Notes from class this week:

Long-term outcomes for children are improved by public housing and housing vouchers.

How much do low-income families’ housing assistance programs affect kids’ long-term outcomes? In their new research, Henry Pollakowski and his co-authors use a nationwide longitudinal dataset to look at how children who were in the Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) program and the public housing system did as adults in terms of things like income and incarceration rates. Using a method called “household fixed effects specification,” they find that “extra years of public housing raise wages by 6.2% for women and 6.1% for men, while voucher-assisted housing raises wages by 4.8% for women and 2.7% for men.” Also, they found that each extra year of HCV-assisted housing for black children made it less likely that they would be in jail in April 2010 by 0.3% for men and 0.7% for women.

In 1940, when girls got female teachers, their academic performance improved.

In the last study, the effects of female teachers on the academic and job outcomes of girls and young women got mixed reviews. In a recent study, David Card and his co-authors look at how female teachers affected female students in public schools in 1940. They focus on rural areas. This group of young women includes those who are more likely than earlier generations to go to college and enter previously exclusive professions. The authors found that when white and black students in the South were taught by women, both groups did better in terms of going to school and finishing their grades. For instance, they predict that a girl who had only female professors in her classroom would have been 7 to 8 percentage points more likely to go to college.

How Australian sex ratios affect societal norms and results related to masculinity

Economic and cultural trends may be influenced by standards of gender roles and masculinity. Victoria Baranov and her co-authors found that when the historical sex ratio of men went up, 5.6% more men signed up to fight in World War I. The different numbers of convicts in different parts of Australia in the 18th and 19th centuries led to different gender ratios in different parts of the country. Assaults, sexual assaults, suicides by men, prostate cancer, and men who don’t want to get the COVID vaccine are all more common in places where men have been treated badly in the past. Additionally, there is less support for same-sex unions in these regions, and school bullying of boys is more common. In their conclusion, the scientists say, “We see these results as signs of masculinity standards that came about because local men were so competitive with each other.” Once established, norms of masculinity remain over time through peer and family socialization in schools.

Top chart: Young and older workers are driving the post-Hurricane Maria job recovery

The Census Bureau released the first Quarterly Workforce Indicators for Puerto Rico last month. These give a more complete picture of the job market in the territory. According to the data, workers under the age of 25 and over the age of 44 did a lot to help the job market recover after Hurricane Maria in 2017. According to their analysis, employment had gotten better by the end of 2019 after hitting a low point in the first quarter of 2018.

Choice opinion: Enrichment initiatives can only go so far in addressing institutionalised educational inequities.

It is unlikely that simply increasing school funding will improve educational equity. Shawna Young wrote in The Hechinger Report, “We need to develop policies at the local and federal levels that address the root causes of inequities, such as the effects of past redlining, which kept black areas from getting the same resources as white communities.”

Self-promotion: Access to higher education, the wealth disparity by race, and financial aid

Recent research by Phillip Levine and Dubravka Ritter looks at how racial disparity is impacted by the American college financial aid system. They show that the government’s aid formula is unfair to white families because it doesn’t count home equity and retirement savings. White families own more of these assets that aren’t counted.

The impact of COVID-19 on Latino families, LGBTQ rights and public policy, “Of Boys and Men,” and conversation with Richard V. Reeves about “Of Boys and Men”

United States Enterprise Institute

27th of October 2022, Thursday

between 11:00 and 12:15 EDT

LGBTQ Rights: The Racial Foundations of Public Policy

Ford School of the University of Michigan’s Center for Racial Justice

27th of October 2022, Thursday

4:00:00–5:15:00 EDT

COVID-19’s socioeconomic effects on Latino families

Institute of Brookings

October 19, 2022, Tuesday

From 3:30 to 5:30 PM EDT

Analysis by: Advocacy Unified Network