Research

Effects of Raising Minimum Housing Standards: Evidence from the Tenement House Act of 1901

Abstract

How do minimum housing standards affect the health and economic outcomes of low-income residents? I exploit variation arising from the Tenement House Act of 1901, which imposed minimum housing standards on new construction, to show that legislation improved children’s health and changed neighborhood composition. Lower income households in treated neighborhoods were more often displaced relative to their higher income counterparts. These individuals moved to the urban fringe and experienced decreases in occupational score. Nevertheless, exploiting variation in children’s ages when the Act was introduced, I estimate that a child’s ten-year survival rate increases by about 0.5 percentage points per year after exposure to the Act. Tenement legislation is responsible for two additional years of life for children in treated neighborhoods.

Full Steam Ahead: Transoceanic Travel Time and Global Migration Patterns

Abstract

How does an innovation in transportation technology affect migrants’ choice of destination country and innovative activity at destination? To address this question, I study the transition from sail boats to steamships during the Age of Mass Migration. Since sea surface winds between origin and destination were a determining factor in travel time by sail, the reduction in travel time when transitioning from sail to steam depends on exogenous wind patterns (Pascali 2017). Using newly transcribed data on international migrations from 1830 to 1880, I exploit the disproportionate decrease in between-country travel times to show that a one percent decrease in travel time increases the number of migrants by two percent. I propose a new instrument for U.S. immigration based on the steamship. I show that steamship induced migrants increased county-level innovation such that a one percentile increase in immigrant share among counties led to 0.49 more patents.

The Land Value Effects of Tenement House Reform

Tenement Construction, Immigrant Banks, and Residential Segregation