The transition from high school to college has become increasingly important for economic success and mobility in the United States. Most students form definite plans regarding post-secondary schooling by their senior years. Yet, not all seniors who plan to attend college immediately after graduation are successful in achieving that goal. We use information from a longitudinal study of high school seniors to determine the factors that influence their ability to actuate their college plans. Special attention is devoted to racial and ethnic variation in the realization of college plans, and in the possible explanations for such variation. Multivariate binary and multinomial logistic regression analyses reveal an enrollment advantage for Asian students and an enrollment disadvantage for African American students. In addition, Asian students are more likely than whites or blacks to attend two-year schools, while African American students are less likely than whites or Asians to attend four-year schools. Encouragement for a college attendance from parents, teachers, and friends is responsible for the greater likelihood of enrollment among Asians. Weaker high school academic performance appears to explain the disadvantage for African American students. The possibility of a cultural explanation is acknowledged for the greater encouragement enjoyed by Asian students, while alternative mechanisms are suggested for the role of academic performance in the lower likelihood of college actuation for black students.

Hookworm and malaria, parasites that remain a significant public health threat in the tropical belt today, were endemic in the American South as late as the first half of the twentieth century. I discuss how the successful eradication of malaria and hookworm in the American South affected human-capital accumulation. I find that areas that had higher levels of (malaria or hookworm) infection prior to eradication experienced greater increases in school attendance and literacy afterwards. Moreover, I find that adults earned substantially more if they were not exposed to these diseases as children. The estimates are large relative to the subsequent convergence between the North and South in the United States, but small compared to the cross-country distribution of income. Nevertheless, the results indicate potentially large benefits of public health interventions in developing countries.

The late 20th century saw a dramatic rise in the labor force participation & educational attainment of women in the US. Much of what we know, however, is based on studies that excluded members of the military &, specifically, male service members' wives. This research examines the dual patterns of labor force participation & educational attainment of military wives over a 50-year period, 1940-1990. The dataset utilized in this analysis is the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS). IPUMS consists of data from US federal censuses refined & recoded for consistency across time. We describe trends in wives' labor force participation, including rates of employment, the extent of employment (full- vs part-time), & type of occupation. Wives' educational attainment (highest grade completed) & continued education (for those who reported being in school in the past year) are measured as well. For each measure, we compare wives of military men to wives of civilian men, as well as conduct analyses separately for women of different race/ethnic backgrounds. Regional variations, mobility, & presence of children are also considered as possible explanations for military/nonmilitary differentials in wives' labor force participation & educational attainment.

A newly collected sample on heights of U.S. passport applicants is analyzed in order to re-address the trend in physical stature of the American population during the 19th century. It has been observed among various samples of the native born free population that the average (male) physical stature decline during the mid-19th century, starting with cohorts born in the 1830s. This has become known as the "Antebellum puzzle." In spite of considerable work on this phenomenon, the question about the extent to which the decline in the biological standard of living was brought about by economic processes concomitant to the onset of modern economic grown or by a deterioration in the disease environment remains. Hence, it is worthwhile to compare the physical stature of the middle class to the evidence of the native born U.S. population at large. On the basis of our evidence we hold the view that middle class trend deviates sufficiently from that of the U.S. population, and is in particular not subject to secular downturn in the Antebellum decades, to argue that the puzzle is rooted in changes in economic conditions to a considerable degree.

Theorists have cited residential segregation as a potentially important cause of rising African American single motherhood rates. Since levels of segregation fell in recent decades, this theory can only stand up empirically if the marginal effect of segregation simultaneously rose sufficiently to offset the decline in levels. Recent quantitative work found a strong positive effect of segregation on single motherhood rates in 1990, but did not look at earlier periods. Using IPUMS data from 1940 to 1990, I find a marked strengthening in the relationship between residential segregation and single motherhood. If those estimates are valid, then segregation could account for close to one-third of the total growth in single motherhood rates during that period. However, further analysis of the apparent effect of residential isolation suggests that the observed correlation between segregation rates and single motherhood is the spurious result of selective migration across metropolitan areas.

In this research I investigate the housing decisions of Spanish-speaking migrants. I use methods developed by Bajari and Kahn (2002) to obtain willingness to pay measurements for the migrant groups in samples drawn from three major California cities. I then apply these results to several hypotheses that attempt to describe current migration patterns of Hispanics into increasingly segregated communities characterized by high levels of crowding, low educational attainment, and high levels of Spanish speakers. This research finds that spoken language plays a significant role in a migrants decision process. Spanish-speaking migrants demonstrate a significant preference for locating in communities with higher levels of Spanish speakers. They demonstrate a large relative distaste for living neighborhoods with high levels of human capital as measured by the percentage of college graduates, as well as significantly lower valuations for the amount of space in a housing unit measured by the number of rooms. The spatial assimilation hypothesis finds significant support within the results, indicating that more assimilated Spanish speakers will continue to emigrate from language enclaves. These results will offer insights into the creation and growth of Hispanic language enclaves in the U.S.

A newly collected sample on heights of U.S. passport applicants is analyzed in order to re-address the trend in physical stature of the American population during the 19th century. It has been observed among various samples of the native born free population that the average (male) physical stature decline during the mid-19th century, starting with cohorts born in the 1830s. This has become known as the "Antebellum puzzle." In spite of considerable work on this phenomenon, the question about the extent to which the decline in the biological standard of living was brought about by economic processes concomitant to the onset of modern economic grown or by a deterioration in the disease environment remains. Hence, it is worthwhile to compare the physical stature of the middle class to the evidence of the native born U.S. population at large. On the basis of our evidence we hold the view that middle class trend deviates sufficiently from that of the U.S. population, and is in particular not subject to secular downturn in the Antebellum decades, to argue that the puzzle is rooted in changes in economic conditions to a considerable degree.

The authors aim this report at those researchers and policymakers who are considering using the longitudinal features of Canadas National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth (NLSCY) and who might benefit from a critical overview of the method and substance of longitudinal research in the field of child and adolescent development. They focus upon large-scale longitudinal surveys of children and youth and therefore devote comparatively little attention to household panel studies. Reviewing British and US longitudinal studies they find that compared to many US datasets, where samples are drawn from respondents that are school-aged or older, the classic British datasets follow a given birth cohort from birth well into their adulthood. Some U.S. studies have followed up children from birth, but these are typically the children of mothers from some earlier survey.The authors document how the methodology relevant to longitudinal and panel studies has developed over the last quarter of the twentieth century and they review three major areas of longitudinal data analysis in which seminal methodological advances have been made: Econometric Approaches; Event History Analysis; and Multilevel Models with Repeated Measures (growth curve models). They show how each of these approaches addresses different substantive research problems that can be defined for longitudinal and developmental data on children and youth.The authors conclude that Canadas NLSCY is very well placed, as an accelerated cohort design, to build upon the research findings and methodological advances associated with seminal longitudinal studies carried out in Britain, the US and elsewhere. They provide specific suggestions for strengthening research to be carried out using this major resource.

We apply an understanding of what computers do to study how computerization alters job skill demands. We argue that computer capital (1) substitutes for workers in performing cognitive and manual tasks that can be accomplished by following explicit rules; and (2) complements workers in performing nonroutine problem-solving and complex communications tasks. Provided that these tasks are imperfect substitutes, our model implies measurable changes in the composition of job tasks, which we explore using representative data on task input for 1960 to 1998. We find that within industries, occupations, and education groups, computerization is associated with reduced labor input of routine manual and routine cognitive tasks and increased labor input of nonroutine cognitive tasks. Translating task shifts into education demand, the model can explain 60 percent of the estimated relative demand shift favoring college labor during 1970 to 1998. Task changes within nominally identical occupations account for almost half of this impact.

One of the most important functions of local government is providing public education. There is, however, variation in preferences for school expenditure among different local groups. How the preferences of heterogeneous groups affect school spending is an important question for public policy. In this paper, I examine the unintended effects of a tax relief program in New York State that lowered the marginal cost of educational expenditure to homeowners by paying a portion of their property taxes to school districts. I find these fiscal incentives had statistically and economically significant effects on local government behavior; school expenditures rose by 1.6% on average in response to the state paying 10% of all local property taxes. Moreover, I find that the distribution of tax relief across local taxpayers and the mobility of non-residential property were important determinants of local response. My results suggest that, as a group, homeowners are relatively more influential on local decisions to increase expenditure than renters or owners of non-residential property, and that local taxpayers perceive significantly higher long-run costs to raising taxes on commercial and industrial property relative to more immobile property, such as vacant land. These findings highlight a potentially important issue that has received little attention in the literature on fiscal federalism: policies that seek to change local public expenditure may be made more effective by focusing on the preferences of more influential groups of local taxpayers.

The global city thesis by which Sassen (1991) has linked globalization with increased social polarization has attracted much attention and caused considerable discussion over the past decade. This article illustrates divergent approaches that have been taken to the study of social polarization and provides an overview of the issues that have been discussed in relation to the polarization debate. I argue that the global city thesis has been misleading and that the empirical work underlying it has been too limited. Thereafter I test the empirical basis for Sassen's thesis in an analysis of the distribution of wages in the New York Metropolitan Area during the period 1970 to 1990.

This paper develops new price indexes from a variety of sources to assess the hypothesis that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for rental shelter housing has been biased downward for its entire history since 1914. Rental shelter housing is the most important single category of the CPI, especially for those years when rent data have been used to impute price changes for owner-occupied housing. If valid, the implications of the hypothesis of downward bias would carry over to the deflator for Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) and, in the opposite direction, to historicalmeasures of real PCE and real GDP...

Trends and projections of the conditions that influence the demand and supply for long term care in Florida. Policy recommendations to benefit from existing positive trends.

Many economic models featuring labor supply decision, especially in macroeconomic analysis, assume away heterogeneity in the nature of work, or assume that the nature of work is irrelevant to the labor/leisure choice. This paper studies the macroeconomic implications of relaxing this assumption. Estimation from micro data using labor hours, wages, consumption, and nonpecuniary job characteristics suggests that labor supply responds to differences and to changes in the nature of work. Ceteris paribus, some job characteristics induce more labor hours than others do. Labeling the jobs that embed the labor inducing characteristics as better quality jobs, the study estimates a Job Quality index for the aggregate U.S. economy from 1850 to 2000. The results suggest that over the same period, improvements in Job Quality accounted for at least 20.4% of growth in labor hours. A general equilibrium analysis of the macroeconomic implications of the Job Quality improvement indicates that the increase in labor hours induced a proportional increase in aggregate output, consumption, capital stock, and investment over the same period.

We examine evidence on trends in interstate migration over the past 150 years, using data from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series of the U.S. Census (IPUMS). Two measures of migration are calculated. The first considers an individual to have moved if she is residing in a state different from her state of birth. The second considers a family to have moved if it is residing in a state different from the state of birth of one of its young children. The latter measure allows us estimate the timing of moves more accurately. Our results suggest that overall migration propensities have followed a U-shaped trend since 1850, falling until around 1900 and then rising until around 1970. We examine variation in the propensity to make an interstate move by age, sex, race, nativity, region of origin, family structure, and education. Counterfactuals based on probit estimates of the propensity to migrate suggest that the rise in migration of families since 1900 is largely attributable to increased educational attainment. The decline of interstate migration in the late nineteenth century remains to be explained.

The author looks at the fertility, mortality, and marriage experience of racial, ethnic, and nativity groups in the United States from the nineteenth to the late twentieth centuries. The first part of the essay describes and critiques the racial and ethnic categories used in the federal census and in the published vital statistics; the second part examines the three dimensions of demographic behavior. Both absolute and relative convergence of fertility across groups has been of relatively recent origin and in large part has been due to stable, or even slightly increasing, birthrates for the majority white population combined with declining birthrates for blacks and the Asian-origin, Hispanic-origin, and Amerindian populations. This has not been true for mortality. The black population has experienced absolute convergence but relative deterioration in mortality (neonatal and infant mortality, maternal mortality, expectation of life at birth, and age-adjusted death rates), in contrast with the Amerindian and Asian-origin populations. The Asian-origin population now has age-adjusted death rates significantly lower than those for the white population. The disadvantaged condition of the black population and the deteriorating social safety net are the likely origins of this outcome. Finally, a trend toward earlier and more extensive marriage existed from about 1900 until the 1960s. At this point, coincident with the end of the baby boom, there has been a movement to later marriage for both males and females among whites, blacks, and the Hispanic-origin populations, a trend that has been more extreme in the black population, especially among females. There has also been a significant rise in percentages never-married at ages 45-54 among blacks and, to a lesser extent, among Hispanics. So here, too, there has been some divergence.

How are hourly wages affected by the Earned Income Tax Credit? Using variation in state EITC supplements, which magnify the effect of the federal EITC, I find that a 10 percentage point increase in the generosity of the EITC is associated with a 4 percent fall in the wages of high school dropouts, and a 2 percent fall in the wages of those with only a high school diploma. This is consistent with other EITC studies, which have shown that the EITC increases the labor supply of lower-skilled workers. Despite the fact that workers with children receive a more generous tax credit than childless workers, the hourly wages of both groups are similarly affected by an increase in the EITC. This suggests that the impact of the EITC on wages is determined by the typical EITC parameters in an employee's labor market, rather than by the individual's own EITC eligibility. To see how employees respond to the credit, I construct a simulated instrument for the EITC parameters in an employee's labor market. Wages respond to variation in the fraction of eligible employees and the average EITC rate, but do not respond systematically to changes in the marginal EITC rate.