The substantial increase in the proportion of immigrants in the US population has attracted considerable research interest in their labor market outcomes, in particular, their relative wages. Most studies in this area, however, do not account for the fact that immigrants have unobservable characteristics that are different from those of natives and that are related to their decision to migrate to a new country. These characteristics, if not controlled for, may result in inaccurate estimates of the earnings disadvantage associated with immigrant status. This study attempts to account for unobservable characteristics associated with migration by comparing immigrants with native migrants. The results suggest that previous studies that used all natives as a comparison group may have provided a lower bound of the wage disadvantage faced by immigrants.

The Austin–Round Rock metropolitan area2 was ranked first in 2015 and second in 2014 by the Kauffman Foundation for startup density among the largest U.S. metropolitan areas. Austin also ranks among the top high-tech city-regions in the United States as evidenced by several indicators. The growth of the technology economy in Austin has been extensively studied. In contrast, there is little scientific documentation of the factors that led Austin to become a vibrant entrepreneurial city. The main objective of this report is to fill this void by presenting reliable data on longitudinal entrepreneurial activity in the city and advancing some hypotheses on the factors that explain the accelerated growth of locally founded startups since 1990. This task is accomplished in several sections. Section one summarizes key events and the institutional development and interventions facilitating Austin’s transition from an economy based in two primary sectors—the University of Texas at Austin and state government—to a high-tech center. Section two describes Austin’s increasing high-tech specialization in four information and communications technologies (ICT) sectors and the benefits of spatial co-agglomeration. Section three uses full-time employment data to document Austin’s economic transition to a technology center and the increasing diversification of the ICT sector. Section four shows data on local . . .

This research treats about the devaluation of skilled mexican migrants women and men in the United States of America. Despite this phenomenon constitutes one of the main obstacles for the skilled migration, it has been studied and explained insufficiently. For the sake of contributing the knowledge .. .

How does Internet diffusion affect crime rates? I use a panel of state-level yearly data on broadband penetration and criminal activity in the US to shed light on the question. I adopt an instrumental variable approach relying on the fact that the most widespread broadband technologies in the US employ the pre-existing telephone and Cable TV networks to transmit data. The deployment of such networks in early times provides a relevant source of exogenous variation in recent broadband diffusion. Results show that Internet diffusion is associated with a significant and substantial decrease in total and property crime rates, suggesting that a substitution mechanism is at play: online activities crowd out offline activities that more likely lead to crime. A number of tests suggest that my estimates may be interpreted in a causal fashion.

This paper will compare the lifetime wage earnings of immigrants and native born citizens in the US for the years of 2000 – 2010 according to educational attainment using cross-sectional data. The data is obtained through IPUMS-CPS Integrated Public Use of Microdata Series, University of Minnesota. The findings of Investment in Human Capital of Mincer (1958), the Immigrant’s Earnings Distribution of Chiswick and Miller (2006), the Pareto’s Law of Income Distribution, and the Immigrants Investment in Human Capital Model by Duleep and Regets (1999) are the theoretical basis in which this study will be ruled. The empirical evidence suggests that immigrants who invest in education have closer lifetime income earnings in the higher income distribution levels to the US native born citizens than those who do not. It also shows that according to age, the average wage earnings will increase rapidly the first working years, settle by the middle, and decrease at the end for all the educational attainment levels.

This paper explores the role of historic gender division of labour in shaping gender norms. To answer this question, I analyse whether differences in the gender division of labour during slavery have a persistent effect on African American women’s labour market outcomes after the end of slavery. I use variation in the production of cotton and tobacco across counties during slavery as a proxy for gender division of labour: tobacco was characterized by a starker gender division of labour compared to cotton. Using data from 1870 to 2010, I show that women living in counties with lower degrees of gender division of labour (higher cotton production relative to tobacco) are more likely to participate in the labour market and have higher occupation income scores, for at least 70 years after emancipation. Furthermore, to disentangle gender roles from local labour demand effects, I analyse the labour force participation of migrants from counties with high historic cotton and tobacco production who relocated to urban areas. The results indicate that gender roles affect women’s labour supply, which in turn affects their labour market experience, resulting in differences in occupation income score.

By counting the number of articles published in major US newspapers containing carefully selected keywords, we construct a time varying measure of ethnic tension. Then, we empirically test the predictions of a theoretical model by using the aforementioned measure, and investigate how ethnic tension affects presidential approval ratings by different ethnic groups. Our results show that while ethnic tension decreases the approval by white voters, the opposite is true for the approval by African American voters. Further scrutiny reveals that this may be explained by the fact that government transfers to African Americans increase as a result of higher ethnic tension.

Bajo la inquietud de conocer el comportamiento de los migrantes de origen mexicano en Estados Unidos captados en 2015 por la Encuesta de Población Actual (CPS), se tiene como objetivo principal revisar la participación en el actual mercado laboral de la primera, segunda y tercera generación de mexicanos, específicamente del sector industrial de la transformación, para así examinar las características de inserción y condiciones de trabajo. Con la intención de analizar las principales dinámicas e interacciones en términos de integración socioeconómica, se busca dar cuenta del perfil sociodemográfico de los trabajadores, así como un estudio comparativo de las condiciones laborales respecto de otros grupos conformados por los nativos blancos-no hispanos y los afroestadounidenses. De esta manera son evaluados algunos aspectos sobre el nivel educativo, el salario promedio anual y los beneficios sociales, a través de un estudio de tipo cuantitativo, transversal, descriptivo y correlacional.

Initially motivated by the known disparities in socioeconomic, educational, and health outcomes for American Indians in the United States, my thesis broadly addresses the ways that interracial marriage, as a proxy for cultural assimilation, affects the health of minorities, and American Indians in particular. While my primary curiosity remains the health outcomes for American Indians in interracial marriages with whites, I examine health outcomes for individuals with white spouses across several minority groups. While a large body of existing literature documents health disparities for minorities in the United States, few have attempted to explain poor health outcomes in relation to interracial marriage.

As women's labor-force participation and earnings have grown, so has the likelihood that wives outearn their husbands. A common concern is that these couples may be at heightened risk of divorce. Yet with the rise of egalitarian marriage, wives relative earnings may be more weakly associated with divorce than in the past. We examine trends in the association between wives relative earnings and marital dissolution using data from the 1968-2009 Panel Study of Income Dynamics. We find that wives' relative earnings were positively associated with the risk of divorce among couples married in the late 1960s and 1970s, and that this was especially true for wives who outearned their husbands, but this was no longer the case for couples married in the 1990s. Change was concentrated among middle-earning husbands and those without college degrees, a finding consistent with the economic squeeze of the middle class over this period.

In this article, we present analyses of the roles of education and occupation in shaping trends in income inequality among college-educated workers in the United States, drawing data from two sources: (1) the 19602000 U.S. Censuses and (2) the 20062008 three-year American Community Survey. We also examine in detail historical trends in between-occupation and within-occupation income inequality for a small set of high-status professionals, with focused attention on the economic well-being of scientists. Our research yields four findings. First, education premiums have increased. Second, between-occupation and within-occupation inequality increased at about the same rates for college graduates, so that the portion of inequality attributable to occupational differences remained constant. Third, scientists have lost ground relative to other similarly educated professionals. Fourth, trends in within-occupation inequality vary by occupation and education, making any sweeping summary of the roles of education and occupation in the overall increase in income inequality difficult.

Are state workers better paid than their counterparts in private industry? That question is likely to come up more often, as the state deals with a huge budget shortfall. The answer is generally no, but there are exceptions. We analyzed the question in two ways, using different data sources for cash wages but the same assumptions about benefit levels.1 Using two sources helped us better answer the question, and each yielded the same broad conclusion: state workers are not on average paid more. That’s true, whether we consider just wages, or total compensation— wages plus benefits. But there are significant differences in pay and total compensation of public and private workers in individual occupations. We did this research for the Alaska Department of Administration (see back page). Below we summarize our findings, and inside report more details.

We assess the extent to which differences in socio-economic status are associated with racial and ethnic gaps in a fundamental measure of population health: the rate at which infants die. Using micro-level Vital Statistics data from 2000 to 2004, we examine mortality gaps of infants born to white, black, Mexican, Puerto Rican, Asian, and Native American mothers. We find that between-group mortality gaps are strongly and consistently (except for Mexican infants) associated with maternal marital status, education, and age, and that these same characteristics are powerful predictors of income and poverty for new mothers in U.S. Census data. Despite these similarities, we document a fundamental difference in the mortality gap for the three high mortality groups: whereas the black-white and Puerto Rican-white mortality gaps mainly occur at low birth weights, the Native American-white gap occurs almost exclusively at higher birth weights. We further examine the one group whose IMR is anomalous compared to the other groups: infants of Mexican mothers die at relatively low rates given their socio-economic disadvantage. We find that this anomaly is driven by lower infant mortality among foreign-born mothers, a pattern found within many racial/ethnic groups. Overall, we conclude that the infant mortality gaps for our six racial/ethnic groups exhibit many commonalities, and these commonalities suggest a prominent role for socio-economic differences.

En los últimos años, la migración de profesionales mexicanos a los Estados Unidos de Norteamérica se ha incrementado significativamente, tendencia que ha sido más acentuada en las mujeres, quienes presentan una tasa de emigración superior a la de los hombres. Sin embargo, a la fecha, es poco lo que se conoce sobre este contingente de población migrante. En este contexto cabe preguntarse: ¿quiénes son las mujeres calificadas que están emigrando?, ¿cuál es su nivel educativo y área de conocimiento en la que se formaron?, y ¿en qué condiciones se emplean en Estados Unidos? Con la finalidad de dar una respuesta a tales interrogantes, este artículo tiene por objetivo analizar la inserción laboral de las mujeres profesionales mexicanas inmigrantes en Estados Unidos desde una perspectiva comparativa con las mujeres nativas y las inmigrantes de otros países y regiones del mundo. Concretamente, haciendo uso de los datos recopilados por la American Community Surrvey (ACS) para 2014, se busca dar cuenta del volumen, tendencias, características sociodemográficas y educativas de las profesionales mexicanas, así como de sus niveles de participación económica, patrones de inserción ocupacional y niveles de ingresos en Estados Unidos.

Cohabitating unions have become increasingly common in American society as has parenthood among cohabiting couples. Several studies have considered differences in the quality and nature of married and cohabiting relationships with much evidence showing that cohabitors have lower relationship quality than married individuals. Extending this literature in light of recent evidence that marriage and cohabitation exert similar effects on individual well-being, we use the American Time Use Survey (2003-2014) to investigate whether married and cohabiting individuals differ in the time they spend with a partner, variation by parenthood, and the effects of shared time on well-being. Preliminary findings indicate that among non-parents married individuals spend more time with a spouse than cohabiting individuals. While married parents spend more time together overall than cohabiting parents, cohabiters spend more time alone together and less time with a partner and children. Next steps will leverage unique new data to examine differences in well-being.

More than 1 million post-9/11 veteran families live in the United States, accounting for more than 1 million veterans, 1 million spouses, and 2.1 million children.1 Another 1.9 million veterans from the post- 9/11 era are expected to exit the military over the next decade.2 To better facilitate the transition of veterans and their families to civilian life, we must understand the strengths they possess and the unique challenges they face. With this report, we aim to inform more effective postservice policies by supplementing existing research on the state of veteran families. We use 2013 and 2014 data from the American Community Survey to describe the characteristics of post-9/11 veteran families. We restrict our analysis to post-9/11veteran families, defined as single parents or married or unmarried couples with children living in the household where at least one parent served in the military during or after 2001. Notably, this excludes veterans who do not have primary custody of their children. We focus on post-9/11 veteran families because they best represent the veteran families who are transitioning to civilian life or will be in the near future. This report is divided into sections on seven domains: family structure, demographics, children, education, employment, income and benefits, and housing. Each section provides an overview of what we know about military and veteran families in that domain. This is intended to provide context for the statistics we present on post-9/11 veteran families and is not a comprehensive review of the literature. For additional context, we also provide some estimates on all US families. We then break down our estimates on post-9/11 veteran families by family type: single parents, married couples, and unmarried couples. A glossary of key terms follows the report.

The ARX Data Anonymization Tool is a software for privacy-preserving microdata publishing. It implements methods of statistical disclosure control and supports a wide variety of privacy models, which are used to specify disclosure risk thresholds. Data is mainly transformed with a combination of two methods: (1) global recoding with full-domain generalization of attribute values followed by (2) local recoding with record suppression. Within this transformation model, given a dataset with low dimensionality, it is feasible to compute an optimal solution with minimal loss of data quality. However, combinatorial complexity renders this approach impracticable for high-dimensional data. In this article, we describe the Lightning algorithm, a simple, yet effective, utility-driven heuristic search strategy which we have implemented in ARX for anonymizing high-dimensional datasets. Our work improves upon existing methods because it is not tailored towards specific models for measuring disclosure risks and data utility. We have performed an extensive experimental evaluation in which we have compared our approach to state-of-the-art heuristic algorithms and a globally-optimal search algorithm. In this process, we have used several real-world datasets, different models for measuring data utility and a wide variety of privacy models. The results show that our method outperforms previous approaches in terms output quality, even when using k-anonymity, which is the model for which previous work has been designed.

In 2014, the MacArthur Foundation sponsored RAND Corporations Infrastructure Resilience and Environmental Policy Program and the University of Southern California (USC) Lusk Center for Real Estate to evaluate its Window of Opportunity initiative. The philanthropic initiative started in 2000 and will end in 2020, allocating $187 million in grants and loans to preserve privately owned affordable rental housing. The purpose of the evaluation is to assess whether the initiative achieved its goals, as well as to provide preservation actors and policymakers with lessons learned about effective preservation practices and to describe the prospects for the future of preservation. The evaluation also assesses the structure of Window of Opportunity to yield lessons for future philanthropic initiatives. The report includes an analysis of national demand for and supply of affordable rental housing in the decade leading up to Window of Opportunity and then during 20002010, while the Initiative was ongoing. The evaluation also draws on 83 interviews, a document review, and four case studies to assess whether the foundation achieved its objectives. The report is intended for several audiences. The first is the MacArthur Foundation itself as it assesses lessons learned from what will be a 20-year initiative and applies them to the design and management of its future philanthropic efforts. Affordable housing developers/ owners, advocates, and others in the field may also be interested in the reports summary of the evolution of practices in preserving affordable rental housing and challenges and opportunities for preservation. Finally, the report may help other philanthropies apply relevant lessons learned here to their own philanthropic initiatives, even if they do not pertain to housing. This report is the product of a collaboration between researchers at the RAND Corporation and at USCs Lusk Center for Real Estate. The RAND Corporation authors are Heather L. Schwartz, Lois M. Davis, and Catherine H. Augustine. The USC Lusk Center for Real Estate authors are Raphael W. Bostic, Richard K. Green, and Vincent J. Reina.

This paper analyses the effects of late entry on the human capital of immigrant children, and investigates the channels via which age-at-migration affects the native-immigration education gap. Ordinary-least-squares estimates can be biased if parents factor the age of children into their migration decision. Using a sample of siblings from the 2000 U.S. Census, the paper employs a family fixed- effects estimation strategy and finds a negative and convex relationship between human capital and age-of-arrival. Teenage entrants’ outcomes are affected the worst compared to younger entrants. Language is an important mediating factor via which age-of-arrival influences education. The critical age for English proficiency is 8-10. Age-of-arrival affects education not only through language but also via heterogeneous origin country conditions. The additional privileges of birth-right citizenship, if any, are disentangled from the benefits of zero age-of-arrival for natives. Citizenship by birth provides few advantages, except for college enrollment. Results are robust to sample selection changes.

Cancer incidence disparities exist among specific Asian American populations. However, the existing reports exclude data from large metropoles like Chicago, Houston, and New York. Moreover, incidence rates by subgroup have been underestimated due to the exclusion of Asians with unknown subgroup. Cancer incidence data for 2009 to 2011 for eight states accounting for 68% of the Asian American population were analyzed. Race for cases with unknown subgroup was imputed using stratified proportion models by sex, age, cancer site, and geographic regions. Age-standardized incidence rates were calculated for 17 cancer sites for the six largest Asian subgroups. Our analysis comprised 90,709 Asian and 1,327,727 non-Hispanic white cancer cases. Asian Americans had significantly lower overall cancer incidence rates than non-Hispanic whites (336.5 per 100,000 and 541.9 for men, 299.6 and 449.3 for women, respectively). Among specific Asian subgroups, Filipino men (377.4) and Japanese women (342.7) had the highest overall incidence rates while South Asian men (297.7) and Korean women (275.9) had the lowest. In comparison to non-Hispanic whites and other Asian subgroups, significantly higher risks were . . .