Wagner Seminar Series ― Andrew Breck and Davin Reed
Title: The Effects of Gentrification on Original Neighborhood Residents: Evidence from Longitudinal Census Microdata
Authors: Quentin Brummet (U.S. Census Bureau) and Davin Reed (NYU Wagner)
Abstract: During the past two decades, college-educated and high-income households have increasingly located in urban neighborhoods. We use new longitudinal Census microdata to study the effects of this gentrification process on original neighborhood residents. We first develop a local labor markets model of gentrification, which yields two insights. First, gentrification's effect on original residents' observable well-being is approximated by its combined effects on their incomes, housing costs, commuting costs, and neighborhood amenities, regardless of whether they move or stay. Second, its effect on their unobservable well-being is proportional to its effect on out-migration. Uniquely, our data allow us to estimate these effects for tens of thousands of original residents of central city neighborhoods in all major metropolitan areas of the United States. We define gentrification as large increases in the number of college-educated individuals living in a neighborhood and employ various identification strategies to help address endogeneity from selection, omitted variables, and reverse causality. Our results suggest that gentrification may lead to small increases in original resident out-migration but that it has no effect on original resident employment, income, commuting distance, neighborhood quality, or rents paid and positive effects on original resident house values. Aggregating these estimates suggests that on average, gentrification benefits original resident homeowners and has little effect on the observed well-being of original resident renters. However, our results are consistent with well-being losses for original resident out-migrants if unobservable neighborhood preferences are strong.
Title: Effect of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program on Diagnosis of Diet-Related Diseases
Author: Andrew Breck (NYU Wagner)
Abstract
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) administered near-cash benefits valued at almost $67 billion dollars to over 44 million Americans in 2016. Although SNAP is well studied, little is known about its effect on the prevalence of diet-related diseases, including heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and high blood pressure. I use restricted-use, longitudinal data from the National Center for Health Statistics to provide new evidence of the effects of SNAP on health. These data include multiple years of Medicaid claims linked with survey information for respondents to the nationally representative National Health Interview Survey. The analytic dataset includes household and individual level characteristics, including SNAP participation, self-reported health variables, and claims-level data for diagnoses, procedures, and Medicaid expenditures. I treat participation in SNAP as endogenous using several linear and non-linear instrumental variable estimation techniques, exploiting plausibly exogenous variation in state-level SNAP policies. I present results from each of the estimation techniques and discuss their relative strengths and weaknesses. Overall, results suggest participation in SNAP has no robust discernible effect on likelihood of diagnosis of hypertension, type 2 diabetes, or heart disease. Following from these findings, I consider a number of policy implications and weigh several opportunities to leverage SNAP to improve long-term health outcomes among income-eligible populations.