Security in old age is dependent on three pillars: an adequate retirement income, accessible quality health care, and affordable housing. The security of the population age 65 and over has become a pressing policy concern in large part because of the aging of the U.S. population, and the reliance of that segment of the population on the largest social programs of the country social security and Medicare. Often overlooked is the increase in diversity that will accompany the aging of the population, especially the rapid growth that will occur in the next few decades in the Hispanic population age 65. The older Hispanic population has continued to experience disparities in social, health, and economic status. In order for this growing segment of the U.S. elderly population to achieve the three pillars that constitute security in old age, U.S. policy makers must explore programs and services that afford an adequate set of health and income benefits, as well as renew their commitment to policies that promote social justice.

In this paper I reexamine the status exchange hypothesis (Davis 1941; Merton 1941), which argued that minorities exchange their high socioeconomic status for the "high" social status of whites. Specifically, I reanalyze the cross-classification table presented in Fu (2001) on recent marriages among whites, blacks, Mexicans, and Japanese (from the 1990 PUMS data), which claims to corroborate the status exchange hypothesis for intermarriage between whites and blacks as well as between whites and Mexican Americans. Using a simple quasi-symmetry model, I show that the same-race and mixed-race marriage share a broadly similar pattern of educational homogamy, which is quasi-symmetric in character. Thus, I argue that this suggests little, if any, evidence for the status exchange hypothesis. Furthermore, the evidence strongly indicates that there is a remarkable consistency and symmetry in husband/wife educational attainment regardless of race (with the possible exception of white/white marriages); intermarried couples share a similar level of education, and educational homogamy dominates the educational marriages, no matter how strong the racial endogamy is.

When was the United States a land of opportunity? This paper revisits the history of intergenerational mobility in the US, accounting for the impact of imperfectly linked census data. Incorrectly linked observations typically attenuate ordinary least squares (OLS) esti- mates, such as the association of income ranks among fathers and sons. This attenuation exaggerates levels of mobility, as mobility is inversely related to the strength of the relation- ship between parents’ and children’s outcomes. I address bias due to imperfectly linked data from the perspective of nonclassical measurement error and propose a class of models for misclassification—error in discrete data—that rely on a repeated, conditionally independent measure of the misclassified variable. A natural source for such a repeated measure can be found by linking observations into an additional sample. In a validation exercise, the proposed estimator reduces bias by 50-90% relative to OLS, with a larger reduction in bias on more severely misclassified samples. After correcting for misclassification error, estimates of the rank-rank slope of occupation status for White men born between 1832 and 1910 are 50-100% higher than OLS estimates, depending on the cohort. Revised estimates suggest a U-shape pattern for intergenerational mobility in US history. Individuals born before the Civil War experienced levels of mobility comparable to the present, while those born between the Civil War and WWI—who entered the workforce during the highest levels of inequality in the US before the present—experienced lower levels of mobility than in any region in the US today.

The aim of this chapter is to examine the concept of social generation as it relates to the analysis of the distribution of well-being, and to compare American and French welfare regime dynamics. The French case is not unique in its generational imbalances; the United States also faces major generational imbalances. In previous publications on the social consequences of economic fluctuations, from the Trente glorieuses (1945-1975) to the Croissance ralentie (1975-today), I have demonstrated the existence in France of a generational cleavage (fracture gnrationnelle) between the generations born before 1955 (the early baby boom generations and the previous ones, who benefited most from the economic acceleration of the postwar period) and those born after 1955 (who are facing an economic slowdown, high youth unemployment, and the resulting social problems). Thus we find an insiderization of previous generations and an outsiderization of new ones. This generational cleavage is often denied by policymakers and in the public debate; however, the long-term implications of these generational dynamics could have major consequences for the stability of the welfare state. This cleavage may be less visible than those based on class, ethnic or gender inequalities, but it nevertheless alters the long-term sustainability of the system. After defining social generations, and briefly discussing some theories of generational dynamics, I will analyze the consequences of macroeconomic changes in the context of strong social regulation on the opportunities of successive generations. I will first consider the different dimensions of the generational cleavage in France and then discuss national specificities within a French-American comparison.

This article tracks changes in high school seniors' educational and occupational plans over a twenty-five year period and assesses whether these plans have become increasingly unrealistic. Comparisons of seniors' career plans with the contemporaneous achievements of high school graduates confirms that high school seniors' ambitions outpace what they are likely to achieve, a gap that is growing over time. Teenagers' increasingly expect that community college will serve as an avenue for higher degrees and professional jobs. Together with the declining influence of grades and curricular track on students' educational and occupational plans, this provides additional evidence that teenagers have become too ambitious. Finally, longitudinal analyses of three cohorts of high school seniors confirm that the positive association between educational plans and attainments is on the decline.

For generations, Los Angeles has been known as a place whereone could go to achieve the American dream. Not long ago,this dream was easily realized in Los Angeles. Californiasmost populous county was once a place where jobs broughtthe middle-class lifestyle within reach of anyone who workedhard. Such jobs formed the foundation of Los Angelesprosperity and enabled the county to become one of the mostvibrant places in California.Over the past few decades, however, economic anddemographic changes have recast the landscape of the LosAngeles economy.1 Today, low-wage jobs have replaced manyof the jobs that once provided a gateway to a middle-class life.As the countys labor market has changed, many Los Angelesworkers and their families have been left behind. Job growthin Los Angeles has lagged that of the rest of the state, and thegap between the wages earned by workers in Los Angelesand the rest of California has widened considerably. As LosAngeles enters the twenty-fi rst century, its promise of the goodlife has faded. Workers tend to have lower wages, familiestend to have lower incomes, and residents have a higher rateof poverty in Los Angeles than in the rest of the state.It is unclear whether Los Angeles will continue to fall behindthe rest of California in the future. However, given the sheersize of the Los Angeles labor market with more than one infour of Californias workers (27.3 percent), and more workersthan 42 states economic trends in Los Angeles will havean extensive impact on the state and nation.2 This reportexamines how Los Angeles workers and their families havefared relative to their counterparts in the rest of California asthe countys labor market has changed. This report fi nds that:Los Angeles Was at the Center of the Bustand on the Periphery of the BoomLos Angeles was at the center of the bust in the early 1990sand on the periphery of the boom in the late 1990s. As a result,job growth in the county has fallen behind that of the rest ofthe state. The recession of the early 1990s resulted in joblosses in nearly every major sector in Los Angeles. Between1990 and 1995, the number of Los Angeles jobs declined by9.4 percent (389,100). In contrast, the number of jobs in therest of California increased by 3.7 percent. Although the boomof the late 1990s led to job growth in Los Angeles, the countysgains fell far short of those of the rest of the state. Between1995 and 2000, the number of jobs in Los Angeles increased by 8.7 percent (325,500) less than half the increase in the rest ofthe state (20.1 percent). Ultimately, over the last decade and ahalf, the number of jobs in Los Angeles declined by 2.8 percent(115,500), while the number of jobs in the rest of the stateincreased by a substantial 28.5 percent (2,386,100).Los Angeles Economic Base Has ShiftedIn recent decades, manufacturing which once formed the coreof Los Angeles economic base has declined considerably,and the service sector has expanded in its place.3 This shifthas increased the share of jobs in low-wage industries anddiminished the number of well-paying jobs available to workerswith relatively low levels of educational attainment. Additionally,the composition of Los Angeles manufacturing sector has beentransformed. Although jobs in both durable and non-durablegoods manufacturing declined during this period, job losses indurable goods were far more severe. Consequently, non-durablegoods jobs, which tend to have lower wages, have gainedincreased prominence in the countys manufacturing sector.The Composition of the Los Angeles LaborForce Has ChangedThe composition of the Los Angeles labor force has changeddramatically in recent decades. While the majority of LosAngeles workers (58.8 percent) were white in 1979, no singleethnic or racial group constituted a majority in 2005. Thecountys workers have become more ethnically and raciallydiverse largely due to the rising number of Latino and Asianworkers. Between 1979 and 2005, Latinos share of the LosAngeles labor force more than doubled, increasing from 22.7percent to 45.5 percent, while Asians share of the countysworkforce nearly doubled, rising from 7.8 percent to 15.0percent. The increasing diversity of the Los Angeles workforcealso refl ects immigration.4 During the 1980s and 1990s, thenumber of foreign-born workers in the Los Angeles workforceincreased by more than 900,000.While Los Angeles workers were more likely to have higherlevels of educational attainment in 2005 than they were in 1979,more than one-fi fth of the countys workforce (22.2 percent)had not completed high school, essentially the same share as in1979. It is particularly noteworthy that the share of workers inLos Angeles without a high school degree has not increased inlight of the large increase in the number of immigrant and Latinoworkers, who tend to have low levels of educational attainment.In 2005, 38.5 percent of Los Angeles foreign-born workers and45.1 percent of Los Angeles Latino workers had not completedhigh school.Los Angeles Workforce CharacteristicsDiffer Markedly from Those of the Rest ofthe StateThe Los Angeles workforce differs markedly from thatof the rest of the state. In 2005, nearly half of the LosAngeles workforce (45.5 percent) was Latino, compared toapproximately one-quarter of the workforce in the rest of thestate (28.1 percent). In addition, half of Los Angeles workers(50.5 percent) were born outside of the US, compared toless than one-third of the rest of the states workers (31.3percent). Los Angeles workers also tend to have low levels ofeducational attainment relative to workers in the rest of thestate. More than one in every fi ve workers (22.2 percent) inLos Angeles had not completed high school in 2005, comparedto approximately one in eight workers (13.2 percent) in the restof the state.The Wage Gap Between Los Angeles andthe Rest of California Has WidenedThe typical Los Angeles workers earnings have lost purchasingpower since 1979. Between 1979 and 2005, the infl ationadjustedhourly wage of the typical worker the worker at themiddle of the earnings distribution decreased by 6.4 percent.In contrast, the wage of the typical worker in the rest of thestate increased by 5.9 percent during the same period, afteradjusting for infl ation. As a result, the gap between the wagesof the typical Los Angeles worker and the typical worker in restof the state has widened considerably. In 2005, the typical LosAngeles worker earned 83.3 cents for every dollar earned byhis or her counterpart in the rest of the state, down from 94.3cents for every dollar in 1979.Ethnic Wage Disparities Have Widened, theGender Gap Has NarrowedThe typical Los Angeles Latino workers wage also has lostpurchasing power, widening the gap between Latino andwhite workers earnings. In 2005, the typical Latino workerearned 50.0 cents for every dollar earned by his or her whitecounterpart, down from 66.7 cents in 1979. Over the sameperiod, the gender gap in Los Angeles narrowed. Much of thisnarrowing has resulted from the declining purchasing powerof male workers wages. Between 1979 and 2005, the typicalmale workers wage declined by nearly one-fi fth (19.2 percent),while the typical female workers wage increased by 12.8percent, after adjusting for infl ation.The Share of Workers with Job-BasedBenefits Has DeclinedLos Angeles workers are increasingly less likely to have jobbasedhealth coverage. Between 1979 and 2004, the share ofthe countys workers with job-based health coverage declinedfrom 71.1 percent to 50.5 percent. Over the same period, theshare of workers in the rest of the state with job-based healthcoverage fell from 74.0 percent to 61.3 percent. A relativelysmaller share of the Los Angeles workforce had job-basedhealth coverage in 2004 compared to the rest of the statesworkforce at least in part because of the growing prevalenceof low-wage jobs in the county, which are less likely to offerhealth coverage.Los Angeles workers also were less likely to have a job-basedpension plan in 2004. Fewer than two in fi ve workers (37.2percent) had a job-based pension plan in 2004, down fromnearly half of all workers (48.8 percent) in 1979. The shareof workers in the rest of the state with job-based pensioncoverage decreased as well, from 55.6 percent in 1979 to justunder half (47.1 percent) in 2004.Incomes Are Lower and Poverty Is MorePrevalent in Los AngelesGiven that Los Angeles workers wages tend to be lowerthan those of workers in the rest of California, the typical LosAngeles income also is lower and poverty is more prevalent.The median family income the income of the family exactlyat the middle of the income distribution was $50,598 inLos Angeles in 2004, 13.3 percent lower than in California asa whole. In addition, 38.9 percent of Los Angeles residentshad incomes below twice the federal poverty level in 2004,compared to 29.9 percent of residents of the rest of the state.

This paper presents a novel technique, anatomy, for publishing sensitive data. Anatomy releases all the quasi-identifier and sensitive values directly in two separate tables. Combined with a grouping mechanism, this approach protects privacy, and captures a large amount of correlation in the microdata. We develop a linear-time algorithm for computing anatomized tables that obey the l-diversity privacy requirement, and minimize the error of reconstructing the microdata. Extensive experiments confirm that our technique allows significantly more effective data analysis than the conventional publication method based on generalization. Specifically, anatomy permits aggregate reasoning with average error below 10%, which is lower than the error obtained from a generalized table by orders of magnitude.

State requirements that high school graduates pass exit exams were the leading edge of the movement towards standards-based reform and continue to be adopted and refined by states today. In this study, we present new empirical evidence on how exit exams influenced educational attainment and labor market experiences using data from the 2000 Census and the National Center for Education Statistics' Common Core of Data (CCD). Our results suggest that the effects of these reforms have been heterogeneous. For example, our analysis of the Census data suggests that exit exams significantly reduced the probability of completing high school, particularly for black students. Similarly, our analysis of grade-level dropout data from the CCD indicates that Minnesota's recent exit exam increased the dropout rate in urban and high-poverty school districts as well as in those with a relatively large concentration of minority students. This increased risk of dropping out was concentrated among 12th grade students. However, we also found that Minnesota's exit exam lowered the dropout rate in low-poverty and suburban school districts, particularly among students in the 10th and 11th grades. These results suggest that exit exams have the capacity to improve student and school performance but also appear to have exacerbated the inequality in educational attainment.

Using multiple births as an exogenous shift in family size, I investigate the impact of the number of children on child investment and child well-being. Using data from the 1980 US Census Five-Percent Public Use Micro Sample, 2SLS results demonstrate that parents facing a change in family size reallocate resources in a way consistent with Beckers Quantity & Quality model. A larger family generated by twins in a later birth reduces the likelihood that older children attend private school, reduces the mothers labor force participation, and increases the likelihood that parents divorce. The impact of family size on a measure of child outcome, such as grade retention, is less clear. The results indicate that for both measures of child investment and child well-being, the 2SLS estimates are statistically distinguishable from OLS estimates, indicating an omitted variables bias in the single equation model.

In recent decades, the concept of family has been fundamentally changed. An essentialdimension of changing behavior is the sharp rise in out-of-wedlock childbearing. The centralissue of non-married motherhood is more related to the diminishing willingness to marry thana changing attitude toward fertility. In a setting where individuals choose marriage because ofthe gains from joint production of child quality as well as the division of labor, the declininggains from specialization for men influence potential spouse selection. Men and women withfewer labor market prospects become less desirable, and consequently a marriage market withmore positive assortative mating will be observed. Our empirical results indicate an increasein the homogeneity of wages between spouses over this period regardless of whether wecontrol for education. In particular, black couples are more positively assorted than whitecouples although the trend converges by the end of the century. We also show that themarriage market is tilted towards better-educated men and women over the period. Thesefindings are consistent with the theory which explains why single motherhood is moreconcentrated among less-educated women.

The evolution of the skill premium (i.e., the wage differential between skilled and unskilled workers) in an economy has interest from at least two perspectives: the evolution of the skill premium is a rough measure of inequality among workers of different qualifications and provides information on the characteristics of the development process of the economy. In this paper, I investigate empirically the evolution of the skill premium in Chile over the last 40 years. After some fluctuations in the 1960s and 1970s, the skill premium increased in the 1980s and has remained roughly constant since then. A simple accounting framework suggests that this evolution is an outcome of a significant increase in relative demand for skilled workers in the 1980s and 1990s and a sizeable increase in the relative supply in the 1990s. Next, I explain the evolution of the relative demand for skilled labor in Chile in the context of the Acemoglu (2003a) model of endogenous technological choice where new technologies are produced in developed countries (like the US) and adopted in developing economies (like Chile). Macro evidence and sectoral evidence confirm the main theoretical prediction of the model: patterns of skill upgrading in Chile have followed the evolution of the same variable in the US.

The purpose of this paper is to study the joint determination of gender differentials in labor market outcomes and in the household division of labor. Specifically, we explore the hypothesis that incentive problems in the labor market amplify differences in earnings due to gender differentials in home hours. In turn, earnings differentials reinforce the division of labor within the household, leading to a potentially self-fulfilling feedback mechanism. The workings of the labor market are key in our story. The main assumptions are that the utility cost of work effort is increasing in home hours, and that higher effort should correspond to higher incentive pay. Household decisions are Pareto efficient, leading to a negative correlation between relative home hours and earnings across spouses. We use the Census and the PSID to study these predictions and find that they are supported by the data.

In this study, we address the theoretical and empirical debate over the impact of mass immigration on industrialization in the United States from 1880 to 1920. In particular, we measure the contribution of immigrants and their descendants to the growth and industrialtransformation of the American workforce. The initial description compares the immigrant (both first and second generation) share of each industrial sector in 1880 and 1920 and then measures the immigrant share of the growth of each sector from 1880 to 1920. These methods underestimate the role of immigration, since the grandchildren of immigrants are absorbed into the long resident population. This is particularly salient since immigrants and their children constituted one-third of the American workforce in 1880 and were concentrated in cities. Through an application of shift share analysis (akin to indirect standardization), we estimate employment by industrial sector in 1920 of the 3rd generation immigrants (the grandchildren of immigrants) separately from the 4th and higher generation. The addition of the 3rd generation tothe 1st and 2nd generation immigrants in 1920 shows that almost 7 of 10 manufacturing workers were of recent immigrant stock. The long resident native born white population was overrepresented in agriculture, good jobs in the public and business services, and in migration streams to the West. The slowdown and eventual closing of the door to European immigration in the 1920s created a huge demand for industrial workers that led to the expansion of the African American Great Migration to cities in the Northeast and Midwest.

This paper presents a theoretical and empirical study of how immigration influences the joint determination of the wage structure and internal migration behavior for native-born workers in local labor markets. Using data from the 19602000 decennial censuses, the study shows that immigration is associated with lower in-migration rates, higher out-migration rates, and a decline in the growth rate of the native workforce. The native migration response attenuates the measured impact of immigration on wages in a local labor market by 40 to 60 percent, depending on whether the labor market is defined at the state or metropolitan area level.

Why have very large Protestant churches proliferated in recent decades? I address this question by shifting attention from megachurches themselves to the overall size distribution of American Protestant churches, examining how and why that distribution has changed over time. This examination reveals a remarkably consistent pattern. In every denomination on which we have data, people are increasingly concentrated in the very largest churches, and this is true for small and large denominations, for conservative and liberal denominations, for growing and declining denominations. This trend began rather abruptly in the 1970s, with no sign of tapering off. Usual explanations of megachurch proliferation do not readily account for the concentration trend. I offer a new explanation: rising costs since the 1970s have made life increasingly difficult for smaller churches, and these difficulties have helped to push people into very large churches.

The sweeping changes in women's role in the 20th century have their origin in the 1870-1930 period. This was a time when the patterns of women's labor supply and marriage changed profoundly. While fertility kept falling throughout the period, the nuptiality first declined, then, around 1900, picked up again. At the same time, American women were a growing presence on the labor market: first as singles, then, after 1900, increasingly as married women. I develop a model which jointly explains labor market and marriage and fertility behavior during this period. Technological change and the associated increase in single womens labor supply are modeled as the prime force for change: they strengthened womens bargaining position on the marriage market. Pre-marital bargaining between a man and a woman concerns not only the division of (future) family income but also the sources of this income. Its outcome depends on the threat-points of men and women which in turn depend on the wages that men and women earn while single. Men are assumed to derive a disutility from their wives work and would prefer to see their partners to stay at home after marriage. Women, however, draw no disutility from work and focus solely on their overall level of utility. In the model, it is this conflict that leads to a postponement of marriage at first, as the men and women hold out, and to an increase in married womens labor supply when the men give in. The theoretical findings are further investigated through calibration of the model.