Mary Jalufka, our very own PhD candidate, received the prestigious Everett S. Lee Graduate Student Paper Award for her paper, “Using Meta-Regression to Model Residential Attainment of Foreign-born Whites, Black Americans, and Hispanics in 1940,” at the 2024 Annual Southern Demographic Association conference in Savannah, GA. This award honors outstanding graduate student research, celebrating the legacy of Professor Everett S. Lee, a founding member of the organization and a prominent figure at the University of Georgia. Only one award is given out each year, most recent former winners come from University of Texas at Austin, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Duke University, and Penn State University.
Mary's paper investigates the residential attainment outcomes of foreign-born whites, Black Americans, and Hispanics in U.S. metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) in 1940. She uses IPUMS historical microdata from the 1940 Decennial Census that provide detailed socioeconomic information for the full universe of respondents, information not included in any other Census standard questionnaire. Using these data, Mary is able to estimate locational attainment regressions for each metropolitan area in which the impact of individual characteristics on residential outcomes is obtained from model parameters in the community-specific micro-level regression. She then uses meta-regression methods to examine the extent to which the microlevel residential attainment relationship is a function of community-level predictors such as local demography. Mary finds that the level of predicted contact differs between foreign-born whites, black Americans, and Hispanics matched on individual and contextual characteristics, as well as among members of the same demographic group across MSAs. Varying rates of return on education and income help to explain intergroup variation but stop short of explaining intragroup variation given the homogeneity of effect sizes across MSAs. Instead, contextual variation in the role of homeownership and place of birth clarify why members of the same demographic group matched on socioeconomic status have diverging residential outcomes across contexts.
Congratulations, Mary! Very well deserved award. We are very proud of you!