In the current study, I focus on the effects of country of origin on immigrant women's odds of becoming self-employed in the United States. I argue that in comparison to their male counterparts, immigrant women make their choice of employment within different sets of available opportunities, impediments and obligations, and within a specific national environment, including the background and experiences brought from the country of origin. Immigrant women, and especially married immigrant women (Donato et al., 2014) experience a double disadvantage as immigrants facing language and cultural barriers when trying to assimilate in regular employment, and as women whose paid work is affected by their familial context (Inman, 2000 and Weiler and Bernasek, 2001). Consequently, they accumulate fewer benefits than men and encounter difficulties in securing lucrative jobs and adequate employment (Stier and Tienda, 2001). In this context, self-employment is a strategy that immigrant women may engage in to obtain income while coping with family demands and the demands of a new and unfamiliar labor market. It offers a way to earn income while caring for children and working from home, and it may be particularly attractive to families in welfare contexts where family arrangements are scarce (Craig et al., 2012). Thus, the process which underlies immigrant women's decision to become self-employed emphasizes the potential role that self-employment may play in their assimilation process, being an alternative solution to their inferior position both at home and in the labor market.

The last four decades have seen a return of high-earning households to central cities. The consequences are urban renewal on the one hand and soaring inner-city rents on the other. In this paper I extend a monocentric city model of income sorting and urban rents to examine whether increases in the number of two-earner households can explain recent patterns of gentrification. I then present evidence from Washington DC that, among the young and married, the rich are shortening their commutes while the poor are lengthening theirs. However, among the unmarried, no such trend is discernible. These facts support the model’s prediction that two-earner households have reshaped the landscape of urban income group sorting.

I investigate why federal student loans crowd out the private market by exploiting the introduction of graduate PLUS loans, which relaxed the federal borrowing limit on graduate students. After the expansion, students replaced private with PLUS loans nearly one-for-one, but did not increase borrowing. I use credit bureau data to compare private and federal loans, and show that most graduate students could receive private interest rates below the federal rates. Modeling students expected utilities, I find that the insurance provided by the federal income-based repayment option can rationalize most borrowers decisions to take out the higher interest federal loans.

Housing policy researchers studying the intersection of housing and disability must understand the relative strengths and limitations of the various types of administrative and survey data that can be used to identify persons with disabilities. This article describes traditional ways that disability has been measured in U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) administrative data and in relevant federally funded household surveys in the United States, while also highlighting newly available linked administrative survey data that can better identify persons with disabilities who participate in HUD-assisted housing programs. The article addresses various methods of measuring disability, including measures that are common across data sources (such as the sequence of six disability questions now included in the American Community Survey, American Housing Survey, and other federally funded surveys) and measures that are unique to specific sources of data (including HUD administrative data linked with population health surveys that include more detail on activity, functional, and social limitations). The article also discusses the strengths and limitations of various measures.

Background: Previous research has largely concentrated on how individual-level factors explain work disability duration. However, growing evidence suggests socio-cultural factors may significantly influence length of work disability. Objective: This study examined whether socio-cultural factors that vary by location of residence influence length of disability. Methods: This study utilized 216,162 non-work-related disability claims from a private US insurance company and matched these data with socio-cultural factors at the census tract level. OLS regression was used to model findings. Results: Higher unemployment rates, greater median household income, increased poverty status, increased length of the work commute, lower educational attainment, lower percentage of residents living alone, higher percentage of residents age 55 and older, higher percentage of disabled adults (3564), a lower percentage of whites, and a larger Hispanic population were associated with a longer length of disability. Conclusions: The findings showed that socio-cultural factors varying by location were associated with the length of disability, suggesting that the socioeconomic context of the areas in which individuals reside are likely to influence the work disability process.

Structural changes in demographics and the economy are creating new challenges and opportunities for subnational governments in regard to public finance across the United States. This report focuses on major demographic and economic changes over the last two decades that affect the state of Georgia and discusses the fiscal implications of these changes. In prior decades, Georgia was relatively less affected than other states by demographic trends such as the aging of the workforce. However, the states population is expected to age substantially over the next 20 years, which will significantly influence revenues and the demand for public services. Furthermore, health care reform in the state is still pending, and Georgia lags behind the national average on most of health indicators. The impacts of these trends are important in terms of economic growth. Georgias economy and industrial composition have also changed dramatically over the last two decades, with a strong decline in manufacturing. In recent years, there has been some job growth in the manufacturing and construction sectors, and the growth in employment in the state has been above the U.S. average.

There is a well-established relationship between union status and health within the general population, and growing evidence of an association between sexual identity and well-being. Yet, what is unknown is whether union status stratifies health outcomes across sexual identity categories. In order to elucidate this question, we analyzed nationally representative population-based data from the National Health Interview Surveys 2013-2014 (N = 53,135) to examine variation in self-rated health by sexual partnership status (i.e., by sexual identity across union status). We further test the role of socioeconomic status and gender in these associations. Results from logistic regression models show that union status stratifies self-rated health across gay, lesbian, and heterosexual populations, albeit in different ways for men and women. Socioeconomic status does not play a major role in accounting for these differences. Findings highlight the need for specific interventions with lesbian women, who appear to experience the most strident disadvantage across union status categories.

In 1898, recent law graduate Lutie A. Lytle-a black woman born to formerly enslaved parents-accepted a position as instructor of law at a law school in Tennessee. In doing so, she became the first black woman law professor in the world. Over the following four decades, despite suffering persistent racial and gender discrimination, Lytle committed her life and work to, in her words, “mak[ing] a sincere and earnest effort to improve [black Americans'] condition as citizens.” This Article details Lytle's life as an advocate, activist, and attorney, and argues that her work places her squarely within the ranks of the black feminist intelligentsia that emerged in the late nineteenth century. In addition, the Article highlights Lytle's disappearance from public life (and the public record) in the early 1940s, and suggests that her pioneering career warrants additional research into her final years.

Tuberculosis (TB) mortality rates in the USA fell rapidly from 1910 to 1933. However, during this period, racial disparities in TB mortality in the nation's expanding cities grew. Because of long delays between infection and disease, TB mortality is a poor indicator of short-term changes in transmission. We estimated the annual risk of TB infection (ARTI) in 11 large US cities to understand whether rising inequality in mortality reflected rising inequality in ARTI using city-level TB mortality data compiled by the US Department of Commerce from 1910 to 1933. We estimated ARTI for African-Americans and whites using pediatric extrapulmonary TB mortality data for African-Americans and whites in our panel of cities. We also estimated age-adjusted pulmonary TB mortality rates for these cities. We find that the ratio of ARTI for African-Americans vs. whites increased from 2·1 (95% CI = 1·7, 2·4) in 1910 to 4·2 (95% CI = 3·4, 5·2) in 1933. This change mirrored the increasing inequality in age-adjusted pulmonary TB mortality during this period. These findings may reflect the combined effects of migration, inequality in access to care, increasing population density, and racial residential segregation in northern cities during this period.

We establish that there are large and persistent differences in final transaction prices for identical new cars, and that demographic characteristics explain at least 20% of the observed variation. Older consumers perform progressively worse in negotiations, and the age premium is greater for women than for men. Our results suggest that the complex nature of vehicle transactions leads to price dispersion in this market, and that the worst performing groups—older women—have the lowest rates of market participation. We conjecture that the results are driven by the sharp increases in women's education and labor force participation in recent decades.

Claiming to be a complex approach, the updated worldwide Sustainable Development Goals agreement broadens its educational scope and acknowledges the integrated and indivisible character of human development through diverse dimensions. Complex systems research provides ways to improve our understanding of the complexity of education and to explore how education fits within the context of human development. To account for ‘effect‐based’ research on education complexity, using the American Community Survey data, we developed a model by inferring a probabilistic network structure of diverse aspects of human development dimensions including education. We explored the model by network analysis methods to discover the intrinsic relationships among education variables and the extrinsic relationships of education with other dimensions of human development in the USA. The results confirmed the well‐known rationale of the relationship between education and wealth, and expanded the understanding of complexity of education as it is part of the life course (timing of individual development) and of the cultural construction of identity.

Segregation has been the subject of extensive study in the U.S., yet we know relatively little about its change from one generation to the next and how closely individual characteristics align with the neighborhood, especially in periods of neighborhood change. Segregation theories, including spatial assimilation and place stratification, have mostly been analyzed through ecological data or intragenerational analysis, making their applicability across generations less certain. In this study, I use a neighborhood classification technique to establish racial, socioeconomic status, and age segregation conditions in 1970-2010 for census tracts inside of metropolitan and micropolitan areas. I use transition matrices and sequence analysis to assess neighborhood segregation stability and change and observe the degree to which individuals follow the neighborhood trends, including across generations. I also explore characteristics in six metropolitan areas to observe the degree of homogeneity or heterogeneity in neighborhood segregation change in places with differing contextual histories. A neighborhood cluster analysis produced a typology of neighborhoods that was related to segregation theories once stability and change were considered. Considerable support for market-led pluralism, dynamic diversity, and segmented assimilation was found for neighborhoods, and this theoretical support carried over to the characteristics of individuals living in the neighborhoods. Metropolitan areas varied considerably in their neighborhood change.

Research has shown that homeowners’ concern with their property values may lead them to have greater civic and neighborhood social engagement than renters. However, it has not been well examined whether changing property values during the housing market cycle affect this purported social benefit of homeownership. Using 2003 to 2013 American Time Use Survey data and Cragg two-part hurdle regression analysis, we assess differences in homeowners’ and renters’ civic and neighborhood social engagement during the stages of the recent housing market cycle. We find that, holding other characteristics constant, homeowners were more likely than renters to volunteer but spent less time in social activities with neighbors than renters, regardless of the housing market stage. Differences in civic and social engagement by tenure did not vary in consistent or expected ways across the stages of the cycle. These findings reinforce claims that homeownership has civic benefits, but evidence is lacking that homeowners make better neighbors than renters. Our findings also suggest that policies to intervene in the housing market to promote neighborhood cohesion need not vary across the housing market cycle.

Objectives: Labor market concentration, or niching, is a process by which individuals are concentrated in particular sectors often by racial or ethnic group, gender, or economic standing. Niching limits economic upward mobility for certain groups, particularly African Americans and Latinos, and processes encouraging niching may change over time. Methods: This study examines African-American and Latino occupational niching in New Orleans and Houston in 2000 and 20082012 using confidential microdata and in relation to both individual and neighborhood characteristics. Results: Individual and local human capital levels are found to play important roles in niching likelihood, in addition to other individual characteristics, such as foreign-born status and neighborhood conditions, specifically local co-racial and co-ethnic population percentages. Conclusions: Results overall highlight the importance of place- and group-specific approaches to both policy and research related to improving economic outcomes for racial and ethnic groups. These customized efforts are particularly important in metropolitan areas undergoing rapid economic, social, and demographic growth and restructuring such as New Orleans and Houston.

In this paper, we examine the evolution of the gender gap associated with marriage and parental status, comparing cohorts born between 1936 and 1985. Womens early-in-life decisions about schooling, marriage, fertility, and work have repercussions throughout their lifetimes. This means we expect gains across cohorts to be an important part of the convergence. Those born early in this period typically began their careers with more-limited opportunities and different expectations than those born towards the end. These decisions are also clearly the outcomes of a complex and dynamic decision-making process. We do not attempt to build a structural model here, but rather document how changing associations between marriage and earnings, and between children and earnings, have contributed to the gender gap in an accounting sense.

Smoking during pregnancy is most common among women with a low socioeconomic status and is negatively associated with important infant health measures such as birth weight. Cigarette taxes decrease smoking amongst pregnant women, thereby leading to improved birth outcomes. In this paper we investigate whether increasing cigarette taxes can reduce the intergenerational transmission of a low socioeconomic status by reducing smoking rates among pregnant women with low educational attainment. In a first step, we exploit variation in cigarette taxes across U.S. states over time to show that increasing cigarette taxes leads to improvements in the health of newborns which are larger for babies of low educated mothers. In a second step, we look at subsequent educational success of 16-year-olds measured by grade retention and school enrollment in a large sample of adolescents. We find that increasing cigarette taxes improves the outcomes of children from a low socioeconomic background, but find no effects among children from a higher socioeconomic background. Our findings therefore suggest that cigarette taxes can be an effective policy instrument for mitigating the propagation of a low socioeconomic status from one generation to the next.

Humans are the most important drivers of global invasive species introduction and natural habitat transformation. An understanding of the relationships between these impacts is needed to understand how we may prevent future species invasions. We explored the ecological differences between areas of dense human habitation and minimally managed natural habitats across an urban-to-rural gradient of land use in southern New England. Urban habitats were significantly different environmentally from rural habitats. Urban soils were more alkaline and coarse textured and had higher lead concentrations than rural soils. Urban habitats had more open canopies, impervious surface, patch forests and induced edge habitats than rural habitats. We also examined differences in presence/absence patterns and leaf functional traits for a set of invasive species across an urban to rural environmental gradient. Some species were more restricted to urban or rural sites than others along this gradient. A priori urban-classified species tended to show trait values associated with drought tolerance, including higher leaf length-to-width ratio, greater leaf thickness, higher leaf dry matter content and lower specific leaf area. Our findings suggest that urban environmental conditions contribute to an ‘urban drought island’ syndrome that favors drought-tolerant species.

Studies focusing on emerging adulthood suggest that young adults from marginalized populations are more likely to assume adult roles earlier or struggle to assume adult roles altogether, both of which increase the likelihood of a challenging transition to adulthood. Demographic profiles of young adults do not simultaneously consider multiple marginalized identities. This study examines how the transition into key adult statuses differs by the intersections of social statuses. We use data from the American Community Survey 2010 to provide population estimates of rates of young adults, ages 1835, reaching five key adult role statuses (completing school, joining the labor force, establishing independent homes, marriage, or parenting) by race or immigration status, gender, and poverty status. Our analyses reveal complex patterns in the adoption of adult role statuses. The general trends suggest that nonpoor young adults become adults at increasingly higher rates than poor young adults throughout the transition period.

We investigate whether economic conditions at labor market entry have persistent effects on law graduate earnings. We find that unemployment levels at graduation continue to affect law earnings premiums within 4 years after graduation for earners at the high end and middle of the distribution. However, the effect fades as law graduates gain experience and the impact on lifetime earnings is moderate. Outcomes data available prior to matriculation do not predict unemployment or starting salaries at graduation. Earnings premiums are not predicted by BLS projected job openings. We find little evidence for the predictive power of cohort size. An inverted yield curve does not predict future law earnings premiums. For medium to high earning graduates, successfully timing law school could increase the value of a law degree ex-post, but simulations show that no strategy for ex-ante timing is readily available.

To measure population changes in areas where census unit boundaries do not align across time, a common approach is to interpolate data from one census's units to another's. This article presents a broad assessment of areal interpolation models for estimating counts of 2000 characteristics in 2010 census units throughout the United States. We interpolate from 2000 census block data using 4 types of ancillary data to guide interpolation: 2010 block densities, imperviousness data, road buffers, and water body polygons. We test 8 binary dasymetric (BD) models and 8 target-density weighting (TDW) models, each using a unique combination of the 4 ancillary data types, and derive 2 hybrid models that blend the best-performing BD and TDW models. The most accurate model is a hybrid that generally gives high weight to TDW (allocating 2000 data in proportion to 2010 densities) but gives increasing weight to a BD model (allocating data uniformly within developed land near roads) in proportion to the estimated 20002010 rate of change within each block. Although for most 2010 census units, this hybrid model's estimates differ little from the simplest model's estimates, there are still many areas where the estimates differ considerably. Estimates from the final model, along with lower and upper bounds for each estimate, are publicly available for over 1000 population and housing characteristics at 10 geographic levels via the National Historical Geographic Information System (NHGIS http://nhgis.org).