Inequality across the twentieth century United States is a tale in two parts. The last half-century is the better known of the two and has been a period of widening inequality. But the first half-century, as we will demonstrate, was a period of narrowing inequality. It is the less well understood of the two tales largely because of data deficiencies. The federal population census, which provides much of the evidence on the distribution of material well being, first asked questions on income (and education) in 1940. We assemble data from a wide variety of sources showing conclusively that there was, during the first half of the century, a substantial decrease in various measures of inequality. The wage structure in manufacturing narrowed, the premium to various white-collar occupations decreased as did that for many craft trades, and the return to years of post-elementary education fell. These declines, moreover, came in two large spurts, both during wartime periods that were subsequently sustained. Not only was there a wage and income compression in the 1940s, about which much has been written, but there was also a narrowing in the late 1910s. Both periods of reductions in the premium to skill and decreases in the pecuniary return to education coincided, as well, with expansions in education, first for secondary schooling and later at the college level.

All children share the same basic needs. Children in immigrant families are no different from others in the United States in their need for food, clothing, shelter, physical safety, psychological nurturing, health care, and education. They also share a dependence on adultsfamily members, communities, governmentto assure their healthy development. Despite the similar needs of children in immigrant families, many have recently been denied equal access to publicly funded health and social benefits, or decisions regarding eligibility for such benefits have been devolved from the federal to state governments.Although the basic needs of all children are similar, children in immigrant families may also have special needs, or special access to resources, because of their current circumstances or conditions associated specifically with immigration. Historical trends in the numbers and socioeconomic and demographic circumstances of children in immigrant families, compared to children in native-born families, reflect key conditions that influence the needs and resources of these children.

The historical evolution of racial differences in income in the 20th century United States has been examined intensively by economists, but the evolution of racial differences in wealth has been examined far less. This paper uses IPUMS data to study trends in racial differences in home ownership since 1900. At the turn of the century approximately 20 percent of black adult males (ages 20 to 64) owned their homes, compared with 46 percent of white men, a gap of 26 percentage points. By 1990, the black home ownership rate had increased to 52 percent and the racial gap had fallen to 19.5 percentage points. All of the long-term rise in the rate of black home ownership, and almost all of the corresponding long-term decline in the racial gap, occurred after 1940, with the majority of both changes concentrated in the 1960 to 1980 period. We also use the IPUMS to study trends in race differences in the incidence of mortgages, and in the value of owner-occupied housing.

Although the general public is not widely aware of this trend, the American Indian population has grown phenomenally since 1900, their demographic nadir. No longer a vanishing race, Indians have rebounded to 1492 population estimates in nine decades. Until now, most research has focused on catastrophic population decline, but Nancy Shoemaker studies how and why American Indians have recovered. Her analysis of the social, cultural, and economic implications of the family and demographic patterns fueling the recovery compares five different Indian groups: the Seneca Nation in New York State, Cherokees in Oklahoma, Red Lake Ojibways in Minnesota, Yakamas in Washington State, and Navajos in the Southwest.

This chapter examines why American Jews came to support the Zionist goal of establishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine during the 1899-1933 period. Zionism remains one of the most successful examples of diasporin nationalism. By diasporin nationalism, I mean the phenomenon of political actors forming a self concious community to achieve political independence for their real or imaginary homeland outside of the political state in which they reside. A literature review reveals that much attention has been paid to the general factors affecting the American Jewish community during this period. In particular attention has focused on two factors; first the ongoing attachment of Eastern European Jewish immigrants to their co-regionalists in Eastern Europe, and second, the rise in Jewish secularism and philanthropy. A statistical analysis indicates little support for these hypotheses and indicates that conflicts within the Jewish community were pivotal.

This dissertation proposes that the family formation decision of individuals and couples are influenced by the decisions of other individuals in society. The existence of such 'social effects' could help to reconcile the magnitude of the changes predicted by existing models with the much more profound changes that actually occurred in recent decades, and it might explain why individuals not directly affected by various shocks might still alter their behavior in response to them. These effects could be transmitted directly from one person to another (e.g., by affecting their attitudes) or they be mediated by markets for goods or marriage partners. We present theories for several of these possible mechanisms. We then develop two unrelated methods for identifying and measuring the magnitude of these effects, and we apply these methods to data from the 1980 U.S. Census. Our results from both methods indicate that a 10 percentage point increase in the fraction of the young persons (16-44) who are single causes the marriage rate of young persons to fall by 1.5-2.0 percentage points. This suggests that approximately 30 percent of the decline in marriage rates among young adults over the last quarter century could be caused by such feedback (i.e., the increase in the fraction single). Finally, we make initial attempts to determine the nature of these effects and we find no evidence for the existence of effects transmitted directly between individuals.

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Objective. African American migrants from the South have long been blamed for many social problems that emerged in northern cities during the second half of the twentieth century. While recent research shows that migrants actually compared favorably with non-migrants on such characteristics as labor force participation, employment, income, and family stability, little effort has been expended to assess the more "macro" effects of migrants on the well-being of the indigenous northern black population. In this paper we investigate the possibility that northern-born black males were less likely to be employed and had lower wages in cities with proportionately larger southern-born populations in 1970. Methods. A multilevel analysis is conducted using individual-level data for 1970 from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series and data for metropolitan statistical areas from the Summary Statistic File 4C (Fourth Count) for 1970. Results. We find that percentage southern-born in an urban area is negatively related to black male employment, but that the relationship disappears when controls are introduced. Southern-origin concentration in an urban area is not related to annual income from salary and wages for black males. Conclusions. We conclude that the evidence from our analyses raises serious doubt about a negative "collective" impact of southern migrants on the economic well-being of the indigenous northern black population.

Statistics reference questions represent more than just a specialized retrieval challenge. When the fundamental point behind asking for data is to practice quantitative analysis techniques, reference librarians who are relative strangers to quantitative analysis and its vocabulary work at a disadvantage. To aid these reference librarians, here we present key quantitative analysis vocabulary. We will walk the reader through an elementary, fictitious example, and then a more complex, "real" example, of correlation and linear regression analysis. Integral use is made of statistical software (SPSS, version 8) and a dataset (Integrated Public Use Microdata Series) downloaded from the Internet, in order to instill in reference librarians a better sense of comfort and literacy with common quantitative analysis techniques using state-of-the-art methods.

Children take considerable time and effort to "produce" and their production is overseen by their families. As a consequence, family type may have a significant effect on child outcomes. One would expect that the relative disadvantages of having unmarried parents would have diminished over the past few decades. The expansion of social welfare programs and greater social acceptance of alternate lifestyles should have reduced the burdens faced by non-married couple families; improved control over fertility should have reduced the likelihood of children being born into disadvantaged environments. I present evidence that the opposite is true: the average difference between children whose parents are married and those whose parents are not has increased. This increase is consistent with an asymmetric information model of marriage (Murphy 1999). The apparent increase in the penalty faced by children growing up outside of married couple families reflects a composition effect: the pool of surviving marriages has changed. Expanded AFDC, lower divorce costs, and smaller penalties associated with out-of-wedlock births allow women to more easily avoid or escape bad marriages; as a consequence, surviving marriages are "better" on average. * Comments and suggestions are welcome. I thank Sandy Black, Glenn Loury, Dilip Mookherjee, Alwyn Young, and seminar participants at