Areas of Expertise

• Poverty & Inequality
• Social Welfare
• Labor and Employment
• Urban Economics

Biography

Rucker C. Johnson is an Associate Professor in the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley. His graduate and postdoctoral training is in labor and health economics. He received his Ph.D. in economics in 2002 from the University of Michigan and was the recipient of three national dissertation awards. Johnson was a Robert Wood Johnson Scholar in Health Policy from 2002 to 2004. His work considers the role of poverty and inequality in affecting life chances. He has focused on such topics as low-wage labor markets, spatial mismatch, the societal consequences of incarceration, the socioeconomic determinants of health disparities over the life course, and the effects of growing up poor and poor infant health on childhood cognition, child health, educational attainment, and later-life health and socioeconomic success.

Website

• Personal Homepage

Working Papers

• Race Differences in the Incidence & Duration of Exposure to Concentrated Poverty over the Life Cours

  GSPP Working Paper: (December 2008)

  Abstract

  This study is among the first to use nationally-representative data from the US to analyze
  the persistence in neighborhood quality over the life course. The analysis utilizes the
  Panel Study of Income Dynamics, spanning 1968-2005, and follows a cohort born
  between 1951 and 1970 from childhood into adulthood. I examine the extent of upward
  and downward residential mobility/instability from childhood through mid-adulthood
  using PSID geocoded neighborhood information and residential location patterns over 35
  years. Characterizing the length of exposure to poor neighborhood conditions for
  different demographic groups also serves to shed light on the age-profile of neighborhood
  effects on later-life attainments, including adult health and economic status.

  The results highlight substantial race differences in the incidence and duration of
  exposure to concentrated poverty over the life course. The study reveals high rates of
  immobility from poor neighborhoods over the life course, especially among AfricanAmericans. The results demonstrate that the average black child spent ¼ of childhood years in high poverty neighborhoods, one-third of early-to-mid adulthood years in high
  poverty neighborhoods, and fifteen percent of adulthood years lived in low poverty
  neighborhoods. This is in stark contrast to those rates for the average white child, who
  spent just three percent of childhood and adulthood years in high poverty neighborhoods,
  spent eighty percent of childhood years in low poverty neighborhoods, and more than
  half of early-to-mid adulthood years in low poverty neighborhoods. The analysis shows
  that black-white differences in adulthood exposure to neighborhood poverty are largely
  accounted for by differences in the likelihood of being born into a poor neighborhood,
  and to a lesser extent by differences in rates of upward and downward socioeconomic
  mobility over the life course.

• The Place of Race in Hypertension: How Family Background and Neighborhood Conditions in Childhood

  GSPP Working Paper: (October 2008)

  Abstract

  This paper investigates the role of family background and neighborhood conditions over
  the life course, particularly during childhood, in influencing health later in life, with a focus on
  the case of hypertension. Most of the black-white difference in life expectancy stem from racial
  differences in mortality rates prior to age 65. Thus, understanding sources of racial health
  disparities requires the investigation of exposures to socioeconomic conditions and risk factors
  earlier in the life cycle. Blacks’ higher prevalence of cardiovascular disease-related risk factors
  account for more than half of the racial disparity in life expectancy (Barghaus, Cutler, Fryer, and
  Glaeser, 2007), with hypertension the leading culprit.

  For a US cohort born between 1951 and 1970, I produce nationally representative
  estimates of the onset of hypertension through mid-life by race/ethnicity, childhood
  socioeconomic status, and childhood neighborhood poverty. I provide evidence on the
  consequences of childhood neighborhood poverty on the risks of hypertension; this is the first
  such study of the full US population. I use nationally representative longitudinal data from the
  US spanning nearly four decades to estimate hazard models of onset of hypertension. The data
  set, the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), has the additional unique feature of allowing
  analyses of siblings and child neighbors throughout much of their life course. I use the
  resemblance between neighboring children’s subsequent likelihood of hypertension in adulthood
  in comparison to the similarity between siblings to bound the proportion of inequality in this
  health condition that can be attributed to disparities in neighborhood and family background. I
  estimate four-level hierarchical random effects hazard models of the onset of hypertension, which
  provide a better understanding of the relative importance of family and neighborhood
  backgrounds. The results demonstrate that both childhood neighborhood conditions and family
  background influence the disease process and risk of hypertension later in life.

  I find childhood neighborhood poverty and its attendant stressors play an influential role
  in shaping risks of onset of hypertension in middle-age. Other notable neighborhood factors that
  were shown to influence risks of onset of hypertension in adulthood include childhood
  neighborhood crime exposure and county per-pupil school expenditures. Notable family
  background factors include birth weight, parental health status, and parental socioeconomic
  status. These effects appear linked in part to low intergenerational economic mobility,
  particularly among blacks. The results indicate that racial differences in these early life
  neighborhood conditions and family background characteristics play a significant role in
  explaining racial disparities in hypertension through at least age 50, while contemporaneous
  economic factors account for relatively little of the racial disparities in this health condition in
  adulthood.

• The Impact of Parental Wealth on College Enrollment & Degree Attainment: Evidence from the Housing

  GSPP Working Paper: (January 2011)

  Abstract

  A long-standing policy goal of aid is to narrow, if not close, the parental income gap in
  children’s subsequent educational attainment. Recent research indicates that credit constraints
  have played a larger role in college enrollment and completion rates over the past 15-20 years
  (Lochner and Monge-Naranjo, 2011; Lovenheim, 2011). Prior evidence found greater credit
  constraints in the US than Canada (Belley et al., 2009). Housing wealth has become an
  increasingly important component of the college enrollment decision over the past 15 years
  (Bound et al., 2010). The parental wealth depletion following the Great Recession and housing
  market collapse has potentially important implications for college prospects of our youth. A
  recent survey of young adults found that 20% aged 18-29 have left or delayed college
  (Greenberg and Keating 2009). A survey conducted in Colorado found that 1/4 of parents with
  children in 2-year colleges planned on sending their kids to 4-year institutions before the
  recession (CollegeInvest 2009).

  This study provides new evidence on the impact of parental wealth on educational attainment. In
  order to address the endogeneity of parental wealth, the empirical strategy analyzes parental
  housing wealth changes induced by local housing booms of the late 1990s and early 2000s, and
  the subsequent housing bust of the 2007-2009 period. Using geocoded data from the Panel
  Study of Income Dynamics (1968-2009) linked to MSA housing price data from the Federal
  Housing Finance Agency, I examine how changes in parental housing equity in the four years
  prior to their child being college-age affect the likelihood that the child attends college and
  where they attend (2-year vs. 4-year; in-state vs out-of-state; college quality). This provides a
  test of the role of parental wealth (and potential credit constraints) in influencing post-secondary
  decisions, including if, when, and where individuals attend and complete college.

• The Effects of Residential Segregation during Childhood on Life Chances

  GSPP Working Paper: (May 2012)

  Abstract

  Human capital accumulation may depend on the neighborhood in which one grows up through a
  variety of channels, including access to school resources, health and social service funding,
  neighborhood crime, peer and role model effects, proximity to a chemical dumping ground or
  related environmental hazards, and connectedness to job networks and informal sources of
  support. This paper provides new causal estimates of the effects of racial residential segregation
  during childhood on subsequent adult attainment outcomes. I account for the potential
  endogeneity of segregation and neighborhood location choice using instrumental variables based
  on 19th Century railroad track configurations, historical migration patterns, political factors, and
  topographical features. Following Ananat (2011), it is shown that cities that were subdivided by
  railroads into a greater number of physically-defined neighborhoods became significantly more
  segregated after the Great Migration of African-Americans to northern and western cities. To
  examine the consequences of segregation during childhood, this study analyzes the life
  trajectories of children born since 1950 and followed through 2009. Data from the Panel Study
  of Income Dynamics (PSID) spanning four decades are linked with information on neighborhood
  attributes and school quality resources that prevailed at the time these children were growing up.
  Results from 2SLS/IV models demonstrate that, for blacks, the level of racial residential
  segregation during childhood negatively impacts subsequent educational attainment, reduces the
  likelihood of high school graduation, increases the probability of incarceration, reduces adult
  earnings and the likelihood of intergenerational mobility, increases the annual incidence of
  poverty in adulthood, and leads to worse health status in adulthood; segregation effects for
  whites were not statistically significant across each of these outcomes but the point estimates were
  in the opposite direction of the corresponding estimates for blacks. The results are consistent
  with prior research that has found that increased segregation leads to more inequality in spending
  across districts of the same MSA, thus worsening the relative position of poorer districts.

• Intergenerational Risks of Criminal Involvement and Incarceration

  GSPP Working Paper: (April 2007)

  Abstract

  This paper provides nationally-representative estimates of the cumulative risks of
  incarceration and obtaining a criminal record by age 40 for a cohort born between 1951-
  1975. I show that men born in the 1960s/early 1970s have significantly greater
  cumulative lifetime risks of imprisonment than similarly-aged men born in the 1950s.
  This is in part a direct consequence of the transformation of incarceration and sentencing
  policy that took off in the 1980s. The racial disparities in lifetime incarceration risks are
  alarming. The results highlight that among black low-educated men, one-half either died
  or had been incarceration before the age of 40.

  Second, this analysis uses an innovative approach to investigate the relative
  importance of family background and neighborhood context on deviant behavior over the
  life course, including ever being expelled, criminal involvement, ever being incarcerated,
  the early formation of risk preferences, and risky health behaviors. Particularly
  noteworthy, the analysis of brother and male child neighbor correlations in adult
  incarceration history revealed remarkably high correlations of 0.69 and 0.54,
  respectively. These results highlight the profound influence that family and/or
  neighborhood background has on criminal involvement and risks of imprisonment.
  Moreover, the results suggest that neighborhood quality during childhood is a significant
  gatekeeper of the intergenerational transmission of deviant behavior and incarceration
  risks among males.

  Third, this study examines the intergenerational consequences by examining
  children of the next generation. I find, using the PSID-CDS data, that the prevalence
  rates of parental incarceration at some point during childhood are significantly larger than
  point-in-time estimates. I find that 20 percent of black children had a father with an
  incarceration history; and among black children with fathers who did not graduate from
  high school, an alarming 33 percent of their father’s had an incarceration history.
  Fourth, this study is among the first longitudinal child-outcome studies that
  examines the role of pre-incarceration risk factors and children’s living arrangements,
  parent-child relationships and substitute caregiver-child relationships, to help determine
  the impact of parental incarceration on families and children.

  I find linkages between exposure to parental incarceration and child behavioral
  outcomes. The pattern of results is remarkably similar across all of the empirical
  approaches utilized that address omitted variables bias—including hierarchical random
  effects models with an unusually extensive set of controls, family fixed effect models,
  child fixed effect models, and instrumental variables estimates. This study bears
  evidence on the extent to which parental incarceration has exacerbated racial disparities
  in childhood and in early adulthood.

• Who’s on the Bus? The Role of Schools as a Vehicle to Intergenerational Mobility

  GSPP Working Paper: (March 2010)

  Abstract

  Access to quality schools and educational resources for children are
  key engines of upward mobility in the US, holding the potential to break the cycle of
  poverty from one generation to the next. Residential segregation by race and class that
  leads to unequal access to quality schools is often cited as a culprit in perpetuating
  inequality in attainment outcomes. However, the role of child neighborhood and school
  quality factors in contributing to the intergenerational persistence of economic status, and
  as sources of racial differences in rates of intergenerational mobility, have received little
  attention in the literature.

  This paper analyzes the effects of the court-ordered desegregation plans of public
  schools, implemented in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, on the extent of intergenerational
  mobility. I exploit the wide variation in the timing of implementation of desegregation
  plans to identify their effects. The empirical analysis makes two unique contributions by
  investigating: (1) the effects of court-ordered desegregation plans of public schools on
  adult socioeconomic attainment outcomes and attempts to separately identify the effects
  of neighborhood and school quality; and (2) the role of childhood school and
  neighborhood quality in contributing to racial differences in intergenerational mobility.

• Educational Consequences of the End of Court-Ordered Desegregation

  GSPP Working Paper: (March 2012)

  Abstract

  The present paper combines this comprehensive data on the timing of court releases from desegregation
  plans of more than 200 school districts that occurred since 1990 (obtained from Reardon et al.) with nationally-representative longitudinal micro data of children born since 1980 followed through 2009. Inparticular, I use the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and its Child Development Supplement (PSIDCDS) matched to children’s school and neighborhood characteristics and school desegregation policyvariables. Using an event study framework and difference-in-difference model, I examine the impacts of the termination of mandated desegregation plans on academic achievement outcomes, including cognitive test scores, high school graduation rates, educational attainment, and non-cognitive behavioral outcomes, separately by race. Preliminary results show that the increased allocation of school resources to those in high poverty, minority neighborhoods following the release of continued court oversight actually served to mitigate the potential negative impacts of resegregation on black student achievement (at least in the short-run).

• The Grandchildren of Brown: The Long Legacy of School Desegregation

  GSPP Working Paper: (March 2012)

  Abstract

  In the US, there is a high degree of persistence in economic status and health status across
  generations, particularly in the lower and upper tails of the income distribution. For example, it
  has been shown that 42 percent of men raised in the bottom quintile of incomes remain there as
  adults, while only 8 percent of US men at the bottom rise to the top quintile (Jantti et al., 2007).
  While public policies that promote equalization of educational opportunity have been
  emphasized as keys to break the intergenerational cycle of poverty, there exists limited causal
  evidence of the mechanisms that underlie intergenerational immobility. Few studies have
  attempted to isolate the causal effect of education on the next generation’s well-being. This is in
  part due to formidable empirical challenges that arise from the paucity of large nationallyrepresentative data sets with information both on parental and child outcomes over the life cycle, and the difficult search for a credible identification strategy.

  This paper uses the Panel Study of Income Dynamics spanning 4 decades (PSID: 1968-2009) to
  link three generations of adult outcomes. The analyses exploit the historical period and quasirandom timing of court-ordered school desegregation to quantify the extent to which children’s well-being can be improved by increased parental education and document the intergenerational
  returns to education. The first stage of the analysis (using the “parent sample” that consists of
  cohorts born between 1950-1970) builds on prior findings that demonstrate for blacks, school
  desegregation significantly increased educational attainment, with no significant desegregation
  effects on whites’ educational outcomes (Johnson, 2011). The present study provides new
  evidence on the causal influence of parental education across generations by using the timing of
  initial court orders and resultant differences in childhood exposure to school desegregation as an
  instrument for parental education, linked (in the second stage) with their children’s subsequent
  life outcomes (using the “child sample” that consists of cohorts born since 1980). The 2SLS/IV
  framework and intergenerational research design utilized enables this work to assess the impact
  of school desegregation on children and their families into the third generation. I find a
  considerable impact of school desegregation that persists to influence the outcomes of the next
  generation, including increased math and reading test scores, reduced likelihood of grade
  repetition, increased likelihood of high school graduation and college attendance, improvements
  in college quality/selectivity, and increased racial diversity of student body at their selected
  college. The findings demonstrate that part of the intergenerational transmission of inequality
  can be attributable to school quality related influences. The results in turn highlight parental
  education as a causal determinant of generational mobility.

• School Quality and the Long-run Effects of Head Start

  GSPP Working Paper: (March 2012)

  Abstract

  This paper contributes to the Head Start literature by providing a unified evaluation of long-run impacts on adult outcomes across several domains. In addition to the extensive literature on the impacts of Head Start on test scores, the present study builds on and contributes to a burgeoning literature investigating long-term impacts of early life interventions (childhood programs in the first decade of life). The paper’s results complement the findings of studies on the long-term impacts of other early childhood interventions, such as the Perry and Abecederian preschool demonstrations, Nurse-Family Partnership, and kindergarten class size in the Tennessee STAR experiment (Chetty et al., 2010), which also find lasting impacts on adult outcomes despite fade-out on test scores.

• How Much Crime Reduction Does the Marginal Prisoner Buy?

  Co-author: Rucker JohnsonSteven Raphael

  GSPP Working Paper: (December 2006)

  Abstract

  We present new evidence on the effect of aggregate changes in incarceration on changes
  in crime that accounts for the potential simultaneous relationship between incarceration
  and crime. Our principal innovation is that we develop an instrument for future changes
  in incarceration rates based on the theoretically predicted dynamic adjustment path of the
  aggregate incarceration rate in response to a shock (from whatever source) to prison
  entrance or exit transition probabilities. Given that incarceration rates adjust to
  permanent changes in behavior with a dynamic lag (given that only a fraction of
  offenders are apprehended in any one period), one can identify variation in incarceration
  that is not contaminated by contemporary changes in criminal behavior. We isolate this
  variation and use it to tease out the causal effect of incarceration on crime. Using state
  level data for the United States covering the period from 1978 to 2004, we find crimeprison elasticities that are considerably larger than those implied by OLS estimates. For the entire time period, we find average crime-prison effects with implied elasticities of
  between -0.06 and -0.11 for violent crime and between -0.15 and -0.21 for property
  crime. We also present results for two sub-periods of our panel: 1978 to 1990 and 1991
  to 2004. Our IV estimates for the earlier time period suggest much larger crime-prison
  effects, with elasticity estimates consistent with those presented in Levitt (1996) who
  analyzes a similar time period yet with an entirely different identification strategy. For
  the latter time period, however, the effects of changes in prison on crime are much
  smaller. Our results indicate that recent increases in incarceration have generated much
  less bang-per-buck in terms of crime reduction.