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Valenzuela Casasempere, Pablo Andrés

University of British Columbia

The first chapter studies the long-run effects of displacement and neighborhood division by looking at individuals affected by the construction of the Interstate Highway System. I develop a novel method to identify affected individuals in the 1940 Census and link them to mortality records from 1995 to 2005. Using three complementary identification strategies, I find that displaced individuals die three months younger, are more likely to leave their neighborhoods, and reside in lower-socioeconomic areas at death. Highly localized spillovers show that individuals living within 100 meters of a highway are also more likely to relocate to lower-socioeconomic areas, yet they do not experience increased mortality. The neighborhoods where displaced individuals relocate explain 30% of the displacement-mortality effect. The second chapter studies the long-run socioeconomic impact of highway construction on U.S. neighborhoods. I construct a balanced panel of neighborhood characteristics from 1930 to 2020 for 62 metropolitan areas by combining historical census records and decennial censuses. Using a matched difference-in-differences design, I find that highways reduce neighborhood populations, driven by a decline in the Black population, with no effect on the white population. There is no evidence of rent changes, but homeownership rates decrease. These effects are more pronounced in suburban areas and neighborhoods with a low initial Black population share. The third chapter studies the increase in urban inequality across worker ages in the U.S. from 1980 to 2019. Using 1970 immigrant enclaves as an identification source, I find that young workers traditionally have a steeper relationship between the college wage gap and city population than older workers. The rising college bias of agglomeration externalities is explained by workers entering the labor market. I show that this increase in the urban component of the college wage gap stems from shifts in occupational structures across cities and workers of different ages. While both old and young college workers have moved away from highly routinized, low-paying jobs—especially in populous cities—young high school graduates’ occupational structure has remained unchanged since 1980.

Text

2025-06-03

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/91269

Economics

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/