In 1999, the 76th Texas Legislature directed the Charles A. Dana Center at the University of Texas at Austin to "conduct a study of variations in known resource costs and costs of education beyond the control of a school district" and to "make recommendations to the 77th Legislature as to methods of adjusting funding under Chapter 42, Edcuation Code, to reflect variations in resource costs and costs of education." The Dana Center was directed to do this work with the assistance of the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts, the Texas Education Agency, and Texas A&M University. Their summary report, A Study of Uncontrollable Variations in the Costs of Texas Public Education: A summary report prepared for the 77th Texas Legislature (Alexander et al. 2000), explored multiple strategies for revising the Cost-of-Education Index (CEI) to reflect the substantial changes in Texas during the 1990s. Their follow-up Technical Supplement extended the analysis to incorporate additional information from the 1999-2000 school year. At the behest of the Joint Selection Committee on Public School Finance, this study further extends the Dana Center analysis of teacher compensation. As such, we incorporate information covering five school years-1998-99, 1999-2000, 2000-01, 2001-02, and 2002-03. We also incorporate information from the 2000 Census. Our analysis demonstrates both that there is considerable need for cost of education adjustments in Texas and that there is need to update the Texas CEI.

Recent influential empirical work has emphasized the negative impact immigrants have on the wages of U.S.-born workers, arguing that immigration harms less educated American workers in particular and all U.S.-born workers in general. Because U.S. and foreign born workers belong to different skill groups that are imperfectly substitutable, one needs to articulate a production function that aggregates different types of labor (and accounts for complementarity and substitution effects) in order to calculate the various effects of immigrant labor on U.S.-born labor. We introduce such a production function, making the crucial assumption that U.S. and foreign-born workers with similar education and experience levels may nevertheless be imperfectly substitutable, and allowing for endogenous capital accumulation. This function successfully accounts for the negative impact of the relative skill levels of immigrants on the relative wages of U.S. workers. However, contrary to the findings of previous literature, overall immigration generates a large positive effect on the average wages of U.S.-born workers. We show evidence of this positive effect by estimating the impact of immigration on both average wages and housing values across U.S. metropolitan areas (1970-2000). We also reproduce this positive effect by simulating the behavior of average wages and housing prices in an open city-economy, with optimizing U.S.-born agents who respond to an inflow of foreign-born workers of the size and composition comparable to the immigration of the 1990s. Abstract Recent influential empirical work has emphasized the negative impact immigrants have on the wages of U.S.-born workers, arguing that immigration harms less educated American workers in particular and all U.S.-born workers in general. Because U.S. and foreign born workers belong to different skill groups that are imperfectly substitutable, one needs to articulate a production function that aggregates different types of labor (and accounts for complementarity and substitution effects) in order to calculate the various effects of immigrant labor on U.S.-born labor. We introduce such a production function, making the crucial assumption that U.S. and foreign-born workers with similar education and experience levels may nevertheless be imperfectly substitutable, and allowing for endogenous capital accumulation. This function successfully accounts for the negative impact of the relative skill levels of immigrants on the relative wages of U.S. workers. However, contrary to the findings of previous literature, overall immigration generates a large positive effect on the average wages of U.S.-born workers. We show evidence of this positive effect by estimating the impact of immigration on both average wages and housing values across U.S. metropolitan areas (1970-2000). We also reproduce this positive effect by simulating the behavior of average wages and housing prices in an open city-economy, with optimizing U.S.-born agents who respond to an inflow of foreign-born workers of the size and composition comparable to the immigration of the 1990s.

The scale of the persistent, concentrated immigration from Mexico is a source of concern to many in the United States. The perception is that Mexicans are not assimilating into mainstream America as previous generations of immigrants did. In this paper, we look at the emigration of approximately 1 million French-Canadians who moved to the United States, with the bulk of the migration occurring between the end of the Civil War and 1930 and with most settling in neighboring New England. What makes this episode particularly interesting is the fact that the French-Canadian immigrants exerted considerable efforts to maintain their language and to replicate their home century institutions, most notably the schooling system, in their new country. This explicit resistance to assimilation generated considerable attention and concern in the U.S. over many years. The concerns are strikingly similar to those often invoked today in discussions of policy options regarding immigration from Hispanic countries, notably Mexico. We look at the convergence in the educational attainment of French Canadian immigrants across generations relative to native English-speaking New Englanders and to other immigrants. The educational attainment of Franco-Americans lagged that of their fellow citizens over a long period of time. Yet, by the time of the 2000 Census, they eventually, if belatedly, appeared to have largely achieved parity. Additionally, we show that military service was a very important factor contributing to the assimilation process through a variety of related channels, namely educational attainment, language assimilation, marrying outside the ethnic group, and moving out of New England. Finally, when we compare Franco-Americans to French-speaking Canadians of the same generations, it is clear that Franco-Americans substantially upgraded their educational attainment relative to what it would have been if they had not emigrated. This suggests that the pull factor eventually exerted a dominating influence.

The March 2004 summary report provides baseline estimates for the Pooled Salary and Benefits Index, the Teacher Fixed Salary and Benefits Index, and the Comparable Wages Index. In this technical supplement, we explore the impact on the index values of changes in the definition of controllable and uncontrollable costs, and extend the analysis to include the 2003-04 school year. We also examine the relationship between the index values and key characteristics of Texas school districts such as student demographics and school district wealth.

Recent influential empirical work has emphasized the negative impact immigrants have on the wages of U.S.-born workers, arguing that immigration harms less educated American workers in particular and all U.S.-born workers in general. Because U.S. and foreign born workers belong to different skill groups that are imperfectly substitutable, one needs to articulate a production function that aggregates different types of labor (and accounts for complementarity and substitution effects) in order to calculate the various effects of immigrant labor on U.S.-born labor. We introduce such a production function, making the crucial assumption that U.S. and foreign-born workers with similar education and experience levels may nevertheless be imperfectly substitutable, and allowing for endogenous capital accumulation. This function successfully accounts for the negative impact of the relative skill levels of immigrants on the relative wages of U.S. workers. However, contrary to the findings of previous literature, overall immigration generates a large positive effect on the average wages of U.S.-born workers. We show evidence of this positive effect by estimating the impact of immigration on both average wages and housing values across U.S. metropolitan areas (1970-2000). We also reproduce this positive effect by simulating the behavior of average wages and housing prices in an open city-economy, with optimizing U.S.-born agents who respond to an inflow of foreign-born workers of the size and composition comparable to the immigration of the 1990s.

Recent influential empirical work has emphasized the negative impact immigrants have on the wages of US-born workers, arguing that immigration harms less educated American workers in particular and all US-born workers in general. Because US and foreign-born workers belong to different skill groups that are imperfectly substitutable, one needs to articulate a production function that aggregates different types of labor (and accounts for complementarity and substitution effects) in order to calculate the various effects of immigrant labor on US-born labor. We introduce such a production function, making the crucial assumption that US and foreign-born workers with similar education and experience levels may nevertheless be imperfectly substitutable, and allowing for endogenous capital accumulation. This function successfully accounts for the negative impact of the relative skill levels of immigrants on the relative wages of US workers. However, contrary to the findings of previous literature, overall immigration generates a large positive effect on the average wages of US-born workers. We show evidence of this positive effect by estimating the impact of immigration on both average wages and housing values across US metropolitan areas (1970-2000). We also reproduce this positive effect by simulating the behavior of average wages and housing prices in an open city-economy, with optimizing US-born agents who respond to an inflow of foreign-born workers of the size and composition comparable to the immigration of the 1990s.

Since the early 1980s an increasing number of states have required students to pass statewide high school exit examinations (HSEEs) in order to graduate. States have usually adopted HSEEs in response to the perception that substantial numbers of graduates lack skills required for success in the modern economy. What do these education reforms mean for students postsecondary economic and labor market prospects? The central hypothesis of our research is that state HSEE policies have the effect of widening gaps in labor force status and earnings between young people who have high school diplomas and those without them. To test this hypothesis we model the association between state HSEE policies and these labor market outcomes using data from the 1980 through 2000 U.S. Censuses. We find no evidence that state HSEEs affect labor force status or earnings, or that the connections between state HSEE policies and these labor market outcomes vary by students race/ethnicity or the level of difficulty of state HSEEs.

Expensed investments are expenditures financed by the owners of capital that increase future profitsbut, by national accounting rules, are treated as an operating expense rather than as a capitalexpenditure. Sweat investment is financed by worker-owners who allocate time to their businessand receive compensation at less than their market rate. Such investments are made with theexpectation of realizing capital gains when the business goes public or is sold. But these investmentsare not included in GDP. Taking into account hours spent building equity while ignoring the outputintroduces an error in measured productivity and distorts the picture of what is happening inthe economy. In this paper, we incorporate expensed and sweat equity in an otherwise standardbusiness cycle model. We use the model to analyze productivity in the United States during the1990s boom. We find that expensed plus sweat investment was large during this period and criticalfor understanding the dramatic rise in hours and the modest growth in measured productivity.

The identity choices of multiracial individuals with Black heritage have traditionally been limited by the one-drop rule in America. This paper evaluates the rules contemporary influence and argues that, with increasing interracial marriage, options in racial identification are now available to this group. Using the 5% 1990 and 2000 PUMS, I consider how children from Black intermarriages are racially identified by their families and, using 2000 data, evaluate theoretical hypotheses to explain identification processes. The results show that most families with Black intermarriages reject the one-drop rule, but that Black-White families create unique interracial options, the implications of which are considered.

Do teenagers make decisions they will later regret or which impose costs on others? Both early teen marriage and dropping out of high school have historically been associated with a variety of negative outcomes, including higher poverty rates throughout life. To understand the personal and societal consequences of a teenager's choices and the desirability of legal restrictions, it is important to identify the causal effects of these choices. This paper uses an instrumental variables approach which takes advantage of variation in state laws which regulate the age at which individuals are allowed to marry, drop out of school, and begin work. The analysis combines information on these laws with data from the 1960, 1970, and 1980 U.S. Decennial Censuses and Vital Statistics marriage certificate data. The baseline IV estimate indicates that a woman who marries young is 28 percentage points more likely to live in poverty when she is older. Similarly, a woman who drops out of school is 10 percentage points more likely to be poor. The IV results are robust to a variety of alternative specifications and estimation methods, including LIML estimation and different levels of data aggregation. In comparison, the OLS estimates are extremely sensitive to how the data is aggregated, particularly for the early marriage variable.

The following excerpt is from the report Immigration and Fading Color Lines in America, by Frank D. Bean, Jennifer Lee, Jeanne Batalova, and Mark Leach, and published by the Russell Sage Foundation and the Population Reference Bureau. This report is one of several in the new series The American People, which sets the results of Census 2000 in context and collectively provides a portrait of the American people in a new century. Each report is written by an author or team of authors selected for their expertise with the data and their broad understanding of the implications of demographic trends. Reynolds Farley and John Haaga are the series editors.

The nineties has been a period of increasing migratory flows from less developed countries to industrialized nations. It is instructive to compare the two largest economies in the world, the European Union and the United States, in terms of the magnitude, trends and composition of their migratory inflows. While the two economies are similar in terms of size and level of development, the European Union still lags behind in its ability to attract immigrants and in the degree of internal mobility of its citizens. Moreover we document a general feature that became more prominent during the nineties. While both economies attracted less educated workers (primary school graduates) as well as highly educated workers (college graduates) from less developed countries, the United States have been able to attract “talent”,( i.e. the best among the skilled workers) from all over the world at a rate unmatched by the European Union. In fact the US attracted a large number of talents from the European Union itself during the nineties. This “brain drain” (probably driven by the large economic reward granted by the American economy to scientific, technological and professional talent) is worrisome for the European Union. Its ability to keep pace with the economic growth of the United States depends, in fact, on its ability to compete in the scientific and technological fields.

Both early teen marriage and dropping out of high school have historically been associated with a variety of negative outcomes, including higher poverty rates throughout life. Are these negative outcomes due to pre-existing differences or do they represent the causal effect of marriage and schooling choices? To better understand the true personal and societal consequences, this paper uses an instrumental variables approach which takes advantage of variation in state laws regulating the age at which individuals are allowed to marry, drop out of school, and begin work. The baseline IV estimate indicates that a woman who marries young is 28 percentage points more likely to live in poverty when she is older. Similarly, a woman who drops out of school is 10 percentage points more likely to be poor. The IV results are robust to a variety of alternative specifications and estimation methods, including LIML estimation. In comparison, standard OLS estimates are extremely sensitive to how the data is aggregated, particularly for the early marriage variable.

The National Science Foundation's (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship (GRF) is a highly prestigious award for science and engineering (S&E) graduate students. This paper uses data from 1952 to 2004 on the population of over 200,000 applicants to the GRF to examine the determinants of the number and characteristics of applicants and the characteristics of awardees. In the early years of the program, GRF awards went largely to physical science and mathematics students and disproportionately to white men, but asthe composition of S&E students has changed, larger shares have gone to biologicalsciences,socialsciences, and engineering, and to women andminorities.The absolute number of awards has varied over time, with no trend. Because the number of new S&E college graduates hasrisen, the result is a sharp decline in the number of awards per S&E bachelor's graduate. In the 2000s approximately 1/3rd as many NSF Fellowships were granted per S&E baccalaureate than in the 1950s-1970s. The dollar value of the awards relative to the earnings of college graduates has also varied greatly over time. Our analysis of the variation in the number and value of awards and of the characteristics of applicants and awardees finds that: 1. The primary determinant of winning a GRF are academic skills, which greatly impact panel ratings of applicants. Consistent with efforts to increase S&E diversity, women and minorities have higher changes of winning an award than white men with similar attributes. 2. The size of the applicant pool varies with the relative value of the stipend, the number of S&E bachelor's graduates, and the lagged number of awards per graduate. We estimate that for every 10% increase in the stipend value, the number of applications goes up by 8 to 10 percent. 3. The average measured skill of awardees falls when the number of awards are increased and rises with the value of fellowships. 4. The supply of applicants contains enough qualified candidates to allow for a sizeable increase in the number of awards without greatly reducing measured skills. 5. The supply of highly skilled applicants is sufficiently responsive to the value of awards that increasesin the value ofstipends could attractsome potentially outstanding science and engineering students who would otherwise choose other careers.

Latinos are now the largest minority in the United States, but their distinctive health needs and mortality patternsremain poorly understood. Proportional hazards regressions were used to compare Latino versus White risk- andincome-adjusted mortality over 25 years follow-up from 5,846 Latino and 300,647 White men screened for theMultiple Risk Factor Intervention Trial. Men were aged 3557 years and residing in 14 states when screened in19731975. Data on coronary heart disease risk factors, self-reported race/ethnicity, and home addresses wereobtained at baseline; income was estimated by linking addresses to census data. Mortality follow-up through 1999was obtained using the National Death Index. The fully adjusted Latino/White hazard ratio for all-cause mortalitywas 0.82 (95% confidence interval (CI): 0.77, 0.87), based on 1,085 Latino and 73,807 White deaths; this patternprevailed over time and across states (thus, likely across Latino subgroups). Hazard ratios were significantlygreater than one for stroke (hazard ratio 1.30, 95% CI: 1.01, 1.68), liver cancer (hazard ratio 2.02, 95%CI: 1.21, 3.37), and infection (hazard ratio 1.69, 95% CI: 1.24, 2.32). A substudy found only minor racial/ethnicdifferences in the quality of Social Security numbers, birth dates, soundex-adjusted names, and National DeathIndex searches. Results were not likely an artifact of return migration or incomplete mortality data.

Findings from the 2000 US Census indicate high rates of Hispanic population increase beyond urban areas and traditional immigrant receiving states. The diversity of new destinations raises questions about forces attracting migrants to rural areas and links between economic structural change and Hispanic population growth. Our conceptualframework applies dual-labor market theory to the meat processing industry, a sector whose growing Hispanic labor force offers an illustrative case study for analyzing how labor demand influences demographic change. We document the industrys consolidation, concentration, increased demand for low skilled labor, and changing labor force composition over three decades. We then positionmeat processing within a broader analysis that models nonmetro county Hispanic population growth between 1980 and 2000 as a function of changes in industrial sector employment share and nonmetrocounty economic and demographic indicators. We find that growth in meat processing employment exhibits the largest positive coefficient increase in nonmetro Hispanic population growth over two decades and the largest impact of all sectors by 2000.