This paper reviews trends in housing affordability in the U.S. over the past four decades. There is little evidence that owner-occupied housing has become less affordable. In contrast, there have been modest increases in the fraction of income that the median renter household devotes to housing. We find pronounced increases in the rent burdens for poor households. We explore the low-income rental market in more detail, analyzing the relative importance of changes in the income distribution, in housing quality, land use regulation, and zoning in affecting rent burdens. We also sketch out some policies that might improve housing affordability.

This paper analyzes how the implicit difference in time horizons between refugees and economic immigrants affects subsequent human capital investments and wage assimilation. The analysis uses the 1980 and 1990 Integrated Public Use Samples of the Census to study labor market outcomes of immigrants who arrived in the United States from 1975 to 1980. I find that in 1980 refugee immigrants in this cohort earned 6% less and worked 14% fewer hours than economic immigrants. Both had approximately the same level of English skills. The two immigrant groups had made substantial gains by 1990; however, refugees had made greater gains. In fact, the labor market outcomes of refugee immigrants surpassed those of economic immigrants. In 1990, refugees from the 19751980 arrival cohort earned 20% more, worked 4% more hours, and improved their English skills by 11% relative to economic immigrants. The higher rates of human capital accumulation for refugee immigrants contribute to these findings.

On the last day of July 1851, Lorenza Berbineau, a Boston servant girl who accompanied the family of Francis Cabot Lowell II on their tour of Europe, went to Hyde Park to the great Exhibition. In breathless prose, she exalted: It was magnificent I saw things from the United States handsome lamps machinery farming emplementsfrom France saw a splendid door of Malachite green also tables Chairs vases some say it is stone some say it is a Metal it was taken from a mine I saw the Horse in Bronze the wild horse there was two men tying a man on to him I saw a wrought silks & caps wrought with gold thread a great many Swiss things cut from woodsome Turkey carpets also French Tapestry Carpets there were two large Diamon I was told the man who cut it was put in Prison for 21 years for cutting it so badlyI saw some Vases made from Cannel Coal they looked like black Ebonythere was a good deal of machinery from Different parts of the world some of it was in motion I saw them make bricks they put the clay in it came out formed into brickI was there about 3 hours to day I got very tired.

Much contemporary scholarship and most media coverage of single-parent families focus on the decades since 1960 and depict this as the era when both single-parent families and social controversy over them soared. But neither single-parent families resulting from marital dissolution and non-marital childbearing nor controversy about these families is new. While the proportion of children living in single-parent families was small prior to 1960, increases in marital dissolution, non-marital childbearing and/or single-parent family formation marked every decade of the twentieth century, fostering widespread debate. Media accounts and scholarly articles published throughout the century testify to the controversy that accompanied these increases. In this study, I examine discourse about single-parent families published in U.S. popular magazines and social science journals between 1900 and 1998. I focus on single-parent families resulting from divorce, separation and non-marital childbearing. I consider how discourse about single-parent families changed over the course of the twentieth century, and I compare discourse about single-parent families in the media with discourse in academia. I use primary data and examine both the quantity and the content of discourse. I begin by establishing how the quantity and content of discourse about single-parent families in popular magazines and social science journals changed over time. Then I draw on reflection theory, production of culture theory and the social construction of problems to explore some of the factors that contributed to these patterns. These include: the demographic trends that drove increases in single-parent family formation; change in the magazine and scholarly publishing industries; change in the characteristics of the popular commentators and scholars who shaped discourse about single-parent families; and selected social and economic trends that may have influenced the quantity of discourse about single-parent families in magazines and social science journals.

The monograph demonstrates the widespread existence of differences in life span by month of birth in the elderly populations of contemporary societies. It provides evidence that the pattern is linked to the seasons of the year, by comparing the Northern and the Southern Hemisphere. It formulates and tests a series of explanations for the month-of-birth effect and rejects many of the most frequently offered explanations. In particular, it rejects those that attribute the month-of-birth effect to social or statistical confounding. It establishes a link between the month-of-birth pattern in the life span and the month-of-birth pattern in survival during the first year of life. It provides evidence that nutrition and infectious disease early in life play an important role in adult health and survival later in life and that the differences in life span by month of birth still exist in cohorts born today.

Having a female firstborn child significantly increases the probability that a womans first marriage breaks up. We exploit this exogenous variation to measure the effect of marital breakup on womens economic outcomes. We find evidence that breakup has little effect on a womans average household income, but significantly increases the probability that her household will be in the lowest income quartile. While women partially offset the loss of spousal earnings with child support, welfare, combining households, and substantially increasing their labor supply, divorcesignificantly increases the odds of household poverty on net.

Segregation of households on the dimension of income at the jurisdictional level is interesting to economists because, under some conditions, it is an equilibrium condition in the political economy models of jurisdiction choice that follow from Tiebout (1956). This paper addresses the measurement of household income sorting across jurisdictions and the attribution of observed sorting to a Tiebout mechanism. A standard decomposition of variance into within- and between-jurisdiction components is biased downward by roughly 50 percent due to measurement error. Adjusting US Census data accordingly, an average across MSAs of six to eight percent of income variation can be explained by differences across jurisdictions; approximately 21 percent in the much-studied Boston MSA. Variance decomposition overstates the role of locally provided public goods because jurisdictions are differentiated by both government and location. Comparing pairs of adjacent, randomly defined neighborhoods in the Boston MSA, I find that jurisdiction differences alone explain no more than three to four percent of income variation.

Discusses issues concerning high-school graduate students with solid B averages, who are finding it hard to get into public universities, in relation to the increasing number of students enrolling in U.S. colleges and universities as of July 2, 2004. Estimated number of undergraduate students who will be enrolled by 2015; Factors that contribute to the increasing number of students seeking college degrees; Reason high-school students with good records are competing for the number of slots at public flagship universities; Details of the approaches which could increase institutional capacity, faculty productivity and allow students to take the courses they need to obtain their degrees faster and at less expense.

The United States is one of only a handful of nations in which immigrant women outnumber immigrant men. These women come from increasingly diverse regions, thereby bringing considerably different skills to the U.S. workforce. However, the question of how gender and ethnicity interact with each other to affect the economic performance of female immigrants remains especially understudied. Thus, this paper aims at providing some insight into this formerly neglected dimension of female immigrant performance. It examines the sources of wage differentials between immigrant females, and other groups in the U.S. labor force, paying particular attention to earnings inequalities created by the interaction of gender and ethnicity. OLS regressions are used to carry out the analysis. A random sample of 100,000 immigrants and 50,000 natives is drawn from the 5% 2000 IPUMS data set. Their salary and wage income is regressed on several variables accounting for differences in human capital, gender and nationality, including interactions between gender and ethnicity. The results show that females and immigrants have relatively low wages because of their sex and country of birth. In addition, interactions between gender and ethnicity are found to be significant determinants of wages.

Faced by a growing homeless population, researchers over the last twenty years have begun to study the determinants and outcomes of homelessness. For the most part, two camps have set up regarding what factors most heavily influence ones movement into homelessness. On the one side, researchers argue that individual characteristics are most important for determining homelessness, but variations between studies have led some to look to structural factors. In particular, researchers on the other side have examined the lack of affordable housing and economic factors as important elements of homelessness. Based on several studies that examine homelessness and employment, this study used data from the 2000 US Census to explore what variables most influence employment status amongst the homeless. In particular, I examine whether age, gender, race, education, disabilities, transportation, ability to speak English, and connection to a social network affect the probability of finding employment. I find that age, gender, race and disabilities significantly affect the probability of a homeless persons ability to find employment. I propose that government can best increase the entrance of the homeless into the labor force by providing them further housing, education, job training, and support programs that will help them overcome the barriers to employment.

The Ottoman government obtained current information on the empire's sources of revenue through periodic registers called tahrir defterleri. These documents include detailed information on taxpaying subjects and taxable resources, making it possible to study the economic and social history of the Middle East and eastern Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Although the use of these documents has been typically limited to the construction of local histories, adopting a more optimistic attitude toward their potential and using appropriate sampling procedures can greatly increase their contribution to historical scholarship. They can be used in comprehensive quantitative studies and in addressing questions of broader historical significance or larger social scientific relevance.

In the past few years, a number of new studies have published high-tech rankings of American metropolitan areas that are used by many business consultants and local economic development organizations to advise firms on location strategies. In this article, the authors generate their own rankings based on an occupational definition of high techness and compare them with those of four other studies. The results rank larger and older industrial cities, such as Chicago, New York, and even Detroit, higher than many of the smaller places celebrated as high tech, such as Austin. The work demonstrates that the methodology underlying rankings is crucially important to the outcome. By abandoning narrow notions of high tech restricted to maturing technologies in computers, electronics, and telecommunications and instead using science and technology (S&T) occupations as a marker for high tech, it may be possible to tag the innovative potential of emerging sectors, including high-tech services.

The ethnic entrepreneurship literature posits that the maintenance of the ethnic community facilitates ethnic entrepreneurship. Hence, and in contrast to classical assimilation theory, it is the preservation of ethnicity rather than its gradual loss, which provides an avenue of economic absorption. Yet, as entrepreneurs and therefore members of the capitalist class, ethnic entrepreneurs are actively engaged within the capitalist economy. From this perspective, entrepreneurial activity may indicate assimilation. Using 1980, 1990, and 2000 census data (IPUMS), this research investigates hypotheses of segmented assimilation on the self-employment outcomes of White, Black, Mexican, and Korean men in the US. Predictions of segmented assimilation are tested by 1) an examination of self-employment differences as a percentage of all men by cohort and ethnicity; 2) an examination of ethnic differences in 1980-2000 changes by cohort; 3) a cohort analysis of the self-employment outcomes of these groups disaggregated by nativity and generation, and compared to US-born Whites and Blacks, separately. Findings reveal a gradual pattern of convergence to US-born White outcomes, as foreign-born Mexicans and Koreans reside in the US longer, and among US-born Mexicans and Koreans. In contrast, entrepreneurial participation among Blacks declines as the foreign-born reside in the US longer, and among US-born Blacks.

This paper argues that the growing presence of a new type of manone brought up in a family in which the mother workedhas been a significant factor in the increase in female labor force participation over time. We present cross-sectional evidence showing that the wives of men whose mothers worked are themselves significantly more likely to work. We use variation in the importance of World War II as a shock to women's labor force participationas proxied by variation in the male draft rate across U. S. statesto provide evidence in support of the intergenerational consequences of our propagation mechanism.

A major, multi-year initiative directed by Co-PI Hedges was designed to help investigators determine whether an intervention has significant effects on learning and instruction. The product of this effort was a multi-volume compilation of intraclass correlation values of academic achievement and related covariate effects that can be used for planning group-randomized experiments in education. Specifically, this Variance Almanac allows researchers to compute the statistical power and samples sizes needed to achieve generalizable results. Early findings from this work were presented by Hedges in a keynote address to the 2006 Annual IERI PI meeting, Variance structure of academic achievement in America: Reference values for planning evaluation studies

Rare membership and lodge data from the late ninteenth-century American fraternal order provide support for the existence of "bridging ties" among its members along class and neighbourhood line, though not across racial or gender lines. Lodge-related political activity centered on issues of exclusivity, such as the desirability of non-English speaking members. The order's system of government was more top-heavy and hierarchical than democratic; decision-making power resided with established members at the organization's national level. Overall, the data paint a picture of an American fraternal lodge unlike that represented in the contemporary literature about social-capital formation in the Golden Age of Fraternity.