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on Minorities Research (Ethnic, LGBTQ+, Disabilities) |
| By: | Qian, Yuting (Yale University); Li, Fan (Yale University); Chen, Xi (Yale University) |
| Abstract: | Racial and ethnic minorities are substantially less likely to receive timely dementia diagnoses, yet the factors underlying these gaps remain poorly quantified. Using nationally representative Health and Retirement Study data linked to Medicare claims and National Neighborhood Data Archive, we examine racial and ethnic disparities in timely dementia diagnosis among U.S. older adults and decompose these gaps using causal mediation analysis. Controlling for demographics and health conditions, non-Hispanic Black and Hispanic individuals are less likely than non-Hispanic White individuals to receive a timely diagnosis. Educational attainment is the dominant mediator, explaining 48% of the Black–White disparity and 62% of the Hispanic–White disparity, followed by neighborhood affluence (27% and 18%, respectively) and the density of non-physician health practitioner offices (16% and 15%) and physician offices (10% and 12%). Dementia specialist evaluation accounts for a further 7% and 6%, respectively. These findings identify education and neighborhood healthcare infrastructure as the primary structural determinants of racial and ethnic gaps in dementia detection, pointing to targeted policy interventions to advance diagnostic equity. |
| Keywords: | timely dementia diagnosis, disparities, education, neighborhood socioeconomic factors, health care access |
| JEL: | I14 J15 J14 I11 I18 C35 R23 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18619 |
| By: | Nicholas Bloom; Gordon B. Dahl; Dan-Olof Rooth |
| Abstract: | There has been a dramatic rise in disability employment since the pandemic. At the same time, work from home (WFH) has risen four-fold. This paper asks whether the two are causally related. Controlling for compositional changes and labor market tightness, a 1 percentage point increase in WFH increases full-time employment by 1.0% for individuals with a physical disability. The postpandemic increase in working from home explains 68%-85% of the rise in full-time employment. Wage data suggests that WFH increased the supply of workers with a physical disability, likely by reducing commuting costs and enabling better control of working conditions. |
| Keywords: | Disability Employment, Work from Home |
| JEL: | J14 J42 |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26112 |
| By: | Nickolas Gagnon; Daniele Nosenzo |
| Abstract: | We investigate preferences for engaging in or opposing discrimination, focusing on moral preferences beyond self-interest. Some individuals may oppose statistical discrimination on grounds of protected-group equality, while others may prefer it to reward groups with higher average merit. Likewise, individuals may oppose taste discrimination or assert their tastes for groups. We conduct incentivized online experiments to elicit discrimination preferences in three domains: ethnicity, gender, and LGBTQ+ status. Analyzing over 60, 000 anonymous decisions about how to pay workers, we report highly heterogeneous preferences and a paradox of meritocracy-while merit may be a reason to reject discrimination, it also justifies discrimination. |
| Keywords: | Discrimination, Ethnicity, Gender, LGBTQ+, Moral principles, Experiment |
| JEL: | D63 D90 J23 J31 J71 J78 K31 M52 |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26125 |
| By: | Nicolò Russo; Rory McGee; Mariacristina De Nardi; Margherita Borella; Ross Abram |
| Abstract: | Health shapes a broad set of later-life outcomes that are central to macroeconomics and public policy, including disability receipt, retirement, long-term care use, and survival. Yet we know little about how much differences in midlife health contribute to disparities in these outcomes later in life by race, ethnicity, and gender. Using the Health and Retirement Study, we construct a measure of health based on frailty and document large disparities at midlife. Black men and women have frailty levels at age 55 comparable to those of White men and women who are 13 and 20 years older, respectively, while the corresponding gaps for Hispanic men and women are 8 and 12 years. We then estimate a dynamic system linking health at age 55 to subsequent outcomes. Equalizing the distribution of health at age 55 across groups substantially reduces disparities in time spent in poor health, disability benefit receipt, and nursing home residence. Importantly, midlife health can account for later-life disparities more than education, health insurance coverage, and marital status jointly. |
| Keywords: | Health inequality, economic outcomes, economic inequality |
| JEL: | I10 D10 D13 |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26127 |
| By: | Holubowska, Olena; Renninger, Andrew |
| Abstract: | Cities bring different groups into proximity, but proximity does not itself produce meaningful encounter. This article examines when neighbourhood diversity becomes socially consequential by distinguishing residential exposure from realised intergroup contact. Using sixteen waves of the New Zealand Attitudes and Values Study linked to neighbourhood ethnic composition, we follow 76, 253 respondents across 371, 042 observations and 39, 422 residential moves in Aotearoa New Zealand. We estimate individual and wave fixed-effects models to examine whether changes in the local presence of Maori, Asian, Pacific, and NZ European residents are associated with changes in contact with those groups, and whether contact is associated with warmer outgroup evaluations. We find that increases in a group’s neighbourhood share are consistently associated with greater contact with that group. Contact, in turn, is associated with warmer attitudes. When neighbourhood composition and contact are included together, the direct association between composition and warmth is small and statistically indistinguishable from zero, while the contact–warmth association remains stable. A benchmark that assumes proportional mixing locally further shows that contact does not simply follow area demography: minority respondents encounter their own groups at higher rates than other groups, while Asian residents are encountered at lower rates generally. These findings suggest that neighbourhood composition forms an opportunity structure whose attitudinal significance depends on whether urban routines, institutions, and everyday spaces convert exposure into interaction. |
| Date: | 2026–05–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:n3hkb_v1 |
| By: | Jacob Arendt; Iben Bolvig |
| Abstract: | This study estimates the effects of an employment programme for disadvantaged unemployed individuals. The programme emphasized on-the-job training and contracting the unemployed for a few paid work hours as a stepping stone into the labour market. Evaluated through a randomised controlled trial, the programme was found to accelerate transitions into part-time work. Contrary to its intention, it permanently increased the share of participants receiving disability pensions among the most disadvantaged groups. To explain this finding, we suggest that training, while enhancing productivity for some, simultaneously provided information of employability used in the assessment of disability pension eligibility. |
| Keywords: | Unemployed, Active Labour Market Policy, Disability Pension, Immigration |
| JEL: | J14 J15 J64 D61 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26131 |
| By: | Singh, Pritam |
| Abstract: | In the mid-nineteenth century, the British Empire was facing a sanitation crisis. Epidemics transported through faster steamships imperilled the imperial economy, threatened labour productivity, and restricted the oceanic mobility of its subjects. However, finding a cheap sanitary workforce that could remove disease-carrying night soil (a euphemism for human excreta) on ships and in colonies was challenging. Several colonies were experiencing labour shortages, and the British officials considered poor white European seamen to be racially too superior, and West African sailors to be too indolent to perform sanitary duties on ships. Through the case study of Natal, a British colony in South Africa, this article shows how, given changing racial sensibilities and labour shortages, officials turned to lower-caste indentured Indian labourers to meet the needs for sanitation at sea and in colonies. While the history of how Indian indentured labour filled the labour gap in sugar plantations after the abolition of slavery in 1833 is well known, the centrality of lower-caste indentured Indian labourers in the sanitation infrastructure that made British imperial expansion possible remains largely undocumented. Contrary to dominant historical viewpoints, which suggest that indentured labour flattened caste-based occupational structures, this history of sanitation reveals a deeper entanglement between caste and indentured labour. |
| JEL: | N0 |
| Date: | 2026–05–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:137991 |
| By: | Karinna Saxby (Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research) |
| Abstract: | Objective: To examine secular trends in mortality by sexual orientation in Australia. Methods: Using Australian Census-linked-mortality records (2011–2023), Cox proportional hazard models were used to estimate all-cause and external-cause mortality risk among adults in same-sex relationships (n=54, 529) and different-sex relationships (n=7, 923, 328), separately by sex. Inverse probability weights balanced comparators on age, educational attainment, and household income. Results were stratified into periods before and after Australia’s 2017 legalisation of same-sex marriage. Results: Compared to those in different-sex relationships, females and males in same-sex relationships experienced elevated all-cause mortality risk [HR1.25 (95% CI 1.15;1.35) and HR1.24 (95%CI 1.16;1.31), respectively] and external-cause mortality risk [HR2.56 (95%CI 2.01;3.26) and HR1.96 (95%CI 1.64;2.71), respectively]. Inequalities in external-cause mortality risk declined following Marriage Equality among females (HR 3.40 → 2.04) and males (HR 2.01 → 1.93) in same-sex relationships, though remained significantly elevated in both periods. Conclusions: Australians in same-sex relationships experience elevated mortality risk relative to those in different-sex relationships, with inequalities persisting after marriage equality. Routine collection of sexual identity in the Australian Census would support ongoing monitoring of these disparities. |
| Keywords: | LGB, sexual orientation, mortality, Australia, marriage equality |
| JEL: | I14 J15 J12 J16 I18 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iae:iaewps:wp2026n07 |