Peer-Reviewed Publications

Extreme weather and mortality of vulnerable urban populations: An examination of temperature and unclaimed deaths in New York City. (Accepted at Demography).

Best Poster Award, Population Association of America Annual Meeting (2024).

with Frank Heiland, Deborah Balk, Jennifer Brite, and Peter Marcotullio.

Abstract: We examine the connection between weather extremes and persons buried in the largest indigent burial ground in the United States—Hart Island, New York, where more than a million unclaimed individuals are interred. Public burial records provide a window into mortality among particularly vulnerable populations. In a first-of-its-kind analysis, we link long-term New York City daily air and wet bulb temperature patterns (1977-2022) to daily deaths that remain unclaimed and were subsequently buried on Hart Island. Examining season-specific temperature-mortality relationships, we find robust evidence linking peak summer temperatures to mortality. On average, a 1-degree Fahrenheit (0.556-degree Celsius) higher maximum daily air temperature in a 7-day (3-day) summer period predicts 1.2% (1%) more unclaimed deaths on day 7 (3), controlling for precipitation, holiday, year and decade fixed effects. Further analysis shows that as many as 5.1% of all extreme heat-related deaths were unclaimed city-wide, suggesting New Yorkers who died on days associated with extreme heat were up to three times as likely to be unclaimed. This research highlights the undue burden that increasing temperatures place on deeply vulnerable populations, and thus the need to use innovative, integrated demographic and climate data and methods to better capture and understand these impacts. 

Comprehensive e-cigarette flavor bans and tobacco use among youth and adults. (Accepted at Health Economics). NBER Working Paper No. 32534 (2024).

with Henry Saffer, Michael Grossman, Daniel L. Dench, and Dhaval M. Dave.

Abstract: The vast majority of youth e-cigarette users consume flavored e-cigarettes, raising concerns from public health advocates that flavors may drive youth initiation and continued use of e-cigarettes. Flavors drew further notice from the public health community following the sudden outbreak of lung injury among vapers in 2019, prompting several states to enact sweeping bans on flavored e-cigarettes. In this study, we examine the effects of these comprehensive bans on e-cigarette use and potential spillovers into other tobacco use by youth, young adults, and adults. We utilize both standard difference-in-differences (DID) and synthetic DID methods, in conjunction with four national data sets. We find evidence that young adults decrease their use of e-cigarettes by about two to three percentage points, while increasing cigarette use. For youth, there is some suggestive evidence of increasing cigarette use, though these results are undermined by pre-trend differences between treatment and control units. The bans have no effect on e-cigarette and smoking participation among adults 25 and over. Our findings suggest that statewide comprehensive flavor bans may have generated an unintended consequence by encouraging substitution towards traditional smoking in some populations.

Work in Progress

Beyond self-reports: Measuring the effect of e-cigarette taxes using biomarkers.

Immigration and education: Early insights from the Buslift to New York City. Presented at Population Association of America Annual Meeting (2025).

with Kevin Shih.

Working Papers

Innovation quality and global collaborations: Insights from Japan, Brookings Global Working Paper Series (2021).

with Dany Bahar.

Poverty hotspots and the correlates of subnational development, Brookings Global Working Paper Series (2020).

with Raj M. Desai and Homi Kharas.