Using historical census data from 1899, 1910 and 1920, this chapter employs spatio-temporal data analysis techniques to estimate the influence of U.S.- led changes in crop production, namely sugar and coffee, on the distribution of racial inequality in literacy ratios across Puerto Rican municipios. Significant development in the islands infrastructure, including educational institutions, accompanied investments in crop expansion. Sugar was the primary focus of U.S. interests and its production was organized around a plantation system historically dependent on racial subordination. Two competing theses concerning how expansion influenced racial inequality are tested: the stratifying thesis, which argues sugar expansion would increase racial inequality by perpetuating the plantation system; and the equalizing thesis, which asserts sugar expansion would decrease racial inequality through infrastructure development resulting from high capital in-flows. Results support the equalizing thesis. Implications for the Puerto Rican case and the study of space and time in historical demographic research are discussed.

This article illustrates the commonly overlooked sample selection problem inherent in using rural classification methods that change over time due to population changes. Since fast-growing rural areas grow out of their rural status, using recent rural definitions excludes the most successful places from the analysis. Average economic performance of the areas remaining rural significantly understates true rural performance. We illustrate this problem using one rural classification system, rural-urban continuum codes. Choice of code vintage alters conclusions regarding the relative speed of rural and urban growth and can mislead researchers regarding magnitudes and signs of factors believed to influence growth.

The former refugee children can now look back on more than five decades of life in their new country. Based on anecdotal evidence and individual cases, most people would assume that the former refugees did very well in terms of socioeconomic status, but, to our knowledge, no quantitative assessment of their success, as a group, to date, exists. In this chapter, we will present such a quantitative picture, drawing on large representative samples, such as those of the United States Census and the National Jewish Population Survey, as well as on the Who’s Who and our own survey.

Sociologists have agonized over this fundamental question: Why do racial and ethnic minority groups lag behind whites on various social indicators? The dominant explanations include adaptations of class-based, institution discrimination, internal colonialism, racial formation and assimilation theories. Each perspective contributes to our understanding of the variability to wealth, status and power. However, few perspectives take on wealth inequality more generally and even fewer take on wealth inequality as it relates to variations within the black population. For those perspectives that focus on racial differences in wealth, the interest is largely on explaining the pathology of black wealth while ignoring the existence of black asset ownership and the determinants thereof. The present study examines the racial and ethnic differentials on the types of assets owned and the levels of each asset owned for blacks and whites over time. The present study also examines the extent to which national origin among blacks makes a difference in terms of the types and levels of assets owned. Specifically, the focus is on several key indicators of income and asset ownership: home ownership, housing values, interest, dividends and rental income, business ownership, and business income. To what extent are black-white differences on these variables attributable to factors other than race and ethnicity? Tobit, logistic and ordinary least squares regression analyses are appropriate methodologies for the present study. The data are drawn from 1970-2000 Integrated Public Use Microdata Series.

Although it is well known that there is a strong association between education and health much less is known about how these factors are connected, and whether the relationship is causal. Lleras-Muney (2005) provides perhaps the strongest evidence that education has a causal effect on health. Using state compulsory school laws as instruments, Lleras-Muney finds large effects of education on mortality. We revisit these results, noting that the effects are not statistically different from zero when we include state specific time trends. We also use a dataset containing a range of health outcomes and find that when using the same instruments, the pattern of effects for specific health conditions appears to depart markedly from prominent theories of how education should affect health. We also find suggestive evidence that vaccination against smallpox for school age children may account for some of the improvement in health and its association with education. Taken together, these sets of results raise concerns about using compulsory schooling laws to identify the causal effects of education on health.

This paper is an examination of the Housing Choice Voucher program initiated by the office of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). It begins with a discussion of the nature of the Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) program in the United States in general. It then discusses the nature of the HCV program and its various components as well as what specific programs are provided in Michigan. The last section is devoted to answering the research question: what is the extent of the excess demand for housing choice voucher assistance within the state of Michigan?

Cities in the U.S. with a higher initial share of college graduates have had a greater subsequent increase in the share of skilled workers over the past two decades. Concurrently, land prices have grown faster in these skilled cities. This paper argues that the diffusion of computers and outsourcing may partly explain these two phenomena. In the presented model, skilled workers are more productive in skilled cities and need unskilled support services. The cities unskilled workers can perform support services, but, when it is cheaper, such services can be undertaken by computers or outsourced to less-skilled cities. New technologies facilitating computerization and outsourcing can increase the skill levels and land prices in skilled cities, under fairly general assumptions. The basic economics of the analysis is that the new technologies diminish the need for unskilled workers in skilled cities and permit skilled workers to earn higher wages. The technological gains increase the demand for skilled workers to live in skilled cities and drive up land prices. Empirically, this paper documents seven trends that the theory rationalizes. Particularly important is the rising wage inequality in skilled cities relative to less-skilled cities, which supports a production theory.

The current legislative and more public media debate over immigration reform has increasedpublic awareness of Hispanic population growth and two important trends: the aging the non-Hispanic U.S. population, and the increasing unwillingness of native-born residents to takeundesirable jobs at their current wage levels. This attention on Hispanic influence in recent yearshas been motivated, in part, by the appearance of rapidly growing Hispanic populations inunexpected places, particularly nonmetropolitan counties outside of the Southwest. Thediversity of new rural areas of destination raises questions about forces attracting migrants toareas outside of the Southwest. While much of the public and legislative debate on immigrationemphasizes the supply side of the labor market for foreign-born workers, this paper takes analternative approach and considers some of the forces in American industry that have altered thedemand side of the labor market. This paper uses a case study to illustrate how economic forceswithin an industrial sector can influence immigrant population growth. We examine trends inmeat consumption and the resultant structural changes in the meat processing industry includingconsolidation, vertical integration, and concentration. We show how these trends havecontributed to the increasing tendency for firms to locate plants in rural areas of the Midwest andSoutheast and employ growing numbers of foreign-born workers. Our results highlight the roleof industrial transformations in the meat processing industry for understanding Hispanicmigration to new geographic destinations in the United States.

The contemporary retreat from marriage in the United States has had a differential impact across socioeconomic and racial groups. Here, 1990 marriage rates and propensities for Virginia, North Carolina, and Wisconsin are analyzed regarding (a) the likelihood that persons in different groups ever marry and (b) patterns of partner choice with respect to race and educational level. Marriage remains strong in most race-education groups but is substantially lower among Blacks and among those with less than 12 years of education. Patterns of partner choice have shifted to show greater symmetry between the educational levels of brides and grooms. Changes have been modest with regard to the level and pattern of interracial (Black-White) marriage. Marriage is increasingly a union of equals, but a union chosen more by Whites than by Blacks and more by the well educated than by the poorly educated.

In Grutter v. Bollinger, Justice O'Connor conjectured that in 25 years affirmative action in college admissions will be unnecessary. We project the test score distribution of black and white college applicants 25 years from now, focusing on the role of black-white family income gaps. Economic progress alone is unlikely to narrow the achievement gap enough in 25 years to produce today's racial diversity levels with race-blind admissions. A return to the rapid black-white test score convergence of the 1980s could plausibly cause black representation to approach current levels at moderately selective schools, but not at the most selective schools.

Beyond formal training, most artists create and work in relative isolation. In early career stages, they often lack the expensive tools, such as darkrooms, digital labs, kilns, and printing presses. They need spaces to rehearse, hang their work, try out their poems and plays on audiences—even a room of one’s own to think and write. Cut off from peers and mentors, they need encouragement and critical feedback. They don’t know much about how art markets work. If there is nowhere for artists to go for help, there are likely to be fewer of them, and the quality of their work is likely to suffer . . .

This paper explores some implications of Hurricane Katrina, especially as it affected, and will continue to affect, African Americans. Our observations stem largely from our ongoing examination of the demography of African Americans, including motivations to leave the South historically, and recent changes generating a significant return migration of African Americans to the South. The specific case of Katrina-related migration requires examining issues of race and classincluding the destinations to which Katrina's victims were displaced and key features of the place to which they might return. We leave for others the evaluation of ongoing political debates concerning responsibility for who did what, and why. Our focus is on New Orleans as a place, and what prospects exist for reconstituting that place in light of past, present, and prospective demographic trends. We first review recent work on place and identity, and describe the general features of past migration patterns of African Americansboth from the South and back to the South. We then identify important features of New Orleans as a distinctive place on the U.S. landscape, in part by comparing New Orleans with other southern cities using the 1% Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) sample of 2000 U.S. Census data. Finally, we assess the prospects of the reconstitution of New Orleans as a place resembling what it was prior to Katrina, by examining the intersecting factors of race, class, and ethnicity in shaping how, and by whom, the city may be resettled. We project that the city will be smaller, more White and Hispanic, more affluent, and more tourism/ entertainment-oriented than its pre-Katrina reality. Given the difficulty of making such projections, we conclude with an analysis of various demographic portraits of what the racial composition of New Orleans may become, depending on (1) its future size, and (2) relative rates of return migration by White and Black New Orleanians.

Using data spanning a half century for adjacent jurisdictions in the U.S. and Canada, we study the long-term effects of a very generous unemployment insurance (UI) program on weeks worked. We find large effects. For example, in 1990, about 6 percent of employed men in Maine’s northernmost counties worked fewer than 26 weeks per year; just across the border in New Brunswick that figure was over 20 percent. According to our estimates, New Brunswick’s much more generous UI system accounts for about two thirds of this differential. Even greater effects are found among women and less-educated men. We argue that our longer-run, cross-national perspective generates more substantial estimates of program effects because it captures workers’ abilities to make a wider variety of adjustments to programs they expect to be permanent.