Throughout the 20th century African Americans have used migration as a strategy for improving their residential environments and increasing their access to social and economic opportunities. This strategy has taken many forms, including movement from the southern countryside to nearby towns and cities, interregional migration from the South to northern cities, and middle class flight from inner-cities. This paper considers the success of one type of mobility by northern African American males—migration between metropolitan areas. Using census data for 1970, 1980, and 1990 we examine changes in four locational characteristics of metropolitan areas (Black male unemployment, Black family structure, residential segregation, and violent crime) during two time periods (1975–80 and 1985–90). Four groups of Black males are identified: (1) those who remained in the same northern metropolitan area during the 5-year period, (2) those who moved to a different northern metropolitan area, (3) those who moved to a southern metropolitan area, and (4) those who moved to a western metropolitan area. Our findings show that, in general, mobile Black males fared significantly better than those who did not move. Furthermore, the benefits of intermetropolitan migration were not uniform across migrant groups. Overall, migrants to the South enjoyed the greatest locational improvements, followed by migrants to western metropolitan areas. The evidence for migrants within the North was more mixed, in some cases resembling more closely the experience of nonmigrants than the other two migrant groups.

The impact of family structure on waged employment is examined using data from the national sample of the 1901 census. The findings suggest that historical inflexibility in the supply of rural labor stemmed from the demands farm parents placed on work-age children. The pervasiveness of family proprietorship in agriculture worked to keep a majority of work-age Canadians outside of waged employment in 1901. Even in the country's western interior where farms were much larger; individuals who lived in married-couple households on farms were the least likely to report themselves in the census as employees.

Many economists and policymakers believe that education creates positive externalities. Indeed, average schooling in U.S. states is highly correlated with state wage levels, even after controlling for the direct effect of schooling on individual wages. We use variation in child labor laws and compulsory attendance laws over time and across states to investigate whether this relationship is causal. Our results show external returns to education around 1% and not significantly different from zero.

The impact of family structure on waged employment is examined using data from the national sample of the 1901 census. The findings suggest that historical inflexibility in the supply of rural labor stemmed from the demands farm parents placed on work-age children. The pervasiveness of family proprietorship in agriculture worked to keep a majority of work-age Canadians outside of waged employment in 1901. Even in the country's western interior where farms were much larger; individuals who lived in married-couple households on farms were the least likely to report themselves in the census as employees.

This paper summarizes the broad foundations of the changing nature of parenthood by examining trends in coresidence with children under age 15. Our study uses data from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Samples (IPUMS) to provide a portrait of demographic parenthood in the US over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In describing changes in parenthood over the past 110 years, we distinguish between those living with own children and those living with other children. We focus in particular on changes in gender patterns of coresidential parenthood and changes in the likelihood that divorced men and women live with children. We also examine the impact of the baby boom on parenting. Our findings support a recasting of ongoing discussions of the parental roles of American men and women by shifting the historical demographic focus from biological transitions to the social aspects of parenting.

I have compared the use of means-tested entitlement programs by natives to the US with native parents and second generation immigrants (natives with at least one immigrant parent) using pooled data from the 1994,1995 and 1996 March Current Population Survey. The nativity of the parent was found to be significant for females using Public Aid and Welfare (PAW), especially those less than 30 years of age. Female second generation immigrants are less likely to use PAW if they have a foreign-born mother or if both parents are foreign-born. This work is unique in its use of simulated wages in the analysis, as well as by splitting the population sample by gender.I have also found this different behavior of the second generation immigrant is a direct result of having foreign-born parents, independent of the predisposing characteristics. Using the sample of pooled CPS data and 1970 Census data, I employed Borjas' grouping estimation strategy to examine the intergenerational link. I find that there is a significant relationship between second generation immigrants and their mothers, independent of level of education. In addition, neighborhood effects were tested for and found to be significant. The intergenerational transfer rate of means-tested entitlement programs appears to work solely through immigrant women.

This paper uses census IPUMS data to analyze trends in racial differences in home ownership and housing values and to examine the connection between residential segregation and the housing status of blacks relative to whites. A widening in the ownership gap between 1940 and 1960 is explained largely by the increasing concentration of blacks in central city areas but a narrowing in the ownership gap between 1960 and 1980 is explained only partly by changes in the relative characteristics of the black and white populations. Residential segregation did not widen the racial gap in home ownership rates in 1940 or 1980, but it did tend to widen the gap in housing values after 1940. Nonetheless, there has been substantial convergence in the relative value of black and white housing since 1940.

Objective. This article examines the characteristics of black southern migrants in the North near the beginning of the Great Migration and compares them with northern-born African Americans. Methods. Data from the newly available 1920 Integrated Public Use Microdata Series file are used to conduct ordinary least squares regression and binary logistic regression analyses that compare migrants and native northerners on: residential characteristics, economic activity, and family patterns. Results. On the one hand, southern migrants, males and females alike, were more likely to report gainful occupations than native northerners. On the other hand, migrants experienced denser housing conditions and held lower-status jobs than indigenous northerners. No significant differences in home ownership or family patterns were found. Even the statistically significant differences between migrants and northern-born blacks were quite modest. A supplemental "generational analysis" suggests that the relatively minor disadvantages experienced by migrants in 1920 were probably due to a temporary period of adaptation and dislocation resulting from their geographic mobility. Conclusions. When combined with evidence from later stages in the Great Migration, these findings indicate that black southern migrants fared quite well in the North, relative to native northerners. Thus, the generally negative descriptions of migrants by contemporary observers, and some later researchers, should be viewed skeptically.

Prior to World War I millions of immigrants arrived from Europe to work in northern plants and factories. During and after the War the African American populations of northern cities grew rapidly as southern migrants moved North. This paper examines the effects of the relative sizes of these two population groups on the occupational standing of African Americans and immigrants in 1920. The results show that the occupational standing of African Americans was unaffected by the relative sizes of the black and immigrant populations in their labor markets. In contrast, the occupational fortunes of all immigrants were more favorable in labor markets with proportionately larger black populations. For New Immigrants a curvilinear relationship also existed between individual occupational standing and the relative size of the their population in the labor market, with the negative relationship observed at lower levels of immigrant concentration turning positive in areas with proportionately more immigrants.

In early 2002, the Population Reference Bureau (PRB) and the Annie E. Casey Foundation (AECF) will publish a special report on children. The report will present changes from 1990 to 2000 for the nation, 50 states, and the District of Columbia for several risk factors including child ren in poverty, children in working poor families, children living with a householder who is a high school dropout, and children without secure parental employment. The report will show 1990 census data and 2000 data from a special survey, the Census 2000 Supplementary Survey (C2SS).

Progressive-era activists claimed that poverty led to broken homes: Impoverished parents - particularly single mothers - were compelled to place children in the care of relatives or institutions. The 1910 census asked all ever-married women how many of their children were alive on the census date. Many women had "missing"children;they reported having more than were living with them. Nearly 25 percent of white single mothers and more than 30 percent of African-American single mothers under age thirty-five had missing children, many of them likely in substitute care. Sizable fractions of young African-American married mothers and remarried mothers of both races also had missing children. The data indicate that placing children in substitute care was associated with limited household resources but was also related to the migration patterns of the period.

This paper is part of a series of reports about the 2000 Census prepared for the nationwide network of KIDS COUNT projects. These reports have been guided by the recommendations of an expert advisory group of data users and child advocates, brought together in a series of meetings by the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the Population Reference Bureau. Members of this advisory group have provided valuable assistance about how to interpret and use data from the 2000 Census.

The Apriori algorithm’s frequent itemset approach has become the standard approach to discovering association rules. However, the computation requirements of the frequent itemset approach are infeasible for dense data and the approach is unable to discover infrequent associations. OPUS_AR is an efficient algorithm for association rule discovery that does not utilize frequent itemsets and hence avoids these problems. It can reduce search time by using additional constraints on the search space as well as constraints on itemset frequency. However, the effectiveness of the pruning rules used during search will determine the efficiency of its search. This paper presents and analyses pruning rules for use with OPUS_AR. We demonstrate that application of OPUS_AR is feasible for a number of datasets for which application of the frequent itemset approach is infeasible and that the new pruning rules can reduce compute time by more than 40%.

A large literature examines men's unemployment and their wives' labor-market participation. In response to her husband's unemployment, a woman may adjust her labor supplied to household production as well as to the market. This article tests for this effect and measures its impact using the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Cost of Living survey of 19171919. Households altered both household-production decisions and the wife's labor supplied to the market in response to the husband's unemployment. But the household-production-response effect was smaller than the added-worker effect, in terms of women's labor hours and household consumption.

This article introduces a special issue of History and Computing devoted to the analysis of historical data using Geographical Information Systems (GIS). Use of GIS in historical research, or historical GIS as it has become known, is a subject area that is developing rapidly. The aim of work that uses GIS is to make best use of all three components of a dataset, namely thematic information on time. Most forms of anlysis allow us to explore one or, at best, two of these components . . .

There has been little research on United States homicide rates from a long-term perspective, primarily because there has been no consistent data series on a particular place preceding the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR), which began its first full year in 1931. To fill this research gap, this project created a data series on homicides per capita for New York City that spans two centuries. The goal was to create a site-specific, individual-based data series that could be used to examine major social shifts related to homicide, such as mass immigration, urban growth, war, demographic changes, and changes in laws. Data were also gathered on various other sites, particularly in England, to allow for comparisons on important issues, such as the post-World War II wave of violence. The basic approach to the data collection was to obtain the best possible estimate of annual counts and the most complete information on individual homicides. The annual count data (Parts 1 and 3) were derived from multiple sources, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Uniform Crime Reports and Supplementary Homicide Reports, as well as other official counts from the New York City Police Department and the City Inspector in the early 19th century. The data include a combined count of murder and manslaughter because charge bargaining often blurs this legal distinction. The individual-level data (Part 2) were drawn from coroners' indictments held by the New York City Municipal Archives, and from daily newspapers. Duplication was avoided by keeping a record for each victim. The estimation technique known as "capture-recapture" was used to estimate homicides not listed in either source. Part 1 variables include counts of New York City homicides, arrests, and convictions, as well as the homicide rate, race or ethnicity and gender of victims, type of weapon used, and source of data. Part 2 includes the date of the murder, the age, sex, and race of the offender and victim, and whether the case led to an arrest, trial, conviction, execution, or pardon. Part 3 contains annual homicide . . .

How might the location of a worker's home affect their work prospects and in particular their occupational mobility? This question arises in the study of African American economic history in a number of ways. As African Americans migrated into Northern US cities in the early twentieth century, settled into developing black communities in those cities, and entered into industrial labor markets, their job prospects may have been widened or narrowed by the influence of either of their "homes" - their place of birth or their new neighborhood. Some researchers have argued that black migrants who came from rural places may have been less prepared for life in the urban North and that their job prospects may have therefore suffered relative to migrants from urban Researchers have also speculated about the labor market impact of residence in the growing racially-segregated neighborhoods of Northern cities. Did residence in these areas in the late 1910s have the same kinds of negative impacts on job prospects that have been found for such neighborhoods in more recent times?

Since the late 1960s researchers who transform routinely generated primary sources into machine-readable data have produced numerous methodological articles and book chapters detailing the process of data creation and describing how the peculiarities of primary sources can affect interpretation of the data. However, in such articles, the best practices for creating large databases have usually been implicit rather than explicit . . .