Explanipedia

Political Power and Mortality: Heterogeneous Effects of the U.S. Voting Rights Act Open

Atheendar Venkataramani, Rourke O’Brien, Elizabeth F. Bair, Christopher Lowenstein · 2025

We study the health consequences of redistributing political power through the 1975 extension of the Voting Rights Act, which eliminated barriers to voting for previously disenfranchised nonwhite populations. The intervention led to broad …

Political Power and Mortality: Heterogeneous Effects of the U.S. Voting Rights Act Open

Atheendar Venkataramani, Rourke O’Brien, Elizabeth F. Bair, Christopher Lowenstein · 2025

Local government expenditure centralization and spatial variation in working-age mortality Open

Rourke O’Brien, Manuel Schechtl, Robert Manduca, Atheendar Venkataramani · 2025

Research finds disparities in local government spending to be one driver of place-based variation in population health outcomes in the U.S. This study asks: net of the amount of local government spending, does the centralization of …

Fiscal Centralization and Inequality in Children’s Economic Mobility Open

Rourke O’Brien, Manuel Schechtl, Zachary Parolin · 2025

Disparities in state and local government spending are key drivers of spatial inequality in social outcomes, including economic mobility. Yet beyond spending levels, the fiscal centralization of state and local governments—that is, the rel…

Municipal police and the economic mobility gap between black and white males in the US Open

Manuel Schechtl, Rourke O’Brien · 2024

Has the opening of Amazon fulfillment centers affected demand for disability insurance? Open

Kara E. Rudolph, Nicholas Williams, Floriana Milazzo, Atheendar Venkataramani, Rourke O’Brien · 2023

An estimated 17.6% of blue-collar, manufacturing jobs were lost in the United States between 1970 and 2016. These jobs, often union-represented, provided relatively generous pay and benefits, creating a path to the middle class for individ…

Fiscal Impoverishment in Rich Democracies Open

Manuel Schechtl, Rourke O’Brien · 2023

This article introduces fiscal impoverishment as a framework for comparative poverty research. We invert standard analyses of welfare state policy and household poverty by focusing not on poverty alleviation but poverty creation and exacer…

Administrative Burdens and Economic Insecurity Among Black, Latino, and White Families Open

Zachary Parolin, Christina J. Cross, Rourke O’Brien · 2023

This study investigates how administrative burdens influence differential receipt of income transfers after a family member loses a job. Using the panel component of the Current Population Survey from 1990 through 2019, we find that admini…

Death by Robots? Automation and Working-Age Mortality in the United States Open

Rourke O’Brien, Elizabeth F. Bair, Atheendar Venkataramani · 2022

The decline of manufacturing employment is frequently invoked as a key cause of worsening U.S. population health trends, including rising mortality due to “deaths of despair.” Increasing automation—the use of industrial robots to perform t…

Death by Robots? Automation and Working-Age Mortality in the United States Open

Rourke O’Brien, Atheendar Venkataramani, Elizabeth F. Bair · 2021

The decline of manufacturing employment is frequently invoked as a key cause of worsening U.S. population health trends, including rising mortality due to ‘deaths of despair’. Increasing automation—the use of industrial robots to perform t…

S-243 Death by Robots? Automation and Working-Age Mortality in the United States Open

Atheendar Venkataramani, Rourke O’Brien, Elizabeth F. Bair · 2021

The decline of manufacturing employment is frequently invoked as a key cause of worsening U.S. population health trends, including increased mortality due to rising 'deaths of despair'. Increasing automation—the use of industrial robots t…

Robots Don't Pay Taxes: Deindustrialization and Fiscal Decline Open

Rourke O’Brien, Zachary Parolin, Atheendar Venkataramani · 2021

Deindustrialization has fundamentally reshaped the economic geography of the United States. Between 1993 and 2007 alone, increasing automation—the use of industrial robots to perform tasks done by human workers—led to the loss of upwards o…

Economic influences on population health in the United States: Toward policymaking driven by data and evidence Open

Atheendar Venkataramani, Rourke O’Brien, Gregory L. Whitehorn, Alexander C. Tsai · 2020

Atheendar S. Venkataramani and colleagues discuss economic factors and population health in the United States.

Structural racism, economic opportunity and racial health disparities: Evidence from U.S. counties Open

Rourke O’Brien, Tiffany Neman, Nathan Seltzer, Linnea Evans, Atheendar Venkataramani · 2020

Illustrations Open

Katherine S. Newman, Rourke O’Brien · 2019

Association Between Automotive Assembly Plant Closures and Opioid Overdose Mortality in the United States Open

Atheendar Venkataramani, Elizabeth F. Bair, Rourke O’Brien, Alexander C. Tsai · 2019

From 1999 to 2016, automotive assembly plant closures were associated with increases in opioid overdose mortality. These findings highlight the potential importance of eroding economic opportunity as a factor in the US opioid overdose cris…

Replication data for: "Does Knowing your FICO Score Change Financial Behavior?" Open

Tatiana Homonoff, Rourke O’Brien, Abigail Sussman · 2019

Homonoff, Tatiana, O'Brien, Rourke, and Sussman, Abigail B., (2021) “Does Knowing Your FICO Score Change Financial Behavior? Evidence from a Field Experiment with Student Loan Borrowers.” Review of Economics and Statistics 103:2, 236–250.

College affirmative action bans and smoking and alcohol use among underrepresented minority adolescents in the United States: A difference-in-differences study Open

Atheendar Venkataramani, Erin Cook, Rourke O’Brien, Ichiro Kawachi, Anupam B. Jena , et al. · 2019

In this study, we found evidence that some health risk behaviors increased among underrepresented minority adolescents after exposure to state-level college affirmative action bans. These findings suggest that social policies that shift so…

Affirmative Action Bans and Health Risk Behaviors Open

Atheendar Venkataramani, Erin Cook, Rourke O’Brien, Ichiro Kawachi, Anupam B. Jena , et al. · 2019

College affirmative action bans were associated with higher rates of smoking and drinking in underrepresented minority 11th and 12th graders, and these students continued to smoke at higher rates into young adulthood. Policymakers should c…

README.pdf Open

Tatiana Homonoff, Rourke O’Brien, Abigail Sussman · 2019

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WI19-01: Economic Opportunity and Spatial Variation in Labor Force Participation, Self-Reported Disability Status and Demand for SSI/SSDI Open

Rourke O’Brien · 2019

analysis_transunion.do Open

Tatiana Homonoff, Rourke O’Brien, Abigail Sussman · 2019

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analysis_survey.do Open

Tatiana Homonoff, Rourke O’Brien, Abigail Sussman · 2019

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FICO Score Reason Codes.pdf Open

Tatiana Homonoff, Rourke O’Brien, Abigail Sussman · 2019

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Prenatal exposure to air pollution and intergenerational economic mobility: Evidence from U.S. county birth cohorts Open

Rourke O’Brien, Tiffany Neman, Kara E. Rudolph, Joan A. Casey, Atheendar Venkataramani · 2018

Early-life Medicaid Coverage and Intergenerational Economic Mobility Open

Rourke O’Brien, Cassandra Robertson · 2018

New data reveal significant variation in economic mobility outcomes across U.S. localities. This suggests that social structures, institutions, and public policies—particularly those that influence critical early-life environments—play an …

Health Endowment at Birth and Variation in Intergenerational Economic Mobility: Evidence From U.S. County Birth Cohorts Open

Cassandra Robertson, Rourke O’Brien · 2018

New estimates of intergenerational economic mobility reveal substantial variation in the spatial distribution of opportunity in the United States. Efforts to explain this variation in economic mobility have conspicuously omitted health des…

Disparate Impact? Race, Sex, and Credit Reports in Hiring Open

Rourke O’Brien, Barbara Kiviat · 2018

Half of U.S. employers consider credit history when deciding whom to hire. The practice has become a contentious policy issue, with multiple jurisdictions limiting the use of credit reports in employment. Yet to date, there has been no tes…

Does Knowing Your FICO Score Change Financial Behavior? Evidence from a Field Experiment with Student Loan Borrowers Open

Tatiana Homonoff, Rourke O’Brien, Abigail B. Sussman · 2018

Health consequences of the US Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) immigration programme: a quasi-experimental study Open

Atheendar Venkataramani, Sachin J. Shah, Rourke O’Brien, Ichiro Kawachi, Alexander C. Tsai · 2017

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