xvi, 307 p. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number. / This research contributes to scholarly understanding of the labor market activity of women living in disadvantaged neighborhoods in large U.S. cities, the group most affected by 1996's welfare reform legislation. Welfare reform tightened eligibility for means-tested assistance programs, forcing many women to seek employment despite daunting personal obstacles. This research uncovers the extent to which this subset of women found steady employment in standard, living-wage jobs as well as the reasons why many have not. Unlike most work in this field, it incorporates measures of neighborhood disadvantage to further explore the spatial barriers to employment faced by this demographic group. I ask whether neighborhood context matters for employment outcomes, beyond individual characteristics and circumstances. Survey data, collected in 1998-1999 and 2001, come from the Project on Devolution and Urban Change, a longitudinal study of 3,916 women living in poor neighborhoods of four U.S. cities. I link these individual data to tract-level U.S. Census data, resulting in a longitudinal, multi-city, geographically-linked dataset, something that no previous published research uses, but an important tool for understanding how neighborhood context affects individual outcomes. The methodological approach involves a combination of regression techniques including pooled logistic regression, ordinary least squares regression, the use of change scores as predictors, the use of lagged endogenous variables, and the derivation of predicted probabilities using results from regression models. Results of this research indicate that neighborhood disadvantage is of only modest utility in explaining women's work trajectories. Although living in neighborhoods with more car ownership does improve employment outcomes, other neighborhood measures are less important. Some traditional markers of "disadvantage," such as the presence of female-headed (single parent) households, actually facilitate better employment outcomes, suggesting the need to reevaluate traditional notions of neighborhood advantage and disadvantage. Individual barriers to employment, particularly health, childcare and family responsibilities, and individual car ownership are consistently predictive of better employment outcomes. The results suggest the potential importance of spatially-targeted programs aimed at alleviating childcare, health and transportation barriers to employment. / Committee in charge: James Elliott, Chairperson, Sociology; Ellen Scott, Member, Sociology; Patricia A. Gwartney, Member, Sociology; Margaret Hallock, Outside Member, Labor Educ & Research Center

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[pt] Esta dissertação é composta por dois capítulos. No primeiro capítulo, avalia-se o impacto de curto e médio prazo de um amplo programa habitacional brasileiro sobre a probabilidade de emprego e outros resultados dos beneficiários no mercado de trabalho. Nós usamos dados de sorteios realizados no Rio de Janeiro para identificar estes efeitos. Concluímos que o programa aumentou a probabilidade de emprego formal em cerca de dois pontos percentuais e não teve efeito sobre a probabilidade de emprego informal. Nós também encontramos evidências de que o programa aumentou salários e a qualidade dos empregos ocupados pelos beneficiários. Adicionalmente, usamos métodos de forma-reduzida para testar a importância de mecanismos que possam explicar o efeito do programa sobre a probabilidade de emprego dos indivíduos. Encontramos evidências de que o aumento dos custos de mobilidade do trabalho dos indivíduos aos projetos habitacionais construídos é um importante determinante dos impactos do programa. Em contrapartida, efeitos de vizinhança, fricções pela realocação dos indivíduos, migração e a distância para a sua residência anterior não parecem ser mecanismos importantes para explicar os impactos do programa. No segundo capítulo, complementamos a análise anterior construindo um modelo estrutural estático de oferta de trabalho. Nós incorporamos no modelo a decisão simultânea de participar do mercado de trabalho e do programa habitacional. Os dados do sorteio são utilizados para ajudar a identificar os parâmetros do modelo e para validá-lo fora da amostra. O modelo estimado é capaz de reproduzir de forma adequada o comportamento dos indivíduos que participam dos sorteios, tanto os utilizados na estimação quanto os sorteios mantidos apenas para sua validação. Então, utilizamos o modelo previsto para realizar experimentos de política pública. / [en] This dissertation is comprised of two chapters. In the first chapter, we assess how a large public housing program in Brazil affected short and medium-run employment probability and other labor market outcomes. We use data from lotteries in Rio de Janeiro to identify these impacts. We concluded that the program increased formal employment by about two percentage points and had no effect on informal employment. Moreover, we also find evidence that receiving a house increased wages and the quality of jobs held for the treated individuals and reduced participation in other social programs. Additionally, we used reduced-form models to test the mechanisms that might explain the observed increase in employment probability. We found evidence that the mobility costs from the individual job to the provided houses is an important determinant of the impacts of the program. On the other hand, neighborhood effects, relocation from the individuals house, migration and the distance from individuals previous homes do not seem to be important mechanisms in explaining the effect of the program on employment. In the second chapter, we complement the previous analysis by building and estimating a static labor supply structural model.We incorporate in the model the simultaneous decision to participate in the labor market and a housing program. We use data for lotteries to help identify the parameters of the model. The lotteries data is also used to out-of-sample validation. Our estimated model is able to reproduce well both the behavior of individuals in the data used for estimation and in the experimental hold-up sample. Then, we use this model to perform policy experiments and evaluate counterfactuals.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Human Nutrition / David A. Dzewaltowski / The prevalence of obesity within the U.S. has risen dramatically in the past thirty years. Recent changes in food and physical activity environments may contribute to increased obesity prevalence, suggesting that disparities in these environments may be linked to the increased risk of obesity observed in low-income, and racial/ethnic minority women. This dissertation characterizes the local food environment experienced by low-income women who participate in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) in Kansas, evaluates whether characteristics of the local food environment contribute to obesity risk, and examines how these relationships vary across the urban-rural continuum. Chapter One reviews the relevant literature examining the association between obesity and local food environments, and identifies three testable hypotheses that serve as the framework for later chapters. Chapter Two characterizes the local food environment and examines geographic, racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic disparities in the availability of small grocery stores and supermarkets. Chapter Three examines the association between store availability and obesity risk at an individual level among participants in the WIC Program, while Chapter Four utilizes multi-level modeling to examine the relationships between tract deprivation, tract store availability and body mass index (BMI). Significant geographic disparities were observed in the availability of small grocery and supermarkets. Racial and ethnic disparities observed within tracts were not observed when examining store availability in a 1-mile radius around the residence of WIC mothers. The majority of women participating in the WIC program resided within a 1-mile radius of a small grocery store, and micropolitan and metropolitan WIC mothers had a multiplicity of food stores available within a 3-mile radius of residence. Food store availability was associated with increased obesity risk only in micropolitan areas. The availability of food stores did not mediate the association between tract deprivation and BMI, which varied across the urban-rural continuum. Overall, these results suggest that the relationship between local food environments and eating behaviors is complex, that limited store availability does not contribute to increased obesity risk in vulnerable populations, and that the association between local food environments and obesity risk varies across the urban-rural continuum.

Studien syftar till att undersöka hur socioekonomisk segregation behandlas och kommuniceras inom olika instanser. Studien undersöker om kommuner och nationella organ arbetar utifrån samma mål och strategier rörande socioekonomisk segregation. Studien har en lokal avgränsning till det nyexploaterade området Gävle strand i Gävle. Segregationen mellan olika socioekonomiska samhällsgrupper har ökat under de senaste årtiondena. Höga bostadspriser och uppsatta hyreskrav gör det svårt för samhällsklasser med lägre inkomst att etablera sig på bostadsmarknaden. Detta leder till att socioekonomiskt starka grupper har större möjlighet att följa utvecklingen på bostadsmarknaden. Studien har genomfört en kvalitativ innehållsanalys samt en kvalitativt jämförande analys, där en jämförelse har gjorts mellan den kommunala stadsplaneringen och nationellt uppsatta mål och strategier som berör ämnet socioekonomisk segregation. Ämnet tystnad i text har också behandlats. Studiens resultat visar att det finns tydliga likheter och skillnader i hur ämnet socioekonomisk segregation behandlas i de olika dokumenten. För att säkra mångfalden i bostadsområden anses i majoriteten av dokumenten att blandade upplåtelseformer är viktigt. Samtidigt beskrivs det i dokumenten om problematiken med att nyproduktion är för dyrt och leder till homogenitet. En stor skillnad i denna studies resultat är hur i de nationella dokumenten lyfts fram vikten av att ställa mer krav i den kommunala planeringen. Samtidigt som det i de kommunala dokumenten redogörs att kommunen inte vill begränsa byggherrarnas byggkoncept. Det finns även skillnader internt hur kommunala och lokala plandokument behandlar socioekonomisk segregation. Studien har skapat en ökad förståelse för hur arbetet kring socioekonomisk segregation behandlas och genomförs genom att påvisa vilka skillnader och likheter som finns mellan olika styr- och plandokument. Studiens resultat kan användas för att bättre förstå dessa likheter och skillnader i syfte att kunna säkerställa att arbetet på kommunal och nationell nivå i större utsträckning behandlar socioekonomisk segregation likvärdigt i framtiden. / This study aims to investigate how socio-economic segregation is treated and communicated within different instances. The study examines whether municipalities and national agencies work on the same goals and strategies regarding socio-economic segregation. The study has a local delimitation to the newly developed area of Gävle Strand in Gävle. Segregation between different socioeconomic social groups has increased in recent decades. High housing prices and rental requirements make it difficult for social classes with lower incomes to establish themselves in the housing market. This leads to socio-economically strong groups having a greater opportunity to follow developments in the housing market. The studies have conducted a qualitative content analysis as well as a qualitative comparative analysis, where a comparison has been made between the municipal urban planning and national targets and strategies related to socio-economic segregation. Silence has also been addressed in the text. The results of the study show that there are similarities and differences in how the subject socio-economic segregation is addressed in the documents. In order to ensure the diversity of residential areas, most of the documents considered mixed forms of tenure to be important. At the same time, the documents describe the problems of new production being too expensive and leading to homogeneity. A big difference in this study's results is how the national documents emphasize the importance of placing more demands on municipal planning, while the municipal documents explain that they do not want to limit the building concepts of the building developers. There are also differences internally between municipal and local plan documents that deal with socio-economic segregation. The study has created an increased understanding of how the work on socio-economic segregation is treated and implemented, by demonstrating what differences and similarities exist between different control and planning documents. The study's results can be used to better understand these similarities and differences in order to ensure that work at the different levels to a greater extent deals with socio-economic segregation in the same way in the future.

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Denna studie ämnar belysa boendesegregationen i Malmö och vilka strategier och verktyg Malmö stad använder för att minska boendesegregationen. För att få inblick i lokala bostadsprojekt har vi undersökt införandet av hyresrätter i Limhamns Sjöstad samt Mallbomodellen i Hyllie. I Malmö är segregationen påtaglig och stadens områden har varierad socioekonomisk prägel. Vi har genomfört dokumentanalys, policyanalys och intervjuer, vilka tillsammans med utvalda samhällsteorier hjälper oss att besvara studiens frågeställningar. För att motverka uppdelade stadsdelar och uppnå social blandning strävar Malmö stad efter blandade upplåtelseformer. Ett blandat bostadsbestånd är av vikt i såväl befintliga bostadsområden som i uppförandet av nya för att motverka segregation. Utöver bostadsprojekt med fokus på integration och social hållbarhet är allmännyttans handlingsutrymme i Malmö något vi i denna studie undersöker. Allmännyttiga bostäder som godtar ekonomiskt bistånd som inkomst gör det möjligt för fler att bo och om dessa bostäder finns på olika platser i staden skapar det förutsättningar för en socialt blandad stad. Vi påverkas av vår omgivning och hur vi bor och för att ge likvärdiga förutsättningar för alla i staden är det viktigt att bryta boendesegregationen. / This study aims to examine residential segregation in Malmö and which strategies and tools Malmö stad uses to reduce residential segregation. To gain insight into local housing projects, we have examined the new rental apartments in Limhamns Sjöstad and the Mallbo project in Hyllie. In Malmö, segregation is evident and the different areas in the city have a varied socio-economic character. We have done document analysis, policy analysis and interviews, which together with selected theories help us answer the study's issues. Malmö stad strives for mixed forms of housing in order to achieve social mix and to counteract divided districts. Mixed housing is important in both existing housing areas and in the construction of new ones to counter segregation. In addition to housing projects with a focus on integration and social sustainability, we investigate the command of public housing in Malmö stad. Public housing that accepts financial assistance as income makes it possible for more people to reside and if the public housing is located in different places in the city, it creates the conditions for a socially mixed city. We are affected by our surroundings and how we live and to provide equal conditions for everyone in the city, it is important to break the residential segregation.

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