The twentieth century has witnessed remarkable declines in older age mortality in Western Europe, Japan, and the United States (Robine and Vaupel, 2002; Kannisto, 1996; Vaupel, 1997; Wilmoth et al. 2000). The first documented 111 year old died in 1932 and the first verified 122 year old died in 1997 (Vaupel, 1997). Not only has the maximum age of death increased, but the number of people living beyond 100 has increased as well, calling into question whether the upper limit to the length of human life postulated by Fries (1980) is anywhere in sight and whether such an upper limit even exists (Vaupel and Jeune, 1995; Wilmoth and Lundstrm, 1996). In the United States life expectancy in 1900 at age 65 for both sexes combined was less than 12 years and only 13 percent of all 65 year olds could expect to reach age 85 and join the ranks of the oldest old. By centurys end life expectancy at age 65 had risen to almost 17 years and 42 percent of all 65 year olds could expect to live until age 85. This increase in life expectancy was extremely slow at first, rising by only half a year during the first three decades of the twentieth century. Since 1930 the increase in life expectancy at age 65 has accelerated to 2 years between 1930 and 1960 and then to 3 years between 1960 and 1999....

In 1948, W. E. B. Dubois declared, 'Probably the greatest and most effective effort toward interracial understanding among the working masses has come about through... the organization of the CIO (Congress of Industrial Organizations) in 1935.' Yet the CIO's role in shaping race relations and patterns of interracial inequality has been largely overlooked by contemporary scholars of race. Drawing from an ongoing research program on the relative effects of the CIO versus the AFL (American Federation of Labor) on interracial inequality during the 1940s, we discuss implications for the role of unions today and into the future. Findings for the CIO era challenge widespread notions about the connection between the 'demand for labor' and interracial inequality. Comparing recent developments in the economy and labor movement with those of the CIO era, we argue that a new form of interracial working-class movement may be emerging, a movement that, if positively linked to continued struggles for racial justice and equality, could make a profound difference for race relations and 'color lines' in the twenty-first century.

In 1948, W. E. B. Dubois declared, 'Probably the greatest and most effective effort toward interracial understanding among the working masses has come about throughthe organization of the CIO (Congress of Industrial Organizations) in 1935.' Yet the CIO's role in shaping race relations and patterns of interracial inequality has been largely overlooked by contemporary scholars of race. Drawing from an ongoing research program on the relative effects of the CIO versus the AFL (American Federation of Labor) on interracial inequality during the 1940s, we discuss implications for the role of unions today and into the future. Findings for the CIO era challenge widespread notions about the connection between the 'demand for labor' and interracial inequality. Comparing recent developments in the economy and labor movement with those of the CIO era, we argue that a new form of interracial working-class movement may be emerging, a movement that, if positively linked to continued struggles for racial justice and equality, could make a profound difference for race relations and 'color lines' in the twenty-first century.

We posit that investment in higher education is more growth-enhancing in economies engaged in innovation on frontier technology. Our empirical analysis addresses a central problem in the education-growth literature: the endogeneity of a regions education policy with respect to its growth path. We turn to the American federal system for examples of investment mistakes. Research universities in states with representation on the congressional appropriations committee receive additional federal funding. The presence of a two- or four-year college in the district of a states education committee chairman can similarly influence budget allocation. Neither of these political instruments are correlated with current growth. We assemble panel data on the stock of human capital in US states from 26 birth cohorts (1947 to 1972). Our results confirm that upper-tier education has a stronger effect on growth in states that are close to the technological frontier. The out-migration of skilled labor accentuates the difference between leading and trailing states.

The unprecedented integration of women into U.S. labor markets was one of the most significant economic and social changes of the Twentieth Century. Indeed, the transformation of legal and economic opportunities for women led The Economist to label the past one hundred years as the "female century" (9 September 1999). My dissertation stresses the larger story of women's recent economic advancement by emphasizing the significance of legal changes, federal policy and technological innovation in forestalling and spurring their progress in three different episodes during the Twentieth Century.Chapter II (with William J. Collins) focuses on the wage gains among African-American women during the 1940s. Using a semi-parametric decomposition, we find that demand shifts during the 1940s were critical to explaining African American women's move from domestic service into more lucrative employment in sectors covered by regulations and unions.Chapter III considers women's rapid economic advancement following the FDA's approval of the first oral contraceptive in 1960. Although a large body of theory and empirical evidence relates the end of the Baby Boom to changes in women's work, this work uses an historical experiment to quantify the importance of "the pill" in affecting broad labor market changes. My findings suggest that from 1970 to 1990, fertility-related shifts in womens labor supply explain roughly 15 percent of the changes in market employment among younger women.Chapter IV examines the impact of changes in womens labor supply on the aggregate wage structure from 1960 to 2000. Using legal variation in access to oral contraception as an instrumental variable, I find that increases women's labor supply during the 1980s raised wages among the most skilled men and depressed wage growth among women at the mean. This suggests that sharp declines in the gender gap during this decade would have been even more dramatic in the absence of large shifts in the supply of womens labor.

Tenant rental shelter is by far the most important component of the CPI, because it is used as a proxy for owner-occupied housing. This paper develops a wide variety of current and historical evidence dating back to 1914 to demonstrate that the CPI rent index is biased downward for all of the last century. The CPI rises roughly 2 percent per year slower than quality-unadjusted indexes of gross rent, setting a challenge for this research of measuring the rate of quality change in rental apartments. If quality increased at a rate of 2 percent per year, the CPI was not biased downward at all, but if quality increased at a slower rate of 1 percent per year, then the CPI was biased downward at a rate of 1 percent. Our analysis of a rich set of data sources goes backward chronologically, starting with a hedonic regression analysis on a large set of panel data from the American Housing Survey (AHS) covering 1975-2003. Prior to 1975, we have large micro data files from the U. S. Census of Housing extending back to 1930. In addition to the hedonic regression data, we stitch together data on the diffusion of important quality attributes of rental units, including plumbing, heating, and electrification, over the period 1918-73. Our final piece of evidence is based on a study of quality-adjusted rents in a single local community, Evanston IL, covering the period 1925-99. Our overall conclusions are surprisingly consistent across sources and eras, that the CPI bias was roughly -1.0 percent prior to the methodological improvements in the CPI that date from the mid-1980s. Our reliance on a wide variety of methodologies and evidence on types of quality change and their importance, while leaving the outcome still uncertain, at least in our view substantially narrows the range of possibilities regarding the history of CPI bias for rental shelter over the twentieth century.

Despite the widespread perception of a link between immigration and crime, evidence availableten years ago suggested that cities that had experienced higher immigration over the 1980s hadno higher crime rates than otherwise similar cities, and immigrant involvement in crime, ascaptured by their incarceration, was less than that of the native born, and much less than that ofnatives with similar characteristics. More recently arrived immigrants had the lowestcomparative incarceration rates, despite relatively poor labor market outcomes. Nonetheless,incarceration rates, like other immigrant outcomes, appeared to converge toward that of thenative born with time in the country. Since that research was conducted, crime rates have fallenconsiderably, immigration has increased, and new legislation affecting who is eligible toimmigrate and the treatment of immigrants once they have arrived has been enacted. These newpolicies have the potential to affect who comes to the country and their activities once inside theU.S.Analysis of newly available data supports the earlier conclusions that immigrants are less likelythan natives to commit crimes. However, that gap is even larger in 2000, with foreign bornhaving institutionalization rates 20% as large as the native born. These results stand in somecontrast to conclusions about immigrant outcomes in labor markets, health status, and otherarenas. We find little evidence that these findings are driven by the increased deportation ofcriminal aliens, but it may be that greater sanctions for non-citizens involved in crime have had adeterrent effect. However, we do not find substantial increases in the rate at which immigrantsbecome citizens, as might be expected.

This paper reports trends in educational assortative marriage from 1940 to 2003 in the United States. Analyses of census and Current Population Survey data show that educational homogamy decreased from 1940 to 1960 but increased from 1960 to 2003. From 1960 to the early 1970s, increases in educational homogamy were generated by decreasing intermarriage among groups of relatively well-educated persons. College graduates, in particular, were increasingly likely to marry each other rather than those with less education. Beginning in the early 1970s, however, continued increases in the odds of educational homogamy were generated by decreases in intermarriage at both ends of the education distribution. Most striking is the decline in the odds that those with very low levels of education marry up. Intermarriage between college graduates and those with "some college" continued to decline but at a more gradual pace. As intermarriage declined at the extremes of the education distribution, intermarriage among those in the middle portion of the distribution increased. These trends, which are similar for a broad cross section of married couples and for newlyweds, are consistent with a growing social divide between those with very low levels of education and those with more education in the United States.

This paper reports trends in educational assortative marriage from 1940 to 2003 in the United States. Analyses of census and Current Population Survey data show that educational homogamy decreased from 1940 to 1960 but increased from 1960 to 2003. From 1960 to the early 1970s, increases in educational homogamy were generated by decreasing intermarriage among groups of relatively well-educated persons. College graduates, in particular were increasingly likely to marry each other rather than those with less education. Beginning in the early 1970s, however continued increases in the odds of educational homogamy were generated by decreases in intermarriage at both ends of the education distribution. Most striking is the decline in the odds that those with very low levels of education marry up. Intermarriage between college graduates and those with "some college" continued to decline but at a more gradual pace. As intermarriage declined at the extremes of the education distribution, intermarriage among those in the middle portion of the distribution increased These trends, which are similar for a broad cross section of married couples and for newlyweds, are consistent with a growing social divide between those with very low levels of education and those with more education in the United States.

In order to explore the potential role of educational context in student performance, the Pew Hispanic Center tabulated some of the basic characteristics of public high schools of Hispanic students and other students at the national level and state level. This assessment is based on a U.S. Department of Education survey that collects data on every public high school in the country and the students who attend them. The most recent publicly available data are for the 2002-03 school year.Some of the major findings in this report include: Latinos are much more likely than whites or blacks to attend the nations largest public high schools. Ten percent of public high schools have an enrollment of at least 1,838 students each. More than 56 percent of Hispanics attend these large public high schools, in comparison with 32 percent of blacks and 26 percent of whites. One quarter of the nations public high schools have more than 45 percent of their students eligible for free or reduced-price school lunches. Three hundred of these schools are also among the largest with an enrollment of 1,838 students or more. Almost 25 percent of Hispanic students attend these 300 high schools, in comparison with 8 percent of black students and 1 percent of white students. Hispanics are more likely to be at high schools with lesser instructional resources. Nearly 37 percent of Hispanics are educated at public high schools with a student/teacher ratio greater than 22 to 1, in comparison with 14 percent of blacks and 13 percent of whites. The average student/teacher ratio in public high schools is 16 to 1 and only 10 percent of schools have more than 22 students for each teacher. Among students at central city high schools, Hispanic students are nearly twice as likely as black students to be at a high school with more than 1,838 students. High schools in seven states educate nearly 80 percent of Hispanic youth. These seven states with large Hispanic high school enrollment have larger public high schools, on average, than the rest of the nation. In the states with large Hispanic high school enrollment, Hispanics are morelikely than either whites or blacks to attend large and relatively more disadvantaged high schools. In California, nearly 40 percent of Hispanics attend large, relatively disadvantaged high schools, in comparison with 8 percent of whites and 30 percent of blacks.

The authors examined the relation of early life socioeconomic status to incident Alzheimer's disease (AD), level of cognition and rate of cognitive decline in old age. For up to 10 years, 859 older Catholic clergy members without dementia at baseline completed annual clinical evaluations as part of the Religious Orders Study. The evaluations included clinical classification of AD and detailed cognitive testing. At baseline, indicators of early life household socioeconomic level (e.g., parental education) and the county of birth were ascertained. Socioeconomic features of the birth county (e.g., literacy rate) were estimated with data from the 1920 US Census. Composite measures of early life household and community socioeconomic level were developed. In analyses that controlled for age, sex and education, higher household and community socioeconomic levels in early life were associated with higher level of cognition in late life but not with risk of AD or rate of cognitive decline. The results suggest that early life socioeconomic level is related to level of cognition in late life but not to rate of cognitive decline or risk of AD.

Public policy toward low-income families with children in the United States has changed dramatically in the last two decades. The Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program, in existence since 1935, was replaced with Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) as part of the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA). PRWORA eliminated . . .

Whether poor single mothers move in response to welfare benefits has important implications for social policy in a federal system. Many scholars claim that welfare does not affect migration. These claims are not definitive, however, because the models underlying them rely on problematic assumptions and do not adequately control for nonwelfare determinants ofmigration. I address these shortcomings with an improved statistical model of individual-level migration. The results indicate that welfare does affect residential choice. Although the effects of welfare are much smaller than the effects of family ties, they are real and have the potential to cause nontrivial changes in welfare populations and welfare expenditures.

In this paper, we present the use of sequential decision-making process simulations for base agents in our multi-agent based economic landscape (MABEL) model. The sequential decision-making process described here is a data-driven Markov-Decision Problem (MDP) integrated with stochastic properties. Utility acquisition attributes in our model are generated for each time step of the simulation. We illustrate the basic components of such a process in MABEL, with respect to land-use change. We also show how geographic information systems (GIS), socioeconomic data, a Knowledge-Base, and a market-model are integrated into MABEL. A Rule-based Maximum Expected Utility acquisition is used to as a constraint optimization problem. The optimal policy of base-agents decision making in MABEL is one that maximizes the differences between expected utility and average expected rewards of agent actions. Finally, we present a procedural representation of extracting optimal agent policies from socio-economic data using Belief Networks (BNs). A sample simulation of MABEL, as it is coded in the SWARM modeling environment, is presented. We conclude with a discussion of future work that is planned.