Dionissi Aliprantis

Black men who witnessed a shooting before turning 12 have household earnings as adults 31 percent lower than those who did not. We present evidence that this gap is causal and is most likely the result of toxic stress; it is not mediated by incarceration and is constant across neighborhood socioeconomic status. Turning to mechanisms related to toxic stress, we study exposure to violence and nurturing relationships during adolescence. Item-anchored indexes synthesize variables on these treatments better than summing positive responses, Item Response Theory, or Principal Components, which all perform similarly. Providing adolescents with nurturing relationships is almost as beneficial as preventing their exposure to violence.

What drives the dynamics of the racial wealth gap? We answer this question using a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium heterogeneous-agents model. Our calibrated model endogenously produces a racial wealth gap matching that observed in recent decades along with key features of the current cross-sectional distribution of wealth, earnings, intergenerational transfers, and race. Our model predicts that equalizing earnings is by far the most important mechanism for permanently closing the racial wealth gap. One-time wealth transfers have only transitory effects unless they address the racial earnings gap, and return gaps only matter when earnings inequality is reduced.

This paper studies how design features influence the success of Housing Mobility Programs (HMPs) in reducing racial segregation. Targeting neighborhoods based on previous residents' outcomes does not allow for targeting race-specific outcomes, generates uncertainty when targeting income-specific outcomes, and generates bias in ranking neighborhoods' effects. Moreover, targeting opportunity bargains based on previous residents' outcomes selects tracts with large disagreements in current and previous residents' outcomes, with such disagreements predicted by sorting since 1990. HMP success is aided by the ability to port vouchers across jurisdictions, access to cars, and relaxing supply constraints, perhaps by targeting lower-ranked neighborhoods.

This paper quantifies the relationship between local opioid prescription rates and labor market outcomes in the United States between 2006 and 2016. To understand this relationship at the national level, we assemble a data set that allows us both to include rural areas and to estimate the relationship at a disaggregated level. We control for geographic variation in both short-term and long-term economic conditions. In our preferred specification, a 10 percent higher local prescription rate is associated with a lower prime-age labor force participation rate of 0.53 percentage points for men and 0.10 percentage points for women. We focus on measuring the impact of opioid prescriptions on labor markets, so we evaluate the robustness of our estimates to an alternative causal path, unobserved selection, and an instrumental variable from the literature.

The Opportunity Atlas (OA) is an innovative data set that ranks neighborhoods according to children’s adult outcomes in several domains, including income. Conceptually, outcomes offer new evidence about neighborhood effects when measured in isolation from neighborhood sorting. This paper shows that neighborhood sorting contributes to OA estimates. We document cases in which small sample sizes and changes over time can explain disagreements between OA rankings and those based on contemporaneous variables. Our results suggest caution for interpretations of the OA data set at a granular level, particularly for predictions about the outcomes of black children in high-income neighborhoods.

There is currently interest in crafting public housing policy that combats, rather than contributes to, the residential segregation in American cities. One such policy is the Housing Mobility Program (HMP), which aims to help people move from disinvested neighborhoods to ones with more opportunities. This paper studies how design features influence the success of HMPs in reducing racial segregation. We find that the choice of neighborhood opportunity index used to define the opportunity areas to which participants are encouraged to move has limited influence on HMP success. In contrast, we find that three design features have large effects on HMP success: 1) whether the geographic scope is confined to the central city or is implemented as a metro-level partnership; 2) whether the eligibility criteria are race-based, race-conscious, or race-neutral; 3) whether tenant counseling, tenant search assistance, and landlord outreach are successful in relaxing rental housing supply constraints.

This paper estimates neighborhood effects on adult labor market outcomes using the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) housing mobility experiment. We propose and implement a new strategy for identifying transition-specific effects that exploits identification of the unobserved component of a neighborhood choice model. Estimated Local Average Treatment Effects (LATEs) are large, result from moves between the first and second deciles of the national distribution of neighborhood quality, and pertain to a subpopulation of nine percent of program participants.

Landlords in high-opportunity neighborhoods screen out tenants using vouchers. In our correspondence experiment, signaling voucher status cuts landlord responses in half. This voucher penalty increases with posted rent and varies little with signals of tenant quality and race. We repeat the experiment after a policy change and test how landlords respond to raising voucher payment limits by $450 per month in high-rent neighborhoods. Most landlords do not change their screening behavior; those who do respond are few and operate at small scale. Our results suggest a successful, systematic policy of moving to opportunity would require more direct engagement with landlords.

The second revision of this working paper studies the relationship between local opioid prescription rates and labor market outcomes for prime-age men and women between 2006 and 2016. We estimate three panel models to control for evolving local economic conditions: a difference-in-differences specification, a specification with specific controls for economic conditions, and a model that focuses on a comparison group of place with similar performance in 2000. These modelling approaches find a range of statistically significant and economically substantial results for both prime-age men and women.

We reconcile the large and persistent racial wealth gap with the smaller racial earnings gap, using a general equilibrium heterogeneous-agents model that matches racial differences in earnings, wealth, bequests, and returns to savings. Given initial racial wealth inequality in 1962, our model attributes the slow convergence of the racial wealth gap primarily to earnings, with much smaller roles for bequests or returns to savings. Cross-sectional regressions of wealth on earnings using simulated data produce the same racial gap documented in the literature. One-time wealth transfers have only transitory effects unless they address the racial earnings gap.

Why do high-income black households live in neighborhoods with characteristics similar to those of low-income white households? We find that neighborhood sorting by income and race cannot be explained by financial constraints: High-income, high-wealth black households live in similar-quality neighborhoods as low-income, low-wealth white households. We provide evidence that black households sort across neighborhoods according to some non-pecuniary factor(s) correlated with the racial composition of neighborhoods. Black households sorting into black neighborhoods can explain the racial gap in neighborhood quality at all income levels. The supply of high-quality black neighborhoods drives the neighborhood quality of black households.

Despite being eligible for use in any neighborhood, housing choice vouchers tend to be redeemed in low-opportunity neighborhoods. This paper investigates how landlords contribute to this outcome and how they respond to efforts to change it. We leverage a policy change in Washington, DC, that increased voucher rental payments only in high-rent neighborhoods. Using two waves of a correspondence experiment that bracket the policy change, we show that most opportunity landlords screen out prospective voucher tenants, and we detect no change in average screening behavior after a $450 per month increase in voucher payments. In lease-up data, however, enough landlords do respond to increased payments to equalize the flow of voucher tenants into high- vs. low-rent neighborhoods. Using tax data and listings from a website specializing in subsidized housing, we characterize a group of marginal opportunity landlords who respond to higher payments. Marginal opportunity landlords are relatively rare, list their units near market rates, operate on a small scale, and negatively select into the voucher program based on hard-to-observe differences in unit quality.

Our first revision of this working paper improves the joint measurement of labor market outcomes and prescription rates in the rural areas where nearly 30 percent of the US population lives. We find that increasing the local prescription rate by 10 percent decreases the prime-age employment rate by 0.50 percentage points for men and 0.17 percentage points for women. Our estimates imply that prescription opioids can account for 44 percent of the realized national decrease in men’s labor force participation between 2001 and 2015.

Despite being eligible for use in any neighborhood, housing choice vouchers tend to be redeemed in low-opportunity neighborhoods. This paper investigates whether landlord behavior contributes to this outcome by studying the recent expansion of neighborhood-based voucher limits in Washington, DC. We conduct two waves of a correspondence experiment: one before and one after the expansion. Landlords heavily penalize tenants who indicate a desire to pay by voucher. The voucher penalty is larger in high-rent neighborhoods, pushing voucher tenants to low-rent neighborhoods. We find no evidence that indexing rents to small areas affects landlord acceptance of voucher tenants. The data can reject the claim that increasing rent limits by less than $3,000 per month can eliminate the voucher penalty. Neighborhood rent limits do shift lease-up locations toward high-rent neighborhoods in the year after the policy change, an effect that is large relative to the number of voucher households that move but small relative to all voucher tenants.

Why do high-income blacks live in neighborhoods with characteristics similar to those of low-income whites? One plausible explanation is wealth, since homeownership requires some wealth, and black households hold less wealth than white households at all levels of income. We present evidence against this hypothesis by showing that wealth does not predict sorting into neighborhood quality once race and income are taken into account. An alternative explanation is that the scarcity of high-quality black neighborhoods increases the cost of living in a high-quality neighborhood for black households with even weak race preferences. We present evidence in favor of this hypothesis by showing that sorting into neighborhood racial composition is similar across wealth levels conditional on race and income.

Our original working paper on opioids and the labor market finds evidence that opioid availability decreases labor force participation while a large labor market shock does not influence the share of opioid abusers. We first identify the effect of availability on participation using a combination of the American Community Survey (ACS) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) county-level prescription data to examine labor market patterns across both rural and metropolitan areas of the United States from 2007 to 2016. We also investigate the possibility of reverse causality, using the Great Recession as an instrument to identify the effect of weak labor demand on opioid abuse.

This paper performs a subgroup analysis on the effect of receiving a Moving to Opportunity (MTO) housing voucher on test scores. I find evidence of heterogeneity by number of children in the household in Boston, gender in Chicago, and race/ethnicity in Los Angeles. To study the mechanisms driving voucher effect heterogeneity, I develop a generalized Rubin Causal Model and propose an estimator to identify transition-specific Local Average Treatment Effects (LATEs) of school and neighborhood quality.

This paper presents a generalization of the DeGroot learning rule in which social learning can lead to polarization, even for connected networks.

This paper studies related counterfactual policies using an overlapping-generations dynamic general equilibrium model of residential sorting and intergenerational human capital accumulation.

This paper estimates the effect that the closure and demolition of roughly 20,000 units of geographically concentrated high-rise public housing had on crime in Chicago.

Under different definitions, notationally similar causal effects make distinct claims about the results of interventions to the system under investigation.

This paper presents a reanalysis of the MTO experiment and literature. Results illustrate why the implicit identification strategies used in the literature on MTO can be misleading.

This paper quantitatively compares water infrastructure interventions that prioritize equity with those that prioritize efficiency.

This paper shows that treatment effects of the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) housing mobility program should not be interpreted as evidence on neighborhood effects.

This paper finds evidence of positive neighborhood effects on adult labor market outcomes using the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) housing mobility experiment.

This paper quantitatively characterizes the "code of the street" from the sociology literature, using the nationally-representative National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 data set to investigate how black young males alter their behavior.

I show there is a tradeoff between identification and prediction driven by a fact I call the problem of context: Treatment always influences the outcome variable in combination with covariates.

I show there is a tradeoff between identification and prediction driven by a fact I call the problem of context: Treatment always influences the outcome variable in combination with covariates.

This paper quantitatively characterizes the "code of the street" from the sociology literature, using the nationally-representative National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 data set to investigate how black young males alter their behavior.

This paper uses an overlapping-generations dynamic general equilibrium model of residential sorting and intergenerational human capital accumulation to investigate the effects of neighborhood externalities.

This paper uses an overlapping-generations dynamic general equilibrium model of residential sorting and intergenerational human capital accumulation to investigate the effects of neighborhood externalities.

This paper evaluates a new technology for providing water.

This paper finds evidence of positive neighborhood effects on adult labor market outcomes using the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) housing mobility experiment.

This paper uses an overlapping-generations dynamic general equilibrium model of residential sorting and intergenerational human capital accumulation to investigate the effects of neighborhood externalities.

This paper finds evidence of positive neighborhood effects on adult labor market outcomes using the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) housing mobility experiment.

This paper presents evidence that instrumental variable frameworks do not identify age effects for the youngest children of a cohort using the results of statistical tests for essential heterogeneity in initial enrollment decisions.

This paper evaluates a new technology for providing water.

This paper presents evidence that instrumental variable frameworks do not identify age effects for the youngest children of a cohort using the results of statistical tests for essential heterogeneity in initial enrollment decisions.

This paper shows that treatment effects of the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) housing mobility program should not be interpreted as evidence on neighborhood effects.

This paper has been updated and expanded. For the new version, see WP 11-22.

This paper estimates the effect that the closure and demolition of roughly 20,000 units of geographically concentrated high-rise public housing had on crime in Chicago.

This paper shows how delayed entry into kindergarten can make it all but impossible to interpret estimates obtained through a framework that uses the date of birth as an instrument to study the causal effects of educational attainment.

Schools are a determinant of lifetime success. Research shows Black and white students in Ohio attend separate schools with unequal opportunity, disadvantaging Black students.

Some Black households live in neighborhoods with lower incomes than their own incomes might suggest, and this may impede their economic mobility. We investigate possible reasons and find that differences in financial factors do not explain racial distributions across neighborhoods. Our findings indicate other factors such as discrimination in the housing market, racial hostility, and social networks are at work.

Medical data are new to the analyses and deliberations of Federal Reserve monetary policymakers, but such data are now of primary importance to policymakers who need to understand the virus’s trajectory to assess economic conditions and address the virus’s impacts on the economy. The number of deaths caused by COVID-19 is one key metric that is often referred to, but as with other COVID metrics, it is a challenge to measure accurately. We discuss the issues involved in measuring COVID-19 deaths and argue that the change in the number of directly observed COVID-19 deaths is the most reliable and timely approach when using deaths to judge the trajectory of the pandemic in the United States, which is critical given the current inconsistencies in testing and limitations of hospitalization data.

Moving to Opportunity (MTO) was a housing mobility program designed to investigate neighborhood effects, the influences of the social and physical environment on human development and well-being. Some of the results from MTO have been interpreted as evidence that neighborhood effects are not as strong as earlier evidence had indicated. This Commentary discusses new research suggesting that neighborhood effects are, on the contrary, as strong and policy relevant as suspected before the experiment. This Commentary also discusses why the interpretation of the MTO data is important: If neighborhood effects drive outcomes, then addressing racial inequality requires concerted efforts beyond ending racial discrimination.

Most studies of the persistent gap in wealth between whites and blacks have investigated the large gap in income earned by the two groups. Those studies generally concluded that the wealth gap was “too big” to be explained by differences in income. We study the issue using a different approach, capturing the dynamics of wealth accumulation over time. We find that the income gap is the primary driver behind the wealth gap and that it is large enough to explain the persistent difference in wealth accumulation. The key policy implication of our work is that policies designed to speed the closing of the racial wealth gap would do well to focus on closing the racial income gap.

Drug overdoses now account for more deaths in the United States than traffic deaths or suicides, and most of the increase in overdose deaths since 2010 can be attributed to opioids--a class of drugs that includes both prescription pain relievers and illegal narcotics. We look at trends in drug use and overdose deaths to document how the opioid epidemic has evolved over time and to determine whether it could be large enough to impact the labor force.

Our analysis shows that exposure to violence in early childhood is related to higher mortality in adulthood for black males and is also related to a host of undesirable outcomes later on for both black and white males.

We study census data to identify neighborhood characteristics in addition to poverty that might help to explain disparities that exist in such outcomes as health, employment, and education.

Why has average income grown in some poor neighborhoods over the past 30 years and not in others?

Not only has poverty recently increased in the United States, it has also become more concentrated.

Although the U.S. poverty rate was the same in 2000 as it was in 1970, the geographic distribution of the poor has become more concentrated.

The online appendix has a technical discussion about the sample and the variables used in the construction of poverty rates in 1970 and 2000.

Workers with more education typically earn more than those with less education, and the difference has been growing in recent decades.

The Cleveland Fed’s Program on Economic Inclusion is trying to think through what the obstacles are to inclusion and some of the possible solutions.

Research shows that neighborhoods matter and how cities are structured through policies—schools, transportation, safety—matters for the success of its residents.

It is well-known that employment outcomes such as unemployment rates and employment-to-population ratios vary markedly across demographic groups. Differences in unemployment rates are especially pronounced across age and racial groups.

Across America, schools are embarking on grand experiments to improve educational outcomes. At the same time, economists are examining what works and what doesn't. The latest issue of Forefront takes an illustrated look at some of the myriad reforms happening in Anytown, USA.

Sara Elaqad discusses how the intensive support of the Mind Matters Cleveland program helps low-income high school students get into college and succeed in coursework and careers.

University of Toronto economics professor Philip Oreopoulos discusses the evidence on comprehensive services improving the academic performance of low-income students and efforts to scale the effectiveness of tutoring programs.

Professor Faye Gary explains why caring relationships and the social networks they can open up are such crucial components of Case Western Reserve University’s Provost Scholars mentoring program.

Matthew Kraft, an economics and education professor at Brown University, discusses arguments for making tutoring a regular, more broadly used component of the daily schedule in US public schools.

University of Toronto economics professor Philip Oreopoulos discusses efforts to make tutoring a more affordable tool for improving the academic performance of low-income students.

Daniel Zaharopol is the founder of Bridge to Enter Advanced Mathematics (BEAM). He describes the support BEAM provides to underserved students to enable them to acquire the math training needed to pursue a STEM education.

Preferences for college majors often are formed years before students set foot on campus, says Basit Zafar, an economics professor at the University of Michigan. Zafar discusses the factors in childhood and adolescence that could encourage or discourage underrepresented groups, like women and minorities, from seeking STEM educations.

Engaging students with STEM content early and often is key to their successful pursuit of careers in science, technology, engineering and math, according to Me’lani Joseph, who recently surveyed STEM enrichment initiatives in Northeast Ohio. She talks about what such programs can do to encourage underrepresented groups to choose STEM careers.

How can we create more pathways to STEM careers? We spoke with Dr. Woodrow Whitlow about the path that led to his distinguished career at NASA. Dr. Woodrow Whitlow Jr. holds a doctorate from MIT and had a decades-long career as a researcher and senior administrator at NASA. He describes how he realized his dreams of working on the space program.

Charles Cox talks about his passion for supporting kids, describes the reality of toxic stress, and explains why patience and empathy are so important when dealing with toxic stress responses.

Professor Shaun Dougherty, a professor of education and policy at Boston College, talks about the ways career and technical education has changed in response to changes in the economy and how employer partnerships can be valuable in supporting a program’s curriculum and hiring its graduates.

Dr. Andrew S. Garner describes how childhood adversity can become biologically embedded through toxic stress to cause negative outcomes in adulthood. But he also describes emerging research on the ways that safe, stable, and nurturing relationships with adults can ameliorate toxic stress and lead to positive outcomes.

Professor Dan O’Flaherty is an economist at Columbia University who has studied racial inequality, homelessness, and crime, among other topics. He describes important results from economics research on racial inequality in the labor market.

Tim Jones, the founding principal of Davis Aerospace and Maritime High School, explains how certain experiences have effectively engaged and inspired his students. He describes the unique partnerships that allow the school to offer such experiences to its students and how those partnerships could be replicated in technical schools across the country.

Richard Rothstein talks about how his work on education led to his focus on residential segregation. As he was writing about educational inequality, he noticed that many problems in education could be traced back to residential segregation and the accompanying concentration of poverty in certain schools.

Professor Faye Gary discusses the racism and discrimination she encountered during her education and the support that helped her overcome the barriers she faced.

Professor Ruby Mendenhall describes how she sees the toxic stress generated by exposure to violence as a root cause of many problems, so that asking about individuals’ adverse childhood experiences is a constructive way to start searching for policy solutions.

David Wintrich, a cofounder of Tech Elevator and board member at the Council on Integrity in Results Reporting, talks about the elements that make a successful coding bootcamp. He describes the recipe for student success, both in and outside of the classroom.