American Community Survey Microdata Research Articles

Non-family Living Arrangements Among Young Adults in the United States

The share of young adults living in married-couple family households in the USA has declined in recent decades. Research on alternative living arrangements focuses on cohabitation among unmarried couples and parent–adult child coresidence. Less is known about trends in non-family living arrangements and the characteristics of young adults living with non-relatives. This study documents trends over time in non-family living arrangements among young adults in the USA and examines the sociodemographic profile of those living with non-relatives. Using pooled US Census and American Community Survey microdata from 1990 to 2019, the authors document age patterns in non-family living arrangements over time and use logistic regression to estimate the likelihood of living with non-family based on individual-level characteristics. Results indicate that non-family living among young adults has increased over time, and that the arrangement is associated with markers of both advantage and disadvantage. Differences across age groups explain some of these mixed results. Trends among younger groups are linked to socioeconomic patterns around family formation. Among older groups, the demographic and labor force characteristics of the foreign born and constraints of their kin availability may be driving trends. The exploratory analysis provides relevant evidence around an increasingly common living arrangement in the USA and also identifies several areas for future research on living arrangements among young adults and the implications of these trends.

Community-level predictors of doubled-up homelessness

ABSTRACT Existing research has examined the community-level factors associated with sheltered and unsheltered homelessness in the United States, generally finding that housing, labor market, and social safety net factors have significant associations with geographic variation in homelessness. Some definitions of homelessness include doubling up, defined as staying with others because of housing loss or economic hardship. We examine the community correlates of doubled-up homelessness across metropolitan areas using a measure that draws on American Community Survey microdata. We present evidence that area median rent and unemployment are positively associated with rates of doubling up among the population in or near poverty, and that income inequality and unemployment are positively associated with rates of doubling up in the total population. In contrast to recent studies of sheltered and unsheltered homelessness, we find a negative relationship between access to cash public assistance and doubling up rates within both the total population and those who are low income.

Patterns of Multidimensional Poverty in the United States

The accurate accounting of where and for whom deprivations occur is fundamental to addressing poverty. In the United States, the official poverty measure considers only a person’s income, although poverty is increasingly understood internationally as a set of multiple, interlinked deprivations. This article introduces a decomposable multidimensional poverty (MDP) measure that addresses these shortcomings by using thirteen American Community Survey microdata indicators to identify education, health, housing, and economic security deprivations for individuals. In 2017, the national poverty rate was 13.7 percent when measured using MDP and 13.1 percent using official poverty. Although similar at the national scale, Hispanic, Asian, and older persons had higher poverty rates using the multidimensional measure, whereas Black and young persons had higher rates when using official poverty. MDP tended to be higher than official poverty in dense urban areas, whereas official poverty tended to be higher in rural areas. Further, MDP was a stronger correlate with COVID-19 death rates than official poverty through the first three waves of the pandemic. The design of MDP recognizes that individuals can experience poverty in different ways and provides a more holistic view of people and places.

Immigrant Women and the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Intersectional Analysis of Frontline Occupational Crowding in the United States

This paper examines changes in occupational crowding of immigrant women in frontline industries in the United States during the onset of COVID-19, and we contextualize their experiences against the backdrop of broader race-based and gender-based occupational crowding. Building on the occupational crowding hypothesis, which suggests that marginalized workers are crowded in a small number of occupations to prop up wages of socially-privileged workers, we hypothesize that immigrant, Black, and Hispanic workers were shunted into frontline work to prop up the health of others during the pandemic. Our analysis of American Community Survey microdata indicates that immigrant workers, particularly immigrant women, were increasingly crowded in frontline work during the onset of the pandemic. We also find that US-born Black and Hispanic workers disproportionately faced COVID-19 exposure in their work, but were not increasingly crowded into frontline occupations following the onset of the pandemic. The paper also provides a rationale for considering the occupational crowding hypothesis along the dimensions of both wages and occupational health.

Motherhood, migration, and self-employment of college graduates

Women face unique challenges in starting and running their own businesses and may have differing motives to men for pursuing self-employment. Previous research suggests that married women with families value the flexibility that self-employment can offer, allowing them to balance their family responsibilities with their career aspirations. This may be especially true for college graduates, who tend to have more successful businesses. Access to childcare may also affect their labor force decisions. Using American Community Survey microdata, we examine how birth-place residence, a proxy for access to extended family and childcare, relates to self-employment and hours worked for college graduate married mothers. Our results suggest that flexibility is a major factor pulling out-migrant college-educated mothers into self-employment. Additionally, it appears that, in response to fewer childcare options, self-employed mothers away from their birth-place work fewer hours, while self-employed mothers residing in their birth-place are able to work more hours per week.

Motherhood, Migration, and Self-Employment of College Graduates

Women face unique challenges in starting and running their own businesses and may have differing motives to men for pursuing self-employment. Previous research suggests that married women with families value the flexibility that self-employment can offer, allowing them to balance their family responsibilities with their career aspirations. This may be especially true for college graduates, who tend to have more successful businesses. Access to childcare may also affect their labor force decisions. Using American Community Survey microdata, we examine how birth-place residence, a proxy for access to extended family and child care, relates to self-employment and hours worked for college-graduate married mothers. Our results suggest that flexibility is a major factor pulling out-migrant college-educated mothers into self-employment. Additionally, it appears that, in response to fewer childcare options, self-employed mothers away from their birth-place work fewer hours, while self-employed mothers residing in their birth place are able to work more hours per week.

Geographic mobility of recent immigrants and urban transit demand in the U.S.: New evidence and planning implications

Residential mobility rates in the U.S. have been in steady decline. Most notably, between 2005 and 2013, one-year intercity migration rate for immigrants has decreased by 0.7 percentage-points, compared to a 0.2 percentage-point decline for the U.S.-born population. Literature on urban implications of geographic mobility suggests that consideration of migration trends, or population flows, can improve urban planning, including transportation. Our research focuses on recent immigrants, a group that significantly contributes to public transit ridership in the U.S. In this study, we analyze the influence of the annual average in-migration rate of recent immigrants to various urban areas from within the country on transit ridership changes across the urban areas between 2008 and 2013. We also compare this effect with the effect of annual average in-migration rate of new immigrants to various urban areas from foreign countries. While the average effect of inflow of new foreign migrants on transit demand is suggested in the literature, distinguishing the transit demand of immigrants that are not movers and those that are movers from various locations remains unexplored.We derive migration flows from the American Community Survey microdata, and transit ridership from the U.S. National Transit Database. We perform geospatial analysis to overcome several constraints that make exploration of the migration-transportation connection difficult, particularly the lack of uniformity in geographic boundaries used for data presentation across and within government agencies, and over time.Our results indicate that consideration of domestic in-migration rates of recent immigrants can improve transit demand forecasting. As past literature has found, recent immigrants are highly likely to use transit. Recent immigrant migrants that have arrived directly from another country are even more likely to use transit. Interestingly, recent immigrants that move to a metropolitan area from another location in the U.S. are relatively less likely to use transit. Among domestic migrants, however, those that move to cities undergoing large increase in transit service relative to population are more likely to use transit. High population and transit stop density of both previous and current cities seem to positively affect transit mode choice for commute trips of recent immigrant movers. Declining inter-urban mobility among recent immigrants can indeed alter future transit demand trends. Transit agencies should not treat recent immigrants as a monolithic group. Consideration of the migration patterns of various types of recent immigrants, and factors that determine those patterns, can improve demand forecasting and planning.

Foreign-born and native-born migration in the U.S.: evidence from linked IRS administrative and census survey records

This paper details efforts to link administrative records from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to American Community Survey (ACS) and 2010 Census microdata for the study of migration among foreign-born and native-born populations in the United States. Specifically, we (1) document our linkage strategy and methodology for inferring migration in IRS records; (2) model selection into and survival across IRS records to determine suitability for research applications; and (3) gauge the efficacy of the IRS records by demonstrating how they can be used to validate and potentially improve migration responses for native-born and foreign-born respondents in ACS microdata. Our results show little evidence of selection or survival bias in the IRS records, suggesting broad generalizability to the nation as a whole. Moreover, we find that the combined IRS 1040, 1099, and W2 records may provide important information on populations, such as the foreign-born, that may be difficult to reach with traditional Census Bureau surveys. Finally, the results of our comparison of IRS and ACS migration responses show that IRS records may be useful in improving ACS migration measurement for respondents whose migration response is proxy, allocated, or imputed. Taking these results together, we discuss the potential application of our longitudinal IRS dataset to innovations in migration research on both the native-born and foreign-born populations of the United States.

Do higher college graduation rates increase local education levels?

AbstractCollege graduates are important for regional economies but also quite geographically mobile. This paper examines the relationship between college graduation rates among persons from a state (relative production) and the later share of college graduates for persons residing in the state (relative stock) using decennial census and American Community Survey microdata. The descriptive relationship has increased over time and is nearly proportional in recent years. Instrumental variables (IV) methods are used to estimate causal effects. The preferred IV results yield an average point estimate for the production‐stock relationship of 0.52, but the effect likely decreases with age.

Merit aid and post-college retention in the state

One goal of state merit-based financial aid programs is to increase the stock of college-educated labor in the state by retaining college-educated persons in the state after college. However, there has been surprisingly little research on whether state merit aid programs are effective at this goal. This paper investigates the effect of state merit aid programs on the post-college location of 24–30year olds. We use decennial census and American Community Survey microdata to consider post-college retention effects in the 25 states that implemented merit aid programs between 1991 and 2004. Our preferred specification implies that strong state merit aid programs on average increase the probability that a college attendee lives in his or her birth state during ages 24–30 by 2.76 percentage points. We also estimate the effect for individual states and find meaningful differences across states in the effect of merit aid programs on in-state post-college retention and explore explanations for these differences.

Marked Ethnic, Nativity, and Socioeconomic Disparities in Disability and Health Insurance among US Children and Adults: The 2008–2010 American Community Survey

We used the 2008–2010 American Community Survey Micro-data Sample (N = 9,093,077) to estimate disability and health insurance rates for children and adults in detailed racial/ethnic, immigrant, and socioeconomic groups in the USA. Prevalence and adjusted odds derived from logistic regression were used to examine social inequalities. Disability rates varied from 1.4% for Japanese children to 6.8% for Puerto Rican children. Prevalence of disability in adults ranged from 5.6% for Asian Indians to 22.0% among American Indians/Alaska Natives. More than 17% of Korean, Mexican, and American Indian children lacked health insurance, compared with 4.1% of Japanese and 5.9% of white children. Among adults, Mexicans (43.6%), Central/South Americans (41.4%), American Indians/Alaska Natives (32.7%), and Pakistanis (29.3%) had the highest health-uninsurance rates. Ethnic nativity disparities were considerable, with 58.3% of all Mexican immigrants and 34.0% of Mexican immigrants with disabilities being uninsured. Socioeconomic gradients were marked, with poor children and adults having 3–6 times higher odds of disability and uninsurance than their affluent counterparts. Socioeconomic differences accounted for 24.4% and 60.2% of racial/ethnic variations in child health insurance and disability and 75.1% and 89.7% of ethnic inequality in adult health insurance and disability, respectively. Health policy programs urgently need to tackle these profound social disparities in disability and healthcare access.