Director: Dr. Garland F. White Using data from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) of the 2000 U.S. census, the socioeconomic attainments of African immigrants was compared to African-Americans in the United States. This comparison was made within the context of assimilation perspective, human capital perspective, and the family investment model. Consistent with previous research findings, the current study found that African immigrants have higher educational attainments than African-Americans in the United States. However, when breaking down the African group by country of birth, African-Americans were found to have higher educational attainments than a few African countries. Generally, the results reveal that African immigrants have higher socioeconomic attainments than African-Americans in the United States. While place of birth was found to have a statistically significant relationship to socioeconomic attainment, within this study race was the most powerful predictor of socioeconomic attainments within these groups. This finding suggests that assimilation and human capital perspectives do not adequately address this observed difference in the socioeconomic attainments of white Africans as compared to black Africans and African-Americans.

With the continuing influx of a large number of immigrants in the United States, the urban labor market segmentation along the lines of race/ethnicity, class, and gender has been drawing considerable attention in recent years. This dissertation focused on the phenomenon of "ethnic niches," i.e., industries and occupations dominated by a particular race/ethnic group. Using data from 5% Public Used Microdata Samples and a confidential dataset extracted from the Decennial Long Form Data 2000, this study suggests that living arrangements increase the chances of niche employment for most racial/ethnic groups, even after controlling human capital and some local context factors. However, there is a "substitution" effect between personal socioeconomic status and location factors. Further, a case study of Chinese male and female immigrants in the San Francisco metropolitan area indicates that living in Chinese residential concentrations and working in a Chinese dominated workplace are strongly related to the probability of niche employment. The results suggest that abundant ethnic resources in ethnic neighborhood and enclaves can provide certain types of labor market opportunities; however, it also indicates the limitation of these resources in helping ethnic minority or immigrant workers, especially women, move upward in the labor market hierarchy. This study also deploys a multilevel research

The book traces the long legal history of first racial segregation, and then racial desegregation in America. The authors explain how rapidly changing demographics and family structure in the United States have greatly complicated the project of top-down government efforts to achieve an "ideal" racial balance in schools. It describes how social capital--a positive outcome of social interaction between and among parents, children, and teachers--creates strong bonds that lead to high academic achievement. The authors show how coercive desegregation weakens bonds and hurts not only students and schools, but also entire communities. Examples from all parts of the United States show how parents undermined desegregation plans by seeking better educational alternatives for their children rather than supporting the public schools to which their children were assigned. Most important, this book offers an alternative, more realistic viewpoint on class, race, and education in America.

Acquiring good jobs is vital for the economic Success of immigrants, yet occupational attainment is understudied in the immigration literature. One particularly neglected aspect is the role of ethnicity in Occupations beyond the ethnic niche. This study examines the occupational attainment of long-term Latin American immigrants from Mexico, El Salvador,Guatemala,Cuba, Ecuador, and Colombia in four metropolitan areas with large Latino Populations. The findings show that occupational attainment varies considerably by country of origin across these areas, although important human and social capital factors also are significant variables. These findings lend Support to the proposition that, for immigrants, place of origin and destination play an important role in job-queuing position.

This paper proposes methods for detecting the changes between spatial tessellations at two different points in time. First, we classify changes of sub-regions into categories and then mathematically formulate the detection of changes of sub-regions. Second, we eliminate systematic positional displacement. Third, we match sub-regions between two tessellations using a representative point of each sub-region. Fourth, we match boundaries between the tessellations and also detect topological errors. Fifth, we judge whether or not matched boundaries should be considered the same. Sixth, we detect the changes of sub-regions by eliminating matched boundaries which are considered different at the previous step. Last, we apply the proposed methods to the U.S. Census data, and conclude with future work.

This dissertation explores Italian neighborhoods in Philadelphia and Toronto, tracing the responses of ethnic enclaves to postwar urban change. The two cities are chosen for the very different settings they provided for postwar Italian life. In South Philadelphia, the proximity of a large African American neighborhood and the specter of urban decline framed postwar Italian ethnicity. In Toronto, by contrast, postwar Italian ethnicity took shape in the midst of prosperity and in a context where no large urban group bore the social and economic prejudice directed against African Americans in Philadelphia. I use information compiled from a range of documentary sources, institutional records, oral histories, and ethnic and local newspapers to describe the reverberations of wider urban dynamics in the social and spatial configuration of Italian community. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) analysis accompanies other forms of interpretation to depict the diverging patterns of ethnic ties within the real estate market, church and social associational life, networks of dating and marriage, and work. I argue that Italian South Philadelphians used ethnicity to police the boundaries of a socially and economically divided city. In Toronto, where political, economic, and demographic patterns yielded a different context, Italian social bonds took a contrasting spatial form, spreading widely across the urban landscape. Italian ethnicity in Toronto operated on a metropolitan scale while in Philadelphia it marked local territory. My dissertation details the development of these very different forms of Italian ethnicity, illuminating the interwoven effects of politics, economy, and race in the choreography of daily life.

Employing the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series of the University of Minnesota, we chronicle the changing timing and duration of transitions to adulthood in the twentieth century. Successive generations of young Americans reinvented the transition to adulthood to accommodate shifts in the economy and the American state. The patterned choices of young people delineate three eras of social history in the twentieth century: the era of reciprocity (19001950), the era of dependence (195070s), and the era of autonomy (1970s-2000). We also explain why African Americans differed from the general trend; they developed distinctive transitions to adulthood in response to persistent inequality.

People of mixed heritagethose with ancestors of different race groupscan acknowledge this mixed heritage or they can chose not to. For decades, many people have indicated mixed heritage on the U.S. Census by reporting an ancestry or ethnic origin that differs from their reported race(s). This ancestry question was included in the long-form version of the census questionnaire in 1980, 1990, and 2000. In this paper, I take a long-term view of mixed- heritage reports to provide context and background information about the newly enumerated but longstanding mixed race population in America. I focus on the following research questions.1) What social and demographic characteristics predict whether a person of mixed racial heritage will report mixed heritage by reporting an ancestry different from their reported race?2) Over the past three censuses, has there been a shift in which characteristics best predict an ancestry report that is different from the reported single race? Is this change primarily evident between 1990 and 2000 and thus probably due to the change in the race question?3) How do characteristics that predict mismatched race/ancestry reports compare with those predictive of multiple-race reports?

Recent studies suggest that greater community heterogeneity will lead to lowerprovision of local public goods and less support for governmental income distribution programs towards the needy (Luttmer 2001). Our study analyzes how private donations to charitable organizations that help the needy are affected by greater community heterogeneity. It is important to address this question since charitable organizations are often considered to provide services that are substitutes toprovisions from the government. We find that greater ethnic heterogeneity decreases both the probability and the amount an individual contributes to a charitable organization using new data from Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID).

There has been a rapid growth in the area of geographic information systems (GIS) and the related creation of spatially addressable data-sets over the past twenty years. Increasingly, researchers are attempting to use the census geographic base files for geo-demographic analyses. The National Historical Geographic Information System (NHGIS), a five-year project funded by the National Science Foundation will result in a comprehensive US census database levels for both geographical and attribute data from 1790 to 2000. A significant part of the project involves the creation of several versions of the database corresponding to the different scales included in the NHGIS. Preliminary work has identified three scales as potentially most useful. One scale is at 1:150,000 for detailed tract-level mapping while another is at 1:1400,000 for county-level mapping. The third one is at 1:1,000,000 for regional and national mapping. The NHGIS is being developed at the University of Minnesota's Population Center.

The new data on race and Hispanic origin provide a vast array of information about the racial and ethnic composition of the United States. Yet, social scientists, demographers, and policy makers are now faced with the serious issue of using these data appropriately. While datacollection is well-advanced, theoretical and methodological developments are only in the beginning stages. To contribute to this area, this paper articulates the utility of latent class analysis for modeling such phenomena as a basis for theoretical advance. Specifically, we examine the latent structure of race and Hispanic origin responses in Census 2000 to provide some empirical basis for further theorizing of Americas current race/ethnic situation. Forexample, race theorists have repeatedly hypothesized that Americas most powerful racial divide today is between Blacks and non-Blacks, rather than between Whites and non-Whites. Our analyses will provide a new testing ground for this and related ideas because we take into account the full array of multiple race and Hispanic origin responses.

Since 1990, a historical database of Belgian municipalities has been under construction at the Department of Modern History at Ghent University. Historical demographic and economic statistics at the level of municipalities for the period 1800-1961 have been systematically collected. Hundreds of historical maps have been digitized, representing the territorial structure of Belgium for the period 1800-2000. Recently, a sophisticated historical geographical information system and a website have been developed to make these maps and data accessible to the public. The main goal of the project is to build a historical . . .

Changes in fertility and mortality affect the size of surviving sibling sets and thus numbers of surviving kin. Because the genealogical generations specifying kinship relations are not temporal cohorts and most plausible demographic changes in anthropological populations are period shocks, the effect of such shocks on kin counts are complex. Shocks increasing fertility or decreasing mortality produce larger numbers of kin per ego and decrease the inequality of the distribution of kin and vice versa. Effects are more diffuse at more distant collateral ranges. Effects are stronger the more intense the shock and the longer its duration. Kinship distributions return to their initial state after the shock and as the original age structure of the population is ergodically reattained. Alternating shocks produce more complex patterns. Implications of these outcomes are that opportunities for political networking and consolidation by means of kinship are altered by demographic instabilities, as are the dynamics of kin selection. This analysis is limited for simplicity to unilineal agnatic reckoning of kin.

Age at first marriage in the United States has increased dramatically between 1970 and 2000. This demographic phenomenon has captured the attention of academic researchers, policy makers and the media. To understand these recent changes in marriage, however, it is important to place them in a broader chronological context. This dissertation is a demographic analysis of marriage and marriage timing in the United States using census microdata from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS). The first half of this dissertation presents a broad overview of the demographic trends in marriage formation over the period 1850 to 2000. These chapters investigate significant racial and ethnic variations in marriage formation and compare marriage formation to other life course transitions. In the second half of the dissertation, I assess the dominant demographic theories of marriage formation, focusing particularly on the role of economic opportunity. This research highlights two key issues: the relevance of changes in women's economic opportunities in explaining changes in marriage age and the important racial and ethnic variations in marriage behavior. Demographers in recent years have dismissed the role of women's economic opportunity and have turned their attention to declines in men's economic opportunity as an explanation for the rapid increase in marriage age since 1970. I argue, however, that both male and female economic opportunity are important to understanding the dramatic fluctuations in marriage age since 1940. Social scientists have documented and analyzed the substantial differences in black and white marriage patterns in recent decades. The economic hardships of black men, in particular, are often cited to explain the differences. Scholars have spent considerably less effort, however, on other racial and ethnic variations in marriage timing and on a longer historical view of these current trends. In this dissertation I present the patterns in marriage age for whites and blacks in the twentieth century, revealing that prior to 1950, black men and women married at younger age than their white counterparts. These results, and the differences between racial and ethnic groups in recent decades, raise questions about the association between socio-economic circumstances and marriage.

The Job Access and Reverse Commute (JARC) program of the FTA provides funding to improve the access to and from jobs for welfare recipients and low-income individuals. The objective of the study was to develop a comprehensive profile of JARC service riders on several economic, social, perceptual, and travel-related indicators on the basis of a data set that was collected by the authors from riders of fixed-route and demand-responsive services in 23 locations across the country that were funded by this program. The economic indicators considered include incomes of riders, full-and part-time work status, employment tenure, reported changes in employment status (transitioning from unemployment to employment), and changes in wages incurred after using the service. Social indicators include vehicle ownership, driver's license, and educational attainment Where possible, JARC service riders were compared with a national sample of automobile and transit users; the data for these measures were obtained from the decennial census. Two measures of perceived service dependency that indicate the importance of the service to the riders are discussed. In addition, a profile of travel-related changes incurred by riders as a result of service use is developed, including changes in mode of travel and travel times. Many of these indicators are differentiated on the basis of type of area and type of service. This analysis brings a user perspective into the discussion about low-income employment transportation services and highlights the diversity of impacts that job access transportation is having on the work and nonwork activities of low-income riders.

Given the very large proportion of Hawaiians who are multiracial, our research examines Native Hawaiian identification in mixed-race Hawaiian families. We use the 1990 Census, which affords a unique look at racial identification because multiracial people were required to choose one race over another. The results show support for our argument that place plays a central role in Pacific identity processes, illustrated in this case among Hawaiians. We find that strong ties to Hawai'i -- the spiritual and geographic home of the Hawaiian population, its history, and its culture are vital to the intergenerational transmission of Hawaiian identification in both continental and island multiracial families. We compare our results for multiracial Native Hawaiians to prior studies of American Indians and Asian Americans to identify any general patterns in correlates of racial identification choices. In each group, we find that familial and geographic relationships to the cultural and ancestral lands are strongly linked to racial identification.