Choice Set Formation in Residential Mobility and Its Implications for Segregation Dynamics

Maximizing Utility or Avoiding Losses? Uncovering Decision Rule-Heterogeneity in Sociological Research with an Application to Neighbourhood Choice

Empirical studies on individual behaviour often, implicitly or explicitly, assume a single type of decision rule. Other studies do not specify behavioural assumptions at all. We advance sociological research by introducing (random) regret minimization, which is related to loss aversion, into the sociological literature and by testing it against (random) utility maximization, which is the most prominent decision rule in sociological research on individual behaviour. With an application to neighbourhood choice, in a sample of four European cities, we combine stated choice experiment data and discrete choice modelling techniques and find a considerable degree of decision rule-heterogeneity, with a strong prevalence of regret minimization and hence loss aversion. We also provide indicative evidence that decision rules can affect expected neighbourhood demand at the macro level. Our approach allows identifying heterogeneity in decision rules, that is, the degree of regret/loss aversion, at the level of choice attributes such as the share of foreigners when comparing neighbourhoods, and can improve sociological practice related to linking theories and social research on decision-making.

Predicting Covid-19 infection and death rates among E.U. minority populations in the absence of racially disaggregated data through the use of US data comparisons

BACKGROUND

The E.U.'s lack of racially disaggregated data impedes the formulation of effective interventions, and crises such as Covid-19 may continue to impact minorities more severely. Our predictive model offers insight into the disparate ways in which Covid-19 has likely impacted E.U. minorities and allows for the inference of differences in Covid-19 infection and death rates between E.U. minority and non-minority populations.

METHODS

Data covering Covid-19, social determinants of health and minority status were included from 1 March 2020 to 28 February 2021. A systematic comparison of US and E.U. states enabled the projection of Covid-19 infection and death rates for minorities and non-minorities in E.U. states.

RESULTS

The model predicted Covid-19 infection rates with 95-100% accuracy for 23 out of 28 E.U. states. Projections for Covid-19 infection and mortality rates among E.U. minority groups illustrate parallel trends to US rates.

CONCLUSIONS

Disparities in Covid-19 infection and death rates by minority status likely exist in patterns similar to those observed in US data. Policy Implications: Collecting data by race/ethnicity in the E.U. would help document health disparities and craft more targeted health interventions and mitigation strategies.

Explaining Residential Clustering of Large Families

Numerous studies have shown that fertility behavior is spatially clustered. In addition to pure contextual effects, two causal mechanisms could drive this pattern. First, neighbors may influence each other's fertility and second, family size may influence decisions about where to live. In this study we examine these two potential causal mechanisms empirically, using the sex composition of the two eldest children and twin births as instrumental variables (IVs) for having a third child. We estimate how having a third child affects three separate outcomes: the fertility of neighbors; the propensity to move houses; and the likelihood of living in a family-friendly neighborhood with many children. We draw residential and childbearing histories (2000-2018) from Norwegian administrative registers (N ~ 167,000 women). Individuals' neighborhoods are defined using time-varying geocoordinates for place of residence. We identify selective moves as one plausible causal driver of residential clustering of large families. This study contributes to the understanding of fertility and relocation, and to the literature on the social interaction effects of fertility, by testing the relevance of yet another network: that of neighbors.

Segmented information, segregated outcomes: Housing affordability and neighborhood representation on a voucher-focused online housing platform and three mainstream alternatives

Online platforms have become an integral component of the housing search process in the United States and other developed contexts, but recent studies have demonstrated that these platforms offer uneven representation of different neighborhoods. In this study, we use listings covering the largest 50 U.S. metropolitan areas to assess how GoSection8, a platform uniquely focused on affordable housing and voucher-assisted households, compares with "mainstream" alternatives of Craigslist, Apartments.com and Zillow. Through descriptive and regression analyses of the housing and neighborhoods represented on these websites and a new way of measuring the distribution of rental housing opportunities, we advance a multisource perspective on the role of online information exchanges in housing search processes. Specifically, we find that GoSection8 and mainstream alternatives capture spatially-segmented information about housing markets, with GoSection8 ads representing units that are more affordable but also more constrained to higher-poverty neighborhoods where assisted households are already concentrated. The findings suggest that disadvantaged households are potentially funneled toward high-poverty, isolated neighborhoods by the operation of stratified information systems available for online housing searches.

Residential mobility, neighborhood cohesion, and depressive symptoms among urban-dwelling African American adolescents

Mechanisms linking residential mobility and depressive symptoms among urban-dwelling African American adolescents have received little attention. This study examined neighborhood cohesion as a possible mechanism. Participants were 358 urban-dwelling African American adolescents (Mage  = 14.78; SD = 0.34) who reported their neighborhood cohesion in Grade 10 and depressive symptoms in Grades 9 and 11, and for whom residential address information was available. There was a significant indirect effect of past moves in middle school on depressive symptoms 1 year later through reduced neighborhood cohesion. However, the indirect effect was not significant in a propensity score-matched sample. Results from the full sample of adolescents suggest that neighborhood cohesion may play a role in the experience of depressive symptoms following past moves in middle school. Different findings for the propensity score-matched sample highlight the need for future studies of residential mobility to employ strategies to correct for possible selection bias.

The Role of Attribute Screening and Choice Set Formation in Health Discrete Choice Experiments: Modeling the Impact of Benefit and Risk Attributes

OBJECTIVES

This study aimed to demonstrate the econometric modeling of benefit/risk-based choice set formation (CSF) within health-related discrete choice experiments.

METHODS

In 4 different case studies, first, a trade-off model was fitted; building on this, a screening model was fitted; and finally, a full CSF model was estimated. This final model allows for attributes to be used first to screen out alternatives from choice tasks before respondents' trade-off attributes and make a choice among feasible alternatives. Educational level and health literacy of respondents were accounted for in all models.

RESULTS

Model fit in terms of log likelihood, pseudo-R², Akaike information criterion, and Bayesian information criterion improved from using only trade-off or screening models compared with CSF models in 3 of the 4 case studies. In those studies, significant screening behavior was identified that (1) affected trade-off inferences, (2) rejects the pure trade-off model, and (3) supports the existence of screening on the basis of benefit-risk profiles, and other attributes. Educational level and health literacy showed significant interactions with multiple attributes in all case studies.

CONCLUSIONS

Choice modelers should pay close attention to noncompensatory respondent behavior when they include benefit or risk attributes in their discrete choice experiment. Further studies should investigate why and when respondents undertake screening behavior. Screening behavior in choice data analysis is always a possibility, so researchers should explore extensions of econometric models to reflect noncompensatory behavior. Assuming that benefit and risk attributes will only affect trade-off behavior is likely to lead to biased conclusions about benefit or risk-based behavior.

What Would It Take to Desegregate U.S. Metropolitan Areas? Pathways to Residential Desegregation by Race

Patterns of household mobility across neighborhoods reproduce patterns of racial segregation at the metropolitan level. Substantial literature across the social sciences has explored the scale and predictors of household mobility as well as changes in metropolitan residential segregation over time. This study unifies these two strands of inquiry by connecting the sorting of households across neighborhoods to aggregate changes in segregation levels. Using discrete choice models of intrametropolitan mobility and restricted decennial census and American Community Survey data for 1960-2014, I model the correlates of household mobility and identify the counterfactual scenarios under which lower segregation levels can be achieved. The results show that even though the mobility flows of the White, Black, Hispanic, and Asian populations across census tracts have become more similar over time, U.S. metropolitan areas are far from experiencing large drops in segregation.

Life Course Events and Migration in the Transition to Adulthood

Do life course events stimulate migration during the transition to adulthood? We identify nine specific life events in the family, education, and employment domains and test whether they lead to migration in the short term, using fixed-effects models that remove the influence of all stable individual-level characteristics and controlling for age. Marital and school completion events have substantively large effects on migration compared to individual work transitions, although there are more of the latter over the young adult years. Furthermore, young adults who are white and from higher class backgrounds are more likely to migrate in response to life events, suggesting that migration may be a mechanism for the reproduction of status attainment. Overall, the results demonstrate a close relationship between life course events and migration, and suggest a potential role for migration in explaining the effect of life course events on well-being and behavior.

The Unequal Availability of Rental Housing Information Across Neighborhoods

As more urban residents find their housing through online search tools, recent research has theorized the potential for online information to transform and equalize the housing search process. Yet, very little is known about what rental housing information is available online. Using a corpus of millions of geocoded Craigslist advertisements for rental housing across the 50 largest metropolitan statistical areas in the United States merged with census tract-level data from the American Community Survey, we identify and describe the types of information commonly included in listings across different types of neighborhoods. We find that in the online housing market, renters are exposed to fundamentally different types of information depending on the ethnoracial and socioeconomic makeup of the neighborhoods where they are searching.

Skill-Based Contextual Sorting: How Parental Cognition and Residential Mobility Produce Unequal Environments for Children

Highly skilled parents deploy distinct strategies to cultivate their children’s development, but little is known about how parental cognitive skills interact with metropolitan opportunity structures and residential mobility to shape a major domain of inequality in children’s lives: the neighborhood. We integrate multiple literatures to develop hypotheses on parental skill-based sorting by neighborhood socioeconomic status and public school test scores, which we test using an original follow-up of the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey. These data include more than a decade’s worth of residential histories for households with children that are linked to census, geographic information system, and educational administrative data. We construct discrete-choice models of neighborhood selection that account for heterogeneity among household types, incorporate the unique spatial structure of Los Angeles County, and include a wide range of neighborhood factors. The results show that parents’ cognitive skills interact with neighborhood socioeconomic status to predict residential selection after accounting for, and confirming, the expected influences of race, income, education, housing market conditions, and spatial proximity. Among parents in the upper/upper-middle class, cognitive skills predict sorting on average public school test scores rather than neighborhood socioeconomic status. Overall, we reveal skill-based contextual sorting as an overlooked driver of urban stratification.