El primer objetivo de esta tesis consiste en explicar cómo se determina el tamaño del sistema de bienestar. Se demuestra que, en un modelo 2-OLG, en el que los agentes deciden la dimensión del sistema de pensiones y de sanidad pública, la interrelación de los efectos redistributivos de ambos programas explica que el tamaño del sistema de bienestar crezca más de lo que la estructura demográfica implica. El segundo objetivo de la tesis consiste en valorar la relevancia de la variable renta en la determinación de los tipos de hogares de las personas mayores. Para ello, se computan distintos modelos teóricos en los que las madres y los hijos determinan conjuntamente la decisión de dónde vivir. Se concluye que, para una muestra de mujeres viudas mayores de 65 años en EEUU, las predicciones del modelo captan perfectamente el patrón no monótono de los datos para 1970 y 1990. Asimismo, el cambio en la renta es capaz de explicar un 75% del cambio en la distribución de los tipos hogares. El tercer objetivo consiste en estudiar otras características que condicionan la formación de los tipos de hogares. Se obtiene que el estado civil de los hijos es una variable clave.

Maps, censuses and other sources of geographic and demographic information are common reference tools for historians, but integrated computer hardware and software systems designed for the preparation, presentation, and interpretation of such geographic and spatially-referenced data are rarely intended for use outside the Earth Sciences. This Guide to Good Practice is written for historians who want to use Geographical Information Systems (GIS) as part of their research. It defines GIS and outlines how it can be used in historical research, describes how to create and get data into a GIS database, explains how GIS can be used for simple mapping and more advanced forms of visualisation, and discusses the various ways to analyse data within GIS. It includes case studies from a variety of historical projects that have used GIS and an extensive reading list of GIS texts relevant to historians. No prior knowledge of GIS has been assumed.

This particular report was commissioned by the PMRT to assist in the preparation of an agreed national definition of the socioeconomic background of school students, to enable nationally comparable reporting of students' outcomes, within the context of the National Goals for Schooling in the Twenty-First Century.

I develop a set of long-term estimates of inequality using length of life as a measure of welfare. Although income inequality has recently increased, lifetime welfare is probably more equally distributed now than in the past. I measure the inequality of lifetimes in the United States and Europe over the past century and a half, and present similar measurements for several populations back to 20,000 BC. Lifetimes have become substantially more equally distributed. The Gini coefficient of lifetimes declined from 0.355 for the 1900 U.S. birth cohort to 0.113 for the 2000 cohort; similar improvements are observed in other developed countries. Inequality levels for preindustrial populations were much higher; for a Maghreb population of roughly 20,000 BC, the lifetime Gini coefficient was 0.593. Unlike income data, lifetimes data suggest that men are disadvantaged relative to women. Men face, and have faced, greater lifetime inequality than women, while having shorter expected lifetimes.

In the initial stages of Hmong settlement in the United States, pessimism about the long-term prospects for theireconomic success was sometimes expressed [Daniels 1990, pp. 369-370]. The low level of Hmong homeownershipin 1990 was consistent with this view. Whereas other immigrants arriving in the U.S. during the period of peakHmong arrival (1975-1984) had achieved homeownership rates of 30 to 45 percent by 1990 [Borjas 2002, Table 1],Hmong homeownership remained below 10 percent.We use Census data7 to show that this situation changed dramatically in the 1990s. As part of a broader pattern ofHmong adaptation and economic gains, Hmong homeownership rates rose rapidly across most of the United Statesand generally closed the homeownership gap between the Hmong and other immigrant groups. However, someHmong communities most importantly the large Hmong settlements in metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) ofCalifornias Central Valley did not fully share in the general rise in Hmong homeownership and now lag farbehind the overall Hmong and immigrant populations in homeownership. We argue below that low levels of skills,employment, and income in Central Valley Hmong communities explain much but not all of this regional gap inHmong homeownership. We further argue that the gap does not appear to be related to either housing prices or anygeneral pattern of elevated discrimination against minority homebuyers in the Central Valley. We conclude withsome ideas for further research on the regional gap in Hmong homeownership.

This working paper continues earlier efforts to compare the experiences of today's second-generation Mexican Americans with those of second-generation members of major immigrant groups of a century ago. Here the focus is on intermarriage. Contemporary data comes from 1998-2001 CPS data sets and historical data from the IPUMS data sets for 1920 and 1960. As in earlier papers, the precise definition of the relevant second-generation members is an important dimension of the work. In this paper the definition of outmarriage is important as well. The major conclusion is that outmarriage of second-generation Mexican Americans may seem low in absolute terms, but is comparable to the outmarriage rates for second-generation Italians at roughly similar stages of that group's adjustment to American society. Appendices take up questions such as evidence on the ethnic composition of the mixed second generation (native-born of mixed parentage) as revealed in earlier CPS data sets.

This study highlights the crucial yet understudied process Latin American immigrants undergo when deciding to become U.S. citizens. Using data from the 1990 U.S. census and interviews with naturalized Latinos, I argue that the decision to naturalize is complex beyond a narrative of assimilation where immigrants increase their ties to the U.S. while reducing their connections to their home country. My analysis begins with an assessment of the assimilation paradigm using data from the 1990 Integrated Public Use Microdata series-U.S.A. (IPUMS) where I test for acculturation and structural assimilation among the Latin American foreign-born. Although results demonstrate support for an assimilation model among key variables such as the ability to speak English, long term residence, and home ownership, other variables such as strong ethnic composition at the workplace and speaking Spanish at home indicate other factors positively associated with naturalization. Data from 26 in-depth interviews with Mexican and Salvadoran naturalized citizens residing in Houston, Texas further illustrate how Latino immigrants maintain ethnic linkages along with their newly acquired citizenship status. While immigrants continue to send remittances, make telephone calls, and travel to their country of origin, they also preserve those ties through U.S. based outlets such as Spanish language television, newspapers, Internet sites, churches, and personal relationships with other Latin American immigrants. Ultimately, the results of both quantitative and qualitative analyses suggest naturalization is a decision to maintain a lifestyle deeply entrenched in an established ethnic space that cultivates relationships with both the local community and country of origin.

Demographic estimation in countries with well-developed data reporting systems is based on data collected by censuses and vital registration systems. In countries with inadequate or inaccurate data reporting systems, demographic estimation often must rely on methods that are indirect. Such methods have been applied with considerable success in studies of mortality and fertility, but they have not been developed assystematically and formally for the analysis of migration. This paper sets out and tests three alternative methods for indirectly estimating origin-destination-specific migrationpropensities that have identical input requirements: two successive, birthplace-specific multiregional population age distributions. Common to all three methods is a focus on theratios of age-specific conditional survivorship proportions, ratios which mirror the regularities in age profiles that characterize migration schedules, suggesting that futureresearch should be directed at linking these regularities with those of model migration schedules.

We study the phenomena of "brain drain" from Europe to the United States. We use both the US Census 1990 and European household surveys to predict the wage differential, corresponding to the difference between the actual wage of Europeans in the United States and the estimated wage that they would have received if they had stayed in Europe. Consistently with the Borjas-Ray model, we find that migrants from Europe are positively self-selected. The predicted wage gap has a significant effect on the propensity to move to the United States for British individuals but not for the French. Although quite sizeable, monetary incentives might actually be of second order in explaining the brain drain to the United States.

Race & ethnicity, as well as cohort status, are strong predictors of asset ownership including home ownership & housing values. Yet, seldom have the two concepts been linked. Additionally, potentially important determinants such as business income have often times been excluded from the analyses despite findings suggesting that business income may be an important indicator for racial & ethnic minorities who would otherwise be relegated to employment in low status jobs in the secondary labor market. Using the most recent data from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Sample, this study examines (1) how Asian, black, Hispanic, & white baby boomers compare in terms of housing values; & (2) what role business income & interest, dividends, & rental income have on housing values for Asian, black, Hispanic, & white baby boomers. Significant racial & ethnic differences in housing values exist, & business income & interest, dividends & rental income are all significant indicators of housing values for all groups.

The Indian government and media have claimed that the so-called brain drain is becoming a brain gain for India, as Indian information technology (I.T.) professionals with U.S. experience return to India. This paper tests this claim through a case study of return migrants in Bangalore and Hyderabad, who migrated to the U.S. to work for at least one year and then returned to work in India either temporarily or permanently. Through interviews with return migrants, this study reveals their perceived benefits from their experience in the United States, and attempts to identify key impacts of these return migrants on the domestic I.T. industry, cities, and work environments. The hypothesis with which I began this study was that the return of this group of professionals brings increased financial capital, social capital, and most importantly increased human capital. I conclude however that the impact of this group has been exaggerated by the media and the Indian government. While the number of returning migrants has been increasing since the late 1990's, the absolute number is still relatively small, as is their impact on the work environment and the city. I argue that we need to differentiate return migrants into two groups: "return professionals" and "return entrepreneurs." Unlike return entrepreneurs, return professionals gain the same skills through their exposure to the I.T. industry in the United States, as those obtained by I.T. professionals based in India who travel to the United States for business purposes. The findings suggest that the current Indian government is erroneously privileging these return migrants over similarly skilled I.T. professionals who have not migrated to the United States.

The ability to estimate interstate transition rates (or probabilities) from population distributions has many potential applications in demography. Iterative Proportional Fitting (IPF) has been used for such estimation, but lacks a meaningful behavioral foundation. Here a new approach, Relative State Attraction (RSA), is advanced. It assumes that states have a greater (or lesser) ability to attract individuals, and that rates respond accordingly. The RSA estimation procedure is developed and applied to model and actual data where the underlying rates are known. Results show that RSA provides accurate estimates under a wide range of conditions, typically yielding values quite similar to those produced by IPF. Both methods are then applied to U.S. data to provide new estimates of interregional migration between the years 1980 and 1990.

This article examines the employment status of older male workers in the era of industrialization, focusing on the questions of how the extent of pressure toward retirement varied across different occupations, and how it changed over time. A comparison of hazard of retirement across occupations shows that men who had better occupations in terms of economic status and work conditions were less likely to retire than were those with poorer jobs. This result tends to reject the recent view that retirement was more voluntary than forced as early as a century ago. The difficulty faced by older workers in the labor market, as measured by the relative incidence of long-term unemployment, was relatively severe among craftsmen, operatives, and salesmen. In contrast, aged farmers, professionals, managers, and proprietors appear to have fared well in the labor market. The pattern of shifts in the occupational structure that occurred between 1880 and 1940 suggests that industrialization had brought a growth of the sectors in which the pressure toward departure from employment at older ages was relatively strong.

This study is exploratory and the precursor of what we hope will be a larger, national study over the coming years. It was conducted as pro bono work by University researchers without external funding. We are grateful to the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota for the research assistant and the resources to conduct and disseminate the research. The data analysis was supported in part by the National Science Foundation, Program in Geography and Regional Science, Grant No. 0136988. Thanks to Michael Leary, Gregory Schrock, Anne Discher, and Bill Dermody for research assistance and feedback, to Mel Gray of St. Thomas University and Neil Cuthbert of the McKnight Foundation for insights on how the Twin Cities arts economy works, to Bill Beyers and Bruce Seaman on how art worlds operate elsewhere, and to the Twin Cities artists and arts organization leaders we interviewed for their time and reflections. We dedicate this study to Wilbur Thompson, an economist who first challenged us to think occupationally, and Howard Becker, whose depiction of art worlds enabled us to see artists as workers in a cooperative enterprise.

This thesis investigates the effect of social benefits on the labor market behavior of immigrants and females. The first part analyses the effect of welfare generosity on the choice of residency of immigrants and natives. The second part investigates the extent to which social benefits affect the relative well-being of females with and without children in the context of four countries. The effect of welfare benefits on migration has long been discussed, but the research has not led to unequivocal conclusions. Similarly, without the support of a consensus in the literature, patterns in the concentration of immigrants across the United States have been suspected of reflecting welfare generosity. The goal of the first study is to reduce uncertainty regarding the extent of welfare induced migratory and clustering behavior of foreign-born individuals. The choice of residence of immigrants in relation to natives is investigated by relating those choices to the interstate dispersion of welfare benefits and other economic variables and their changing magnitudes over time. The reliability of common methodological approaches is also examined. The paper employs difference-in-difference comparison group-based methods with state fixed effects along with mixed multinomial and conditional logits. The empirical analysis indicates that immigrants cluster in high benefit regions, but their migration pattern is positively correlated with changes over time of economic variables other than welfare benefits. These results have been confirmed by more recent data of immigrant migration patterns. The findings of this paper suggest the existence of other factors aside from benefits (for example, wage rates and ethnic networks), which explain the residential choice of immigrants to a greater extent.The second study explores cross-country variation in social benefits and their effect on the size of the family gap the gap in the well-being of women with and without children as measured by income components. The analysis finds a lot of variation in the impact of benefits across countries and within the income distribution. In countries with means-tested benefits the effect of children on disposable income is not alleviated, but reduced, while countries with universal benefits do not exhibit any effect of children at the bottom of the distribution.

The goal of this article is to explore the demographic features and the effects of an unbalanced sex ratio on the marriage patterns of Spanish immigrants and their descendants in Ybor City (Florida, United States) at the beginning of the 20th century. Besides providing details of clandestine emigration to the United States, Ybor City is a city that was established as a result of the development of the tobacco industry. During its early years it attracted a huge number of Spanish people, most of them single men who had to face the problem of a shortage of Spanish women. The data that were used comes from the Hispanic Oversample of the 1910 United States Census. For Ybor City, this is a 50% sample of the Spanish people, their direct descendants and those living in the same home.

A structural approach is used to examine who matches with whom. A two-sided matching model that allows for marital sorting in response to marriage market flexibility and agents' preferences is utilized. Estimation is based on imbedding the numerical solution of a matching model within a maximum likelihood procedure. Results indicate that wage is more desirable than education in predicting marriageability for white men; education is more desirable for black men. The marriage market for white men is more flexible. Both marriage market flexibility and the chance of being classified correctly using agents' wage and education decrease with age for white men.

In Darwins (1871) theory of mate choice, males compete, females choose,males are more differentiated, and highly ornamented males mate earlier. Thispaper reexamines the latter three hypotheses of Darwin about human mateselection by estimating a Nash marriage market equilibrium model using allrestrictions implied by marriage theory. The MLE method employed involvessolving for steady state marriage sets. An index of marriageability is proposedto allow for incorporation of data on education, wages, and unobserved heterogeneityin a computationally manageable way. Results do not support Darwinsclaim: males are as choosy as females. However, the notion that males are moredifferentiated than females and that marriageable (highly ornamented) malestend to marry earlier are both supported by my results. Education is more importantthan wage as a marriageable trait for both men and women. Femalesin cities tend to have more desirable unobserved characteristics when comparedwith males in cities and females in suburbs. The marriage market appears tobe sensitive to changes in agents levels of education and variability in wages.