U.S. Census Bureau economists and social scientists are set to present their research findings at the annual meeting of the American Economic Association (AEA) and Allied Social Science Associations (ASSA) in San Francisco Jan. 3-5. This conference typically hosts thousands of attendees from around the world and showcases the latest economic research.

This year’s conference includes 21 papers by Census Bureau researchers examining the outcomes of children, adults, households, workers, and businesses on a variety of dimensions including earnings, employment, intergenerational mobility, program participation, housing, education, health and health care, productivity, international trade, regional economics, and statistical research. The papers being presented include: 

• The Measurement of Income Growth, Mobility, and Volatility in the U.S. by Race-Ethnicity and Gender (Maggie R. Jones, Adam Bee, Amanda Eng, Kendall Houghton and Nikolas Pharris-Ciurej). Using linked demographic and tax records on the population of U.S. working-age adults, the Mobility, Opportunity, and Volatility Statistics (MOVS) fill a gap in income statistics. MOVS defines households and calculates household income, applying an equivalence scale to create a personal income concept, and then traces the progress of individuals' incomes over time. The statistics paint a stark picture of income growth disparity in the United States.

• The EITC and Intergenerational Mobility (Randall Akee, Margaret R. Jones and Emilia Simeonova). This paper studies how the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) impacts the socio-economic standing of children who grew up in households affected by the policy through its use of the universe of tax filers and Census Bureau demographic and household information. Findings suggest significant and mostly positive effects of more generous EITC refunds on the next generation which vary substantially depending on the age at first exposure to increased EITC and the duration of exposure.

• Intergenerational Mobility and Housing Wealth in the United States (Ariel Binder, Max Risch and John Voorheis). Using linked data from administrative tax records, Census Bureau household surveys, and residential property ownership and valuation records, this paper examines the intergenerational relationship between parent and child resources in the United States. The authors find that housing wealth is more persistent across generations than income and that there are large gaps in relative and absolute mobility of housing wealth between Black and White families, attributable largely to differences in homeownership rates.

• Creating High-Opportunity Neighborhoods: Evidence From the HOPE VI Program (Rebecca Diamond, Raj Chetty, Lawrence Katz, Sonya Porter and Matthew Staiger). This paper examines the impact of the HOPE VI program, which demolished distressed public housing projects, replaced them with a mix of market-rate and subsidized units, and created new community programs to support residents. The authors find a large, persistent reduction in poverty rates in targeted neighborhoods. Children who lived in the revitalized public housing units 10 years after the award earned approximately $2,500 more at age 26 compared to children who lived in the public housing units in the year before the HOPE VI award.

• Where to Build Affordable Housing? Evaluating the Tradeoffs of Location (Cody Cook, Pearl Z. Li and Ariel Binder). Using administrative data on households living in units funded by the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, this paper shows that tenant characteristics such as income, race, education, and family structure vary widely across neighborhoods, despite common eligibility thresholds. Moving a new development to a neighborhood with less poverty and better access to good schools and jobs increases aggregate tenant welfare and reduces both racial and economic segregation. However, this is more costly to provide and disproportionately benefits more moderate-need, non-Black/Hispanic households.

• The Influence of Foreclosure on Family Outcomes: Moving From Opportunities? (Sharon O'Donnell, Owen Denoeux and Dani Sandler). Using panel data from the 2008 SIPP and foreclosure event data, together with tract-level neighborhood data and school quality data, this paper examines events preceding and following the loss of the home due to foreclosure during the Housing Crisis of 2006-2013 and the Great Recession.

• Socioeconomics of Eviction (Dani Sandler, Ashley Erceg, Nick Gratez, Sonya Porter and Matthew Desmond). This paper uses administrative earnings data from Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) and eviction court records covering the entire United States to examine how earnings and employment change preceding and succeeding an eviction filing or an eviction. The authors also explore heterogeneity by geography, race, gender, household composition, and industry.

• Evicted from the Land of Opportunity: Evidence on Displacement From California Rent Control (Brian Asquith, Kate Pennington and Charly Porcher). This paper examines the resilience of earnings and employment to displacement from high-wage, high-productivity, high-cost cities, due to plausibly exogenous evictions from rent-controlled housing. The authors find that evicted tenants are more likely to exit the city and endure a reduction in nominal income. Destinations tend to be neighborhoods with lower job density, high unemployment rates, and diminished school quality. Children from evicted households face significant setbacks. 

• The Effects of Universal Pre-K (Alexander Smith, Andrew Barr and Jonathan Eggleston). Using tax data and a difference-in-differences approach that leverages the introduction of universal preschool in Georgia and Oklahoma, this paper shows that universal preschool generated no average increases in earnings for individuals for whom the program was available in early childhood. However, there is significant heterogeneity in the effects, which the authors explore. Results on educational attainment, incarceration and receipt of government assistance align with the pattern of effects on earnings.

• The Long-Term Effects of Income for At-Risk Infants: Evidence From Supplemental Security Income (Gloria Aldana, Amelia Hawkins, Christopher Hollrah, Sarah Miller, Laura R. Wherry and Mitchell D. Wong). This paper examines whether a generous cash intervention early in life can “undo” some of the long-term disadvantage associated with poor health at birth. The authors examine the effects of the Supplemental Security Income program on health care use and mortality in infancy, high school performance, post-secondary school attendance, college degree attainment, earnings, public assistance use, and mortality in young adulthood. They detect no improvements in any of these outcomes.

• The Mortality Gap: Unveiling Mortality Disparities in the HUD Population (David Pritchard, Thomas Foster, Nikolas Pharris-Ciurej, Ethan Krohn and Veronica Garrison). This study documents the mortality of individuals receiving housing assistance from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and finds mortality rates that are 10 to 15 percent higher than the U.S. population, controlling for age, sex, and race. HUD-assisted non-Hispanic White and non-Hispanic American Indian and Alaska Native individuals experience much higher mortality.

• The Rise of Midlevels in Healthcare Supply (Joshua D. Gottlieb, Neale Mahoney, Kevin Rinz and Victoria Udalova). Combining medical claims with internal Census Bureau data, the authors document the growth in midlevel practitioners' role in providing health care in the United States and consider various explanations. They show that growth in health care demand, combined with doctors' increasing preference to live in urban and well-educated regions of the country, primarily drives substitution to midlevels.

• The Distributional Effects of Firm Demand Changes: Evidence From U.S. Linked Worker-Owner Data (Sean Wang and Samuel Young). Using linked administrative data on both workers and owners at passthrough firms in the United States, this paper documents the incidence of firm demand shocks on employment, wages and business income across the individual income distribution to assess the overall distribution of gains from business growth and losses from business decline.

• Productivity Dispersion and Structural Change in Retail Trade (Dominic Smith, G. Jacob Blackwood, Michael Giandra, Cheryl Grim and Jay Stewart). This paper presents productivity dispersion statistics for industries in the retail trade sector. The authors find that from 1987 through 2017, productivity dispersion increased slightly on average, with the tails of the retail productivity distribution having similar dispersion as the middle. Meanwhile, firm dispersion has increased more than establishment dispersion. The paper also examines productivity growth and the increasing importance of national retailers and e-commerce.

• Global Value Chains: Firm-Level Evidence From the United States (Aaron Flaaen, Fariha Kamal, Eunhee Lee and Kei-Mu Yi). Using Census Bureau microdata on international trade between 2002 and 2017, this paper measures the extent of international inputs embodied in U.S. exports at the establishment- and firm-level, providing a window into the ways U.S. firms are linked to multiple markets through both foreign sourcing and foreign sales. The analyses provide insights into the factors influencing the flows of global value chains and their resilience.

• What Firm-Level Responses to Tariffs Reveal About Trade Fragmentation (Beata Javorcik, Justin Pierce and Emily Wisniewski). This paper uses detailed data on imports from 1992 to 2021 of all U.S. firms to examine adjustments in their supply chains in response to the U.S.-China trade war. The authors find that U.S importers have lowered the share of imports from China, diversified their set of source countries, and increased the share of imports from related parties. Higher tariffs are associated with reduced overall trade flows and higher average prices for firms’ imports. Affected firms have also adjusted their sourcing patterns for “unaffected” products.

• The Characteristics and Geographic Distribution of Robot Hubs in U.S. Manufacturing Establishments (Erik Brynjolfsson, Catherine Buffington, Nathan Goldschlag, J. Frank Li and Javier Miranda). Using data from the Annual Survey of Manufactures, this paper shows that robotics adoption and robot intensity is more strongly related to establishment size than age and that respondents having robotics also have higher capital expenditures. Establishments are more likely to have robotics if other establishments in the same Core-Based Statistical Area and industry also report having robotics. “Robot Hubs,” which have more robots than expected given industry and manufacturing employment, are characterized along several industry, demographic, and institutional dimensions.

• Expanding the Frontier of Economic Statistics Using Big Data: A Case Study of Regional Employment (Brian Quistorff, Abe Dunn, Eric English, Kyle Hood and Lowell Mason). This paper proposes a framework for quantifying the usefulness of big data sources relative to existing official sources and applies the methodology to employment estimates using data from a payroll processor. The authors find that such data can improve existing state-level estimates by 9 percent and produce new, more-timely county-level estimates.

• SIPP SEAMLESS: Redesigning the Survey of Income and Program Participation (Neil Bennett and Jason Fields). This paper discusses the challenges that the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) currently faces, from declining response rates to rising collection costs, and the opportunities for modernization that would reduce respondent burden, move to year-round monthly multimode data collection, increase the use of administrative records and modernize data processing. The authors outline the new survey design and discuss the evolution in data collection methods, improvements in data processing and imputation, and leveraging of administrative records.

• Slowly Scaling Per-Record Differential Privacy (Brian Finley, Justin Doty, Ashwin Machanavajjhala, Mikaela Meyer, David Pujol, Anthony Caruso, William Sexton and Zachary Terner). This paper develops formal privacy mechanisms that ensure a per-record differential privacy guarantee degrades slowly in the protected records’ influence on the statistics being released. As an example, the authors consider the private release of sums of unbounded establishment data such as payroll, where the proposed mechanisms extend meaningful privacy protection even to very large establishments. They evaluate these mechanisms empirically and demonstrate their utility.

• Self-Selection and the Diminishing Returns of Research (Kai-Jie Wu and Lorenz Ekerdt). Examining the downward historical trend on research productivity, this paper finds that the average ability of researchers has fallen substantially. The authors also investigate the impact this has on the long-run growth rate of per capita income.

For a panel on federal research data, Nate Ramsey will be discussing access to confidential data for research purposes and John Voorheis will speak on advances in linking statistical and administrative data. Deputy Director Ron Jarmin will participate in a panel on the state of first-generation college graduates in the economics profession.

There will also be presentations based on Census Bureau microdata by researchers using the Federal Statistical Research Data Center (FSRDC) network.

Census Bureau economists and our FSRDC collaborators play a key role in creating and improving statistical products essential to policymakers, businesses, researchers and the public. These products come from a variety of sources such as survey microdata on businesses and households, linked employer-employee data, and confidential microdata from federal and state administrative and statistical agencies. Our economists use these data to study a variety of topics to help the Census Bureau better measure the economy.

More information on all the papers to be presented at the AEA/ASSA meeting, including a preliminary program with abstracts, is available at 2025 ASSA Preliminary Program.

More information on working papers by Census Bureau and FSRDC researchers is available at Research Working Papers.