This report presents projections of the foreign-born computing and engineering (C&E)workforce that recent Senate legislation could admit in the next one, two, five, and tenyears. Most public controversy has focused on the Comprehensive Immigration ReformActs (S.2611) process for resident undocumented aliens (passed last May 25, 2006). Butthere also are numerous reforms to highly skilled admissions. The projections suggestthat the legislation could admit an immigrant computing and engineering workforce thatis just more than 5 times greater than todays levels of admission. And the projection ofimmigrants under S.2611 exceeds the total foreign-born labor force in C&E that isconsistent with projections of future employment demand by the Bureau of LaborStatistics. The legislation could admit foreign computing and engineering workers innumbers much greater than historical trends or casual assumptions about futureemployment.

In this chapter we present an overview of the history of racial differences in schooling in the United States. We present basic data on literacy, school attendance, educational attainment, various measures of school quality, and the returns to schooling. Then, in the context of a simple model of schooling attainment, we interpret the fundamental trends in an analytic narrative that illuminates change over time. Although some of the data presented in the tables carry the story to the late twentieth century, the evidence and narrative we develop focus on the period before 1954, the year of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.A theme of convergence is central to the narrative. Slaves were typically forbidden to learn how to read and write, and others were typically forbidden to teach them. Just after the Civil War, more than 80 percent of African Americans over the age of nine were illiterate (compared to 12 percent of whites). After Emancipation, black children continued to face many obstacles in acquiring education. In addition to their relative poverty and their parents' relatively low levels of literacy (on average), society and its educational institutions were overtly racist. The negative implications for black children's schooling were significant and lasted well into the twentieth century. Nonetheless, successive generations of black children did manage to narrow the racial gap in schooling and educational attainment. By 1930, only 12 percent of African Americans were illiterate finally attaining the level that whites had registered 60 years earlier. The pace of change was not constant, however, and there were some periods of short-run divergence between blacks and whites in educational attainment. The long-term process of convergence, moreover, has yet to fully run its course, and the remaining racial gaps in schooling have proven quite stubborn to eliminate.

Criminal background checks have become a routine part of pre-employment screening. Since black men are overrepresented in the criminal justice system, increasing use of criminal background checks might have a significant employment effect for black men. Using a unique dataset on state availability of criminal history data over the Internet, I find that the relative employment of young black men was lowered by more than 2% in states that made the records of former criminal offenders available on the Internet compared with states that did not.

Objective: To determine the effects of genetic versus environmental influences on smoking initiation (SI) and smoking persistence (SP).Methods: Native California twins (32,359 pairs), who completed a questionnaire in 1992 or 1998 to 2001, were studied. Standard epidemiologic and genetic analyses were conducted using multiple logistic regression and biometric models to determine factors related to smoking phenotype.Results: The strongest influence on SI was having a co-twin who ever smoked; the adjusted odds ratio was 9.7 [95% confidence limits (CL), 8.8-10.6] among monozygotic twins and 5.7 (95% CL, 5.2-6.2) among dizygotic like-sex pairs. The risk of SP was also increased if the co-twin currently smoked [adjusted odds ratios, 3.5 (95% CL, 3.0-4.1) for monozygotic twins and 2.3 (95% CL, 2.0-2.7) for like-sex dizygotic pairs]. The proportions of variance due to genetic effects, shared environment, and individual environment for SI were 31.6% (24.2-39.1), 47.5% (41.1-53.7), and 20.9% (18.8-23.1) for females, and 71.2% (66.7-75.4), 12.0% (8.7-15.7), and 16.7% (15.0-18.7) for males. For SP, estimates were identical by gender: 54.6% (43.6-65.5), 8.6% (0-17.1), and 36.8% (32.9-40.9). Modification of SI by closeness between twins was found, but little difference was seen for SP by closeness, birth cohort, or age.Conclusions: Gender differences in the pattern of genetic and environmental determinants of SI indicate that gender-specific approaches may be needed for smoking prevention efforts. Modification of genetic effects by closeness between twins and birth cohort suggests that environmental interventions could reduce a heritable propensity to smoke. However, the apparently heritable tendency to continue smoking is unaffected by gender, age, birth cohort, or closeness between twins.

Recent research has focused on the role of hiring managers in hiring processes. A particular finding of a number of studies is that minority managers are more likely to hire minorities than are white managers. Although these studies have shed light on a number of mechanisms that are alleged to account for the pattern that minority managers tend to hire minorities, their research designs select on the dependent variable by studying only people who have been hired. We argue that these studies cannot safely make inferences about managers race differentials in the tendency to select one group over another. By distinguishing the various mechanisms involved in hiring process, we show the conditions under which it is safe to conjecture about hiring managers propensity to hire same race individuals. We illustrate these arguments using unique data on how candidates are selected from the pool of candidates for entry-level jobs in a decentralized setting exhibiting variation in both hiring managers and job candidates race.

The proportion of men aged 65 and older who are willing and able to work declined steadily over the twentieth century. The major factors in the rise of retirement appear to be the increased availability of pensions and the shift out of farming occupations; however, most research on this issue has focused only on the experience of northern men. This article uses data from records of the Georgia Confederate pension program to investigate the effects of pension and occupation on the southern retirement decision in the early twentieth century. An analysis of Union veterans living in the South suggests that regional factors like farm residence had a larger impact on retirement behavior than military pensions. As in the North, increases in wealth, especially among farmers, were associated with a higher probability of retirement.

We compare the labour market performance of immigrants from a single origin country, in two host countries with different migration policies, relative to their (counterfactual) position had they remained in their source country. While most studies of immigration focus on the absolute income differences between countries, we argue that relative gains to migration may also influence the migration decision and that these gains will be influenced by differential relative costs across the skill distribution. Using data on Indian immigrants in the United States and Great Britain matched to comparable data on individuals who remained in India, we show that the average Indian immigrant will experience a fall in their relative ranking in the wage distribution compared to the position they would have achieved had they remained in the origin country. The fall in relative rankings is larger for immigrants to the US than to the UK, and largest of all for those with intermediate skills.

There is a rapidly developing empirical literature on the effects of agglomeration on economic activity. This paper surveys recent studies that provide econometric estimates of effects. Doubling economic density increases labour productivity by three or more per cent. Beneath this general picture, however, effects vary widely in a way that defies easy generalisation. A variety of factors are involved in producing effects, with labour market specialisation featuring as important in a number of studies. There appears to be an important positive interaction between human capital and agglomeration effects. However, the empirical literature surveyed does not shed much light on the precise nature of the mechanisms involved. Effects of own industry scale are substantial in some cases. But a majority of three or four-digit industries are not significantly agglomerated, and even fewer demonstrate significant positive agglomeration effects of own industry scale.On the basis of this literature, New Zealand policy makers aiming to raise productivity should include a focus on the conditions that would allow its largest city to successfully grow in size. They should avoid attempts to select particular industries to increase their national scale in the hope of reaping agglomeration economies.

During the last decade, scholars and policy makers have begun to acknowledge what young adults and their parents have been realizing for several decades: the transition to adulthood has increasingly become a protracted process, often extending into the third decade of life and even later. Sociological maturity, when the young achieve full-fledged adult status in society, requires more time and investment than it once did. The contrast is especially sharp compared with a half century ago, when individuals swiftly moved from adolescence into adulthood. Why this change has occurred and its ramifications for family lives of Americans are the main topics of this lecture. I begin with a brief history of recent changes that have occurred and then turn to some of the public policy implications facing this country, especially concerning young adults coming from disadvantaged backgrounds or facing special obstacles that increase the risk for making a successful transition to adulthood. My discussion draws heavily from the work of the MacArthur Research Network on Transitions to Adulthood and Public Policy ("The Network"), a team of scholars from varied disciplines who have been assembled by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to examine what social science data tell us about the reasons for . . .

This paper uses data from California in 1860, a period in which property rights were uncertain, to investigate the relationship between the certainty of property rights and agricultural production. The negative effect of uncertain property rights on farm values, crop production, and wheat productions was large. For example, crop values for preemptors, who had more uncertain property rights than other farmers, were 22-38 percent lower than other farmers. This is consistent with contemporary discussion of the period, which linked uncertain property rights to low investment in the land and the use of short season crops. Less obviously, the mix of products was also significantly affected. Farmers with less secure property rights produced less as measured by crop value than similar farmers with more secure property rights, but owned similar amounts of livestock, presumably because it was mobile. In aggregate, uncertainty depressed the value of crop output by 13-20 percent. The results have implications for understanding the historical development of agriculture in the United States, since squatting on agricultural land was prevalent throughout the United States, and for understanding agriculture in the Third World, since uncertain property rights in agricultural land are still an issue today.

his lively, informative study provides an intimate view of the lived experience of race in urban America from a unique vantage: the corner store. Sociologist Monica McDermott spent a year working as a convenience store clerk in white working class neighborhoods in Atlanta and Boston in order to observe race relations between blacks and whites in a natural setting. Her findings illuminate the subtle cues and genuine misunderstandings that make up race relations in many urban communities, explore how racial interactions and racial identity are influenced by local context, and provide evidence of what many would prefer to believe does not exist: continued anti-black prejudice among white Americans. McDermott notes that while most black-white interactions are civil and unremarkable on the surface, interactions between blacks and whites living in close proximity are characterized by continual attempts to decipher the intent behind words, actions, and gestures, and that certain situations and topics of conversation, such as crime or gender relations, often elicit racial stereotypes or negative comments. Her keen insights on the nuances of race relations will make this book essential reading for students and anyone interested in life in contemporary urban America. This lively, informative study provides an intimate view of the lived experience of race in urban America from a unique vantage: the corner store. Sociologist Monica McDermott spent a year working as a convenience store clerk in white working class neighborhoods in Atlanta and Boston in order to observe race relations between blacks and whites in a natural setting. Her findings illuminate the subtle cues and genuine misunderstandings that make up race relations in many urban communities, explore how racial interactions and racial identity are influenced by local context, and provide evidence of what many would prefer to believe does not exist: continued anti-black prejudice among white Americans. McDermott notes that while most black-white interactions are civil and unremarkable on the surface, interactions between blacks and whites living in close proximity are characterized by continual attempts to decipher the intent behind words, actions, and gestures, and that certain situations and topics of conversation, such as crime or gender relations, often elicit racial stereotypes or negative comments. Her keen insights on the nuances of race relations will make this book essential reading for students and anyone interested in life in contemporary urban America.

The University of Toledo College of Arts and Sciences proposes to offer a multidisciplinary Doctor of Philosophy Degree in Spatially-Integrated Social Science as a cooperative venture between the departments of Geography and Planning, Economics, Political Science and Public Administration, and Sociology and Anthropology. The program will be designed around the application of geographic information science and spatial analysis to study the spatial dimension of human and social dynamics, including interaction of individuals and society, government, and market participants. This program will enhance the allied social science’s role in UT's mission as a metropolitan urban university and will strengthen the university’s efforts in outreach, research and education. This proposed program will focus on space as a unifying theme under which social scientists can examine social, political and economic processes over the landscape. The location and distribution of populations and the social processes that influence those populations will thus form the basis upon which the relevant data associated with these phenomena are assembled, organized, displayed . . .

The American fertility transition is unusual in comparison with historical transitions in other currently developed nations. The decline came very early, dating from about 1800 and took place from very high levels of fertility, a crude birth rate of 55 and a total fertility rate of about 7.0 for the white population in 1800. Further, the fertility transition began long before the sustained decline in mortality, dating from approximately the 1870s. Finally, the transition occurred in a predominantly agrarian and rural nation, although birth rates declined in both rural and urban places. Using a new database that supplements basic population census measures with other demographic, agricultural and manufacturing data, age-specific child-woman ratios can be calculated at the county level files for 1800 to 1860. This chapter examines patterns of geographic dispersion of white child-woman ratios, estimates structural spatial regression models and assesses spatial autocorrelation and clustering. Spatial autocorrelation was significant for variation by longitude (east-west) but not latitude (north-south). Low fertility counties were clustered in 1,800 and 1,810, while high fertility counties were more often found together later. Finally, fertility was less spatially patterned in longer settled and newly settled counties than in transitional areas.

Existing estimation approaches for spatial databases often rely on the assumption that data distribution in a small region is uniform, which seldom holds in practice. Moreover, their applicability is limited to specific estimation tasks under certain distance metric. This paper develops the Power-method, a comprehensive technique applicable to a wide range of query optimization problems under both L∞ and L2 metrics. The Power-method eliminates the local uniformity assumption and is, therefore, accurate even for datasets where existing approaches fail. Furthermore, it performs estimation by evaluating only one simple formula with minimal computational overhead. Extensive experiments confirm that the Power-method outperforms previous techniques in terms of accuracy and applicability to various optimization scenarios.

In The Southern Diaspora, Gregory sets forth the important but often overlooked theme that “migration matters” (327). Whether the largescale migration of Southern, Central, and Eastern Europeans to the United States or the involuntary migration of Africans to North Amer- ica, migration has consequences not only for the individuals involved but also for the places of departure and arrival. The Great Migration, ac- cording to Gregory, is no less important: Gregory’s account moves the study of internal migration beyond . . .

Research on changes in women parenting has focused primarily on their increased likelihood of combining parenthood with paid employment, exploring the pressures that result from this "second shift" or "double burden." This article complements this approach by focusing instead on the likely reduction in the help that mothers of small children have received as declines both infertility and the coresidence of nonnuclear adults have reduced the number of other women in the household. Using national census data for the period 1880 to 2000, we show a substantial decline in the presence and availability of other females in the household, as fewer are co-resident and more of those who are coresident are employed or in school. Although all mothers experience this decline, it is most acute for mothers working for pay in nonagricultural activities.