Davis School of Gerontology

"Residential Tenure and Mobility among Older Adults in the Health and Retirement Study."

The objective of the proposed project is to produce the HRS Tenure and Mobility Data file, which will include both a data file and complete documentation of the data and created variables.

"Documenting the Geographical Features of the Great Recession."

The objective of this project is to construct monthly time series of regional economic indicators spanning over the time before, during, and after the Great Recession. Specifically, we will focus on the period 2003-2013 and refer to metropolitan areas, counties, and zip codes as our reference geographical units. Our aim is to document region-specific features at the finest possible level in order to accurately measure the differential impact of the Great Recession on individual well-being across regional economies.

"Monitoring Insurance Expansion under the Affordable Care Act."

To ameliorate the burden borne by Americans when paying for health care, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) intends to provide nearly universal health insurance coverage. This study seeks to monitor the expansion of health insurance coverage under the ACA and experimentally encourage uninsured, but newly eligible individuals to enroll in Medicaid. These goals will be executed by adding questions and an experimental component to a nationally representative Internet survey called the American Life Panel. The study’s findings will used to inform insurance take-up policy and add evidence on how health insurance can improve health and well-being.

"The Gente-fication of Los Angeles: Trends and Processes of Hispanic Neighborhood Ascent"

This project explores the degree to which majority Hispanic neighborhoods in Los Angeles are experiencing socioeconomic ascent as well as the demographic processes underlying these changes. Using Census and American Community Survey data, I will explore whether socioeconomic neighborhood ascent is due to changes in long-time residents' socioeconomic status (SES) or higher-SES residents moving in, whether Hispanic residents are being displaced from these neighborhoods, and whether the higher-SES residents in these neighborhoods are Hispanic and/or immigrants.

"Immigrant Detention Study."

This study will collect and systematically analyze extensive data on the current and former long-term detainees, their close family members, and their bond hearings, in order to address three main issues.  First, the study seeks to understand the social, economic, legal, and health consequences of long-term detention on immigrants, their families, and their communities.  Second, the study will examine the nature and operation of bond hearings available to immigrants in long-term detention.  Third, the study will test, for the first time, the feasibility of applying methodological innovations in research on incarceration/reentry to longitudinally study an immigrant population that is ordinarily very difficult to access and retain as study subjects.