We present a nonparametric framework to model an evolving sequence of probability distributions that vary both due to underlying effects of sequential progression and confounding noise. To distinguish between these two types of variation and estimate the sequential-progression effects, our approach leverages an assumption that these effects follow a persistent trend. This work is motivated by the recent rise of single-cell RNAsequencing time course experiments, which aim to identify genes relevant to the progression of a particular biological process across diverse cell populations. While classical statistical tools focus on scalar-response regression or order-agnostic differences between distributions, it is desirable in this setting to consider both the full distributions as well as the structure imposed by their ordering. We introduce a new regression model for ordinal covariates where responses are univariate distributions and the underlying relationship reflects coherent changes in the distributions over increasing levels of the covariate, a concept we formalize as trends in distributions. Implemented via a fast alternating projections algorithm, our method exhibits numerous strengths in simulations and application to single-cell gene-expression data. Additionally, we characterize theoretical properties of the proposed estimators and the generality of our trends-assumption.

Background: Migration of Filipinos to the US began in 1889 after annexation of the Philippine by the US. Between 1889-1934 Filipino immigrants were classified legally as “nationals” because the Philippines was a colony of the US. Migration of Filipino nurses began after World War II when Filipino nurses educated in the Philippines have since be- come a favored solution to the cyclical nursing shortages in the US. Objective: Describe the major influences that contributed to mass migration of Filipino nurses to the US. Methodology: Historical research using archival research and telephonic interviews of key individuals who had first-hand experience of Filipino nursing migration. Several data bases were examined as primary and secondary sources. Conclusion: Cyclical and worsening nursing shortages in the US prompted immigration policies and economic incentives for recruitment of Filipino nurse graduates who were educated in US-based curricula with English as the medium of instruction. Institutional- ized exportation of labor by the Philippine government to help pay for its foreign debt has created massive emigration of Filipino nurses who seek better economic and educational opportunities and permanent residence in the US for themselves and their families. Be- cause of their visibility as the largest foreign educated nurses in the US, Filipino nurses confronted backlash from American professional nurses and organizations as well as rec- ognition of their significant contribution to ease nursing shortages and provide quality care in the US.

Broader diversity in the research workforce affords the inclusion of research agendas, methods, and perspectives that might otherwise be overlooked to address key social and scientific problems. However, promoting diversity in science is not a trivial matter. It entails mitigating some of the long-term social and institutional inequalities that have prevented the participation of underrepresented groups, such as Latinos, in scientific research. For instance, the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU) reports that Hispanic serving institutions receive (on average) only 69 cents for every federal dollar of funding that all other higher education institutions receive. This article describes how an interdisciplinary research institute at an under-resourced Hispanic serving institution managed to build a culture of undergraduate research by promoting the research of local faculty and supporting their mentoring role in the face of economic and administrative challenges. In spite of dramatic budget cuts that fluctuated between 1.4% and 13.

Ethylene glycol is highly toxic and represents an important cause of poisonings worldwide. Toxicity can result in central nervous system dysfunction, cardiovascular compromise, elevated anion gap metabolic acidosis and acute kidney injury. Many states have passed laws requiring addition of the bittering agent, denatonium benzoate, to ethylene glycol solutions to reduce severity of exposures. The objectives of this study were to identify differences between unintentional and intentional exposures and to evaluate the utility of denatonium benzoate as a deterrent. Methods and Findings Using the National Poison Data System, we performed a retrospective analysis of reported cases of ethylene glycol exposures from January 2006 to December 2013. Outcome classification was summed for intentionality and used as a basis for comparison of effect groups. There were 45,097 cases of ethylene glycol exposures resulting in 154 deaths. Individuals more likely to experience major effects or death were older, male, and presented with more severe symptoms requiring higher levels of care. Latitude and season did not correlate with increased exposures; however, there were more exposures in rural areas. Denatonium benzoate use appeared to have no effect on exposure severity or number. Conclusion Deaths due to ethylene glycol exposure were uncommon; however, there were major clinical effects and more exposures in rural areas. Addition of denatonium benzoate was not associated with a reduction in exposures. Alternative means to deter ingestion are needed. These findings suggest the need to consider replacing ethylene glycol with alternative and less toxic agents.

Based on their socioeconomic characteristics, Mexican immigrant men should have very high unemployment. More than half do not have a high school diploma. One in four works in construction; at the height of the recent recession, 20% of construction workers were unemployed. Yet their unemployment rates are similar to those of native-born white men. After controlling for education and occupation, Mexican immigrant men have lower probabilities of unemployment than native-born white men both before and during the recent recession. I consider explanations based on eligibility for unemployment benefits, out-migrant selection for unemployment, and employer preferences for Mexican immigrant labor.

The main problem in releasing sensitive data to public networks and domains is how to publish data while protecting privacy and permitting useful analysis. This problem is known as privacy-preserving data publishing. In the well-known (α,β)-privacy model, only two types of risks are considered: presence leakage (membership disclosure) by which adversaries may explicitly identify individuals in (or not in) the published dataset, and association leakage (attribute disclosure) by which they may unambiguously correlate individuals to their sensitive information. Ambiguity is an anonymization technique for this privacy model that publishes attributes of tuples in separate tables. The lossy join of these table produce false tuples which inject uncertainty. In this paper, we improve this anonymization technique (Ambiguity + ) that publish the frequency of each distinct value in order to preserve better data utility based on the (α,β)-privacy model. Experimental results demonstrate that our work preserves data utility at a satisfactory level and also information loss is considerably decreased.

College graduates are important for regional economies but also quite geographically mobile. This paper examines the relationship between college graduation rates among persons from a state (relative production) and the later share of college graduates for persons residing in the state (relative stock) using decennial census and American Community Survey microdata. The descriptive relationship has increased over time and is nearly proportional in recent years. Instrumental variables methods are used to estimate causal effects. The preferred IV results yield an average point estimate for the production-stock relationship of 0.52, but the effect likely decreases with age. JEL Codes: I25, J24, R23

Immigrants are an intrinsic part of Americas workforce. In 2013, 17 percent of all workers ages 18 to 6424 millionwere immigrants. Immigrants are an even larger proportion of workers without a high school diploma, of whom 44 percent are foreign-born. In industries such as landscaping, apparel manufacturing, and animal slaughtering and processing, more than one-third of workers are foreign born. Among medical and life science professionals, 43 percent are foreign born.1 With the aging of baby boomers and the continuing low birth rates, the competitiveness of Americas labor force hinges more than ever on the effective integration of immigrants into the workforce.

Welcome to the fourth edition of AFBs Research Navigator. This is a quarterly series accompanying AFBs DirectConnect newsletter from the AFB Public Policy Center. The purpose of this series is to keep you informed of user-friendly facts and figures and the latest research pertaining to people with vision loss. The series will also include the necessary background information so you may use the information most accurately. Have an idea for a Research Navigator topic? Want to know more about a particular statistic or line of research? Send your thoughts to AFB's Senior Policy Researcher, Rebecca Sheffield. Readers are also encouraged to check out AFBs Statistical Snapshots. This webpage is regularly updated with a wide variety of information and tools that address commonly asked questions about people with vision loss.

One way in which marriage generates value is by allowing couples to pool property for the purposes of risk sharing and investment. This dimension of marriage has received little attention in the literature, in part because it is difficult to separate this effect from the gains from division of labor within the household. We measure the impact of a class of married womens property laws introduced in the American South during the 1840s on family investment and assortative matching in the marriage market. These laws did not grant married women autonomy over their separate property; they merely shielded this property from seizure by their husbands creditors. This had the dual effect of mitigating downside risk while restricting a husbands ability to borrow against his wifes property; it also preserved the bulk of the wifes property as an inheritance for the couples children. As such, these laws affected a couples ability to pool property and access credit without affecting the relative bargaining position of husbands and wives; this allows us to shed light on the importance of property in the marriage market. Using a newly compiled database of linked marriage and census records, we show that these property laws increased investment when the bulk of a couples property was owned by the husband; however, they had the inverse effect when most of a couples property was owned by the wife. In addition, we show that assortative matching on wealth declined after the passage of these laws, while assortative matching on age increased.

Hispanics make up a rapidly growing proportion of the U.S. older adult population, so a firm grasp of their mortality patterns is paramount for identifying racial/ethnic differences in life chances in the population as a whole. Documentation of Hispanic mortality is also essential for assessing whether the Hispanic paradoxthe similarity in death rates between Hispanics and non-Hispanic whites despite Hispanics socioeconomic disadvantagecharacterizes all adult Hispanics or just some age, gender, nativity, or national-origin subgroups. We estimate age-/sex- and cause-specific mortality rate ratios and life expectancy for foreign-born and U.S.-born Hispanics, foreign-born and U.S.-born Mexican Americans, non-Hispanic blacks, and non-Hispanic whites ages 65 and older using the 19892006 National Health Interview Survey Linked Mortality Files. Results affirm that Hispanic mortality estimates are favorable relative to those of blacks and whites, but particularly so for foreign-born Hispanics and smoking-related causes. However, if not for Hispanics socioeconomic disadvantage, their mortality levels would be even more favorable.

In this dissertation, I build upon the literature examining the motherhood wage penalty. Although previous research has found that much of this penalty can be explained by differences between mothers and childless women in human capital acquisition, job experience, work hours, and unobserved characteristics, these reasons do not fully explain the penalty. The portion of the penalty that remains unexplained is often attributed to some combination of discrimination against women by employers and lower work effort among mothers. In this dissertation, I examine another plausible mechanism: I consider the role that job changes and employment exits play in creating this penalty. In doing this, I draw on economic theories of job mobility that posit job changes play an important role in shaping workers' wage trajectories. I also draw on signaling theory, which argues the reason workers leave their job and spend time in non-employment matters in shaping workers' future wages. I use panel data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1979 (NLSY79). This dataset follows a cohort of nearly 6,000 women who entered the labor market in the late 1970s and early 1980s, a time during which changing employers was becoming increasingly common. I use data from surveys conducted between 1979-2010 (the most recent year of data available). I apply event history and fixed effects models to examine how children shape women's job changes and employment exits, and how these events, in turn, shape women's wages. Throughout this dissertation, I examine how motherhood intersects with race/ethnicity, spouse characteristics, birth timing, and education to shape women's labor market decisions and wage outcomes. I found motherhood reduces the hazard that women will make the types of non-family voluntary job changes that result in wage gains. I also found that different patters of changing jobs and exiting the labor market contributes to roughly twenty percent of the unexplained motherhood wage penalty, and moreover, these differences help to explain why the wage penalty is largest for women who bear children early in adulthood. Finally, in examining the different reasons women spend time in non-employment, I found family-related interruptions are associated with larger short-term wage penalties compared to interruptions following a layoff, but the penalties for family-related interruptions persist over the long-term only among highly educated women.

This dissertation encompasses three papers. My first paper contributes to the larger literature on the effect of individual-level characteristics on urban location choice by examining whether young people aged 25-34 with a bachelor's degree or higher are more likely to live in central cities in 2011 than in 1990. In my second paper, I use 2011 IPUMS data to estimate the effect of education on living in a central city for various age groups, with a focus on the 25-34 year old age group. Consistent with other studies I find that the effect of education on living in the central city declines with age but that this decline is not monotonic. My final paper examines the effect of state government spending on city population growth.

Background We investigated very preterm (VPTB) and preterm birth (PTB) risk among Hmong women relative to non-Hispanic whites and other Asian subgroups. We also examined the maternal education health gradient across subgroups. Methods California birth record data (20022004) were used to analyze 568,652 singleton births to white and Asian women. Pearson Chi-square and logistic regression were used to assess variation in maternal characteristics and VPTB/PTB risk by subgroup. Results White, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Asian Indian, and Vietnamese women had 3659 % lower odds of VPTB and 3056 % lower odds of PTB than Hmong women. Controls for covariates did not substantially diminish these disparities. Cambodian, Filipino and Lao/Thai womens odds of VPTB were similar to that of Hmong women. But they had higher adjusted odds of PTB compared to the Hmong. There was heterogeneity in the educational gradient of PTB, with significant differences between the least and most educated women among whites, Chinese, Japanese, Asian Indians, Cambodians, and Laoians/Thais. Maternal education was not associated with PTB for Hmong, Vietnamese and Korean women, however. Conclusions Studies of Hmong infant health from the 1980s, the decade immediately following the groups mass migration to the US, found no significant differences in adverse birth outcomes between Hmong and white women. By the early 2000s, however, the disparities in VPTB and PTB between Hmong and white women, as well as between Hmong and other Asian women had become substantial. Moreover, despite gains in post-secondary education among childbearing-age Hmong women, the returns to education for the Hmong are negligible. Higher educational attainment does not confer the same health benefits for Hmong women as it does for whites and other Asian subgroups.

Ten Gallon Economy features new research on regional economic growth and some surprising findings on Texas' unique tax and banking institutions; booming energy and export sectors; vibrant labor market; expanding demographics and human capital; and growing border economy.

Structural models of location choice use observed demand to estimate household preferences. However, household demand may be partly determined by borrowing constraints, limiting house- holds’ choice set. Credit availability differs across locations, households, and years. We put forward a model of neighborhood choice where mortgage approval rates determine households’ choice set. Using household-level data, geocoded transactions, and mortgage applications for the San Francisco Bay area, we find that including borrowing constraints leads to higher es- timated preferences for better performing schools and majority-white neighborhoods. General equilibrium estimates of the relaxation of lending standards provide two out-of-sample predic- tions: between 2000 and 2006, (i) a compression of the price distribution and (ii) a decline in black exposure to Whites. Both predictions are supported by empirical observation.

The baby-boom cycle has caused very large swings in the relative supply of experienced workers (first a large decline, and then a large increase). Yet, the experience premium has failed to decline markedly in the period where the supply of experience has increased. I develop a methodology to estimate the increase in the relative demand for experience that is required to reconcile the behavor of prices and quantities, and show this to have been large - a phenomenon I dub experience-biased technical change. I conjecture that one of the drivers of experience-biased technical change is a decline in the relative demand for physical strength. In support this conjecture, I show that occupations requiring high or moderate physical strength have accounted for a declining share of weeks worked in the economy, with sedentary occupations experiencing a corresponding increase. I also confirm that older workers have a comparative disadvantage in occupations requiring physical strength.

This paper investigates whether preschool children exposed to Sesame Street when it began in 1969 experienced improved educational and labor market outcomes subsequently. We exploit geographic variation in broadcast reception derived from technological limitations, including distance to a broadcast tower and UHF versus VHF transmission. We relate this variation to Census data on grade-for-age status, educational attainment, and labor market outcomes in 1980, 1990, and 2000, respectively. The results indicate that Sesame Street improved school readiness, particularly for boys and children living in economically disadvantaged areas. The estimated impact on ultimate educational attainment and labor market outcomes is inconclusive.

We use a task-based approach to analyze the gender wage gap in the U.S. labour market from 2003 to 2010 on CPS data. Our empirical strategy accounts for heterogeneous selection into employment and occupations according to the latters task intensity. Differently from previous literature, we let the data speak for itself and identify three fundamental tasks defining an occupation: manual, cognitive-decisional and cognitive-professional tasks. Once accounted for heterogeneous selection rules into employment and for endogeneity of tasks, the gap narrows in manual intensive and cognitive-professional jobs, while it widens with the intensity of cognitive-decisional tasks.