The combination of ethnicity and birthplace was used to identify first and second generation Chinese immigrants and US born white Americans. Cancer incident cases for three comparison groups were obtained. Population counts for each study group were extracted from The Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS-98). Direct Age-standardized incidence rates (ASIRs) were calculated using the world population as a standard. ASIRs were compared among first, second generation Chinese immigrants and US born white Americans for nasopharyngeal, esophageal, stomach, liver, colon, rectum, lung, female breast and prostate cancers. Observed, relative and cause-specific survival rates were calculated for the three study groups. The advantages and disadvantages of the three survival rates were compared. Cause-specific survival rates for female breast, prostate, colorectal, and lung cancer were compared among first and second generation Chinese immigrants and US born white Americans. Multivariate survival analysis was conducted using Cox proportional hazard model. Other prognostic factors, such as stage at diagnosis, age, gender, and had or did not have directed surgery during first therapy, SEER registry, and marital status, were examined. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

The global city thesis by which Sassen (1991) has linked globalization with increased social polarization has attracted much attention and caused considerable discussion over the past decade. This article illustrates divergent approaches that have been taken to the study of social polarization and provides an overview of the issues that have been discussed in relation to the polarization debate. I argue that the global city thesis has been misleading and that the empirical work underlying it has been too limited. Thereafter I test the empirical basis for Sassen's thesis in an analysis of the distribution of wages in the New York Metropolitan Area during the period 1970 to 1990.

Many observers have recognized and decried the disproportionate impact on young minority males of harsh sentencing policies for drug dealing. Nationwide, African-Americans and Hispanics constituted 78.2 percent of incarcerated drug offenders in 1996. Their incarceration rates for drug offenses were respectively 17 and 8 times greater than non-Hispanic white rates. The disproportionalities for drug offenses were over twice as wide as the disproportionalities for other types of offenses.1 Scholars have noted the lack of hard data about neighborhood dynamics of arrest and incarceration for drug dealing, but they have nonetheless tended to explain the disproportionate impact on minorities with reference to neighborhood phenomena. This paper uses a mapping of the pre-incarceration residences of drug-dealers incarcerated in state prison in Massachusetts to systematically explore neighborhood and certain other explanations for disproportionate impact.

This paper examines changes in the occupations of African-American women during the period 1940-1980 using U.S. Census samples, with an emphasis on the breakthrough of black women into clerical work. In contrast with some previous studies, my results indicate that increased educational attainment played a significant role in opening black opportunities for clerical jobs. But changes in education still explain less than half of the overall increase in probability of a clerical job, suggesting that declining discrimination may also have been important. Employing an illustrative tipping model of endogenous discrimination, the paper argues that a range of historical forces might have tipped the labor market toward an equilibrium with less employment discrimination. Some preliminary evidence suggests a potential role for public employment and the educational qualifications of the black labor pool.

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, specially 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.

This paper uses data drawn from the U.S. Censuses of population enumerated between 1880 and 1940 to draw conclusions about the demographic impact of the Mexican Revolution for the United States. There was a substantial Mexican heritage population in the United States as early as 1880. Earlier migration flows were overwhelmed beginning in 1906-07 with a much larger stream, provoked by a combination of economic and political conditions in Mexico and the United States. The Mexican economy suffered severe setbacks after 1906; after that political instability and armed conflict led to both economic and political emigration from Mexico. In the U.S. side a strong economy and demand for labor provided in a home for immigrants. The demographic data show a large surge in immigration, the excess of which that is caused by the Mexican Revolution is estimated in the paper to be between 73,000 and 136,000 individuals between 1911 and 1919.

In the late eighteenth century, Benjamin Franklin commented on the remarkably high fertility and large family size in what was British North America, which he attributed to the ease of acquiring good farm land. His comments were reiterated by Thomas Robert Malthus in his famous Essay on the Principle of Population:But the English North American colonies, now the powerful people of the United States of America, made by far the most rapid progress. To the plenty of good land which they possessed in common with the Spanish and Portuguese settlements, they added a greater degree of liberty and equality. The political institutions that prevailed were favorable to the alienation and division of property. There were no tithes in any of the States and scarcely any taxes. And on account of the extreme cheapness of good land a capital could not be more advantageously employed than in agriculture, which at the same time that it supplies the greatest quantity of healthy work affords the most valuable produce of society.The consequence of these favorable circumstances united was a rapidity of increase probably without parallel in history. Throughout all of the northern colonies, the population was found to double in twenty-five years.Although Malthus guessed at the rate of natural increase (implying a 2.8 percent per year rate of growth), he was not far off. During the period 1790 to 1810, population growth in the new nation (including migration) exceeded 3 percent per annum (see Table 4.2).

Disclosure limitation methods transform statistical databases to protect confidentiality, a practical concern of statistical agencies. A statistical database responds to queries with aggregate statistics. The database administrator should maximize legitimate data access while keeping the risk of disclosure below an acceptable level. Legitimate users seek statistical information, generally in aggregate form; malicious users-the data snoopers-attempt to infer confidential information about an individual data subject. Tracker attacks are of special concern for databases accessed online. This article derives optimal disclosure limitation strategies under tracker attacks for the important case of data masking through additive noise. Operational measures of the utility of data access and of disclosure risk are developed. The utility of data access is expressed so that trade-offs can be made between the quantity and the quality of data to be released. Application is made to Ohio data from the 1990 census. The article derives conditions under which an attack by a data snooper is better thwarted by a combination of query restriction and data masking than by either disclosure limitation method separately. Data masking by independent noise addition and data perturbation are considered as extreme cases in the continuum of data masking using positively correlated additive noise. Optimal strategies are established for the data snooper. Circumstances are determined under which adding autocorrelated noise is preferable to using existing methods of either independent noise addition or data perturbation. Both moving average and autoregressive noise addition are considered.

A growing interest in studying the self-employment decision can be attributed to the conventional wisdom that small business formation is necessary for economic development. Extant research has also begun to explore the self-employment determinants of emerging populations, such as immigrants and African Americans, emphasizing that there is need for better policies aimed at helping these populations. Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans epitomize this need to pursue these two areas of research. To specifically address these areas, this dissertation pursues two objectives: (1) to empirically analyze the self-employment trends of Puerto Ricans and mainland Puerto Ricans against other groups (Dominicans, Cubans, Mexicans) in both Puerto Rico and the United States, and (2) to explain why differences exist in small business financing sources among various groups (Island-born Puerto Ricans, mainland Puerto Ricans and immigrants) in Puerto Rico. Econometric techniques such as switching regressions and multinomial logit models are employed for the stated purposes. Moreover, the econometric analysis draws upon several data sources: selected samples from both the United States and Puerto Rican Censuses of Population and Housing, and a small business survey developed by the Center for Economic Development at the University of Puerto Rico. Clearly, understanding the factors that may influence the self-employment decision among different ethnic groups in Puerto Rico and the United States can promote the creation of policy initiatives that foster entrepreneurial growth among these groups. In this light, the results from this study add to extant development literature regarding the role of small businesses on economic growth and to the importance of formulating adequate policies to ensure that small entrepreneurs have access to capital markets. The results of this dissertation suggest that in both Puerto Rico and the United States, Puerto Rican participation in the self-employment sector did not increase as rapidly as compared to Cubans, Dominicans/Mexicans, and other immigrants/Hispanics during the 1980s. Moreover, the analysis using the Public Use Microdata Samples (PUMS) data do not show evidence of selection into the self-employment sector among Puerto Ricans, although the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) sample does show a positive selection into the self-employment sector for the Puerto Rican sample during the 1980s. This dissertation then finds evidence to suggest that Puerto Ricans have lower levels of entrepreneurial involvement. The estimation results from a multinomial logit of financing sources, employing the aforementioned survey, support the hypothesis that mainland Puerto Ricans and immigrants have greater access to credit markets than Island-born Puerto Ricans. The results employing the Census data are also consistent with the view that Puerto Ricans and immigrants are negatively selected into the entrepreneurial sector.

This paper provides new evidence on the economic consequences of unilateral divorce laws on the future labor market outcomes of children. Using a cohort of young adults from the 1990 census, we examine the effect of living in a unilateral divorce state as a child on education, earnings, and marital status. Women with many years of childhood exposure to unilateral divorce laws have lower wages and have completed less schooling. However, there is no statistically significant effect of unilateral divorce exposure on men's wages. Both women and men are more likely to marry and less likely to get divorced with more years of exposure to unilateral divorce as a child. We also explore alternative mechanisms through which unilateral divorce laws can affect children's outcomes. The evidence suggests that while divorce rates did increase significantly as a result of the laws, bargaining power within the household is also an important factor driving our results.

How did turn-of-the-20th-century immigrants perform in the American economy relative to native-born Americans? This article reassesses this question using data from the 1900 and 1910 American census files. I find in both cross sections that American immigrants perform well in blue-collar and white-collar occupations, with either faster growth in earnings or an outright earnings advantage over native-born Americans in the same occupational sector. Estimates of within-cohort growth reveal that the cross-sectional results do not overstate immigrant progress due to cohort effects. Immigrants also exhibit a high degree of mobility into the well-paid white-collar sector of the American economy, and the progress of the immigrant population as a whole was not slowed by the emergence of the "new" immigration. (C) 2000 Academic Press.

We empirically examine the role of social networks in welfare participation using data on language spoken at home to better infer networks within an area. Our empirical strategy asks whether being surrounded by others who speak the same language increases welfare use more for those from high welfare-using language groups. This methodology allows us to include local area and language group fixed effects and to control for the direct effect of being surrounded by one's language group; these controls eliminate many of the problems in previous studies. The results strongly confirm the importance of networks in welfare participation.

This paper assesses the relative labour market performance of second-generation Americans in the early 20th Century. I demonstrate that the earnings patterns of second-generation Americans in the 1910 and 1920 IPUMS Census samples were much like those of native-born native parentage Americans. Earnings equality was achieved despite lower educational attainment among the second-generation; school attendance patterns among teenage boys in the 1920 Census sample reveal that the sons of immigrants were less likely to be in school than native-parentage boys of the same age. Finally, I focus on the occupations held in father-son pairs identified in the 1920 Census sample. Analysis of intergenerational occupational patterns reveals that the sons of immigrants were more likely to demonstrate up ward occupational mobility, relative to their parents, than were the sons of native-born native parentage Americans.

This paper begins by documenting racial convergence in the value of owner-occupied housing from 1940 to 1990. Most of this convergence occurred before 1970, as black and white home owners became more similar in terms of household and housing characteristics that were positively correlated with housing values. The post-1970 story is rather less encouraging. During the 1970s, convergence in housing values stalled, and in fact, the "unexplained" portion of the value gap increased. We explore the post-1970 experience from a variety of perspectives. We examine the changing connection between residential segregation and the racial value gap; we document trends in the correlation between income and central-city residence; and we explore the correlation between riots in the 1960s and the racial gap in housing values thereafter. 1 According to one recent study, the black/white ratio of mean household wealth in 1995 was 0.18, compared with a black/white ratio of mean household income of 0.64 (Wolff 1998). See Higgs (1982) and Margo (1984) for historical perspective. 2 By "debt/equity ratio" we mean the ratio of mortgage debt to housing equity. 3 Racial differences in home ownership might also affect differences in well being if home ownership promotes various positive externalities (such as more stable neighborhoods, or better citizenship); see Green and White (1997), and DiPasquale and Glaeser (1999). 4 By "neighborhood quality" we are referring to attributes/behavior of one's neighbors and the characteristics of their housing; local public goods; access to transportation and retail services; and so on. The IPUMS data set that we analyze in this paper includes information on the characteristics of households, and their housing (for some years) but does not include direct information on neighborhood quality.