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on Minorities Research (Ethnic, LGBTQ+, Disabilities) |
| By: | Chiara Campana; Pierre Koning; Maarten Lindeboom |
| Abstract: | While evidence points at potentially strong effects of stricter screening and tightening eligibility criteria for Disability Insurance (DI), little is known about their targeting effects: are screened-out workers also those with better future health and more ability to work? To shed light on this, we employ Regression-Discontinuity-in-Time regressions that compare the long-term outcomes of DI application cohorts just before and after a reform in the Netherlands. The reform led to stricter screening in the sickness period before DI application and reduced the number of applicants by 33%. Up to 18 years after application, we find persistently lower survival rates and lower employment rates of post-reform cohorts. Using detailed information on the future chronic diseases of these cohorts and the application diagnoses, we next construct indices capturing long-term expected survival (a “Survival Health Index”, SHI) and long-term employment prospects (a “Work Ability Index”, WAI) for DI applicant cohorts in the years following application. These indices allow us to assess whether the reform primarily deterred applicants with health-related disabilities, work-related disabilities, or both. We find that the self-screening induced by the reform was stronger for applicants with work disabilities (low WAI scores compared to their SHI scores) than for health disabilities (low SHI scores compared to their WAI scores). This is largely due to a decline in applications of workers with mental and musculoskeletal health conditions that have high survival rates, but lower employment rates. |
| Keywords: | Disability Insurance, (Mental) health, Screening, Targeting |
| JEL: | H2 I3 |
| Date: | 2026–09–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mhe:chemon:paper_1788312395330_653 |
| By: | Oded Galor; Marc Klemp; Daniel C. Wainstock |
| Abstract: | What gave rise to the mosaic of cultural expressions across the globe? Why are some societies more culturally diverse than others? This study develops a unified theory of cultural evolution, characterizing the forces that have governed this process over the course of human existence. The research advances the hypothesis that population movements and socioeconomic transformations generated a mismatch between inherited cultural traits and prevailing ecological and societal conditions, setting in motion an evolutionary process governed by adaptation-based vertical transmission, horizontal diffusion, and fitness-based evolutionary selection. The theory generates novel testable predictions concerning the origins of the global cultural mosaic and the cross-societal variation in cultural diversity. First, greater ecological distance between ancestral environments generated greater cultural distance across societies. Second, prehistoric differences in ancestral diversity contributed to divergent adaptive capacity and greater cultural distance. Third, societies descended from more diverse prehistoric populations exhibit greater cultural diversity despite convergence induced by adaptation to a common environment and societal norms. Drawing on measures of cultural distance and diversity derived from folkloric and musical traditions among ethnic groups, visual representations of common concepts, and the dispersion of norms, values, and attitudes, the empirical analysis lends credence to the predictions of the theory. |
| JEL: | O10 Z10 |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35656 |
| By: | Joshua S. Goodman; Samuel Nitkin |
| Abstract: | Private tutoring chains like Kumon and Sylvan have expanded rapidly in recent decades. Combining data on business locations, household spending, and district test scores, we study who uses these centers and how they affect academic skills. Nearly half of tutoring users are from the top income decile, with Asian and White households five and two times as likely to purchase tutoring as Black and Hispanic households. A staggered differences-in-differences design shows the opening of a district's first chain center raises district-wide math and reading scores by 0.02-0.03 standard deviations, at a much lower cost than public spending typically producing similar gains. Math effects are largest for White and Asian students, so that center entry widens racial achievement gaps, though less so in more racially integrated districts. These private investments help their users, deepen educational inequality, and shape outcomes by which state accountability systems and families judge schools. |
| Keywords: | tutoring center, test scores, achievement, educational inequality |
| JEL: | I21 I24 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12935 |
| By: | Ritikaa Khanna; Rourke O'Brien; Andrew C. Stokes; Atheendar Venkataramani; Elizabeth Wrigley-Field |
| Abstract: | U.S. life expectancy stagnated and declined in the 2010s despite continued growth in real per capita income. We use Preston curves to characterize this pattern as a change in the relationship between income and longevity. Using state-level data from 1980 to 2019 and county-level data from 2000 to 2019, we estimate population-weighted Preston curves relating life expectancy to logged real per capita income. From 1980 to 2010, U.S. states followed the classic Preston curve pattern: rising income was accompanied by rising life expectancy. Counties followed the same pattern from 2000 to 2010. From 2010 to 2019, however, states and counties continued to become richer while life expectancy stagnated or declined. The curves shifted right without shifting up and became steeper, indicating decoupling and divergence: increases in aggregate resources over time no longer produced broad longevity gains, and, in any given year, inequality in life expectancy by income grew. These patterns are robust to alternative temporal anchors around the Great Recession and to substituting education for income. They also appear across sex and racial groups. County-level decompositions are broadly consistent with arguments that longevity has fallen due to widely shared exposures to social deterioration, which may account for the Preston curve reversal. Collectively, we show that the recent U.S. mortality crisis reveals a weakening—and growing inequality—in the conversion of aggregate resources into longevity gains. We conclude that the recent U.S. mortality crisis could be understood not only as a story about particular causes of death, but also as a weakening of institutional and social translation. |
| JEL: | I1 I14 I15 J19 |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35470 |
| By: | Baird, Andrew F.; Keener, Steven; Finn, John |
| Abstract: | This study examines the racialized geography of automatic license plate reader (ALPR) surveillance in Hampton Roads, Virginia. We link court-unsealed Flock Safety camera locations to measures from the 2020–2024 American Community Survey and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s 2022–2024 National Vital Statistics System. Population-adjusted negative binomial models with locality-clustered standard errors and Webb wild-cluster bootstrap p-values test associations with racial composition, poverty, age structure, homicide and overdose mortality, and Black/White neighborhood boundaries. Camera counts are consistently higher in areas with larger Black populations and those bordering substantially Blacker communities, net of all covariates. Homicide mortality is not positively associated with cameras in the fully controlled model, whereas overdose mortality is. These findings challenge race-neutral claims that ALPR cameras merely follow serious violence and support theories of racializing surveillance by showing how data-driven public-safety infrastructure can reproduce racial inequalities in surveillance exposure. |
| Date: | 2026–08–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:d6j3b_v2 |
| By: | Do, Thi Thanh Duong; Nguyen, Thi Thiem; Luu, Van Duy; Nguyen, Thanh Phong |
| Abstract: | Macadamia has recently emerged as a high-value tree nut crop in tropical and subtropical mountain regions, particularly in the Northwest of Vietnam (including Dien Bien, Son La and Lai Chau province). In Dien Bien province, where agriculture is dominated by smallholder and ethnic minority farming systems, macadamia development is increasingly promoted as a pathway for income diversification, ecological restoration, and climate resilience. However, the rapid expansion of this crop also raises critical sustainability concerns that require systematic assessment. This study evaluates the opportunities and risks associated with sustainable macadamia production in mountain food systems, using a comprehensive analytical framework that integrates environmental, economic, and social dimensions. The research draws on field surveys, stakeholder interviews, and secondary data to assess production performance, livelihood impacts, and ecological implications in Dien Bien province. Key indicators include income generation, land-use efficiency, soil conservation capacity, market integration, and institutional support mechanisms. The findings indicate that macadamia cultivation offers significant opportunities for improving household incomes, particularly when integrated with agroforestry systems. It contributes to soil protection, enhances carbon sequestration potential, and supports the transition toward more climate-resilient farming systems. In addition, the development of value chains and market linkages has begun to create new economic opportunities for local communities. Nevertheless, the study also identifies several major risks. These include market price volatility, limited technical knowledge among farmers, insufficient access to quality planting materials, and weak extension services. Social challenges such as land tenure insecurity and unequal benefit distribution may further constrain sustainable outcomes. From an environmental perspective, inappropriate land conversion and monocropping practices could undermine biodiversity and long-term ecosystem stability. The paper concludes that achieving sustainable macadamia production in mountainous Northwest Vietnam requires integrated policy interventions, strengthened cooperative models, and the adoption of climate-smart agricultural practices. Enhancing technical capacity, improving market governance, and ensuring inclusive participation of ethnic minority communities are essential to balance economic benefits with environmental integrity and social equity in the region’s evolving mountain food systems. |
| Keywords: | Environmental Economics and Policy |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:nccc26:409070 |
| By: | Hodgkins, Josef V. |
| Abstract: | Objective: To argue that the geographic category "rural, " as operationalized in disparities research and federal shortage-area designation, conceals the rural populations who fare worst, and what follows for psychiatric–mental health (PMH) nursing. Methods: Critical analysis of literature on rural mental health disparities, rurality measurement, and racially and sexually minoritized rural populations, spanning 2002, when the field was urged past counting rural disorder toward how place shapes it, through 2026. Results: Prevalence findings have stayed inconsistent for two decades, substantially because rurality is measured dichotomously. On disaggregation, the rural–urban axis often proves the wrong one: among American Indian and Alaska Native veterans, urban–rural comparison yields no significant difference while comparison with White veterans yields large ones. Because shortage-area designation is geographic, the aggregate does not merely describe disparity; it drives allocation. Conclusions: Aggregation is not a neutral convenience. A category that renders the worst-off invisible and governs resource distribution is a justice concern for a specialty supplying much of rural America's mental health workforce. PMH nursing should assess structural position rather than residence, adopt continuous and intersectional measures of rurality, and contest designation methodology as professional advocacy. |
| Date: | 2026–08–15 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:5zvw8_v2 |
| By: | Andy Chung (University of Reading, Global Labor Organization); Tin Cheuk Leung (Wake Forest University); James Reade (University of Reading) |
| Abstract: | Digital platforms expose workers and managers to immediate, public, and persistent evaluations from external audiences, creating a form of social pressure that may shape workplace decisions. We examine whether such digital social pressure predicts subsequent opportunity allocation and worker performance, using professional football as a high-frequency empirical setting. We link player-match data from Europe’s five major leagues to post-match Twitter commentary and construct measures of negative sentiment, toxicity, and racial abuse. Comparing players with themselves over time and teammates in the same current match, we find that greater negative sentiment is associated with a lower probability of appearing in the team’s next match. Toxicity shows a similar but less stable association, while racial-abuse intensity is imprecisely estimated when the measures enter jointly. By contrast, associations with performance conditional on a subsequent appearance are small and imprecise. Overall, the findings suggest that digital social pressure is reflected more strongly in the allocation of subsequent opportunities than in worker performance, showing how public evaluations generated outside formal organizational boundaries can become part of the reputational environment surrounding internal managerial decisions. |
| Keywords: | digital social pressure; online criticism; managerial decision-making; worker performance; social media; professional football; racial abuse |
| JEL: | J24 M54 D91 Z22 J71 |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:wfuewp:023574 |
| By: | Kawimbe, Robyn |
| Abstract: | Since the election of President Hakainde Hichilema in August 2021, Zambia has undertaken a substantial programme of macroeconomic stabilisation, sovereign debt restructuring, institutional reform, energy diversification and renewed investment in the mining sector. This article examines whether these developments amount to more than a conventional economic recovery and instead represent the emergence of a new developmental order centred upon fiscal discipline, productive capacity, energy security, strategic mineral governance and institutional inclusion. The article adopts a qualitative political-economy methodology combining documentary analysis of Zambian legislation and government policy with evidence from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, African Development Bank (AfDB), Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC), ZESCO, Parliament of Zambia and major mining-sector actors. It employs a theoretical framework combining developmental-state theory, state-capacity theory and the concept of strategic economic sovereignty. The analysis finds that Zambia has made demonstrable progress in restoring macroeconomic stability. Inflation returned to the Bank of Zambia's target range in April 2026, international reserves increased substantially, fiscal consolidation progressed and Zambia reached agreements covering most of the external-debt restructuring perimeter. In May 2026, the Government announced a further debt-for-energy transaction involving approximately US$1.365 billion of sovereign notes and a US$600 million African Development Bank facility, linking debt management directly to national grid resilience. The article further examines Zambia's attempt to convert its copper endowment into a foundation for industrial development, including greater domestic processing and value addition, alongside substantial investment in solar generation and electricity infrastructure. Constitutional and institutional reforms designed to strengthen representation of women, youth and persons with disabilities are considered as components of a broader conception of state legitimacy. Anti-corruption initiatives and access-to-information reforms are similarly analysed as mechanisms of institutional accountability. The article nevertheless cautions against equating macroeconomic improvement with completed development. Poverty, inequality, electricity insecurity, commodity dependence, unemployment and corruption risks remain significant. The article concludes that Zambia's principal achievement under the Hichilema administration is best understood not as the completion of national transformation but as the construction of an institutional and macroeconomic platform from which transformation may become possible. Zambia's experience consequently offers lessons for resource-rich developing states seeking to reconcile debt sustainability, critical-mineral development, renewable energy, international investment and national economic sovereignty. |
| Date: | 2026–08–16 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:lawarc:hy8s7_v1 |