With falling wages and rising inequality, persistent unemployment, failing schools, and broken cities, have America's best days come and gone? In America Needs Talent, Jamie Merisotis, a globally recognized leader in philanthropy, higher education, and public policy, explains why talent is needed to usher in a new era of innovation and success, and why deliberate choices must be made by government, the private sector, education, and individuals to grow talent in America. What if you paid for education based on what you actually learned, instead of the time you spent in class? What if your visa application was processed as if you were an asset to our nation's growing talent pool, instead of by Homeland Security? Merisotis proposes bold ideas to successfully deploy the world's most talented people-from rethinking higher education to transforming immigration laws, revitalizing urban hubs, and encouraging private sector innovation. The outlook may be gloomy now, but it doesn't need to be. The second American Century can happen-by developing and deploying the next thinkers, makers, and risk takers who will power America's knowledge economy in the 21st century. . .

Local differences in US employment-population rations and unemployment rates have persisted over many decades. Using decennial census data from 1950-2010, we investigate the reasons for this. The persistence cannot be explained by permanent differences in amenities, local demographic composition or the propensity of women to work. Population does respond strongly to differences in economic fortunes, although these movements are not large enough to eliminate shocks within a decade. Over the longer run, persistence in local joblessness is largely explained by serial correlation in the demand shocks themselves. The paper also shows that commuting plays an important part in adjustment to local shocks, even when the units of analysis are, as here, commuting zones.

The first substantial waves of voluntary migration from Africa arrived in the United States in the last quarter of the twentieth century. The largest number of them hailed from Egypt, Ethiopia, Nigeria, and South Africa. Highly select in their educational aspirations and achievements, many of them settled and started families. By 2010, their U.S.-born children had begun to reach adulthood, offering us a first look at intergenerational mobility among voluntary migrants from Africa. The racial diversity in this group of immigrants allows us to gauge the impact of racial stratification on immigrant adaptation. 1990 U.S. census and 20082012 American Community Survey data are used to uncover patterns of affluence and poverty among young Egyptian, Ethiopian, Nigerian, and South African immigrants in 1990 and U.S.-born men and women of those ancestries in 20082012. White and Black cohorts of U.S. birth and stock serve as additional referents. I find that women of the African second generation have advanced faster than their male counterparts and that racial group membership is at least predictive of financial well-being as specific national origins, with Black Africans, and Ethiopians in particular, showing pronounced disadvantages compared with White Africans in both the immigrant and second generations.

Economists sometimes assume that strictly regulated housing markets near mountains and oceans are expensive because they are costly places to build, not because they are nice places with productive firms and workers. U.S. data show this convenient assumption to be false. Housing supply has grown more in supply-constrained markets than elsewhere over recent decades, indicating constraints are correlated with demand growth. Supply constraints are highly correlated with productivity proxies such as historical education levels, immigration, and national employment growth in locally prevalent industries. The correlation between constraints and productivity growth invalidates common uses of constraints as part of instrumental variables for home prices. The relationship between supply constraints and price volatility is much weaker after accounting for observable demand factors.

The present and future live birth prevalence of Down syndrome (DS) is of practical importance for planning services and prioritizing research to support people living with the condition. Live birth prevalence is influenced by changes in prenatal screening technologies and policies. To predict the future impact of these changes, a model for estimating the live births of people with DS is required. In this study, we combine diverse and robust datasets with validated estimation techniques to describe the non-selective and live birth prevalence of DS in the United States from 1900-2010. Additionally, for the period 1974-2010, we estimate the impact of DS-related elective pregnancy terminations (following a prenatal diagnosis of DS) on the live births with DS. The live birth prevalence for DS in the most recent years (2006-2010) was estimated at 12.6 per 10,000 (95% CI 12.412.8), with around 5,300 births annually. During this period, an estimated 3,100 DS-related elective pregnancy terminations were performed in the U.S. annually. As of 2007, the estimated rates at which live births with DS were reduced as a consequence of DS-related elective pregnancy terminations were 30% (95% CI: 27.331.9) for the U.S. as a whole. Our results and our model provide data on the impact of elective pregnancy terminations on live births with DS and may provide a baseline from which future trends for live births with DS can be estimated.

Diabetes is a disease that affects the Hispanic population in disproportionate numbers. With larger numbers of immigrants coming to the United States who are of Hispanic origin, the individual risk and health burden of this disease will have a major impact on the quality of life and the health care system. Research into the influence of the timing of changes in lifestyle suggested an association between specific levels of socioecological exposures and certain health conditions. This study examined that possibility. The use of the National Health Interview Survey, 2005-2011, provided adequate data for examining whether age at migration was associated with self-reported diabetes; if there was a relationship between age at migration, diabetes, and obesity; and, if the age at migrationdiabetes relationship differed depending on the Hispanic subgroup. It was a quantitative, cross-sectional study using a logistic regression. The outcomes indicated that migration early in life influenced diabetes diagnosis in later life and, with the addition of obesity to the model, the relationship between age at migration and diabetes persisted. This research can be a catalyst for social change in allowing for the identification of individuals most at risk, the timeframes for that increased risk, and a better understanding of the factors that predispose individual to diabetes. Public policy initiatives to target specific time periods can provide avenues for social change among this population with preventive measures to reduce long-term negative consequences of diabetes, thus improving quality of life and providing a more effective use of the health care system.

Evidence on whether nonprofit workers earn less than for-profit workers is mixed. I argue that we should only expect wage gaps when labor demand of the nonprofit sector of an industry is low. When labor demand is high, there are not enough “motivated” workers to fulfill demand, so nonprofits must raise wages. I find empirical evidence consistent with these predictions. Penalties for working in a nonprofit are largest in areas where nonprofits require a small share of the labor force. In these same locations, the quality of work is higher than in for-profits.

Do immigrants have better labor-market outcomes under Democratic governors? By exploiting variations associated with close elections in a regression discontinuity (RD) design applied on gubernatorial elections in 50 states over the last two decades, we find that immigrants are more likely to be employed, work longer hours and more weeks, and have higher earnings under Democratic governors. We present evidence that Democratic governors implement policies which create better labor-market conditions in certain occupations where immigrants are concentrated. Our findings are robust to a number of different specifications, controls, and samples.

In the past decade, the health care industry, and long-term care (LTC) in particular, saw substantial job growth. In anticipation of growing demand for LTC due to an aging demographic, employment opportunities in LTC are expected to surpass those of other U.S. sectors. Workforce planners are concerned about ensuring an adequate pipeline of appropriately trained workers for LTC jobs. This study examines the demographics, socioeconomic status, and job mobility of workers by LTC sector and occupation. The goal of the study is to identify the characteristics associated with job mobility and turnover of LTC workers, and the pathways to LTC jobs these workers utilize.

When comparing married men and married women, the gap in earnings tends to be large, albeit decreasing over time. ... What is remarkable, however, is that there was almost no difference between never-married men and never-married women.

Change in demographic characteristics, absent improvement in socioeconomic resources of minority households, are likely to affect the magnitude of change as well as the demand for various types of transportation. In this chapter the effects of population growth and change in the demographic characteristics of the population on change in vehicle ownership, drivers, and transportation mode choice on the work commute are analyzed. In addition, it explores the impacts of growth in the number of drivers and change in the age structure of the driving population on change in the number of vehicular crashes. Using U.S. Census Bureau projections to 2060 and other data, changes in transportation use and related factors are projected. Total population growth will be the major factor increasing the size of the driving population even as racial/ethnic changes and population aging work to attenuate that growth and lead to lower mileage driven per driver. These same changes will lead to an overall decrease in crash rates even as a larger number of elderly become victims of traffic fatalities. In addition, racial/ethnic changes are projected to lead to a larger proportion of the population using public transportation and carpooling and increases in the percentage of households without vehicles.

Despite concern regarding labor market discrimination against Hispanics, previously published estimates show that Hispanic women earn higher hourly wages than white women with similar observable characteristics. This estimated wage premium is likely biased upwards because of the omission of an important control variable: cost of living. We show that Hispanic women live in locations (e.g., cities) with higher costs of living than whites. After we account for cost of living, the estimated Hispanic-white wage differential for non-immigrant women falls by approximately two-thirds. As a result, we find no statistically significant difference in wages between Hispanic and white women in the NLSY97.

We examine job matching as a potential source of urban agglomeration economies. Focusing on college graduates, we construct two direct measures of job matching based on how well an individual's job corresponds to their college education. Consistent with matching-based theories of urban agglomeration, we find evidence that larger and thicker local labor markets increase both the likelihood and quality of a job match for college graduates. We then assess the extent to which better job matching of college-educated workers increases individual-level wages and thereby contributes to the urban wage premium. We find that college graduates with better job matches do indeed earn higher wages on average, though the contribution of such job matching to aggregate urban productivity appears to be relatively modest.

In this thesis, I study how routinization-the process of codifying and automating job tasks-influences regional employment change. I examine two questions. First, does routinization drive employment change in US metropolitan areas after controlling for occupation and industry mix? Second, does overall employment change occur more strongly through occupational change than industry change across US metropolitan areas? My analysis finds that routinization is a major determinant of both total and relative changes across industry-occupation employment groups; changes in industry group employment have been more important influences on overall employment change than changes in occupation group employment; the difference between occupation group and industry group effects are lessening over time; and joint industry and occupation effects are decreasingly less important in understanding employment change. These findings underscore the importance of task--change in determining employment change and in understanding industries versus occupations as categories for analyzing the evolution of regional economies.

A classic literature argues that improvements in agricultural productivity result in higher non-agricultural output, particularly at low levels of development. The proposed mechanisms for these forward linkages vary, but centre on either increases in the supply of factors, especially labour and capital, or demand externalities in product markets. Regardless of the mechanism, the empirical evidence for substantial forward linkages from agriculture is limited. In this paper, I show that in reform-era China there were substantial forward linkages. I exploit the fact that Chinas 1978-84 agricultural reforms were more beneficial to farmers with land suited to cash crops to provide plausibly exogenous variation in agricultural productivity. Then, using a newly digitised panel of economic data for 561 counties, I trace the growth of agricultural and non-agricultural output over forty years. Higher agricultural output was associated with significantly faster subsequent growth in non-agricultural output. I estimate 15 and 25 year elasticities of 1.2 and 0.8. I am able to identify these linkages because China is subject to substantial geographic capital and labour market frictions. These frictions limit the equalisation of prices across space and keep local shocks local. I use the predictions of a simple two sector model, which nests the possibility of linkages through demand externalities and the supply of capital or labour, to provide evidence that the linkages identified were primarily due to higher agricultural surpluses increasing the supply of capital to local firms.

Education in the United States has experienced three major transformations. The first occurred in primary education. Already by the late 19th century, no less than 80 percent of Americans between the ages of 5 and 13 were enrolled in grades K-8. The second was the so-called high school movement. Between 1910 and 1940, the percentage of Americans between the ages of 14 and 17 who were enrolled in high school rose from below 20 percent to close to 70 percent. Finally, there was higher education. This last movement gained momentum in the 1950s. The percentage of Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 who were enrolled in higher-education institutions rose from less than 20 percent in the 1950s to more than 50 percent nowadays.

We explore the educational response to fracking, a recent technological breakthrough in the oil and gas industry, taking advantage of the timing of its diffusion and spatial variation in shale reserves. We show that fracking has significantly increased relative demand for less-educated male labor and high school dropout rates of male teens, both overall and relative to females. Our estimates imply that, absent fracking, the teen male dropout rate would have been 1 percentage point lower over 2011-15 in the average labor market with shale reserves, implying an elasticity of school enrollment with respect to earnings below historical estimates. Fracking increased earnings more among young men than teenage boys, suggesting that educational decisions respond to improved earnings prospects, not just opportunity costs. Other explanations for our findings, like changes in school quality, migration, or demographics, receive less empirical support.

This paper studies the occupational choices of highly educated native-born American males and links their choices to cultural attitudes toward pecuniary rewards and social prestige in their ancestral countries. These cultural attitudes were reported in the World Values Survey, which surveyed individuals' opinions on a series of subjects in various societies. The empirical analysis verifies that cultural attitudes play a significant role in occupational choices: when other factors that may be correlated with one's opportunity and advantage are controlled for, a stronger cultural demand for pecuniary rewards leads individuals to choose more lucrative jobs, and a stronger demand for social prestige leads them to choose more prestigious jobs. The paper further explores the neighborhood effects on cultural transmission and finds a positive relationship between the proportion of the population from the same ancestry in the residential area and the effects of cultural attitudes on occupational selection.