There is limited existing evidence justifying the economic case for state education policy. Using newly-developed measures of the human capital of each state that allow for internal migration and foreign immigration, we estimate growth regressions that incorporate worker skills. We find that educational achievement strongly predicts economic growth across U.S. states over the past four decades. Based on projections from our growth models, we show the enormous scope for state economic development through improving the quality of schools. While we consider the impact for each state of a range of educational reforms, an improvement that moves each state to the best-performing state would in the of long-run economic gains of over four times current GDP.

This paper tests whether deposit insurance promotes financial depth by influencing depositor behavior. To do so, we rely on two schemes operating in the U.S. during the 1920s: the Postal Savings System and the deposit insurance schemes that some states had adopted. We exploit the discontinuity in deposit insurance across state borders and compute changes in postal savings deposits in cities located along the borders of states that did and did not have deposit insurance. We examine the relative growth of postal savings deposits in pairs of border cities when bank suspensions occurred within a short radius (10, 20, and 30 miles). Our results indicate that, following a bank suspension within a 10-mile radius, deposits in postal savings offices located in the non-deposit insurance state increased by 16 percent more than deposits in the neighboring postal savings office located in the deposit insurance state. The magnitude of the effect declines with bank suspension distance. It disappears when deposit insurance is not in effect. Using county-level data, we find that deposit insurance is associated with a 56 percent increase in local banking capacity.

The gay rights movement and parallel fight to end discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation has precipitated a number of policy debates in the past 40 years and various legislative responses across states. By 2010, a majority of states had adopted some form of legislation outlawing prejudice on the basis of sexual orientation in either private or public employment. A primary objective driving this movement is to reduce the negative effects caused by discrimination against this targeted minority of people by providing them with comprehensive legal protection and recourse. This paper uses data from the 2010 American Community Survey to estimate the consequences of adopting statewide employment nondiscrimination policies on wages for all people and specifically amongst the protected class. After controlling for individual characteristics that affect wages, the results show no indication that employment nondiscrimination policies convey a unique benefit for gays and lesbians. The important symbolic meaning of legitimizing the identities of gays and lesbians as fully contributing members of society by adopting these antidiscrimination protections might serve as a more compelling equality measure than evaluating the isolated income effects alone.

For policymakers aiming to alter the migratory patterns of skilled labor, one potential tool involves subsidizing higher education. We present new evidence on the effects of merit aid scholarship programs programs that offer partial or full tuition subsidies to high-achieving in-state students. Using Census data on 24 to 32 year olds in the U.S. from 1990 to 2010, we show that eligibility for merit aid programs slightly increases the propensity of state natives to live in-state, while also extending in-state enrollment into the late twenties. However, the share of a cohort both living in-state and having a BA is unchanged, with a possible decline in overall BA attainment. These patterns notwithstanding, the magnitude of merit aid effects is of an order of magnitude smaller than size of the treated population, suggesting that nearly all of the spending on these programs transfers resources to individuals whose ultimate migration decisions remain unchanged.

Results from international standardized tests show large cross-country differences in students' performances. Where do these gaps come from? This paper argues that differences in cultural environments and parental inputs may be of great importance. We show that the school performance of second-generation immigrants is similar to that of native students in their parents' countries of origin. This holds true even after accounting for different family background characteristics, schools attended and selection into immigration. We quantify the overall contribution of various parental inputs to the observed cross-country differences in PISA test performance and show that they account for between 12% and 30% of the total variation and for most of the gap between East Asia and other regions. This pattern calls into questions whether PISA scores should be interpreted only as a quality measure for a country's educational system, since they actually contain an important intergenerational and cultural component.

Immigrants upon their arrival in the United States are in better health condition with respect to their American counterpart however such advantage erodes over time. In this paper, we study the heterogeneity of such unhealthy behaviours assimilation among different arrival cohorts. We focus our analysis on binge drinking and cigarette consumption as a proxy for unhealthy behaviour assimilation by immigrants. Regarding binge drinking we show that more recent immigrant cohorts arrive with a higher probability of being binge drinker and experience a faster unhealthy assimilation in terms of increased consumption of alcohol and an increase in the probability of starting to drink over guideline on a daily basis. Such assimilation is less pronounced for smoking habits, in fact both earlier and later arrival cohorts report lower smoking rates. However, such health advantage is decreasing with time spent in the US.

This study contributes to a growing body of research in counseling, public health, and psychology that examines how features within neighborhoods affect mental health. The environment in which their clients live directly affects services that counselors provide. Mental health discussions often center at the individual level, but mental health significantly impacts communities a whole. Therefore, the presence of mental health problems in individuals will affect the wider community at varying societal levels. Geographic information Systems, (GIS) will be used to determine which features of built environment associated food insecurity impact mental health and where the correlations between mental health and food insecurity are strongest. The proximity of features defining food insecurity will be used to identify areas that may be vulnerable to mental health issues. The study's research questions will examine conditions of the neighborhoods built food environment that impact mental health and in turn increase allostatic load. The hypotheses of this study assert that positive food choices and a healthy neighborhood food environment will have a positive linear relationship with mental health. The results of this study will increase the use of the geographic information systems within counseling research; inform counselors and policymakers the impact of social determinants on mental health and identify vulnerable geographic subgroups. Counselors and decision makers may choose to use information and findings from this study to develop population-specific interventions.

The population of older adults in the United States is increasing in both size and racial and ethnic diversity. Research examining racial and ethnic disparities in care among older adults is essential to providing better quality care and improving patient outcomes. Yet, in the current climate of limited research funding, what efficient methods exist for gerontological nurse researchers to address these important health care issues among racially and ethnically diverse groups, groups typically underrepresented and difficult to access in research? We suggest data sciencea rigorous, interdisciplinary philosophy and method to acquire, manage, explore, and interpret large data setsusing existing clinical and population data (Brennan & Bakken, 2015).

We propose the rise of crack cocaine markets as a key explanation for the end to the convergence in black-white educational outcomes in the United States that began in the mid-1980s. After constructing a measure to date the arrival of crack markets in cities and states, we show that the decline in educational outcomes for black males begins with the start of the crack epidemic. We also show that there are higher murder and incarceration rates after the arrival of crack cocaine and that these are predictive of lower black high school completion rates, a result consistent with human capital theory. We estimate that effects related to crack markets can account for approximately 40% to 70% of the fall in black male high school completion rates.

This research explores the economic causes and consequences of language structures. It advances the hypothesis and establishes empirically that variations in pre-industrial geographical characteristics that were conducive to higher return to agricultural investment, larger gender gap in agricultural productivity, and more hierarchical society, are at the root of existing cross language variations in the presence of the future tense, grammatical gender, and politeness distinctions. Moreover, the research suggests that while language structures have largely reflected the coding of past human experience and in particular the range of ancestral cultural traits in society, they independently affected human behavior and economic outcomes.

My thesis project will deal with the future economic impact on the city of Hartford, Connecticut of the new Coltsville National Historical Park. The park encompasses the former Colt firearms factory, closed for over two decades, and the surrounding area, informally known as Coltsville, that was once its company town. While best known as the production site of some of the first practical multiple-shot firearms, the factorys arguably stronger claim to historic significance is the contribution it made to manufacturing everywhere by pioneering a number of mass-production techniques. For years, a group of local stakeholders worked to persuade the National Park Service (NPS) to make Coltsville, on the National Register of Historic Places since 1976 (OConnell et al. 2009, 7), a unit of the National Park System. This effort came to fruition in late 2014, although the new national park is understood to still be years away from becoming fully operational. The goal of my analysis is to forecast the economic impact of the new national park on the city of Hartford in terms of the number and location of additional jobs resulting from the increase in visitor numbers brought about by the new park.

Beginning in the 1960s—and accelerating over the last two decades— changes in marriage, divorce, cohabitation, and nonmarital childbearing have transformed family life in the United States. The family continues to serve a primary role in raising children and caring for elderly relatives. But new family patterns and increased instability are creating complex family and economic ties that often span multiple households. These unstable living arrangements and complex family relationships also affect the health and well-being of children and adults, creating challenges for families and policymakers alike

It is a well-established result that immigrants upon their arrival in the United States are in better health condition with respect to their American counterpart and that such advantage erodes over time. In this paper, following Giuntella and Stella (2016), we intend to study if such assimilation might be heterogeneous not only for different arrival cohorts but also for different unhealthy behaviors. To do so we focus on the assimilation of two unhealthy behaviors: binge drinking and cigarette consumption. For binge drinking we show that more recent immigrant cohorts arrive in the US with a higher probability of being binge drinker and experience a faster assimilation in terms of increased consumption of alcohol and an increase in the probability of consuming alcohol over daily guideline. On the contrary smoking assimilation is less pronounced. Both earlier and later arrival cohorts report lower smoking rates, although such health advantage decreases with time spent in the US. These results shows that there is indeed heterogeneity in the assimilation of unhealthy behaviors for American immigrants, which are more at risk of assimilating alcohol consumption rather than smoking habits from natives.

Despite regulatory efforts in Texas aimed at preventing the spread of coloniasself-help settlements with inadequate water and wastewater infrastructuresince the early 1990s hundreds of new self-help model subdivisions have formed throughout the state. Using aerial photography and parcel-level property records, I provide the first systematic analysis of these subdivisions. Their proliferation poses considerable challenges for local planners, and although most model subdivisions appear to have basic infrastructure, housing conditions are exceedingly poor because of the protracted nature of the self-help process. The study highlights the need for renewed attention by scholars, policymakers, and planners toward self-help settlements in Texas.

This research explores the economic causes and consequences of language structures. It advances the hypothesis and establishes empirically that variations in pre-industrial geographical characteristics that were conducive to higher return to agricultural investment, larger gender gap in agricultural productivity, and more hierarchical society, are at the root of existing cross-language variations in the presence of the future tense, grammatical gender, and politeness distinctions. Moreover, the research suggests that while language structures have largely reflected the coding of past human experience and in particular the range of ancestral cultural traits in society, they independently affected human behavior and economic outcomes.

Heritage language (HL) speakers have received scholarly attention in recent years as an interdisciplinary research theme, but relatively less attention has been paid to their demographics. Existing studies of HL speakers' demographics often focus on young children in areas of high immigrant concentration (i.e., California, Florida, and New York), and no study has systematically investigated cross-regional and chronological demographic patterns of adult HL speakers. From the perspective of HLs as a national resource, such demographic data on adult HL speakers are useful to gauge the availability of the bilingual workforce and determine structures needed to support and develop a bilingual U.S. population. Using the Integrated Public User Microdata Series (Ruggles & Sobek, 1997), which is based on data from the U.S. Census and the American Community Survey, this study makes geographical and chronological comparisons among groups of adult HL speakers from 1980 to 2010. The data show major differences in the demographics of adult HL speakers in different regions. The analyses also reveal typological differences, specifically between the adult HL speakers of Spanish and other languages. Implications of these patterns are discussed.

Technological advances, particularly in the areas of processing and storage have made it possible to gather an unprecedented vast and heterogeneous amount of data. The evolution of the internet, particularly Social media, the internet of things, and mobile technology together with new business trends has precipitated us in the age of Big Data and add complexity to the integration task.  The objective of this study has been to explore the question of data heterogeneity trough the deployment of a systematic literature review methodology. The study surveys the drivers of this data heterogeneity, the inner workings of it, and it explores the interrelated fields and technologies that deal with the capture, organization and mining of this data and their limitations. Developments such as Hadoop and its suit components together with new computing paradigms such as cloud computing and virtualization help palliate the unprecedented amount of rapidly changing, heterogeneous data which we see today. Despite these dramatic developments, the study shows that there are gaps which need to be filled in order to tackle the challenges of Web 3.0. 

There were 8 million unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. working or looking for work in 2014, making up 5% of the civilian labor force, according to new Pew Research Center estimates using government data. The number was unchanged and the share was down slightly since 2009, the year the Great Recession officially ended.