The authors use American Community Survey (ACS) language data for 2009 to 2013 to map all U.S. counties where 10 percent or more of the population age five and older is estimated to speak a minority (heritage) language at home. The methodology of the ACS data estimation and the limitations of ACS language data, especially for assessing bilingualism, are reviewed. We then explain the methodology underlying our maps and discuss the geographic patterns, evolution, and sociospatial aspects of Spanish, Native North American, French, German, Asian, and Pacific Island languages, all of which are used by multiple communities in the United States. Four causes are suggested to explain those counties where heritage languages only as a group meet or exceed the 10 percent threshold (i.e., our sixth language category). The article concludes with a consideration of the benefits of bilingualism, the pressure from English that the heritage languages face, and some suggested directions for geolinguistic research of geographic patterns of languages and bilingualism in counties across the United States.

While many studies focus on the Vietnam War draft lottery, few consider differences in economic outcomes resulting from differences in local labor markets. Using data from the American Community Survey, National Archives, Department of Defense, U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and Angrist Data Archive, this study creates a composite dataset for analysis. Employing a two stage least squares approach with lottery determined draft eligibility, the presence of military bases in Public Use Microdata Areas, and county-level population scaled casualty counts as instruments, this study finds Vietnam veteran status is associated with a 21.6% reduction in wages and a 6.08% reduction in the likelihood of employment compared to nonveterans.  I would like to thank my advisor Enrico Moretti for his substantial help, guidance, and patience. I would also like to thank Zachary Bleemer for his mentorship and for fielding some of my questions regarding this paper. 2

The digital transformation imposes both opportunities and risks for creativity and for creative employment, with implications for trends in income levels and the distribution of income. First, we consider skill-biased technological change as a determinant of income and labor market outcomes in the arts. Arguably, the IT revolution has changed the demand for certain skills, with creative occupations being more in demand than general employment. Second, we consider declines in the costs of generating new works and artistic experimentation due to digital technologies, and their effect on the barriers to entry in labor markets. Third, we touch upon the rise of online contract labor in . . .

Child mortality is a serious issue in most part of the developing world. Every year, 5.4 million children under-five (u5) die in the world. Reduction of the child mortality from 93/1000 live birth to 39/1000 live birth is an important Sustainable Development Goal (SDG). Out of 195 countries analyzed in SDG 118 countries have already achieved the target on under-five mortality and 26 countries will get SDG target by 2030 hopefully. Remaining 51 countries could not achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). High-risk fertility behavior (HRFB) is common in Africa and South Asia which can potentially affect child mortality. Various factors associated with child mortality have been identified in the previous literature. Among other factors, women’s age at a time of childbirth, the interval between births and the birth order of the child have been pointed out as significant risks factors of child mortality. These three factors have been treated as an HRFB. The aim of the current study is to analyze the HRFB and child mortality in a cross countries context. In this study, we have examined the association between u5 child mortality and various measures of HRFB, viz., women’s age (<18 years or >33 years), the interval between births (<24 months), and the birth order of the child (>3). The present study is based on data from the demographic and health survey (DHS) 1987-2016 from a total of 24 countries from South Asia and Africa (N=1,224,832). It includes the information about the women who were 15-49 and had given birth in the last five years. We emphasize the impact of the three measures of HRFB on the odds of u5 child mortality as well as different combinations of three measures. Bivariate descriptive analysis and a multivariate logistic regression model are used to analyze the relationship between HRFB and u5 child mortality. In pooled data analysis, results show the HRFB increases the risk of under-five (u5) child mortality. In any high-risk category, women within which one condition is found in any of the three factors (women age, birth interval and birth order) were 77% more likely to child die (AOR = 1.771, 95% CI: 1.722 - 1.821). In a single high-risk category, a significant association exists between mother’s age <18 y and child mortality but mother age at childbirth >=34 y were not significantly related to under-5 mortality. However, the children born with the birth interval <24 months were 4 times more likely to die than those children who were born when preceding birth interval was >=24 months (AOR = 4.995, 95% CI: 4.842-5.152). Moreover, the birth order is a protective factor. In multiple high risk categories, women age at birth <18 y and birth interval <24months (mo), women age at birth >34 y and birth interval <24mo, women age at birth >34 y and birth interval <24mo and birth order >3, or birth interval <24mo and birth order >3 were significantly associated with the likelihood of having u5 mortality among children in 24 countries of two regions (Africa and South Asia). Out of 24 countries, there are 16 countries in which the women age <18 y or >34 y is a significant risk factor of child mortality and there is not a single country in which it is a protective factor. The association between mortality risk and birth interval <24mo is highly significant in all countries. Birth order is not much important but it is consistent. Birth order does not have any evidence because it is a risk factor in some countries while it is a protective factor in other countries. The study concludes that HRFB increases the risk of child mortality. Outcomes of the proposed study possess some critical policy implications. The governments of South Asian and African countries need to invest more in the health care system to improve the quality of care of mother and neonates. The health management system should be improved to increase awareness for potential women to get proper care from the start of pregnancy. Also, potential mothers should focus on antenatal care (ANC).

Marriage patterns can be well understood only if researchers employ measures of marriage rates that are appropriate for the question asked. In this paper, we provide evidence that the two classes of measures typically used in the literature, the number of new marriages per population and the share of individuals currently or ever married within an age range, generally lead to misleading inference when used to study the probability someone marries during his or her life or fertile life, how it evolves, and how it differs across populations. An alternative measure, the share of individuals ever married in a given cohort by a given age, is better suited for such studies. When researchers are interested in year-on-year changes in marriage probabilities of singles, age-specific marriage hazards are more reliable than population-based measures. We conclude by discussing implications of our findings for studies of the drivers and consequences of marriage formation.

Extant research documents how siblings’ relationships develop from childhood through adolescence; yet, we know little about how sibling relationships change in young adulthood. Rooted in life course theory, this 2-wave longitudinal study investigated changes in sibling closeness and conflict, and the roles of life transitions and sibling similarity in life stage. Participants included 273 young adults from 180 families who reported on 340 sibling relationships (Time 1 M age = 24.45, SD = 5.33; Time 2 M age = 30.23, SD = 5.33). Multilevel repeated measures analysis of covariance indicated that, on average, siblings’ perceptions of conflict declined over the course of young adulthood. Additionally, patterns of change in closeness and conflict were linked to life transitions surrounding coresidence, parenthood, and similarity in employment. The discussion addresses findings in regard to life course theory and similarity in life transitions.

One of the possible revisions to the 2020 Census is a single question about racial and ethnic origins that includes a “Hispanic/Latinx” category in the same question as the “racial” groups. If implemented, this would, for the first time, make it possible for respondents to unambiguously self-identify as multiracial and part-Latinx (for example, as Latino/a and White, or Latino/a and Black). Using the 2015 Texas Diversity Survey, which included a similar question format, I investigate the demographic characteristics of individuals who identify as multiracial White/Latinx, Black/Latinx, or other part-Latinx identities, comparing their characteristics to individuals who identify as only Latinx. I use these demographic characteristics, along with comparisons to the 2011-2015 American Community Survey data for Texas, to project the likely result of such a revision in the 2020 Census, projecting its impact on our understanding of the demographics of Latino/as in the United States.

The Great Depression was a brutal time in American history. Unemployment soared, millions were impoverished, the economy had tanked, and over 9000 banks were closed. Oppositional groups among the working class emerged. Communist groups also emerged and challenged the Capitalist paradigm, and a rising unionism. A common mantra during the period was “Fight—Don’t Starve” (Piven and Cloward 1977; Luce 2017; Smith 2002).

The literature on scal federalism usually argues that policies involving income reallocation should be administered by the highest level of government. This argument , however, neglects a uniformity constraint, which limits regional variation in its tax and welfare policies. Our paper explores the extent to which income support for poor households varies across US states due to the interaction between the federal government's uniformity constraint and regional variations in local economic conditions and the net transfer policies of state governments. Our results are based on a simulation of the combined response of federal and state net transfers to a pre-tax earnings shock. They point to large dierences in the level of insurance against income shocks experienced by households with low incomes in dierent states.

Although immigrants to the United States earn less at entry than their native-born counterparts, an extensive literature has found that immigrants have faster earnings growth that results in rapid convergence to native-born earnings. However, recent evidence based on U.S. Census data indicates a slowdown in the rate of earnings assimilation. We find that the pace of immigrant wage convergence based on recent data may be understated in the literature as a result of the method used by the census to impute missing information on earnings, which does not use immigration status as a match characteristic. Because both the share of immigrants in the workforce and earnings imputation rates have risen over time, imputation match bias for recent immigrants is more consequential than in earlier periods and may lead to an underestimate of the rate of immigrant wage convergence.

Seminal work by Goldin and Margo (1992) used the first available microdata samples of the United States decennial census to document the narrowing of the wage structure between 1940 and 1960, a pattern they refer to as the “Great Compression.” We revisit their findings using newly available, substantially enlarged samples of the decennial censuses covering this period. Our findings largely replicate the patterns initially reported by Goldin and Margo. However, differences emerge when estimating rates of return to education and experience for specific groups and in a decomposition exercise. A second goal is to indicate directions for future research that might benefit from the use of the complete count census data.

A partir de las bases de datos de la American Community Survey disponibles en el sitio de IPUMS, se analiza cómo se ha comportado la población de cubanos en Estados Unidos en el período 2000-2014. Calculando una media ponderada de la población en el período y dividiendo por lugar de residencia en dos grupos: los que viven en la Florida y los que viven fuera de este estado, se analizan algunas variables que caracterizan a los cubanos residentes en Estados Unidos. Por otra parte se presenta una información más actualizada que muestra el estado para el 2016 de los cubanos residentes en Estados Unidos atendiendo a su distribución por sexo y edad. Además de este análisis en el 2016, se realiza una breve evolución que presenta una actualización general a partir del 2001, que considera los años 2015 y 2016, años que en la primera parte del trabajo por variables no se muestran. Asimismo se calculan las tasas de crecimiento anual de dicha población y el comportamiento de las entradas de cubanos a ese país a partir del año 2001. El trabajo es de corte descriptivo y pretende tener un acercamiento al comportamiento demográfico de los cubanos en Estados Unidos, con el objetivo de obtener insumos para futuras investigaciones. La novedad radica en trabajar con una base de datos desarrollada a partir de una encuesta anual que se aplica en sustitución del censo en Estados Unidos y que puede ser una fuente de información importante en el trabajo de los migrantes cubanos en ese país.

This paper assesses crosscountry variation in life-cycle human capital accumulation , using new evidence from US immigrants. The returns to experience accumulated in an immigrant's birth country before migrating are positively correlated with birth-country GDP per capita. To understand this fact, we build a model of life-cycle human capital accumulation that features three potential theories: differential human capital accumulation, differential selection, and differential skill loss. We use new data on the characteristics of immigrants and nonmigrants from a large set of countries to distinguish between these theories. The most likely theory is that immigrants from poor countries accumulate less human capital in their birth countries before migrating. Our findings imply that life-cycle human capital stocks are much larger in rich countries.

This dissertation consists of two parts. The first part is about understanding the mechanism behind female labor supply movement over economic development. Female labor force participation follows a U-shape pattern over per capita GDP cross nationally as well as within some countries. This paper questions if this pattern can be explained through sectoral, uneven technological movements both at market and at home. For that I develop a general equilibrium model with married couples and home production. I defined multiple sectors both at home and in the market. And by feeding the model with uneven technological growth, I observe how participation rate moves over development. My results indicate that a decrease in labor supply is mainly due to structural transformation. Meaning, a higher technology in a large sector causes prices to go up in that sector relative to other. Hence, labor allocated to this sector will decrease. Assuming this sector has a big market share, it will . . .

This thesis consists of three papers in the broad field of Applied Economics. I focus on three “soft factors”, namely, face-to-face communication, brief social inter- actions and information updates. I study on how they affect individual and organ- isational outcomes using different natural experiments. The first chapter provides causal evidence on how the ability to communicate face-to-face (in addition to elec- tronic communication) can increase organisational performance. The study exploits a natural experiment within a large organisation where workers must communicate electronically with their teammates. A computerized system allocates the tasks to workers creating exogenous variation in the co-location of teammates. Workers who share the same room, can also communicate in person. The main findings are that face-to-face communication increases productivity and that this effect significantly varies across tasks, team characteristics and working environments. In the second chapter I construct a novel dataset of immigrants and ships arrived to the US in the early 20th century to study the effects of brief social interactions and their per- sistence over time. The chapter shows that individuals travelling (during few days) with shipmates that have better connections in the US, have higher quality jobs. Several findings are consistent with the mechanism whereby individuals get informa- tion or access to job opportunities from their shipmates. The study highlights the importance of social interactions with unknown individuals during critical life junc- tures. It also suggests that they are more relevant for individuals with poor access to information or weak social networks. The third chapter shows that executions cause a local and temporary reduction in serious violent crime. The interpretation of this result follows from a theoretical framework connecting information updates with the increasing ’awareness’ of individuals about the consequences of crime. Consistently with the predictions of the model, the study finds that effects are stronger when media attention is high and lower in places with high propensity to apply the death penalty.

For nearly 20 years, the U.S. Census has allowed respondents to report multiple races, offering new opportunities to assess the well-being of multiracial groups. Multiple-race reporting provides much-needed nuance for assessing the racial stratification of social outcomes as the distinctions between racial groups is less clear. Here, I explore the promises and the pitfalls of working with multiple-race data in studies of race inequality. I begin with a discussion of prior work using multiple-race data, showing how they inform our understanding of race-based patterns, and also consider issues raised by the conceptual and methodological fuzziness inherent in using multiple-race responses. I then provide a brief picture of current racial differences in adult poverty rates for single- and multiplerace groups, revealing that some multiracial groups experience parity with single-race groups while others occupy a space in between. While these patterns are meaningful, multiple interpretations are possible given the nature of multiple-race data.

Since taking office, President Donald Trump has expanded interior immigration enforcement and made it easier for states and local governments to apprehend and detain illegal immigrants. His actions are often based on the widespread perception that illegal immigrants are a significant and disproportionate source of crime in the United States. This brief uses American Community Survey data from the U.S. Census Bureau to analyze incarcerated immigrants according to their citizenship and legal status for 2016. The data show that all immigrants—legal and illegal—are less likely to be incarcerated than native-born Americans relative to their shares of the population. By themselves, illegal immigrants are less likely to be incarcerated than native-born Americans.

The study examined the trends, determinants and health risks of adolescent fatherhood in countries where adolescent-girl pregnancy/motherhood are decried but with permissive male sexual latitude. Male-recode datasets of Demographic Health Survey (2000-2014) for Nigeria, Ethiopia and Zambia were used. The surveys were grouped into 3-Waves: Wave 1 (2000 and 2004); Wave 2 (2005 to 2009) and waves 3 (2010 to 2014). Ethiopia data consisted of 2000, 2005 and 2011 datasets; Nigeria‘s datasets included 2003, 2008 and 2013 while Zambia set of data featured 2002, 2007 and 2014. Wave-1 consists of 2000, 2002 and 2003 datasets; Wave-2 has 2005, 2007 and 2008 datasets while 2011, 2013 and 2014 data were used for Wave- 3. These files in each wave were grouped together and then combined into a single file. All data were weighted to ensure representation and analyses were split by countries and by waves to show the trends across .the years and for different countries. The study employed univariate, bivariate analysis and binary logistics that tested the log-odds of adolescent fatherhood with respect to selected sexual behaviour indices, individual and shared demographic variables. The results, among others, indicated that more than one out of every five adolescents has had two or more sexual partners. The likelihood of adolescent fatherhood is inversely related to condom use, but positively associated with increasing age at first cohabitation and higher number of multiple sexual partnerships (≥ 2) at odd-ratio of 1.673 and 1.769 in 2005/2009 and 2010/2014, respectively. Adolescents that have attained primary and tertiary education, and who are professionals and skilled labourers were 0.379, 0.313, 0.213 and 0.403 times (respectively) less likely to father a child as adolescent. The positive association between rural place of residence and adolescent fatherhood in the past shifted to urban residents in 2010/2014. The study concludes that enlightenment on the use of condom and testing for STIs/HIV and AIDS should be intensified. Increasing access to higher formal education including job opportunities is crucial to interventions towards boys’ vulnerability to fatherhood. The authors recommend support from policy-takers, governments and other stakeholders towards male adolescent access to higher education, skills acquisition, and campaigns against boys and girls cohabitations in the study locations and by extension sub-Saharan Africa in general.

In 1983, then Secretary of Education, T.H. Bell, proposed convening a national panel on the state of education in America. In his opinion, the American educational system was in complete disarray. He approached Ronald Reagan to convene the panel, but Reagan refused and so Bell took it upon himself to organize the group. The panel he chose was comprised of members from the business, political, and academic elite. The primary author of the final report was education writer, James J. Harvey, who would later admit that their views were misguided because educational reform is more complicated than they had anticipated (Bauman 2003). A Nation at Risk, the 1983 Report generated from Bell’s efforts, has become a watershed document about education, rivaling Abraham Flexner’s 1910 report on US Medical schools, and started a process of neo-liberal policies aimed . . .