Grounded in the research on the important role of social structures in forming gender inequalities, this study examines the effect of occupational attributes on the gender earnings gap over four decades. Using the IPUMS-USA from 1970 to 2010, the paper shows that occupational attributes cannot be reduced to the aggregate attributes of their individual incumbents. Rather, the effect of occupations on the gender earnings gap goes far beyond both the distributive role of occupational segregation and the effect of individual wage-related characteristics. Furthermore, occupations not only explain a significant portion of net gender pay gaps, but have also contributed to the narrowing of the gaps over the past several decades, as occupational attributes that favor women's pay have become more dominant over time.

This paper investigates the existence of speculative bubbles in the US national and in 23 regional housing markets over three decades (1978-2012). A new method for detecting exuberance in housing markets is proposed. By taking changes in the macroeconomic conditions (such as interest rate, per-capita income, employment, and population growth) into consideration, the new method provides a better control for housing market fundamentals and thereby it is expected to significantly reduce the chance of false positive identification. Compared with the method of Phillips, Shi and Yu (2015a,b), the new approach finds a dramatic reduction in the number of speculative housing markets and shorter bubble episodes in the US. It locates only one bubble episode in the earlyto-mid 2000s over the whole sample period in the national housing market. At the regional level, it identifies three periods of speculation: late 1980s, early-to-mid 2000s, and the post-crisis period in 2011-2012. The early-to-mid 2000s bubble episode is the most severe one involving nine major metropolitan statistical areas.

These essays contribute towards our understanding of the economics of space. This dissertation is composed of three chapters. Chapter one—Is the rent too high? Aggregate implications of local land- use regulation: Highly productive U.S. cities are characterized by high housing prices, low housing stock growth, and restrictive land-use regulations (e.g., San Francisco). While new residents would benefit from housing stock growth due to higher incomes or shorter commutes, existing residents justify strict local land-use regulations on the grounds of congestion and other costs of further development. This paper assesses the welfare implications of these local regulations for income, congestion, and urban sprawl within a general equilibrium model with endogenous regulation. In the model, households choose from locations that vary exogenously by productivity and endogenously according to local externalities of congestion and sharing. Existing residents address these externalities by voting for regulations that limit local housing density. In equilibrium, these regulations bind and house prices compensate for differences across locations. Relative to the planner's optimum, the decentralized model generates spatial misallocation whereby high-productivity locations are settled at too-low densities. The model admits a straightforward calibration based on observed population density, expenditure shares on consumption and local services, and local incomes. Welfare and GDP would be 1.4% and 2.1% higher, respectively, under the planner??Ễs allocation. Abolishing zoning regulations entirely would increase GDP by 6%, but lower welfare by 5.9% due to greater congestion. Chapter two—The impact of emerging climate risks on urban real estate price dynamics: In the typical asset market, an asset featuring uninsurable idiosyn- cratic risk must offer a higher rate of return to compensate risk-averse investors. A home offers a standard asset’s risk and return opportunities, but it also bundles access to its city’s amenities??Ẻand to its climate risks. As climate change research reveals the true nature of these risks, how does the equilibrium real estate pricing gradient change when households can sort into different cities? When the population is homogeneous, the real . . .

In addition to regular marriage, Australia, Brazil, and 11 US states recognize common law (or de facto) marriage, which allows one or both cohabiting partners to claim, under certain conditions, that an informal union is a marriage. France and some other countries also have several types of marriage and civil union contracts. The policy issue is whether to abolish common law marriage, as it appears to discourage couple formation and female labor supply. A single conceptual framework can explain how outcomes are affected by the choice between regular and common law marriage, and between various marriage and civil union contracts.

The following dissertation is comprised of three essays that focus on different mechanisms on which social capital influences firm and entrepreneur behavior. All three essays use different econometric techniques to account for endogenous variables. Essay 1: Are Local Market Relationships Trumping Organic Certification? The Case of Small and Medium Fruit and Vegetable Farmers. This article investigates how an organic fruit and vegetable farmer’s choice to use direct-to-consumer market channels impacts his/her decision to be certified organic. First, we model the decision to be certified organic as a conditionally independent decision from the farmer’s chosen market channels. Second, we estimate the probability of certifying organic as an endogenously determined marketing decision to the choice of market channels, and use a bivariate probit specification to model this decision. Empirical evidence indicates that the decision to certify is endogenous to the chosen market channels. We show that farmers selling direct to consumers are less likely to certify organic. Essay 2: The Economic Implications of Social Capital on Hispanic Entrepreneurship. This essay assesses the effect of social capital, defined as . . .

The U.S. divorce rate has dropped by nearly 25% since 1979 (FP-15-18) with 17.6 women divorcing per 1,000 married women in 2014. Many of these divorces are among parents, yet there is no recent data on parenthood status among divorced individuals (Amato, 2000). This profile addresses this gap by using data from the 2014 American Community Survey (ACS), 1-year estimates to identify whether there are children present in the household among individuals ages 15-55 who experienced a divorce (divorcees) in the past year. Some divorcees have nonresident children, so these estimates of the proportion of recent divorces involving children are conservative. We compare divorcees to their counterparts - married parents who did not experience a divorce in the past year (consistently married). We also examine the prevalence of resident minor children among recent divorcees by race/ethnicity and educational attainment.

In recent years, the popular media has suggested an emerging 'back-to-the-city' migration trend among baby boomers that are presumably electing to migrate to large cities and urban cores. These assertions conflict with the general association in the academic literature between retirement and migration to rural or non-metropolitan areas. This paper tests this 'back-to-the-city' hypothesis through aggregate-level analysis of Census data on baby boomer demographic trends and logistic regression modeling of the relationships between baby boomer demographics and their destination choices, using IPUMS ACS microdata. Analysis of Census data suggests that large metropolitan areas tended to lose baby boomers during the 2000s, and that high-growth areas for baby boomers are generally located in the outer suburbs of metropolitan areas; however, some neighborhoods very near to downtowns experienced significant growth as well. Logistic regression of baby boomer migrants' destination choices suggests that retirement migration is still associated with moves away from large metropolitan areas; however, among within-metropolitan migrants, high levels of income and education are associated with moves downtown. As such, it appears that downtowns of large cities are emerging as an option for 'amenity' baby boomer migrants, and an alternative to the traditional rural destinations characteristic of retirement migration.

The article explores the impacts of the tenement programs in the U.S. An overview of the impacts on increase in immigration and urban crowding towards the housing programs in the country is explained. It mentions the challenges to the implementation of the antilot crowding campaign in New York and its impacts to the U.S. housing policy. It also outlines the value of affordable housing in the country.

Recent asset pricing studies suggest that demand for stocks since 1980 has driven expected returns below their historical average. The current yield of risk-free assets in the U.S. is also well below historical bond yields. This decrease in bond yields, coupled with increases in longevity, has doubled the cost of funding a real dollar of income in retirement since 1980 for a 65-year-old retiree. Many common financial planning practices are surprisingly sensitive to asset returns, and advisors need to understand the challenges clients will face if high asset prices persist. Results from a life cycle planning model show that savings rates would need to rise sharply for households hoping to maintain the same standard of living in retirement if real asset returns are low. Low expected returns also have a surprisingly strong impact on the amount of savings needs to fund legacy goals and a negative impact on client spending throughout their life cycle. Advisors may need to modify expected returns in planning software to provide clients with more realistic projections on meeting long-term spending goals.

Query processing over uncertain data has gained growing attention, because it is necessary to deal with uncertain data in many real-life applications. In this paper, we investigate skyline queries over uncertain data in distributed environments (DSUD query) whose research is only in an early stage. The state-of-the-art algorithm, called e-DSUD algorithm, is designed for processing this query. It has the desirable characteristics of progressiveness and minimum bandwidth consumption. However, it still needs to be perfected in three aspects. (1) Progressiveness. Each time it only returns one query result at most. (2) Efficiency. There are a significant amount of redundant I/O cost and numerous iterations which causes a long total query time. (3) Universality. It is restricted to the case where local skyline tuples are incomparability. To address these concerns, we first present a detailed analysis of the e-DSUD algorithm and then develop an improved framework for the DSUD query, namely IDSUD. Based on the new framework, we propose an adaptive algorithm, called ADSUD, for the DSUD query. In the algorithm, we redefine the approximate global skyline probability and choose local representative tuples due to minimum probabilistic bounding rectangle adaptively. Furthermore, we design a progressive pruning method and apply the reuse mechanism to improve its efficiency. The results of extensive experiments verify the better overall performance of our algorithm than the e-DSUD algorithm.

This paper shows that the frequency at which workers are paid affects the within-month patterns of both household expenditure and aggregate economic activity. To identify causal effects, I exploit two novel sources of exogenous variation in pay frequency in the US. First, using a (as-good-as-random) variation in the pay frequency of retired couples, I show that those who are paid more frequently have smoother expenditure paths. Second, I take advantage of the cross-state variation in laws, and compare the patterns of economic activity in states with different legislation on pay frequency of wages. I document that low pay frequencies lead to within-month business cycles when many workers are paid on the same dates, which generates costly congestion in sectors with capacity constraints. These findings have important policy implications in a context where firms and workers do not internalize such congestion externalities, which generates market equilibria with suboptimally low pay frequencies.

This paper analyzes the impact of property tax limits on female labor supply. We exploit exogenous variation across time of housing market conditions in the housing boom and bust periods and geographic changes of property tax limits across states in the cross-state Combined Statistical Areas (CBSA) to identify a causal link between property tax limits and female labor supply. Theory predicts that the effects of property tax limits on female labor supply in the housing boom and bust periods are in opposite directions due to opposite income effects. As predicted, empirical results suggest that female labor force participation reduced by 0.7 to 1.4 percentage point in the housing boom (2005-2006) due to property tax limits. In contrast, females are associated with a negligible to 1.3 percentage point higher probability of workforce participation in the housing bust (2008-2009) due to such limits. We do not find an impact of property tax limits on hours of work for the female population.

The decline in private sector wages in the aftermath of the Great Recession reopened a longstanding debate about whether public sector employees make more than private sector employees. However, much of this debate has only focused on the difference in wages over the past few years. This paper uses the Current Population Survey from 1995-2013 to examine how the federal-private wage differential has evolved over time. Wage regressions are estimated by year for federal and private sector workers. I then use these estimates to calculate the federal private wage differential. This is augmented with selectivity bias corrections for each year. Probit estimates of the probability of receiving employer-provided health insurance and a pension plan are also estimated for each year. The findings suggest that the federal pay differential is invariably positive, but fell during the 1990s, began to rise in the early 2000s, and has continued to rise to the end of the sample period. In this paper, I also examine the difference in wage and fringe benefit between state/local government employees and private sector employees. For the analysis, this paper uses the American Community Survey from 2012-2014 to examine how the state/local-private wage gaps vary by state. Probit estimates of the probability of receiving employer-sponsored health insurance are also estimated. The findings present a wide range of the wage differentials between state/local government employees and private sector counterparts. On the other hand, public employees enjoy higher probability of receiving health insurance through a current employer.

The Kaufman Test of Educational Achievement, Third Edition (KTEA-3) is a revised and updated comprehensive academic achievement test (Kaufman & Kaufman, 2014). Authored by Drs. Alan and Nadeen Kaufman and published by Pearson, the KTEA-3 remains an individual achievement test normed for individuals of ages 4 through 25 years, or for those in grades prekindergarten (PK) through 12 and above. Based on a clinical model of academic skills assessment in the broad areas of reading, mathematics, and written and oral language, the KTEA-3 follows the CattellHornCarroll (CHC) or Information Processing theoretical assessment approach. Detailed information regarding the composites structure and rationale for changes to subtest inclusion and/or exclusion is provided. Updates assess learning disabilities according to the Individuals With Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEIA; 2004) or the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed.; DSM-V; American Psychiatric Association [APA], 2013) criteria. Norm-referenced for diagnostic and classification purposes, the KTEA-3 offers criterion-referenced pattern analyses of errors or individual strengths and weaknesses to facilitate intervention planning. Test administrators are expected to hold a graduate degree or a bachelors degree with specific training in standardized test administration. Including updated norms, items, instructions, graphics, and expanded subtest floors and ceilings, 19 available subtests are selected based on examinees educational level. Formatted similarly to its previous editions, the core battery includes two reading, two math, and two written language subtests, and four new subtests provide indepth assessment of reading-related skills and academic fluency. Depending on the examinees educational level, administration time ranges between 24 and 85 min. Specific prompts, sample, and teaching items individualize administration and ensure that low scores are not due to the subjects failure to understand instructions. The KTEA-3 continues to use item blocks, based on educational level, for the Reading Comprehension, Listening Comprehension, Written Expression, and Oral Expression subtests, with instructions for establishing each basal. A recommended administration order is only given for two subtests (i.e., Letter and Word Recognition before Word Recognition Fluency and Nonsense Word Decoding before Decoding Fluency), verifying that the examinee has the requisite skills to complete the latter. See Table 1 for a summary of KTEA-3 subtests and composite structure.

Using IPUMS data for five decennial years between 1970 and 2010, we delineate and compare the trends and sources of the racial pay gap among men and women in the U.S. labor force. Decomposition of the pay gap into components underscores the significance of the intersection between gender and race; we find meaningful gender differences in the composition of the gap and in the gross and the net earnings gapsboth are much larger among men than among women. Despite these differences, the over-time trend is strikingly similar for both genders. Racial gaps sharply declined between 1970 and 1980 and continued to decline, but at a slower rate, until 2000. However, at the turn of the millennium, the trend reversed for both gender groups. The growth of the racial pay gap at the turn of the millennium is attributable to the increase in overall income inequality, stagnation in occupational segregation, and an increase in the unexplained portion of the gap, a portion we attribute to economic discrimination.

In this study, we examine the importance of multifactor productivity (MFP) growth in goods and services for U.S. States during 1980–2007 by applying the dual growth accounting framework. We find that MFP growth was relatively high and converged in the goods sector, but was low and did not converge in services. Although low growth in MFP in services was due to declining real user cost, particularly in real estate services,the lack of convergence itself was due to variation in wage growth. We also document that while the gap between productivity and wage growth was higher in goods, t he two series were more strongly correlated in services. Finally, states with higher initial human capital experienced higher growth in both sectors.

Millions of Americans rely upon public assistance programs to help meet their basic needs. These programs provide a vital lifeline for individuals and families struggling to get by. Indeed, given rising costs of necessities such as child care, housing, and health care, many families’ ability to achieve a modest but adequate standard of living requires resources earned on the job and assistance from government programs.1 However, for many workers in certain sectors, wages are so low that even those who work full time must rely heavily on government assistance to make ends meet. This suggests that low pay by many employers—facilitated by weakened or inadequate labor standards, such as a low minimum wage and outdated overtime regulations—is placing unwarranted demands on public resources. As corporations achieve extraordinarily high profit levels and executive pay reaches new heights, it is appropriate to question whether employers are effectively passing off a portion of their societal responsibilities on to taxpayers. This report examines the utilization of public assistance among low-wage workers and their families. After a brief review of previous research, it presents data on program participation and transfer income receipt by working individuals’ annual hours of work, hourly wage level, major industry of employment, and state. Then it examines how higher wages among workers at various wage levels affect utilization rates and benefit dollars received. Finally, it discusses policies that would raise wages and the effect these policies would have on public assistance utilization and overall program spending. It concludes that higher hourly wages for low- and middle-wage workers, achievable through a variety of labor-market policies, would unambiguously generate savings in government safety-net and income-support programs—savings that could be used to strengthen and expand anti-poverty programs or make critical public investments to boost productivity and grow the economy.

Racial/ethnic aspects of urban neighborhoods have been a major concern of social scientists post-World War II. As we move into the twenty-first century, however, the object of study is changing dramatically in that the majority US population will soon be minorities; this is already the case in many locales, and other countries are experiencing similar shifts. To recount this dynamic and provide context, the paper begins by considering the US city pre-World War II, ethnic enclaves, and their transition to the present day—giving rise to an immigrant ethos that remains prevalent. Attention then turns to general frameworks related to the immigrant experience, and their future applicability. Considered next is the current state of majoritizing the minority. As one outcome, urban neighborhoods will become demographically diverse and reflect socioeconomic differences rather than racial/ethnic ones; that is, in the jargon of past research, neighborhood composition will be determined by Class more than Culture. This should be largely driven by market forces as mediated by elements such as social networks (formal and informal) and personal preferences. Inertia effects also would operate to slow, but not eliminate, shifts in the urban landscape. Conceptually, these forces are represented by Market-Led Pluralism and Resurgent Ethnicity. Regarding other likely futures, as acculturation occurs a substantial increase in intermarriage is expected, leading to A Blended America. Economic shifts also play into the future as nations of the Global South strengthen, while production in the Global North becomes more automated. Hence, immigration will continue, but from different origins; and the overall level will be lower, leading to A Shrinking Nation.

Although Congress enacted civil rights legislation in the 1960s to address racial inequities in income and employment, the executive branch and the courts have since retreated from efforts to pursue those policies aggressively. Meanwhile, anti-racism advocates, including the Montgomery County, Virginia based Dialogue on Race, have continued to promote strategies aimed at securing employment and income equity for all citizens. This study analyzed the social and economic costs of continued racial inequality in employment and income, and examined the ways in which local employers are addressing this challenge in the Blacksburg, Virginia region by exploring their self-reported rationales for action on the basis of economic efficiency or profit, moral obligation to fairness and justice, adherence to legal requirements, or leader influence. I addressed these concerns through population data analysis, key informant interviews, and a survey of major local employers. I found that New River Valley employers appear to be motivated by economic and moral reasons, as well as legal compliance. I conclude that activists should use this apparent openness to multiple rationales to work to help community leaders and local employers recognize racial equality as a moral imperative rather than as an instrumental claim incidental to its perceived utility.

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Abstract: We make use of predicted social and civic activities (social capital) to account for selection into "social" occupations. Individual selection accounts for more than the total difference in wages observed between social and nonsocial occupations. The role that individual social capital plays in selecting into these occupations and the importance of selection in explaining wage differences across occupations is similar for both men and women. We make use of restricted data from the 2000 decennial census and the 2000 Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey. Individual social capital is instrumented by distance-weighted surrounding census tract characteristics.