

Federal Housing Administration and Veterans Administration policies are understood to have contributed to racial disparities in homeownership, wealth, and neighborhood opportunity in the United States, but systematic data on their mortgage activity is scarce. This project proposes to digitize and publicly release a dataset of FHA-insured and VA-guaranteed mortgages issued between 1935 and 1975 to assess the demographic and spatial distribution of these loans. Addresses will be geocoded, and names of borrowers matched to full-count Census data from 1930, 1940, and 1950 to identify borrowers’ demographic and socioeconomic backgrounds. This project will assess who received these loans; how they were distributed across neighborhoods; and whether FHA and VA insurance accelerated White flight and exacerbated segregation.

Building on past research on the role of the Earned Income Tax Credit in supporting migration decisions, this research will evaluate the subsequent outcomes for both parents and children. Leveraging detailed linked administrative data—including the American Community Survey, Current Population Survey, and individual tax records—the author will conduct a longitudinal analysis of U.S. families’ migration patterns and economic outcomes. High-resolution geographic information provides information on the quality of neighborhoods families move to and from, with variables such as school quality, local poverty rates, incarceration rates, labor market opportunities, and measures of economic mobility. Linking individual tax records with survey data allows for an assessment of children’s educational attainment, employment, and earnings over time. Tax records provide information on family income, employment, and geographic mobility.

This project will examine the housing consequences of Interstate 10 in New Orleans. Specifically, the author will examine whether the construction of Interstate 10 resulted in differential housing outcomes in Black neighborhoods, compared to White neighborhoods. The author has created historical interstate data from the U.S. Geological Survey, the National Historical Geographic Information System, and additional census tract characteristics, including racial demographics, total housing units, owner-occupied housing units, and median home value. This study has the potential to shape the multidisciplinary literature examining the impact of highways, public railways, and other types of transportation infrastructure on neighborhoods.