The labor-force participation of African-American married women in the southern United States was increasing during a period of deteriorating labor markets when that of African-American men was decreasing. Although the effect of this development on the African-American family was complex, the trend was certainly a sign of limited progress for these women. The jobs that they were able to acquire were generally better than their customary work since the Civil War, despite the adverse labor-market shocks to which African-American families were subject.

Using a representative sample of the Hispanic population of the United States based on the manuscripts of the 1910 census, we estimate childhood mortality for the period from approximately 1890 to 1910. We find high child mortality in the Hispanic population, higher than for non-Hispanic whites but not significantly different than among nonwhite non-Hispanics (mostly African Americans). Hispanic rural farm populations in California, Texas, and Arizona experienced high,mortality: but not as high as other Hispanic populations. Child mortality was very high among Hispanic residents of New Mexico and those in Florida outside Tampa; it was especially low in the Hispanic population in Tampa.

This article outlines a research strategy for studying difficult-to-reach migrant populations that combines community collaboration, targeted random sampling, and parallel sampling in sending and receiving areas. The authors describe how this methodology was applied to the study of gender, migration, and HIV risks among Hispanic migrants in Durham, North Carolina. They illustrate the usefulness of community collaboration for informing survey design and providing a contextual understanding of research findings. They likewise demonstrate the importance of parallel sampling and assess the bias that would have resulted from conducting their study with convenience samples as opposed to a targeted random sampling technique. While the authors describe its application to HIV risks among Hispanic migrants, the methodology can easily be extended to other migrant groups as well as to other sensitive topics pertaining to migration and social adaptation.

It has traditionally been considered that the Mexican Revolution produced a high migratory flow towards the United States, for there is evidence of a noticeable increase in the number of Mexicans living in the U.S. after the armed period of the Revolution was over. However, this number of Mexicans represents barely one percent of Mexico's population at that time. It is possible to say that the Revolution was only one of many conditions that together contributed to increase Mexican migration, and among which we must consider economic aspects, especially regarding migration to California and Texas.Several U.S. data sources have allowed researchers to estimate the amount of migrants who arrived to the U.S. during the Mexican Revolution, and this work attempts to determine the percentage that may be associated specifically to the conflict, in order to assess its impact on U.S. demographic conditions.

I investigate how the relationship between the wage and the length of the work day has changed since the 1890s among prime-aged men and women. I find that across wage deciles, within wage deciles, and within industry and occupation groups the most highly paid worked fewer hours than the lowest paid in the 1890s, but that by 1973 differences in hours worked were small and by 1991 the highest paid worked the longest day. I examine several explanations for the compression in the length of the work day and investigate the implications of hours inequality for earnings inequality.

This paper outlines a framework which computes and analyzes the equilibria from a class of dynamic games. The framework dates to Ericson and Pakes (1995), and allows for a finite number of heterogeneous firms, sequential investments with stochastic outcomes, and entry and exit. The equilibrium analyzed is a Markov Perfect equilibrium in the sense of Maskin and Tirole (1988). The simplest version of the framework is supported by a publically accessible computer program which computes equilibrium policies for user-specified primitives, and then analyzes the evolution of the industry from user-specified initial conditions.We begin by outlining the publically accessible framework. It allows for three types of competition in the spot market for current output (specified up to a set of parameter values set by the user), and has modules which allow the user to compare the industry structures generated by the Markov Perfect equilibrium to those that would be generated by a social planner and to those that would be generated by "prefect collusion". Next we review extensions that have been made to the simple framework. These were largely made by other authors who needed to enrich the framework so that it could be use to provide a realistic analysis of particular applied problems.The third section provides a simple way of evaluating the computational burden of the algorithm for a given set of primitives, and then shows that computational constraints are still binding in many applied situations. The last section reviews two computational algorithms designed to alleviate this computational constraint; one of which is bsed on functional form approximations and the other on learning techniques similar to those used in the artificial intelligence literature.

College educated couples are increasingly located in large metropolitan areas. These areas were home to 32 percent of all college educated couples in 1940, 39 percent in 1970, and 50 percent in 1990. We investigate whether this trend can be explained by increasing urbanization of the college educated or the growth of dual career households and the resulting severity of the colocation problem. We argue that the latter explanation is the primary one. Smaller cities may therefore experience reduced inflows of human capital relative to the past and thus become poorer.

Background: Many screening experts believe that women contemplating screening mammography would benefit from education about false positive results. Objective: To learn how women feel about false positive results and other potential harms of screening mammography Design: Cross-sectional survey (66% response rate) Setting: Random sample of American women age 18 and older. Participants: 479 women who completed the survey and did not report a history of breast cancer. Results: Women recognized that false positive results occur - their median estimate of the false positive rate for 10 years of annual screening was 20% (25th-75th percentile: 10%-45%). Women were highly tolerant of false positive results: about two thirds felt that 500 or more false positive results per life saved was a reasonable price to pay (37% would tolerate 10,000 or more). Women who had experienced a false positive result (n=76) expressed the same high tolerance (39% would tolerate 10,000 or more). 62% of women did not want to factor information about false positive results into their screening decision. Only 8% of women thought that mammography could harm a woman who did not have breast cancer. Most women (94%) doubted the possibility of non-progressive breast cancers. Few had heard about ductal-carcinoma-in-situ (DCIS) - a cancer which does not always progress. However, when informed, 60% of women wanted to factor the possibility of DCIS into their screening decision. Conclusions:Women are aware of false positive results and seem to view them as an acceptable consequence of screening. In contrast, most women are unaware that screening can detect cancers that may never progress but feel that such information would be relevant. Perhaps, educational efforts should focus less on false positive results and introduce a less familiar outcome - the detection of DCIS.

The chapter presents a sociologist's perspective on research methodologies, with an emphasis on approaches for studying gender issues. The chapter stresses the danger of creating a false divide between quantitative and qualitative methodologies. It emphasizes the importance of employing methodologies that not only give underrepresented women a voice in the policy process but provide valid measures of persistent gender inequalities. It urges combining a variety of research strategies, including survey research done for other purposes, and provides examples of studies that use an integrated approach.

Whereas most research focuses on how variations in socioeconomic conditions contribute to the diversity in fertility behavior within a population, this paper analyzes the fertility of Danish twins in order to find possible genetic influences on an individual’s fertility decisions. The analyses reveal that male monozygotic twins have a significantly higher correlation of completed fertility than their dizygotic counterparts, which suggests a (dominant) genetic influence on male fertility behavior. For females, an important gene-environment interaction emerges: the difference in the correlation of completed fertility between mono- and dizygotic twins changes over time. Only for later cohorts is there evidence for a greater similarity of completed fertility among female monozygotic twins as compared to dizygotic twins. This means that the genetic influence on the fertility of females increases over the sample period.

Using data from the 1990 Public Use Microdata Sample, this article examines the sources of differentials between immigrants and natives in interstate migration in the 1985-90 period. Three sets of factors are evaluated to determine whether they account for differences between immigrants of different origins and natives: individual human capital, social capital of nativity groups, and economic conditions in state of residence. The analysis shows that while human capital factors are the most important sources of differences between immigrants and natives in internal migration patterns, contextual dimensions associated with the social capital of nativity groups and state economic conditions also strongly influence interstate migration of immigrants.