A social transformation of profound proportions has been unfolding over the second half of the twentieth century as women have turned from household work to wages as the key source of their livelihood. This timely study, a broad comparative analysis of African American women's and white women's changing relationships to home and work over the past forty years, at last provides a wide-ranging overview of how this shift is influencing the shape of families and the American economy. Susan Thistle brings together diverse issues and statistics--the plight of single mothers; the time crunch faced by many parents; the problem of housework; patterns of work, employment and marriage; and much more--in a rich and engaging analysis that draws from history, economics, political science, sociology, government documents, and census data to put gender at the center of the social and economic changes of the past decades. With its broad historical and theoretical sweep, clear charts and tables, and accessible writing, From Marriage to the Market will be an essential resource for understanding the tumultuous changes currently transforming American society. A social transformation of profound proportions has been unfolding over the second half of the twentieth century as women have turned from household work to wages as the key source of their livelihood. This timely study, a broad comparative analysis of African American women's and white women's changing relationships to home and work over the past forty years, at last provides a wide-ranging overview of how this shift is influencing the shape of families and the American economy. Susan Thistle brings together diverse issues and statistics--the plight of single mothers; the time crunch faced by many parents; the problem of housework; patterns of work, employment and marriage; and much more--in a rich and engaging analysis that draws from history, economics, political science, sociology, government documents, and census data to put gender at the center of the social and economic changes of the past decades. With its broad historical and theoretical sweep, clear charts and tables, and accessible writing, From Marriage to the Market will be an essential resource for understanding the tumultuous changes currently transforming American society.

Scholars typically approach the relationship of population movements and foreign relations in terms of immigration, ethnic group lobbies, and state policies and actions. However, our era of unprecedented transmigration requires a multiplayer framework for appreciating the construction and impact of foreign relations. The new framework must incorporate the role of transnationally competent and influential individuals with multilocal experiences and multiple identifications, diasporic communities, and nonstate collectivities and networks. In this chapter, therefore, we highlight the dynamic and interactive cross-border ways in which transmigration has shaped and continues to affect the formulation and execution of foreign relations involving the United States.

Domestic service is one of the secondary labor markets that have grown in the context of globalization. Its dynamism is linked to the demand for cheap female labor to satisfy needs within the sphere of domestic reproduction. The characterization of the U.S. domestic service labor market in the early 21 st century on the basis of survey data shows that (now as in the past) its growth is based mainly on the influx of immigrant labor, nowadays mainly from Latin America. Domestic workers' poverty levels, coupled with their low educa tional achievement, merely corroborate the fact that the growth of this labor market in developed societies is yet another of the regressive consequences observed in the world of work within the context of globalization.

The three chapters of this thesis present econometric studies on human capital and institutions, two important drivers of economic development. The empirical model in the rst chapter tries to improve on previous estimates of returns to education in Germany by taking into account the institutional features of the education system. The relationship between human capital accumulation and trade as well as the quality of institutions is analyzed in the second chapter of this thesis. The last chapter analyzes the e¤ect of natural resource and aid rents on a country’s quality of institutions. The rst chapter presents estimates of returns to education in Germany using an empirical model that captures the basic features of the German education system. It thereby overcomes some of the short-comings of previous empirical analyses. The main result is that di¤erences in the skill premiums across graduates from di¤erent secondary schools are large. In Germany there are three types of secondary schools: lower secondary (Hauptschule), middle secondary (Realschule) and upper secondary (Gymnasium) schools. Graduates from all three types of secondary school can engage in vocational training or apprenticeship training, but only graduates from the Gymnasium can access university. The empirical results indicate that annual returns to vocational training are more than four times higher for graduates from the highest secondary school compared to graduates from a lower secondary school. Least-squares estimation biases returns to vocational education of Hauptschule graduates upward by about 20 percent and implies a downward bias of more than 60 percent for Gymnasium graduates. The chapter also studies the determinants of educational choices, showing that the parents’ education level increases the probability of choosing a higher secondary school. The second chapter examines the e¤ect of trade on on-the-job human capital accumulation. This is central to economic growth theory, since both trade and human capital are often considered engines of economic growth. Economic theory, however, is ambiguous on whether trade increases or decreases on-the-job human capital accumulation. The chapter provides empirical evidence regarding the e¤ect of trade on on-the job human capital examination, using data on US immigrants. It is shown that estimated returns to countryof-origin experience of US immigrants are positively correlated with trade openness as well as institutional quality of the country of origin. The last chapter turns to the determinants of institutional quality in developing countries by addressing the question whether natural resources and aid are detrimental for the quality of institutions. It is shown that the e¤ect of several natural resource measures on institutional quality becomes signi cantly negative at high levels of ethnic fractionalization. This nding is robust to a variety of econometric speci cations. The results suggest that mineral and fuel abundance resource weakens institutions to the extent that it provides means and incentives to engage in civil con‡ict. The chapter also reaches the conclusion that in developing countries the relationship between aid ‡ows and institutional quality is di¤erent from that between natural resources and the quality of policies and institutions. Contrary to mineral and fuel rents, aid does not seem to be associated with lower institutional quality even when ethnic fractionalization is high. This nding contrasts with previous empirical evidence concluding that aid has a negative e¤ect on democracy which substantially exceeds the harmful e¤ect of oil rents.

According to the U.S. Census, the nations Hmong population grew sharply from 94,439 in 1990 to 169,428 in 2000. But it is difficult to determine where the line should be drawn between the Hmong community and the rest of the population or, indeed, between any two ethnic communities. In this article we explore the boundaries of the Hmong community. In particular, we explain why identification of ethnic groups in the Census data can be ambiguous, review the possible sources of relevant Census evidence, and describe our methodology. After careful examination of detailed Census data, we conclude that the usual race-only criterion used to identify a person in the data as Hmong is too narrow, and that a broader, more inclusive definition more accurately delineates the Hmong ethnic group. After a detailed investigation of the Census data for hundreds of individuals, we conclude that the most accurate approach is to include in the Hmong ethnic group all who identify their race, ancestry, or language as Hmong. This broader definition implies that Census count of the Hmong population in 2000 might have been as large as 204,948.

Spatial equilibrium models rely on migration to arbitrage away differences in utility across locations net of moving costs, where remaining differences in wages and rents reflect the compensating differentials related to site-specific amenities. Recent refinements to the spatial equilibrium model focus upon the prospect of disequilibrium in amenity markets. Amenity market disequilibrium implies over or under-compensation (incomplete compensation) across some locations, which suggests a role for these factors in subsequent migration. This paper follows the theoretical and empirical approach of Clark, Herrin, Knapp, and White (2003. An intercity wage regression is estimated where fixed effects capture the impact of site characteristics on wages. We then regress the fixed effects on a comprehensive vector of site attributes, where the residuals capture incomplete compensation in wages. The derived measures of incomplete compensation are included in binary logit model of migration. The results provide further evidence that incomplete compensation for site characteristics is a significant factor in migration decisions, and the findings are consistent with tendencies toward spatial equilibrium.

Differences in house price and income growth rates between 1950 and 2000 across metropolitan areas have led to an ever-widening gap in housing values and incomes between the typical and highest-priced locations. We show that the growing spatial skewness in house prices and incomes are related and can be explained, at least in part, by inelastic supply of land in some attractive locations combined with an increasing number of high-income households nationally. Scarce land leads to a bidding-up of land prices and a sorting of high-income families relatively more into those desirable, unique, low housing construction markets, which we label superstar cities. Continued growth in the number of high-income families in the U.S. provides support for ever-larger differences in house prices across inelastically supplied locations and income-based spatial sorting. Our empirical work confirms a number of equilibrium relationships implied by the superstar cities framework and shows that it occurs both at the metropolitan area level and at the sub-MSA level, controlling for MSA characteristics.

Despite high geographic mobility, there are big and persistent cross sectional differences in unemployment rates between U.S. regions. In this paper, I extend a competitive search model to a setting with distinct local labor markets to obtain high cross sectional volatility of unemployment in the presence of a highly mobile labor force. Using plausible economic primitives such as technology and search and moving costs, I construct a spatial model in an equilibrium setting by explicitly allowing for both net and gross mobility. One of the key issues of the local labor market dynamics is the question of who moves and who stays behind. This paper takes the first step into this direction by looking at different age groups. The model is successful in accounting for big unemployment differences across the US regions despite high labor mobility. Several counterfactual and policy experiments are conducted. As the population ages and reaches the point of no population growth, the aggregate unemployment rates for middle-aged and older workers increase by 0.34 and 0.60 percentage points, respectively. Using the model, I show that the government can effectively offset the negative impact of the aging population by subsidizing workers' moving expenses. I also find that higher unemployment benefits make local labor market adjustment much slower which, in turn, increases the aggregate unemployment. This equilibrium effect of higher unemployment benefits appears to be new in the literature. I am also able to generate the thick market effect (Shimer, 2001) without relying on multiple equilibria or increasing returns to scale in a matching technology. For the numerical solution of the stochastic dynamic equilibrium, I use the Krusell-Smith (1998) method, extending its application to a multi-sector search model.

An earlier paper proposed a consistent category system for occupations in the U.S. Census of Population data from 1960 to 2000, based mainly on the 1990 Census occupation definitions. This paper updates that work by assigning some of the standardized occupations probabilistically to 1960 respondents on the basis of other information available about the respondent.

The recent publication of an expansive national dataset, the Integrated Public Use Microdata Sample, allows for new analyses of the historical geography and settlement of various immigrant and ethnic groups in the United States. The present research explores the growth, development, and geographic dispersion of the ethnic Mexican population, and outlines some of the demographic and social characteristics within significant clusters of this population in the United States across the first half of the twentieth century. The analysis does not attempt to overturn other geographies and ethnographies in Mexican American history, but through its ability to elucidate broad, national patterns it is able to create a more dynamic view of settlement, demonstrating the role of immigrants and of women immigrants in particular. Results indicate that place matters: the geographical context of arrival and settlement were key factors in differentiating communities and the lives of those who lived in them.

This paper analyses the effect of child labor on household labor supply using 1920 US Census micro data. The aim of the analysis is to understand who in the household benefits from child labor. In order to identify a source of exogenous variation in child labor I use State-specific child labor laws. I find that a rise in the proportion of working children by household is associated with no variation in parents labor supply. I also find a strong negative externality among children: as the proportion of working children by household rises, everything else equal, the probability that each child works falls while the probability that he attends school rises. This suggests that parents redistribute entirely the returns from child labor to the children in the household, consistent with a model of household labor supply with fully altruistic parents.

Since at least 1960, Appalachians have lower wages, employment rates, and educational attainment than residents elsewhere in the country. Despite educational gains and large federal outlays since 1965, the wage gap has only slightly decreased. Using a sample of full-time workers from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series Census project, I identify factors affecting the wage gap between 1970 and 2000. I find several national trends unfavorable to Appalachians after 1980: increasing returns to both observable and unobservable skill, rising income inequality, and the decline of manufacturing, which offset faster Appalachian education growth. There is also a growing gap in education returns between Appalachia and elsewhere in the country since 1980.

Has leisure increased over the last century? Standard measures of hours worked suggest that it has. In this paper, we develop a comprehensive measure of non-leisure hours that includes market work, home production, commuting and schooling for the last 105 years. We also present empirical and theoretical arguments for a definition of per capita that encompasses the entire population. The new measures reveal a number of interesting 20th Century trends. First, 70 percent of the decline in hours worked has been offset by an increase in hours spent in school. Second, contrary to conventional wisdom, average hours spent in home production are actually slightly higher now than they were in the early part of the 20th Century. Finally, leisure per capita is approximately the same now as it was in 1900.

When you think about it, it's a miracle the census got taken at all in the 19th century, given the conditions of travel and people's suspicions about folks asking questions. Was the person who happened to be at home a child? Or Grandma, who may not have spoken too clearly? The census taker must have stayed overnight with some folks, so did they get a better record?We know the rules said that the census taker had to go to each house to inquire. One Web site lists all the instructions for the enumerators for each census, from 1850 through 2000. Check www.ipums.umn.edu/usa /voliii/tEnumInstr.html.