Anna L. Ziff

Working Papers

Beyond the Local Impacts of Place-Based Policies: Spillovers through Latent Housing Markets

Abstract Many analyses of place-based policies, which target geographic areas often to foster economic development, focus on their direct effects. Responses of households and firms that propagate within similar markets (e.g., housing markets) are also important for studying overall effectiveness. I propose an approach to estimate non-spatial spillover effects on non-targeted areas in the same markets as the targeted areas. My approach can be adapted to other settings with possible non-spatial spillovers. I illustrate the approach and discuss the economic framework using a widespread, place-based policy, Tax Increment Financing (TIF). To characterize housing markets, I construct a network of connected neighborhoods using data on household moves and define markets based on a model of community detection from network theory. With this data-driven characterization, I estimate the "market" spillover effects to non-targeted areas within the same housing market. TIF is locally effective at increasing property values within the targeted area. However, the market spillover effects indicate a negative effect on non-targeted areas within the same housing markets. This result implies that the policy relocates investment from non-targeted to targeted areas. I analyze outcomes related to household and firm characteristics and find support for the relocation mechanism. I combine the direct and spillover effects to calculate a back-of-the-envelope estimate of an overall effect close to zero, with the policy redistributing investment towards relatively disadvantaged targeted areas within housing markets.

Levees: Infrastructure and Insurance as Adaptation to Flood Risk

Abstract This paper considers the interaction of two key flood policy instruments commonly used in the US, levee infrastructure and flood insurance, and measures how much flood insurance take-up changes in response to levee provision. Levees are critical infrastructure that reduce expected flood damage in a protected area. When a levee is constructed, and later accredited by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), it alters inherent flood risk, flood insurance prices, and mandatory insurance purchase requirements. Using a novel panel dataset drawing from the National Levee Database, manually collected levee accreditation documentation, and FEMA flood insurance data, we leverage variation in levee construction and accreditation timing within a difference-in-differences design. Construction timing allows us to examine insurance take-up as a result of decreased flood risk, while take-up responses to accreditation reflect changes in insurance prices and mandatory purchase requirements. Our paper has three main findings: first, we find that levee construction decreases flood insurance by 20 percent. Second, we find that levee accreditation does not further change flood insurance take-up. Third, we find that decreases in flood insurance take-up due to levee construction decreases aggregate household insurance spending by $1.2 million per levee-mile, accounting for both extensive and intensive margin changes, and $5.7 million in averted expected damages per levee-mile, which, when compared to recent estimates of levee construction costs, corresponds to a break-even time horizon of 10 to 50 years.

Association between the Volatility of Income and Life Expectancy in the U.S.

Abstract Numerous studies have documented large differences in the income- and education-mortality gradients across geographic areas and have emphasized the role of health behaviors, policy, and overall affluence, but less is known about the role of the volatility of household income in affecting life expectancy, especially among households in the bottom part of the income distribution. In this paper, we examine the relationship between the volatility of income and the life expectancy of adults in the U.S., focusing on the first two decades of the twenty-first century. We use a commercial source of data on all households in the U.S., InfoUSA, to construct longitudinal data on households residing in mid-sized commuting zones of the U.S. and measure household income volatility across the income distribution and across counties. We link data on volatility with estimates of life expectancy at the county level and by income quartiles to analyze the volatility - life expectancy relationship while including controls for demographics, economic conditions, and policy generosity. We find that house- hold income volatility is negatively correlated with life expectancy only at the bottom of the household income distribution. This relationship is driven by negative associations between life expectancy and household income volatility for non-Hispanic whites. Though we cannot extrapolate our conclusions based on place-based differences to individuals, we link our findings with a broader literature showing a relationship between volatile earnings and health as well as the literature on place-based differences in mortality.

Works in Progress

Rental Choice Sets in Low- and High-Opportunity Neighborhoods for Housing Choice Voucher Program Participants

Unifying Panel Data Models for Unobserved Heterogeneity

Publications

Gender Differences in the Benefits of an Influential Early Childhood Program

Abstract This paper studies the life-cycle impacts of a widely emulated high-quality, intensive early childhood program with long-term follow up. The program starts early in life (at 8 weeks of age) and is evaluated by an RCT. There are multiple treatment effects which we summarize through interpretable aggregates. Girls have a greater number of statistically significant treatment effects than boys and effect sizes for them are generally bigger. The source of this difference is worse home environments for girls with greater scope for improvement by the program. Fathers of sons support their families more than fathers of daughters.

Early Childhood Education and Crime

Abstract This article presents new evidence on the crime-reducing impacts of a high-quality, intensive early childhood program with long-term follow-up, evaluated by a randomized controlled trial. Proportionately, more women than men decrease their criminal activity after participating in the program. This gender difference arises because of the worse home environments for girls, with corresponding greater scope for improvement by the program. For both genders, treatment effects are larger for the least-advantaged children, as measured by their mother's education at baseline. The dollar value of the social cost of criminal activity averted is higher for men because they commit more costly violent crimes.

Evaluation of the Reggio Approach to Early Education

Abstract We evaluate the Reggio Approach using non-experimental data on individuals from the cities of Reggio Emilia, Parma and Padova belonging to one of five age cohorts: ages 50, 40, 30, 18, and 6 as of 2012. The treated were exposed to municipally offered infant-toddler (ages 0–3) and preschool (ages 3–6) programs in Reggio Emilia. The control group either did not receive formal childcare or were exposed to programs offered by municipal systems (outside of Reggio Emilia), or by state or religious systems (in all three cities). We exploit the city-cohort structure of the data to estimate treatment effects using three strategies: difference-in-differences, matching, and matched-difference-in-differences. Most positive and significant effects are generated from comparisons of the treated with individuals who did not receive formal childcare. Relative to not receiving formal care, the Reggio Approach significantly boosts outcomes related to employment, socio-emotional skills, high school graduation, participation in elections, and obesity. Comparisons with individuals exposed to alternative forms of childcare do not yield strong patterns of positive and significant effects. This suggests that differences between the Reggio Approach and other alternatives are not sufficiently large to result in significant differences in outcomes. This interpretation is supported by a survey we conduct, which documents increasing similarities in the administrative and pedagogical practices of childcare systems in the three cities over time.