This paper uses 2000 Census data to estimate the relationship of agglomeration and proximity to human capital to wages. The paper takes a geographic approach, and focuses on the attenuation of agglomeration and human capital effects. Differencing and instrumental variable methods are employed to address endogeneity in the wageagglomeration relationship and also to deal with measurement error in our agglomeration and human capital variables. Three key results are obtained. First, the spatial concentration of employment within five miles is positively related to wage. Second, the benefits of spatial concentration are driven by proximity to college educated workers, an instance of human capital spillovers. Third, these effects attenuate sharply with distance.

While an extensive literature examines the impact of low-skilled immigration on US native wages, there has been almost no research on the parallel question of how immigration affects the price of goods and services. A standard small open economy model suggests that low-skilled immigration should reduce the relative price of non-traded goods by decreasing the wages of low-skilled workers. Treating US cities as small open economies and using confidential price data on goods and services to estimate reduced-form price effects, I find that, at current immigration levels, a 10 percent increase in the share of low-skilled immigrants in the labor force decreases the price of immigrant-intensive services, such as housekeeping and gardening, by 1.3 percent and of other non-traded goods by 0.2 percent. Structural estimates suggest that lower wages are a likely channel through which these effects take place. However, wage effects are significantly larger for low-skilled immigrants than for low-skilled natives because the two are imperfect substitutes. Overall, the results imply that the low skilled immigration wave of the 1990s increased the purchasing power of high-skilled natives living in the 25 largest cities by 0.65 percent but decreased the purchasing power of native high school dropouts by 2.66 percent.

From 1940 to 1990, a 10 percent increase in a metropolitan area's concentration of college-educated residents was associated with a .8 percent increase in subsequent employment growth. Instrumental variables estimates support a causal relationship between college graduates and employment growth, but show no evidence of an effect of high school graduates. Using data on growth in wages, rents and house values, I calibrate a neoclassical city growth model and find that roughly 60 percent of the employment growth effect of college graduates is due to enhanced productivity growth, the rest being caused by growth in the quality of life. This finding contrasts with the common argument that human capital generates employment growth in urban areas solely through changes in productivity.

Abstract: Why has the gendered division of domestic labour proved so resistant to change despite the growth in married women's labour force participation? We develop a game theoretic model of marriage to show that women's individual levels of relative economic autonomy are not in themselves sufficient to bring about an aggregate shift in the division of domestic labour. Using data for 22 countries from the 1994 International Social Survey Programme, we show that what is required is that there be a greater proportion of economically autonomous women within the society as a whole, together with a sufficiently large proportion of men who, if faced with an economically autonomous woman, would rather participate in domestic tasks than endure marital breakdown. These results suggest that until we see greater gender material equality for the majority of women in a society and an evolution in men's gender ideology, the gendered division of domestic labour will persist.

There have been numerous studies of the impact of post-1965 U.S. immigration policies on the significant growth of the U.S. population since 1965. Some of these studies have explored chain migration generally while others have attempted to estimate quantitatively a value for the immigration multiplier for chain migration. The only systematic demographic calculation method for immigration multiplier was proposed in 1986 by Jasso and Rosenzweig, who used an INS data set of individual administrative records that is not readily available to the public. The method of Jasso and Rosenzweig drew some debate due to its limitations. Given the complicated nature of the immigration multiplier, no effective calculation methods have been proposed since the debate. In this dissertation, I develop a relatively simple method for the calculation of the immigration multiplier to measure chain migration using the Public Use Microdata Sample from the U.S. Census and published INS data for the last thirty years. With the introduction of the Immigration Multiplier, this research has also introduced the Immigration Unification Multiplier for measuring the unification part of chain migration (focusing on family reunifications) and the Immigration Reproduction Multiplier for measuring the reproduction phase of the chain migration (focusing on immigrant fertility). This research has presented the Immigration Multiplier as the product of the Immigration Unification Multiplier and the Immigration Reproduction Multiplier, or the combined total number of the first- and second-generation individuals contributed respectively by the original principal immigrants. Using this new Immigration Multiplier, this research has performed extensive analysis and some simulations that provide the estimated multiplier effect of migration chains under various scenarios. Simulation models were built based on the immigration characteristics as well as the feasibility of interventions (e.g. the elimination of the sponsorship of siblings of U.S. citizens and its impact). This research has demonstrated that the chain immigration process does exist in the U.S., and the chain immigration patterns vary by country of origin. The research also suggests that the future sponsorship of family members is determined by the combination of U.S. immigration policy, the social and cultural characteristics of countries from which the immigrants came.

The interpretation of twentieth-century African American inequality remains fraught with controversy. Have barriers to African American economic progress crumbled or remained stubbornly resistant to fundamental change? Has the story been similar for women and men? What mechanisms have fostered or retarded change? Those questions matter not only because they cut so close to the heart of twentieth-century American history but also because they bear on important public-policy choices in the present. In this article, we rely primarily on census data assembled in the University of Minnesota's Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) to examine the controversial topic of black inequality. Our answer to the questions the data pose does not support either the optimistic or the pessimistic version of African American history. But it does not come down in an illusory middle, either. Rather, it recasts the issue by arguing that after World War II the nature of black inequality altered fundamentally. Inequality, we contend, worked differently at the end of the twentieth century than at its start or midpoint. At the start of the twentieth century, pervasive, overt racial discrimination barred blacks from most jobs, denied them equal education, and disenfranchised them politically. During the second half of the twentieth century, slowly and sometimes in the face of violent opposition, the situation of African Americans changed dramatically. Courts and Congressprodded by a massive social movement, national embarrassment on the world stage during the Cold War, and the electoral concerns of urban politiciansextended political and civil rights. Affirmative action and new "welfare rights" contributed to the extension of social citizenshipguarantees of food, shelter, medical care, and education. By the end of the century, legal and formal barriers that had excluded blacks from most institutions and from the most favorable labor market positions had largely disappeared. Black poverty had plummeted, and black political and economic achievements were undeniable

...It is the main hypothesis that after controlling for other forms of human capital and additional worker characteristics, native workers experienced greater rates of return to the attainment of 12 years, 14 years (some college) and 16 years (college degree) of education respectively in 1980 and in 1990. Additionally, it is hypothesized that the rates of return to all three levels of education grew between 1980 and 1990 for both groups, and that they grew the most for 16 years (college degree) of education. This second hypothesis is intended to show growth rates in immigrant and native returns to education that might provide incight into the determinants of the rate-of-return differences posited in the first hypothesis. More specifically, some economists (Berman et al, 1994) have cited observed growth in the relative demand for skilled labor in the 1980s as a likely cause of the larger increase in the number of jobs requiring high skills relative to those requiring low skills. It is possible that this higher relative demand for skilled labor is benefiting both groups. Applying human capital theory to immigrant assimilation, section II reviews the literature on declining relative immigrant skill levels and declining relative immigrant wages between 1970 and 1990. Also, section II observes changes in the rates of return to different levels of education experienced by all male workers and the changing labor market conditions that occurred over the same period. Section III explains the data and empirical model used to estimate the rates of return to education experienced by immigrants and natives in 1980 and 1990. Since the real argument regarding these differences in rates of return lies in their interpretation, section IV delivers the results and then attempts to make sense of them with traditional explanations. Section V gives concluding remarks, policy implications and suggestions for further research...

In this paper we study whether location-specic price variation affects statistical inference and theoretical interpretation of human capital earnings functions. We demonstrate, in a model of local labor markets, that the "return to schooling" is constant across locations if and only if preferences are homothetic--a special case that seems unlikely to generally pertain. Examination of the U.S. Census data (for 1980, 1990, and 2000) provides evidence that the return to a college education, relative to a high school education, does indeed vary widely across cities, e.g., in 1990 the return in Houston is 0.54 while in Seattle it is only 0.33. We provide theoretical reasons to suspect that the returns to education are relatively lower in expensive high-amenity locations, and present evidence consistent with this prediction. Finally, we raise concerns about standard empirical exercises in labor economics which treat the returns to education as a single parameter.

Historical research on intermarriage has overlooked how distinctive patterns of ethnic settlement shape partner choice and assumed that the mate selection process operated the same way for men and women. This study utilizes a sample of young married adults drawn from the 1910 Census IPUMS to examine 1) whether ethnic variation in partner choice was shaped by differences in group concentration and distribution and 2) if factors shaping outmarriage were gendered. About one fifth of young married Americans had spouses of a different ethnic background in 1910, though there was considerable ethnic variation in outmarriage propensities. Barriers to intermarriage fell at different rates, depending upon ethnic group, sex, and region of settlement; they were weakest for first- and second-generation English men. Structural factors such as group size operated differently for men and women; while larger group representation increased men's odds of outmarriage to both native stock and other white ethnic wives, women from the ethnic groups with the largest presence were significantly more likely to wed fellow ethnics than the native stock. Ultimately, even if they resided in the same location, the marriage market operated in different ways for ethnic women and men in search of mates.

In 1954, the Internal Revenue Service stipulated that employer contributions to the health insurance plans of their employees were to be excluded from employee taxable income. Today, the tax subsidy is major feature of the U.S. health care market. This paper examines the initial effects of the tax subsidy on the demand for health insurance using previously unexamined data from 1953 and 1958. Results suggest that the tax subsidy increased the growth of group insurance, particularly among union members and employed persons. This is a critical effect because group insurance is not only less expensive than individual insurance, but it is also easier to obtain, and households with access to group health insurance are far more likely to purchase health insurance coverage than those without similar access. By increasing access to group insurance, the tax subsidy fostered an increase in the purchase of group health insurance by people who may not have purchased individual coverage, and generated institutional change as it cemented an employment-based system of group health insurance in the United States.

This paper examines the economic well-being of households headed by same-sex partners relative to households headed by married and cohabiting heterosexuals. Using data from the 1990 Census of Population and Households, Public Use Micro Data 5% Sample (PUMS), we evaluate inter-group differences in absolute and adjusted household income and, using algebraic and regression-based decomposition techniques, assess the contribution to these differences of household human capital and labor market activity. Descriptive analyses reveal that average annual income and the income-to-needs ratio are higher in same-sex households than in households headed by married or cohabiting heterosexuals. The multivariate decompositions indicate that this economic advantage exists even though lesbian and gay male couples reap lower returns to their combined human capital investments and labor market activity.

The U.S. workforce heavily depends on immigrants. To address the role & position of non-White immigrant groups in the United States, the authors examine employment & industry patterns in the labor force, disaggregated by nativity & gender, in 1990 & 2000. The authors then look at job quality & mobility, with job quality defined by occupation, industry, & relative earnings, using 1990 & 2000 census data. Disaggregating results by race & ethnicity, nativity, & gender reveals that immigrants do not appear entirely to be stuck in low-end jobs, & arrival cohort data suggest substantial immigrant upward mobility, mainly from lower to middle but also to higher range jobs. Immigrants may experience more upward mobility than analysts sometimes conclude based on consideration of immigrants' race & ethnicity alone & on assumptions that the experiences of new immigrants are likely to mirror those of the African American population. 2 Tables, 5 Figures, 35 References.