Objectives. What were the determinants and patterns of naturalization in the first two decades of the 20th century? Low levels of citizenship acquisition among contemporary immigrants are frequently contrasted to the assumed rapid naturalization of prior European migrants, but in truth we know little about the earlier period. Historic data are well suited to investigate four explanations for naturalization: individuals resources and skills; regulatory and bureaucratic barriers to citizenship; relative costs and benefits of citizenship; and the degree of political mobilization directed to immigrants. Methods. I use U.S. Census microfile data to run logistic regression models, and documentary material to examine the contours of immigrant naturalization in the early 20th century. Results. I find that while individual attributes matter, place of residence could be even more important; in 1900, where an immigrant lived influenced naturalization more than birthplace, ability to speak English, or literacy. Residence effects seem linked to a states relative openness to immigration and local political mobilization. Over time, however, residence effects attenuate as the 1906 Naturalization Act and establishment of a federal naturalization bureaucracy appear to make citizenship patterns more uniform across the country. Conclusions. These findings suggest that historic and contemporary explanations of immigrants naturalization should focus as much on the context of reception as the presumed quality of immigrants.

Over the past decade, rents and home prices in major cities across the country have escalated rapidly. As young adults transition from college into the workforce, already owing an average of $20,000 in student loan debt, securing affordable housing in the current market can pose an overwhelming challenge.Because our nations largest cities contain the best prospects for high-paying jobs and professional career paths, young professionals still migrate to major metropolitan areas like New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Boston. The high cost of rent, however, often leaves them trapped in a prolonged rental cycle, unable to save enough money for a down payment on a home, or prompts them to become financially overextended by taking on large, risky home mortgages.

Persons who were perceived to be Arabs experienced a period of increased harassment, violence, and workplace discrimination in the United States in the weeks immediately following September 11, 2001. Drawing on prior studies that have hypothesized that experiences of discrimination increase the risk of preterm birth and low birth weight, this study explores whether there was an effect on birth outcomes for pregnant women of Arab descent. California birth certificate data are used to determine the relative risk of poor birth outcomes by race, ethnicity, and nativity for women who gave birth in the six months following September 2001, compared with the same six calendar months one year earlier The relative risk of poor birth outcomes was significantly elevated for Arabic-named women and not for any of the other groups.

This article uses the puzzle of diverging trajectories of immigrant citizenship in the United States and Canada to build a new approach to the study of citizenship and political incorporation. I consider three existing models of citizenship: an approach that considers citizenship adoption as the product of cost/benefit calculations; an approach that understands individuals and groups to be differentially endowed with the skills, resources and interests necessary to acquire citizenship; and an approach that believes countries adopt citizenship regimes which either include or shut out immigrants. I then offer an alternative model of structured mobilization which views political incorporation as a social process of mobilization by friends, family, community organizations and local leaders that is embedded in an institutional context shaped by government policies of diversity and newcomer settlement. The material and symbolic resources provided by government shape the ability and interest of "social helpers" to assist with and mobilize around citizenship. The article concludes by considering the implications of structured mobilization for various debates in immigration and political sociology.

Drowning in student loan and credit card debt? Cant afford to get married, buy a home, have children? At last, a book for the under-35 generation (and their parents) that explains why it is not their fault.Strapped offers a groundbreaking look at the new obstacle course facing young adultsthe under-35 crowdas they try to build careers, buy homes, and start families. As Tamara Draut explains, getting ahead is getting harder. A college degree is the new high school diplomabut it now costs a fortune to get that degree, and students graduate with crippling debts. Good jobs are scarcer thanks to stagnant wages and disappearing benefits. And, the cost of everythingstarter homes, health coverage, child carekeeps going up and up. Budding families, even those with two incomes, struggle to pay the bills, while Visa and Mastercard have become the new safety net. Young adults are starting out behind the financial eight ballborrowing their way into adulthood and wondering whatever happened to the American Dream.Is this the way things have to be? Not at all, argues Tamara Draut, a leading young commentator and a fresh voice for change. She shows how the obstacle course bedeviling young adults didnt just happenit was allowed to happen by a generation of leaders more interested in serving wealthy interests than in investing in the nations future. Strapped brims with ideas for a new kind of America where every young person can go to college, buy a home, and start a family.Strapped will help jump-start a national conversation about where the country is failingand how we can make it right again.

This paper explores small-scale and primarily informal entrepreneurship through the lens of self-employed home gardeners in South Texas. Though the study site of Laredo, Texas lies within the southwestern border area of the United States, South Texas is best characterized by: the underdevelopment of basic infrastructure (e.g., physical, educational, and social), the inadequate development of human resources and income, and the degraded environment. Nonetheless, self-employed gardeners have improved their life chances, in spite of the regions challenges, earning 1.7 times the legal minimum wage. Additional results based on the survey of one-hundred (100) self-employed gardeners reveal a nearly even split between full-time and part-time employment, the importance of the border and the proximity of Mexico to the supply and informality of gardeners, and the ease of market entry into the gardening profession. Four propositions for further research for border entrepreneurship and informality are offered.

The United States has a vital resource that gives it an advantage over its industrialized peers, namely people. With the third largest population in the world, the U.S. stands apart from many European countries and Japan who are coping with the challenge of population aging and below replacement fertility. Owing to high levels of immigration and high fertility among foreign-born women, the U.S. population continues to grow even as it becomes ever more diverse. Census 2000 recorded its largest minority population in history28 percentwith 12 percent African American; 11 percent Hispanic; 4 percent Asian; and other groups combined accounting for the remainder. In a globalized world, demographic complexity could become an asset by strengthening market ties and fostering regional integration. Realizing these dividends, however, requires human capital investments that position the U.S. to compete more effectively in global markets.

"Widely acknowledged as a masterful analysis of the distinctive features of the new immigration, this book is a lively classic, combining an innovative paradigm with rich empirical evidence. With commitment and discipline, its authors provide the best that social science has to offer."--Aristide Zolberg, author of A Nation by Design

Technological progress has long been widely recognized as a crucial source of economic growth. Many countries have, accordingly, devoted considerable resources to promote more rapid generation and diffusion of technology in their economies. Yet recent studies reveal a persistence of stark contrasts across countries and geographic space more generally, not only in productivity, but also in the generation of new technological knowledge. What accounts for these geographic disparities is not well understood.

We demonstrate a method to synthesize a small but statistically valid sample of individuals for the 1890 Census, which was destroyed. This generated sample covers a subset of the questions that were asked in the 1880 Census producing records that match a subset of the aggregate statistics that did survive. Strictly speaking, this sample is "made-up" data, and as such would be useless for genealogical research, but it has the same aggregate statistical properties that the actual data is known to have had. While our work was restricted to a subset of the available variables, our implementation of a constraint satisfaction solver within the census/survey domain should provide the basis for the construction of a better dataset for historical research than the use of straight-line interpolation when the scaled to consider more variables and geographic regions.

This dissertation is a collection of three essays, each of which examines different aspects of self-employment. The different analyses use different sources of data and various econometric methods to test issues related to US entrepreneurship.In the first essay, I use NSCG (National Survey of College Graduates) dataset in order to estimate the impact of human capital on the self-employment status of individuals. To capture this effect, I use Probit and Logit techniques separately on men and women and find out that individuals who majored in medicine, law, business, architecture, psychology, fine arts and agricultural sciences are more likely to be self-employed. I do find evidence that women, Blacks and Hispanics have the smallest interest to run their own business. One important finding is that people with degrees in engineering, education and science choose mostly to be wage-employed.The second essay examines the effect of human capital on self-employment earnings using the same dataset obtained for the first one. To estimate the coefficients on income levels, I take advantage of three different econometric methods, namely OLS, Heckit and matching estimator. Regression results on men show that having higher education brings more success in terms of self-employment earnings. Evidence shows that men do better when they are self-employed whereas women are better off when they are wage workers. The most lucrative majors for the male entrepreneurs are architecture, math, physics, chemistry and most fields of engineering. Women entrepreneurs who enjoy higher earnings are mostly majored in architecture, medicine, law, psychology and counseling. However, no particular education level is found to contribute to female entrepreneurial earnings. Being Asian or in the middle-age category increases the likelihood of having higher self-employment incomes. Marriage is found to considerably contribute to male entrepreneurial earnings whereas it adversely affects female self-employment income.In the final essay, I look at the effect population density has on US local self-employment rates. The motivation is the existence of a huge variation of population densities and a considerable deviation of self-employment rates across US states and counties. My hypothesis, which stems from the theory of division of labor, is that self-employment rate declines with a greater fraction of the population. Data for this analysis are taken from Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) in year 2000. I employ Probit and Logit models as the empirical strategy, separately on men and women. Results show that a negative and statistically significant impact of population density is present for both sexes.Hence, people who are located in less crowded areas are more likely to be self-employed. Considering the relatively low availability of good-matching jobs in smaller places, self-employment can be explained as a failure of the size of the market place. This effect is found to be larger for people like physicians and lawyers who are in more specialized occupations, indicating a greater negative impact of the size of the location on the self-employment status of people with higher skills.

In 2003 the Hispanic population of the United States reached 40 millionor 44 million if the inhabitants of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico are included (U.S. Census Bureau, 2004b). Only Mexico (with a population above 100 million) is larger among Spanish-speaking countries today. The rapid growth of the Hispanic populationwhich had been estimated at only 4 million in 1950has been stunning (Table 2-1).1 Its current growth rate is four times that of the total population. The U.S. Census Bureau (2004a) has projected that, given continuing immigration and moderate levels of natural increase, Hispanics will grow by 2050 to an estimated 103 million people and account for 25 percent of the national total, significantly exceeding the proportions of other ethnic or racial minorities. And while Hispanic Americans now account for one of every seven persons in the United States, their impactsocial, cultural, political, and economicis much more profound because of their concentration in particular states and localities. The origins, present status, and complex trajectories of this population thus merit careful analysis.

I construct a set of dynamic macroeconomic models to analyze the effect of unskilled immigration on wage inequality. The immigrants or their descendants do not remain unskilledover time they may approach or exceed the general level of educational attainment. In the baseline model, the economys capital supply is determined endogenously by the savings behavior of infinite-lived dynasties, and I also consider models in which the supply of capital is perfectly elastic, or exogenously determined. I derive a simple formula that determines the time discounted value of the skill premium enjoyed by college-educated workers following a change in the rate of immigration for unskilled workers, or a change in the degree or rate at which unskilled immigrants become skilled. I compare the calculations of the skill premiums to data from the U.S. Current Population Survey to determine the long-run effect of different immigrant groups on wage inequality in the United States.JEL Classification Numbers: J61, O41.Key Words: Immigration, Educational Attainment, Wage Inequality.

The debate over the minimum wage has continued since before its inception in 1938 through the present with legislation entered into U.S. Congress and several states to raise the wage above the $5.15 level set in 1997. The call to change the minimum wage is driven by its decreasing value over time. Since 1968, the value of the minimum wage has experienced a declining trend punctuated by periodic adjustments, but because the federal minimum wage is set by Congress and is not indexed for inflation its value continues to decline. The decline in the real value of the minimum wage is particularly felt by those who may be supporting a family and earning the minimum rate. From 1959 (when these data began to be collected) to 1981 the minimum wage tracked very closely to the federal poverty level for a family of three. Since 1981, however, the annual earnings of a head of household earning minimum wage have fallen further below this poverty measure. Another trend that began in 1981 is the decreasing number of people earning minimum wages in the United States. This number continues to decline to the point that in 1999 about 2.5 percent of the workforce earned minimum wage and there is evidence that this percentage has continued to decline. The Congress has not increased the minimum wage in over nine years. This is the longest period without an increase since the rate was established at $0.25 in 1938. Several states have decided to change the minimum wage rate in their states well above the federal rate. Currently, 21 states have rates above the federally established rate and six more states will vote on increases in November, 2006. The states with the highest rates are Washington ($7.63) and Oregon ($7.50) with both states’ rates indexed for inflation. An important question in the debate over the minimum wage is who is earning minimum wage? If, as some assume, nearly all minimum wage earners are teenagers working at fast-food restaurants, then increasing the minimum wage will only inflate the price of a combo meal. If this situation is the case then an increase in the minimum wage could mean the loss of jobs for some employees when profits are squeezed by increasing costs of labor. On the other hand, if those earning minimum wage include a significant number of heads of households including single parents, then the level of the minimum wage rate could be vitally important to someone trying to survive on one or more minimum wage jobs. This study seeks to answer the question of who earns minimum wage in Utah by utilizing national Census data, Community Population Survey (CPS) data, Utah Department of Workforce Services (DWS) data and original survey research of Utah’s businesses. National Census data shows that there are approximately two million workers (2.5% of the hourly-paid workforce) who earned minimum wage or less in the United States. The characteristics of these workers is that they tend to be younger (ages 20-24 is the largest group), female (66%), mostly Caucasian (a slightly higher percentage of minimum wage workers are White than the regular hourly-paid workforce), and work part-time. Most minimum wage workers work in food services occupations and most are fairly well educated (29% with high school diplomas and another 34% with some college education). Sixty-five percent of all workers earning minimum wage in the U.S. have never been married. The 2000 Census and DWS data on employment provide information on those earning minimum wages in Utah. The 2000 Census showed that 94,000 Utahns earned minimum wage or less in 1999 and that if the minimum wage rate would have been $7.00 at that time, the number of employees at or below minimum wage would have grown to 178,000. Child care workers, waiters/waitresses (servers) and teaching assistants would have been some of the occupations most likely to receive minimum wages. DWS data for 2006 uses average earnings which would mask those earning wages at the lowest levels, but these data also indicate that if the minimum wage were $7.00 today, 84,000 employees would make wages at or below that rate. A survey conducted in September 2006 of 3,800 Utah businesses was consistent with the information gathered from the Census, CPS and DWS. A very high percentage of those earning minimum wage in Utah work part-time (82%). Only 17 percent were age 19 or younger and most were men (55%). The survey results indicate that highest percentage of minimum wage earners in Utah are White. Minimum wage workers were found primarily in food service with significant numbers in recreation/fitness centers, office maintenance and retail (grocery stores). Most were concentrated along the Wasatch Front with over half in the Salt Lake City metropolitan area. A very large percentage of minimum wage workers were employed by medium-sized businesses (71%).

Many argue that tourism development is beneficial for local economies partly because of spillover effects. Others hold that tourism jobs are lower-paying, often seasonal and can generate a host of social ills with earned income concentrated in low income households. A As a major component of this report, a Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) of 31 Pennsylvania counties is used to test the impacts of tourism businesses supported by the Progress Fund, a regional Community Development Financial Institution, on household income distribution by incorporating secondary and primary employment based income. IPUMS-USA and IPUMS-CPS data was used in linking primary and secondary employment to household activity by income level and industrial sector. Analysis indicates that tourism-oriented activity has relatively large contributions to lower and upper as opposed to middle income households.