Spatiotemporal Changes in the Slavery-Inequality Relationship: The Diffusion of the Legacy of Slavery.

Despite the persistence of relationships between historical racist violence and contemporary Black-White inequality, research indicates, in broad strokes, that the slavery-inequality relationship in the United States has changed over time. Identifying the timing of such change across states can offer insights into the underlying processes that generate Black-White inequality. In this study, we use integrated nested Laplace approximation models to simultaneously account for spatial and temporal features of panel data for Southern counties during the period spanning 1900 to 2018, in combination with data on the concentration of enslaved people from the 1860 census. Results provide the first evidence on the timing of changes in the slavery-economic inequality relationship and how changes differ across states. We find a region-wide decline in the magnitude of the slavery-inequality relationship by 1930, with declines traversing the South in a northeasterly-to-southwesterly pattern over the study period. Different paces in declines in the relationship across states suggest the expansion of institutionalized racism first in places with the longest-standing overt systems of slavery. Results provide guidance for further identifying intervening mechanisms-most centrally, the maturity of racial hierarchies and the associated diffusion of racial oppression across institutions, and how they affect the legacy of slavery in the United States.

Geographic Isolation and Vulnerability Across Peru's Ecological Regions: The Influence of Regional Contexts of Extraction.

Geographically isolated places are often sites of exported environmental risks, intense resource extraction, exploitation and marginalization, and social policy neglect. These conditions create unique challenges related to vulnerability and adaptation that have direct disaster management implications. Our research investigates the relationship between geographic isolation and flood-related social vulnerability across Peru's ecological regions. Ecoregions have different relationships with colonialism and capitalism that shape vulnerability, and we hypothesize that the relationship between vulnerability and geographic isolation varies across ecoregions. Using mapping techniques and spatial regression analysis, we find that relationships between vulnerability and geographic isolation vary regionally, with differences that suggest alignment with regional contexts of extraction. We find notable differences in vulnerability related to public health infrastructure and access to services and between ecoregions with sharply contrasting histories of natural resource extraction and investment and disinvestment.

Migration as a Vector of Economic Losses From Disaster-Affected Areas in the United States.

We introduce the consideration of human migration into research on economic losses from extreme weather disasters. Taking a comparative case study approach and using data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York/Equifax Consumer Credit Panel, we document the size of economic losses attributable to migration from 23 disaster-affected areas in the United States before, during, and after some of the most costly hurricanes, tornadoes, and wildfires on record. We then employ demographic standardization and decomposition to determine if these losses primarily reflect changes in out-migration or the economic resources that migrants take with them. Finally, we consider the implications of these losses for changing spatial inequality in the United States. While disaster-affected areas and their populations differ in their experiences of and responses to extreme weather disasters, we generally find that, relative to the year before an extreme weather disaster, economic losses via migration from disaster-affected areas increase the year of and after the disaster, these changes primarily reflect changes in out-migration (vs. the economic resources that migrants take with them), and these losses briefly disrupt the status quo by temporarily reducing spatial inequality.

User Beware: Concerning Findings from the Post 2011-2012 U.S. Internal Revenue Service Migration Data.

The U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) makes publicly and freely available period migration data at the state and county levels. Among their uses, these data inform estimates of net-migration as part of the U.S. Census Bureau's Population Estimates Program, which, in turn, are used for producing other annual statistics, survey design, business and community planning, and federal funding allocations. Building on and extending prior research, we devote this Research Brief to documenting from multiple new angles a highly concerning and apparently systemic problem with the IRS migration data since the IRS took over responsibilities for preparing these data from the U.S. Census Bureau in 2011. As we then discuss, despite the fact that the IRS provides documentation detailing changes that it made to how it prepares these data relative to how the U.S. Census Bureau prepared them, it is not clear why or how these changes would result in the problem detailed in our analysis. Given that this problem appears to be an internal one within the IRS, we conclude by suggesting that the post 2011-12 IRS migration data not be used until this problem is resolved, and we encourage the IRS to do so quickly, transparently, and collaboratively.

Identifying Substantial Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Outcomes and Care in Wisconsin Using Electronic Health Record Data.

BACKGROUND: Our goal was to identify racial and ethnic disparities in health outcome and care measures in Wisconsin. METHODS: We used electronic health record data from 25 health systems submitting to the Wisconsin Collaborative for Healthcare Quality to identify disparities in measures, including vaccinations, screenings, risk factors for chronic disease, and chronic disease management. RESULTS: American Indian/Alaska Native and Black populations experienced substantial disparities across multiple measures. Asian/Pacific Islander, Hispanic/Latino, and White populations experienced substantial disparities for 2 measures each. DISCUSSION: Reducing health disparities is a statewide imperative. Root causes of health disparities, such as systemic racism and socioeconomic factors, should be addressed for groups experiencing multiple disparities, with focused efforts on selected measures when indicated.

Population change and the legacy of slavery.

Despite increasing evidence of a contemporary legacy of slavery in the US South, scholars do not have a clear empirical understanding of the ways in which demographic forces can alter local connections to racial histories. In this study, we examine the influence of long-run trends in population change on the relationship between historical slave concentration and contemporary black-white poverty inequality in the American South. We combine one century and a half of county-level population data, including estimates of the slave and total populations in 1860, estimates of black and white population change starting in 1880, and black-white poverty disparities from the 2011-2015 American Community Survey. Our results offer new empirical evidence regarding the enduring influence of racial histories over time, and suggest that white population increase between 1880 and 1910 was particularly influential in understanding the local connection between slave concentration and black-white inequality. Moreover, rather than disrupting the transmission of the legacy of slavery, results indicate that white population increase may have helped spread this legacy of racial inequality to other counties through diffusion processes. We find that while local historical legacies are persistent, they are not permanent, and population trends are a critical force shaping local racial inequality.

Changing Spatial Interconnectivity during the "Great American Migration Slowdown": A Decomposition of Intercounty Migration Rates, 1990-2010.

Prior research on the "Great American Migration Slowdown," or the declining rate of U.S. internal migration in recent decades, is dominated by two research foci. The first is concerned with the determinants of the migration slowdown. The second is concerned with spatial heterogeneity in the migration slowdown in and across places. With respect to the aim of this paper, many studies of spatial heterogeneity in the migration slowdown have implicitly raised questions about whether and to what extent places are connected to one another by migration flows, or the spatial interconnectivity of migration. The spatial interconnectivity of migration is a concrete manifestation of underlying spatial interdependence among places, and, as such, deserves to be explicitly unpacked to further our understanding of the migration slowdown. Using county-to-county migration flow data from the Internal Revenue Service and a novel application of Das Gupta's demographic standardization and decomposition procedures, we document changes in the spatial interconnectivity of migration during the migration slowdown between 1990 and 2010. We show that counties became more connected to one another by migration over time, and that the increasing spatial interconnectivity of migration helped to keep the migration slowdown from slowing further. We also document changes in the spatial interconnectivity of migration for four types of migration flows: metro-to-metro, nonmetro-to-metro, metro-to-nonmetro, and nonmetro-to-nonmetro. Our work further elucidates the characteristics of the migration slowdown by describing changes in the spatial interconnectivity of migration. It also raises new questions for future research about the determinants and consequences of these changes.

The Differential Influence of Geographic Isolation on Environmental Migration: A Study of Internal Migration Amidst Degrading Conditions in the Central Pacific.

This study investigates how geographic isolation interacts with declining environmental and economic conditions in Kiribati, an island nation wherein which limited access to financial resources amidst degrading environmental conditions potentially constrain capital-intensive, long distance migration. We examine whether geographic isolation modifies the tenets of two dominant environmental migration theses. The environmental scarcity thesis suggests that environmental degradation prompts migration by urging households to reallocate labor to new environments. In contrast, the environmental capital thesis asserts that declining natural resource availability restricts capital necessary for migration. Results show that the commonly applied environmental scarcity thesis is less valid and the environmental capital thesis is more relevant in geographically isolated places. Findings indicate that geographic isolation is an important dimension along which migration differences emerge. As overall environmental and economic conditions worsen, likelihoods of out-migration from less remote islands increase whereas likelihoods of out-migration from more isolated islands decrease.

The Spatial Distribution of Poverty and the Long Reach of the Industrial Makeup of Places: New Evidence on Spatial and Temporal Regimes.

A wealth of research identifies industrial structure as a central correlate of place-level poverty and suggests that changes in and the clustering of industry contribute to the spatial clustering of poverty over time. However, few studies have investigated the spatial and temporal dimensions simultaneously, and none have effectively examined spatio-temporal interactions. Consequently, a core tenet of theory on poverty in place has not been adequately examined. To address this limitation, we explicitly test hypotheses about systematic variation in the poverty-industry relationship over time and across space using a new method to quantify dynamic associations by simultaneously accounting for spatial and temporal autocorrelation and relationship heterogeneity. The Upper Midwest is our study site given dramatic regional changes in dominant industries (i.e., manufacturing, services, and agriculture) and poverty during the past several decades. We find that the specific character of the poverty-industry relationship systematically varies along both the temporal and spatial dimensions: industry is more protective in certain periods than in others according to sector trends, and is more protective in certain places than others conditional on sector dependence. Our approach yields a more precise and reliable understanding of the long reach of local industrial structure on the spatial clustering of poverty.

U.S. Return Migration and the Decline in Southern Black Disadvantage, 1970-2000.

OBJECTIVE: This study investigates how the Return Migration altered racial inequality in poverty in the American South. METHODS: I disaggregate southern poverty into its separate constituents using household data from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) for 1970 through 2000. RESULTS: The prevalence of poverty declined most dramatically for black southern households and the racial gap in poverty narrowed to the extent that previous substantial regional differences disappeared. A central focus is the contrast between higher poverty and inequality among migrants who returned to their birth state relative to other southern-born migrants who returned to the South. CONCLUSIONS: The migration experience is diverse and has conflicting consequences for racial inequality; for some, migration maintained economic vulnerability. Given the complex force of migration, I conclude that a nuanced theoretical approach to migration that gives weight to economic and noneconomic motivations is critical to understand the racial dimensions of migration and the associated changes in racial inequality.

HISTORICAL RACIAL CONTEXTS AND CONTEMPORARY SPATIAL DIFFERENCES IN RACIAL INEQUALITY.

Research examining regional variation in the impact of racial concentration on black-white economic inequality assumes that the American South is distinct from the non-South because of its slavery history. However, slavery's influence on the relationship has not been directly examined nor has it been adequately theorized within the economic inequality literature. We assess whether the link between contemporary black concentration and poverty disparities is structured by historical racial context. We find that while there is contemporary racial inequality throughout the United States, inequality-generating processes vary spatially and in ways that are tied to the local historical racial context.

A Note on the Identification of Common Geographies.

Areal data have been used to good effect in a wide range of sociological research. One of the most persistent problems associated with this type of data, however, is the need to combine data sets with incongruous boundaries. To help address this problem, we introduce a new method for identifying common geographies. We show that identifying common geographies is equivalent to identifying components within a k-uniform k-partite hypergraph. This approach can be easily implemented using a geographic information system in conjunction with a simple search algorithm.

Population recovery in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina: Exploring the potential role of stage migration in migration systems.

In this research brief, we explore how places affected by natural disasters recover their populations through indirect, or "stage," migration. Specifically, we consider the idea that post-disaster impediments (e.g., housing and property damage) in disaster-affected areas spawn migration flows toward and, over time, to disaster-affected areas through intermediary destinations. Taking as our case Orleans Parish over a five-year period after Hurricane Katrina, we show that stage migration accounted for up to about one-fourth of population recovery. We close by discussing the implications, limitations, and potential extensions of our work.

The 'New Great Migration' of Blacks to the U.S. South: Estimating duration of residence in the absence of retrospective information.

BACKGROUND: Prior research on the 'New Great Migration' of Blacks to the U.S. South from other U.S. regions has neglected the issue of how long Black migrants have lived or can be expected to live in the South. This is a critical omission because duration of residence is an important precondition for and an indicator of migrants' integration in receiving areas. Unfortunately, data limitations prevent estimating Black migrants' duration of residence in the South in the usual way, using information from retrospective questions and life histories. OBJECTIVE: Taking an unconventional but familiar approach, this study develops the first estimates of Black migrants' expected duration of residence in the South to shed light on the temporal characteristics of the New Great Migration. METHODS: Microdata from four U.S. censuses and an adaptation to the accounting procedures in multiregional life tables are used to estimate Black migrants' expected duration of residence in the South between 1965 and 2000 for four birth cohorts (those born in 1920, 1930, 1940, and 1950), with uncertainty. We further disaggregate our results by place of birth (South versus non-South). RESULTS: Black migrants could expect to live about half of their remaining life between 1965 and 2000 in the South, with variation across cohorts and by place of birth. CONCLUSIONS: This study provides a needed point of reference for research on the New Great Migration of Blacks to the South, and shows how analyses of the age and origin-destination structure of migration flows can reveal their implied temporal dynamics.

Recovery Migration After Hurricanes Katrina and Rita: Spatial Concentration and Intensification in the Migration System.

Changes in the human migration systems of the Gulf of Mexico coastline counties affected by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita provide an example of how climate change may affect coastal populations. Crude climate change models predict a mass migration of "climate refugees," but an emerging literature on environmental migration suggests that most migration will be short-distance and short-duration within existing migration systems, with implications for the population recovery of disaster-stricken places. In this research, we derive a series of hypotheses on recovery migration predicting how the migration system of hurricane-affected coastline counties in the Gulf of Mexico was likely to have changed between the pre-disaster and the recovery periods. We test these hypotheses using data from the Internal Revenue Service on annual county-level migration flows, comparing the recovery period migration system (2007-2009) with the pre-disaster period (1999-2004). By observing county-to-county ties and flows, we find that recovery migration was strong: the migration system of the disaster-affected coastline counties became more spatially concentrated, while flows within it intensified and became more urbanized. Our analysis demonstrates how migration systems are likely to be affected by the more intense and frequent storms anticipated by climate change scenarios, with implications for the population recovery of disaster-affected places.

Recovery Migration to the City of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina: A Migration Systems Approach.

Hurricane Katrina's effect on the population of the City of New Orleans provides a model of how severe weather events, which are likely to increase in frequency and strength as the climate warms, might affect other large coastal cities. Our research focuses on changes in the migration system - defined as the system of ties between Orleans Parish and all other U.S. counties - between the pre-disaster (1999-2004) and recovery (2007-2009) periods. Using Internal Revenue Service county-to-county migration flow data, we find that in the recovery period Orleans Parish increased the number of migration ties with and received larger migration flows from nearby counties in the Gulf of Mexico coastal region, thereby spatially concentrating and intensifying the in-migration dimension of this predominantly urban system, while the out-migration dimension contracted and had smaller flows. We interpret these changes as the migration system relying on its strongest ties to nearby and less damaged counties to generate recovery in-migration.

Spatial variation in poverty-generating processes: Child poverty in the United States.

This study builds on research demonstrating that sub-regions within the United States have different processes that abet poverty and that child poverty is spatially differentiated. We focus on the social attributes of the local area to assess what the geographic place represents in terms of social characteristics, namely racial/ethnic composition and economic structure, and to resolve apparent inconsistencies in poverty research. Using spatial regime and spatial error regression techniques to analyze county census data, we examine spatial differentiation in the relationships that generate child poverty. Our approach addresses the conceptual and technical aspects of spatial inequality. Results show that local-area processes are at play with implications for more nuanced theoretical models and anti-poverty policies that consider systematic differences in factors contributing to child poverty according to the racial/ethnic and economic contexts.