This paper examines and measures the extent of wage convergence of immigrants to native-born workers. The focus is on a dimension of immigrant labor market assimilation that has been largely overlooked in this literature; particularly, how differences in local labor market wage-setting mechanisms affect the process of wage convergence. Recently, some have argued that im-migrants arriving after the 1970s will possess inferior assimilation abilities relative to previous immigrant cohorts because they lack essential skills. This paper shows that wage convergence varies significantly between high-immigration states and that the wage-setting structure can be a significant factor in the assimilation process. The results also indicate that recent immigrants begin their process of assimilation from a position that is similar to previous immigrants and that if their human capital accumulation rates mirror those of previous cohorts, successful wage con-vergence will rest on the development of an equitable pay structure.

Data synthesis is a promising solution to share data for various downstream analytic tasks without exposing raw data. However, without a theoretical privacy guarantee, a synthetic dataset would still leak some sensitive information. Differential privacy is thus widely adopted to safeguard data synthesis by strictly limiting the released information. This technique is advantageous yet presents significant challenges in the vertical federated setting, where data attributes are distributed among different data parties. The main challenge lies in maintaining privacy while efficiently and precisely reconstructing the correlation among cross-party attributes. In this paper, we propose a novel algorithm called VertiMRF, designed explicitly for generating synthetic data in the vertical setting and providing differential privacy protection for all information shared from data parties. We introduce techniques based on the Flajolet-Martin sketch (or frequency oracle) for encoding local data satisfying differential privacy and estimating cross-party marginals. We provide theoretical privacy and utility proof for encoding in this multi-attribute data. Collecting the locally generated private Markov Random Field (MRF) and the sketches, a central server can reconstruct a global MRF, maintaining the most useful information. Additionally, we introduce two techniques tailored for datasets with large attribute domain sizes, namely dimension reduction and consistency enforcement. These two techniques allow flexible and inconsistent binning strategies of local private MRF and the data sketching module, which can preserve information to the greatest extent. We conduct extensive experiments on four real-world datasets to evaluate the effectiveness of VertiMRF. End-to-end comparisons demonstrate the superiority of VertiMRF, and ablation studies validate the effectiveness of each component.

Contemporary research on immigrant settlement and adaptation emphasizes the interactions of ethnic-immigrant resources and local economic contexts. Yet, understandably, most research in this field continues to focus on major urban centers, truncating our view of the range of these interactions and the extent to which theories and concepts emerging from immigrant magnets generalize to more peripheral regions of the country. To address this shortcoming, we use census data from the postwar period to examine immigrant settlement trends in the Deep South Triad of Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Findings indicate that this peripheral region of an otherwise booming South is extremely diverse in terms of its foreign-born population and that the largest groups (British, Vietnamese, Indians, and Hondurans) exhibit strong yet distinct patterns of concentration in the regional economy. These findings suggest that many of the same immigrant-adjustment processes documented in core immigrant cities generalize reasonably well to very different regional contexts with substantially lower rates of immigration and employment growth.

Although the United States has experienced race-related civil disturbances throughout its history, those that occurred in the 1960s were unprecedented in their frequency and scope. Between 1964 and 1971, hundreds of riots erupted in American cities, resulting in large numbers of injuries, deaths, and arrests, as well as in considerable property damage that was concentrated in predominantly black neighborhoods. Ending the riots required extraordinary law enforcement efforts, sometimes including the mobilization of National Guard units. In retrospect, the riots marked a turning point in American racial politics, as the carefully orchestrated demonstrations of the early Civil Rights Movement gave way to violent, chaotic civil disturbances.At the time of their occurrence, the riots prompted congressional investigations into their proximate and underlying causes and into their immediate consequences in the form of looting, property damage, arrests, injuries, and deaths (U.S. Senate 1968). Subsequently, a large sociology literature developed that attempted to identify city-level correlates of the occurrence and severity of riots (see, inter alia, Wanderer 1969, Spilerman 1971, Lieske 1978, Carter 1986, and Myers 1997). But there have been comparatively few studies of a systematic, econometric nature that examine the impact of the riots on the relative economic status of African Americans, or on the neighborhoods in which the riots took place (Aldrich and Reiss 1970, Frey 1979, Kelly and Snyder 1980, King 2001).In this paper we study the impact of the 1960s riots in the context of long-term racial disparities in labor market outcomes. Among full-time male workers, the racial gap in earnings narrowed in the aggregate up to 1975, with periods of sharp convergence (e.g., the 1940s) alternating with periods of relative stasis (e.g., the 1950s and early 1960s). Since 1970, racial convergence in earnings has slowed markedly, and a substantial part of the observed convergence has been driven by the selection of low-income black males out of the full-time labor force (Brown 1984, Chandra 2000). Over the same period, the proportion of blacks living in high poverty neighborhoods increased sharply (Wilson 1987), and black ghettos turned increasingly bad in the sense that residential segregation led to increasingly poor socioeconomic outcomes among young blacks (Cutler and Glaeser 1997, Collins and Margo 2000).

We evaluate U.S. trends in social capital since 1952 and assess explanations for the observed declines. We examine both social capital centered in the community and in the home and argue that the decline in social capital has been over-stated. Declines in social capital centered in the home have been more pronounced among women relative to men, contemporaneous with the rise in women's labor force participation rates. Rising community heterogeneity (particularly income inequality) explains the fall in social capital produced in the home.

Asian American professionals who have grown up in the United States and attained upper-middle class status frequently join ethnic organizations. Yet, what motivates these professionals to join and how their organizations frame their communities deserve greater attention, for racial and ethnic solidarity supposedly decline with greater class status. This research analyzes what kinds of organizations that second generation Korean and Indian Americans create in Dallas, Texas and why. Ultimately, the organizations and their members demonstrate that race and ethnic culture do not lose relevance for individuals with greater economic standing, but instead their class position shapes how they interpret their ethnic minority status. Despite their economic status, individuals felt labeled as racially different and as "foreigners" from White peers while growing up, and seek greater comfort with co-ethnics in organizations. The organizations promote another racial stereotype, as the economically-successful model minority, in order to fight the image of the perpetual foreigner. The Dallas culture, population size, and economy encourage organizational endorsement of the model minority stereotype. Members also join associations to maintain those parts of their ethnic heritage that fit with American norms. The organizations, however, downplay the significance of culture as they focus on the model minority image. The model minority stereotype excludes some individuals from joining the organizations and eventually can hurt the communities, even as the organizations promote it in part to alleviate problems.

There are more than a million and a half people in New York City who are living below the poverty line, according to official statistics. The poverty line for a family of four was about $18,000 in the year 2000. In a city where many New Yorkers with five times that salary feel that they are just scraping by, some argue that the poverty line should be much higher. But by any measure, poverty in New York City has increased. Almost 300,000 more people in New York Citys population lived below the poverty line in 2000 than in 1990, according to data from the census. In 1990, some 1.38 million New Yorkers -- or 19.3 percent of the population -- were living below the poverty line. By 2000, the number had increased to 1.67 million or, 21.2 percent...

More powerful and affluent today than ever, the United States has promising opportunities to influence the course of history. Yet these prospects are shadowed by significant perils and burdens. In this visionary book, leading scholars from the Brookings Institution and other prominent research organizations and universities analyze the major domestic and foreign policy problems facing the nation.

In Eating Smoke: Fire in Urban America, 1800-1950, Tebeau sets out to explain the role of two largely undocumented actors -- firemen and insurance men -- in analyzing, managing, and attacking urban fire... Tebeau's study vigorously opens the way for scholars looking to make sense of the city in the midst of an era of uncertainty and risk