In the past two decades gender pay differences have narrowed considerably and a declining significance of gender has pervaded the labor market in numerous ways. This paper contends that in the first several decades of the twentieth century there was a rising significance of gender. The emergence of gender distinctions accompanied several important changes in the economy including the rise of white-collar work for women and increases in women's educational attainment. Firms adopted policies not to hire women in particular occupations and to exclude men from other occupations. A model of discrimination is developed in which men oppose the hiring of women into certain positions. The assumptions of the model break down when women acquire known and verifiable credentials. The shift from the rising to the declining significance of gender may have involved such a change.

This paper reviews various approaches to the modelling of spatial choice. Spatial choice modelling is viewed as a distinct area of research, within the larger field of discrete choice modelling, with a sound methodological basis and computationally tractable modelling framework. This review draws upon empirical application of spatial choice models to interregional migration and identifies the main research issues, summarizes the progress of research thus far, and suggests some paths for future research. It is argued that some of the widely used models suffer from problems derived from their development in aspatial choice contexts. Acknowledging the increased complexity and, possibly, the different choice process that spatial choice situations present over their aspatial counterparts leads to the development of the so-called competing destinations model and its variants. Evidence from empirical tests of these spatial choice models suggests that analysts engaged in interregional migration modelling risk model misspecification if they ignore the peculiarities of spatial choice.

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The recent literature on immigrant transnationalism points to an alternative form of economic adaptation of foreign minorities in advanced societies, based on the mobilization of their cross-country social networks. The phenomenon has been examined mainly on the basis of case studies that note its potential significance for immigrant integration into the receiving countries and for economic development in the countries of origin. Despite their suggestive character, these studies consistently sample on the dependent variable, failing to establish the empirical existence of transnational activities beyond a few descriptive examples and their possible determinants. We address these issues on the basis of a survey designed explicitly for this purpose and conducted among selected Latin immigrant groups in the United States. Although immigrant transnationalism has received little attention in the mainstream sociological literature so far, it has the potential of altering the character of the new ethnic communities spawned by contemporary immigration. We examine the existence of transnationalism on the basis of discriminant functions of migrant characteristics and seek to establish the relative probablilities of engaging in this kind activities based on hypotheses drawn from past literature. Implications of our results for the sociology of immigration, as well as broader sociological theories of the economy are discussed.

In her analysis using the random utility model, Lisa Barrow compares the location decisions of households with children to those of households without children. She uses the 5% Individual Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) from the 1990 Census to evaluate location patterns in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, restricting attention to individuals who were living in the area from 1985 through 1990. She finds that households with children are disproportionately drawn to areas with relatively high SAT scores. Disproportionate effects are found for whites and African Americans.

Using PUMS data for the censuses in 1970, 1980, and 1990 and the methodological techniques of double-cohort design linking age and duration within the United States most recently developed by Myers, et al. (1995), this paper examines the process of immigrant assimilation in Miami-Dade County, Florida with respect to language acquisition, citizenship status, and poverty status. The immigrant cohorts of particular interest within Miami-Dade County will be Cubans arriving in the 1960s compared to Cubans arriving in the 1970s, as well as Cubans arriving in the 1980s. These groups will be compared with each other, as well as compared with immigrant cohorts of non-Hispanic White, non-Hispanic Black and non-Cuban Hispanic, where the sample size is large enough. Further, there will be comparisons with results found in Myers, et al., (1995) for ethnic Los Angeles, CA, where appropriate. Generally, it was found that immigrant cohorts in Miami-Dade County are assimilating into the mainstream of American society through the benchmarks of language acquisition, naturalization to U.S. citizenship and advancement out of poverty. However, there are some special cases of immigrant cohorts with respect to language acquisition.

'The Context of English-Language Adoption among 2nd Generation Ethnics as Reflected in the 1940 U.S. Census,' Walter D. KamphoefnerThe contemporary debate on immigration often suffers from the assumption that during the era of massive European influxes, immigrants adopted English quickly and universally. In fact, figures from 1940 show that the percentage of 2nd generation ethnics claiming English as their mother tongue ranged from a high of nearly two-thirds for some groups to barely 20 percent for others. This paper will examine foreign language retention/English adoption in the 2nd generation as a rough indicator of ethnic acculturation. Its primary source of evidence is information on mother tongue of the children of immigrants in the Public Use Sample from the 1940 U.S. Census. It compares 23 nationality groups--all those large enough to present an adequate sample size (French Canadians, Mexicans, and 21 European groups). Adoption of English is examined in relation to individual characteristics such as age, sex, ethnic homogeneity of parents, and residence in rural or urban settings. Also taken into consideration are the similarities to English of various immigrant tongues, and two types of contextual variables: regional and familial. Regional variables include the absolute size and population proportion of the ethnic group in the area, and the recency of arrival as indicated by ratio of 1st to 2nd generation ethnics; familial variables include number of foreign-born in the household, naturalization (as a rough surrogate for recency of arrival), occupation, literacy and educational levels of the parents' generation.Results of these analyses show that turn-of-the-century critics of immigration such as the Dillingham Commission were totally off base in their fears of the urban huddled masses: other things being equal, city dwelling ethnics learned English most quickly, and those on the farm, most slowly. In fact, once the playing field had been leveled by controlling for such contestual variables, the gap in English language adoption narrowed considerably between the 'Old' immigration from Northern and Western Europe and the allegedly inferior 'New' immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe. Interestingly, both North American groups in the study, Mexicans and French Canadians, had very high rates of language preservation, suggesting the importance of proximity and return migration. The factor of linguistic affinity proves to play a relatively minor role; the second generation from both Spain and France had rates of English adoption nearly 30 points higher than ethnics rooted in their erstwhile North American colonies. This study is the first to explore the factor of linguistic affinity, and illuminates the much-neglected field of the language transition. It highlights a number of structural factors which continue to affect ethnic adoption of English down to the present.

The relationship between women's employment and the risk of divorce is both complex and controversial. The role specialization (or interdependence) view of marriage argues that the gains to marriage for both partners decrease when both are in the labor force, and hence women's employment destabilizes marriage. In contrast, the economic opportunity hypothesis asserts that female labor force participation does not intrinsically weaken marriage, but gives women resources that they can use to leave unsatisfactory marriages. Here we use data from the two waves of the National Survey of Families and Households to conduct the first large-scale empirical test of those conflicting claims. Our results provide clear evidence that, at the individual level, women's employment does not destabilize happy marriages but increases the risk of disruption in unhappy marriages.

In this paper, I attempt to determine how the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) affects homeownership. The FHA insures the full value of selected loans made by private lenders. I use changes in FHA underwriting criteria over time and the differential effects of these criteria across metropolitan areas to study the effects of the FHA on homeownership. To do this, I simulate the difference in the fraction of homes in his metropolitan area that a prospective homeowner could afford with FHA and conventional criteria, and see how the difference in affordability affects homeownership. I find that more generous FHA underwriting criteria increase homeownership. In the period from 1970 to 1990, FHA increased homeownership by an average of about 0.6 percentage points, and increased homeownership by 1.57 percentage points for those at the 90th percentile of effects of FHA on house purchase affordability. FHA also had greater effects on the homeownership of certain groups, especially Blacks and married couples with children.

This article addresses two related questions. To what extent did cities and towns provide African Americans adequate water and sewer services during the era of Jim Crow (1880-1925)? What motivated local governments to allow African Americans access to water and sewerage services? In light of the treatment African Americans received from state and local governments in areas such as education and police protection, it seems odd that blacks would have received any water and sewer service. Two explanations considered focus on fear of epidemic disease, and variation in the extent of residential segregation over time and across cities.

Self-selected migration presents one potential explanation for why observed returns to a college education in local labor markets vary widely even though U.S. workers are highly mobile. To assess the impact of self-selection on estimated returns, this paper first develops a Roy model of mobility and earnings where workers choose in which of the 50 states (plus the District of Columbia) to live and work. Available estimation methods are either infeasible for a selection model with so many alternatives or place potentially severe restrictions on earnings and the selection process. This paper develops an alternative econometric methodology which combines Lee's (1983) parametric maximum order statistic approach to reduce the dimensionality of the error terms with more recent work on semiparametric estimation of selection models (e.g., Ahn and Powell (1993)). The resulting semiparametric correction is easy to implement and can be adapted to a variety of other polychotomous choice problems. The empirical work, which uses 1990 U.S. Census data, confirms the role of comparative advantage in mobility decisions. The results suggest that self-selection of higher educated individuals to states with higher returns to education generally leads to upward biases in OLS estimates of the returns to education in state-specific labor markets. While the estimated returns to a college education are significantly biased, correcting for the bias does not narrow the range of returns across states. Consistent with the finding that the corrected return to a college education differs across the U.S., the relative state-to-state migration flows of college- versus high school-educated individuals respond strongly to differences in the return to education and amenities across states.

Self-selected migration presents one potential explanation for why observed returns to a college education in local labor markets vary widely even though U.S. workers are highly mobile. To assess theimpact of self-selection on estimated returns, this paper first develops a Roy model of mobility and earnings where workers choose in which of the 50 states (plus the District of Columbia) to live and work. Available estimation methods are either infeasible for a selection model with so many alternatives or place potentially severe restrictions on earnings and the selection process. This paper develops an alternative econometric methodology which combines Lee's (1983) parametric maximum order statistic approach to reduce the dimensionality of the error terms with more recent work on semiparametric estimation of selection models (e.g., Ahn and Powell, 1993). The resulting semiparametric correction is easy to implement and can be adapted to a variety of other polychotomous choice problems. The empirical work, which uses 1990 U.S. Census data, confirms the role of comparative advantage in mobility decisions. The results suggest that self-selection of higher educated individuals to states with higher returns to education generally leads to upward biases in OLS estimates of the returns to education in state-specific labor markets. While the estimated returns to a college education are significantly biased, correcting for the bias does not narrow the range of returns across states. Consistent with the finding that the corrected return to a college education differs across the U.S., the relative state-to-state migration flows of college- versus high school-educated individuals respond strongly to differences in the return to education and amenities across states.

The fraction of U. S. college graduate women entering professional programs increased substantially just after 1970, and the age at first marriage among all U. S. college graduate women began to soar around the same year. We explore the relationship between these two changes and the diffusion of the birth control pill ('the pill') among young, unmarried college graduate women. Although the pill was approved in 1960 by the Food and Drug Administration and spread rapidly among married women, it did not diffuse among young, single women until the late 1960s after state law changes reduced the age of majority and extended 'mature minor' decisions. We present both descriptive time series and formal econometric evidence that exploit cross-state and cross-cohort variation in pill availability to young, unmarried women, establishing the 'power of the pill' in lowering the costs of long-duration professional education for women and raising the age at first marriage.

California is a national leader in promoting electric vehicle (EV) adoption. It maintains ambitious targets for light- and heavy-duty fleet turnover, including a mandate requiring that all passenger vehicles sold in the state be zero-emission by 2035. In support of these goals, the state has long operated several light-duty clean vehicle incentive programs that provide financial support for households to purchase a new electric vehicle, often by replacing an older internal combustion engine vehicle (ICEV). This suite of programs includes the Clean Vehicle Rebate Project (CVRP) as well as several more recently developed equity-focused opportunities, such as Clean Cars for All (CC4A), which limit participation to low- and moderate-income households. These programs targeting low-income populations can help ensure no populations are left behind and will support a just transition to clean energy. This report considers the distributional impacts of these programs, especially for equity. We assess six programs: three statewide – CVRP, the Clean Vehicle Assistance Program (CVAP), and the California Clean Fuel Reward (CCFR) – and three regional – CC4A, Drive Clean in the San Joaquin Rebate Program (DCSJ-RP), and the Southern California Edison Pre-Owned EV Rebate Program (SCE-PreOR). We not only evaluate the effectiveness of incentives in benefiting California’s disadvantaged populations, but also characterize the potential impact these incentives have on electric vehicle uptake rates throughout the state. The researchers use data sources about vehicle fleet characterization, distribution of incentive funds, and measures of socioeconomic and environmental burden in communities across California. We first examined the total dollars distributed by the six aforementioned clean vehicle incentive programs. Since 2010, more than $1.9 billion has been allocated through the programs via nearly 1 million individual incentive awards. Nearly 128,000 awards (approximately $314 million) were distributed to households in disadvantaged communities (DACs) as defined by Senate Bill 535 (2012). We find, as suggested by previous research, that CVRP (by far the largest program historically) is heavily skewed towards benefitting non-DAC tracts, with only 12.1% of its funds distributed to recipients in DAC tracts throughout the lifetime of the program. We found similar results for the two other statewide programs, CVAP and CCFR. In comparison, the three regional programs – CC4A, DCSJ-RP, and SCE-PreOR – have been more effective at delivering funds to DAC and lower-income tracts (e.g., 52% of funds distributed within DAC tracts for CC4A).