OBJECTIVES We tested whether the immigrant health advantage applies to non-Hispanic Black immigrants and examined whether nativity-based differences in allostatic load exist among non-Hispanic Blacks. METHODS We used pooled data from the 2001-2010 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey to compare allostatic load scores for US-born (n = 2745) and foreign-born (n = 152) Black adults. We used multivariate logistic regression techniques to assess the association between nativity and high allostatic load scores, controlling for gender, age, health behaviors, and socioeconomic status. RESULTS For foreign-born Blacks, length of stay and age were powerful predictors of allostatic load scores. For older US-born Blacks and those who were widowed, divorced, or separated, the risk of high allostatic load was greater. CONCLUSIONS Foreign-born Blacks have a health advantage in allostatic load. Further research is needed that underscores a deeper understanding of the mechanisms driving this health differential to create programs that target these populations differently.

The foreign-born Taiwanese population in the United States come from a politically divided homeland where Chinese national identity has been declining and Taiwanese national identity has been on the rise since the 1990s. Studies in Taiwan have focused on the link between national identity and ethnic identity among Taiwan nationals, but little research has been conducted in the United States concerning the link between national identity and racial identity for Taiwanese Immigrants. Using data from the 1980, 1990, and 2000 5% Integrated Public Use Microdata Series-USA (IPUMS-USA) samples I examine how Taiwanese immigrants have racially identified themselves in each U.S. Census and if their racial identity choices are significantly different across time. Additionally, I conduct a multilevel binomial logistic model of racial identity for Taiwanese immigrants, examining the extent to which socioeconomic, demographic, and contextual level variables are associated with racial identifying as Taiwanese compared to Chinese using data from the 2000 5% IPUMS-USA sample. The findings reveal a significant decrease in Chinese racial identity and an increase in Taiwanese racial identity from 1980 to 2000, exemplifying a pattern of racial identification similar to the shift in national identity that occurred in Taiwan since the early 1990s. Findings from the multilevel model of racial identity suggested that Taiwanese immigrants with high socioeconomic statuses are more likely to racially identify as Taiwanese compared to Chinese. Those having the highest economic status, educational attainment, and greater English proficiency had greater odds of racially identifying as Taiwanese compared to those living in lower socioeconomic statuses. There were also differences by immigrant cohorts and age groups. Context, in the form of the proportion of Taiwanese racial identifiers in the state, also appears to be an important factor determining how Taiwanese immigrants racially identify themselves. Furthermore, this thesis highlights how racial formation theory provides a unique framework for analyzing the case of racial identification of Taiwanese immigrants.

We evaluate how intensified interior immigration enforcement impacts the likelihood that children of unauthorized immigrants will repeat a grade or drop out of school. Using a weighted index of the intensity of interior immigration enforcement at the MSA level, we find that increased enforcement has the largest impact on younger children ages 6 to 13. The estimates, which account for the non-random residential location of children and their families, reveal that increased enforcement raises young children's probability of repeating a grade by 6 percent and their likelihood of dropping out of school by 25.2 percent.

We examined whether and how lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) adults between 40 and 65 years of age differ from heterosexual adults in long-term care (LTC) expectations. Our data were derived from the 2013 National Health Interview Survey. We used ordered logistic regression to compare the odds of expected future use of LTC among LGB (n=297) and heterosexual (n=13120) adults. We also used logistic regression models to assess the odds of expecting to use specific sources of care. All models controlled for key socioeconomic characteristics. Although LGB adults had greater expectations of needing LTC in the future than their heterosexual counterparts, that association was largely explained by sociodemographic and health differences. After control for these differentials, LGB adults were less likely to expect care from family and more likely to expect to use institutional care in old age. LGB adults may rely more heavily than heterosexual adults on formal systems of care. As the older population continues to diversify, nursing homes and assisted living facilities should work to ensure safety and culturally sensitive best practices for older LGB groups.

College graduates are considerably more mobile than non-graduates, and previous literature suggests that the difference is at least partially attributable to college graduates being more responsive to employment opportunities in other areas. However, there exist considerable differences in migration rates by college major that have gone largely unexplained. This paper uses microdata from the American Community Survey to examine how the migration decisions of young college graduates are affected by earnings in their college major. Results indicate that higher major-specific earnings in an individuals state of birth reduce outmigration suggesting that college graduates are attracted toward areas that especially reward the specific type of human capital that they possess.

The Internet has the potential to reduce search frictions by allowing individuals to identify faster a larger set of available options that conform to their preferences. One market that stands to benefit from this process is that of marriage. This paper empirically examines the implications of Internet diffusion in the USA since the 1990s on one aspect of this market—marriage rates. Exploring sharp temporal and geographic variation in the pattern of consumer broadband adoption, I find that the latter has significantly contributed to increased marriage rates among 21–30 year-old individuals. A number of tests suggest that this relationship is causal and that it varies across demographic groups potentially facing thinner marriage markets. I also provide some suggestive evidence that Internet has likely crowded out other traditional meeting venues, such as through family and friends.

We explore the sexual orientation wage gap across four race and ethnic groups in the 2000 U.S. Census: Asian, black, Hispanic, and white. Using decomposition analysis, we explore if racial minority groups experience the same pattern of sexual orientation wage differences as their white counterparts, and how racial and sexual orientation wage differences interact over the distribution of wages. For men, we show a combined unexplained penalty greater than the sum of their individual unexplained race and sexual-orientation differentials. Racial minority lesbians, however, earn higher wages than what the sum of their racial and sexual-orientation analyses would suggest.

We document several facts about workforce transitions from the informal to the formal sector in Vietnam, a fast growing, industrializing, and low-income country. First, younger workers, particularly migrants, are more likely to work in the formal sector and stay there permanently. Second, the decline in the aggregate share of informal employment occurs through changes between and within birth cohorts. Third, younger, educated, male, and urban workers are more likely to switch to the formal sector than other workers initially in the informal sector. Poorly educated, older, female, rural workers face little prospect of formalization. Fourth, formalization coincides with occupational upgrading.

This article measures restaurant variety in US cities and argues that city structure directly increases product variety by spatially aggregating demand. I discuss a model of entry thresholds in which market size is a function of both population and geographic space and evaluate implications of this model with a new data set of 127,000 restaurants across 726 cities. I find that geographic concentration of a population leads to a greater number of cuisines and the likelihood of having a specific cuisine is increasing in population and population density, with the rarest cuisines found only in the biggest, densest cities. Further, there is a strong hierarchical pattern to the distribution of variety across cities in which the specific cuisines available can be predicted by the total count. These findings parallel empirical work on Central Place Theory and provide evidence that demand aggregation has a significant impact on consumer product variety.

This paper examines effects of schooling on wages instrumenting for individual schooling using cohort-level maternal schooling from previous censuses. Results suggest that an additional year of schooling increases hourly wages by 1- percent for men and 12.6 percent for women.

Relative to GDP, Guyana is one of the largest recipients of remittance flows in the world, receiving on average 17 percent of its GDP. In past decades, these transfers have increased considerably compared with other inflows, including foreign direct investment and international aid. Yet little is known about what macroeconomic factors explain their movement, or how they impact Guyana's economy. This article investigates the macroeconomic determinants of remittance flows to Guyana. We estimate a remittance determination equation, and find that income in the migrant host country, as well as income and interest rate differentials between the migrant host country and Guyana, are important determinants of remittance flows. En términos de PIB, Guyana es uno de los mayores destinatarios de los flujos mundiales de remesas, por ser país receptor de un promedio de 17 por ciento de su PIB. En décadas anteriores, se han aumentado las transferencias considerablemente en comparación con otros ingresos, incluso la inversión extranjera directa y la ayuda internacional. Sin embargo, poco se sabe sobre los factores macroeconómicos que explican su movimiento, o cómo afectan la economía de Guyana. En este artículo se investiga los determinantes macroeconómicos de los flujos de remesas a Guyana. Utilizamos una ecuación aproximada para determinar las remesas y concluimos que los ingresos en el país receptor de migrantes, así como las diferencias de ingresos y de tasas de interés entre el país receptor y Guyana, son importantes determinantes de los flujos de remesas. Par rapport au PIB, la Guyane est l'un des bénéficiaires principaux des flux des envois de fonds dans le monde, en recevant en moyenne 17 pour cent de son PIB. Au cours des dernières décennies, ces transferts ont considérablement augmenté par rapport à d'autres entrées, y compris l'investissement direct étranger et l'aide internationale. Pourtant, on connaît peu sur les facteurs macroéconomiques qui expliqueront leur mouvement ou leur impact sur l'économie de la Guyane. Cet article étudie les déterminants macroéconomiques des flux des envois de fonds à la Guyane. Nous estimons une équation de détermination des envois de fonds, et constatons que le revenu dans le pays d'accueil des migrants, ainsi que le revenu et les écarts de taux d'intérêt entre le pays d'accueil des migrants et la Guyane, sont d'importants déterminants des flux des envois de fonds.

Three NYC organizations - the Federal of Protestant Welfare Agencies, Catholic Charities Archdiocese of New York, and UJA-Federation of New York - jointly selected a set of policies and contracted with the Urban Institute to test their effects on rates of poverty individually and combined. The set includes three policies directly tied to employment and earnings, three in-kind benefits, and a new tax credit for nonworkers.

Using comprehensive longitudinal matched employer-employee data for the U.S., this paper provides new evidence on the relationship between productivity and immigration-spawned urban diversity. Existing empirical work has uncovered a robust positive correlation between productivity and immigrant diversity, supporting theory suggesting that diversity acts as a local public good that makes workers more productive by enlarging the pool of knowledge available to them, as well as by fostering opportunities for them to recombine ideas to generate novelty. This paper makes several empirical and conceptual contributions. First, it improves on existing empirical work by addressing various sources of potential bias, especially from unobserved heterogeneity among individuals, work establishments, and cities. Second, it augments identification by using longitudinal data that permits examination of how diversity and productivity co-move. Third, the paper seeks to reveal whether diversity acts upon productivity chiefly at the scale of the city or the workplace. Findings confirm that urban immigrant diversity produces positive and nontrivial spillovers for U.S. workers. This social return represents a distinct channel through which immigration generates broad-based economic benefits.

he impact of intermarriage with natives, on labor market outcomes of immigrants, is not homogeneous across ethnic groups. Wages of Asian women are compared with non‐Asians. Both ordinary least squares and instrumental variables estimates of the effects of intermarriage on the wages of Asian women are negative and significant. Non‐Asian women earn a wage premium that becomes insignificant when controls for selection into marriage are introduced. One possible explanation for the intermarriage penalty for Asians is an income effect of having a high‐earning native husband. Intermarriage penalties rise with husband's education. Assimilation patterns of intermarried Asians indicate that they have lower initial wages, market hours, and employment, but exhibit faster rates of growth over their years of stay. The results are robust across Asian subgroups and husband's ethnicity.

We study whether war service by one generation affects service by the next generation in later wars, in the context of the major US theaters of the 20th century. To identify a causal effect, we exploit the fact that general suitability for service implies that how close to age 21 an individual’s father happened to be at a time of war is a key determinant of the father’s likelihood of participation. We find that a father’s war service experience has a positive and significant effect on his son’s likelihood of service. We estimate an intergenerational transmission parameter of approximately 0.1, across all wars, and that each individual war had a substantial impact on service in those that followed. We find evidence consistent with cultural transmission of war service from fathers to sons, and with the presence of substitutability between this direct transmission and oblique transmission (from society at large). In contrast, father’s war service increases sons’ educational achievement and actually reduces the likelihood of military service outside of wartime, suggesting that the results cannot be explained by material incentives or broader occupational choice. Taken together, our results indicate that a history of wars helps countries overcome the collective action problem of getting citizens to volunteer for war service.

This paper shows how in Medicare Part D insurers' gaming of the subsidy paid to low-income enrollees distorts premiums and raises the program cost. Using plan-level data from the first five years of the program, I find multiple instances of pricing strategy distortions for the largest insurers. Instrumental variable estimates indicate that the changes in a concentration index measuring the manipulability of the subsidy can explain a large share of the premium growth observed between 2006 and 2011. Removing this distortion could reduce the cost of the program without worsening consumer welfare.

This senior thesis studies the evolution and ideals of several populations in Los Angeles through the lens of car culture. The automobile is a symbol of expression and upon analyzing it, a great deal can be revealed about its owner. Los Angeles is home to the hot rodding, lowriding, and import tuning car movements. All three major car cultures were born from a marginalized youth population. The three movements shed light on the sentiments and assimilation process of the various ethnic communities that created the car culture. This essay will show how each movement not only influenced one another, but also the car industry as a whole. Additionally, this essay examines how advancements in technology have led the current millennial generation to form a mass youth culture. The mass youth culture of the present day is much different than the young populations of past time periods, and that is reflected when analyzing modern day car culture.

The uneven revitalisation of some North American manufacturing industries calls attention to the challenges and opportunities facing historical industry core regions. Yet policy prescriptions routinely overlook industry- and place-specific factors that enable or restrict the viability of manufacturing over time. We re-engage Markusens profit-cycle model of industrial evolution and dispersion, presenting updated metrics of U.S. manufacturing industry restructuring over three decades, and demonstrating the uneven ways that historical core regions remain vital. Through the critical case of the turbulent computer industry, we show that combining industry trends with scrutiny of firm, technological, place and market contingencies can explain policy-relevant differences in regional industrial fortunes.

This paper examines the 2010 wage of Mexican and non-Hispanic White full-time workers in California, compares each of the significant factors that contribute the difference in Mexican and non-Hispanic Whites wages and attempts to find an explanation for the wage gap. Using the technique/method of ordinary least squares to find a regression of the wage rate equation for each race group: Mexicans and nonHispanic Whites. Sensitivity analysis is being preformed after running the regression to observe the changes in the educational, English Proficiency, and age coefficients. The initial hypothesis of this paper is that Mexican workers earn less than non-Hispanic White workers in the labor market based on the findings of similar research, and the results of the regression conducted produces support. This paper find the average age of Mexicans is 5 years younger than the average age of non-Hispanic Whites in the labor market. The average educational level of the Mexicans is a high school diploma, and average educational level of non-Hispanic White is at least an Associate degree. Also the wage gap between male and female workers is smaller for Mexican population than the wage gap in non-Hispanic White population. A Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition performed in this paper shows that 81.63% of the wage gap can be explained to the characteristic effects, and 18.37% of the wage gap is unexplained and possibly due to discrimination.

We study how the recent national housing boom and bust affected college enrollment and attainment during the 2000s. We exploit cross-city variation in local housing booms, and use a variety of data sources and empirical methods, including models that use plausibly exogenous variation in housing demand identified by sharp structural breaks in local housing prices. We show that the housing boom improved labor market opportunities for young men and women, thereby raising their opportunity cost of college-going. According to standard human capital theories, this effect should have reduced college-going overall, but especially for persons at the margin of attendance. We find that the boom substantially lowered college enrollment and attainment for both young men and women, with the effects concentrated at two-year colleges. We find that the positive employment and wage effects of the boom were generally undone during the bust. However, attainment for the particular cohorts of college-going age during the housing boom remain persistently low after the end of the bust, suggesting that reduced educational attainment may be an enduring effect of the housing cycle. We estimate that the housing boom explains roughly 30 percent of the recent slowdown in college attainment.