This paper quantifies the value of self-employment as a flexible work alternative for mothers with young children. On average, self-employed women have more control over their work schedule, hours and location than wage and salary employed women. I incorporate self-employment into a life-cycle model of married womens fertility and employment decisions and use data from the NLSY79 to estimate the value of self-employment flexibility for mothers. I find that mothers with preschool-aged children value the package of flexible amenities in self-employment at $7,400 annually, which represents around 20% of their average wage and salary earnings. A partial equilibrium counterfactual exercise suggests that self-employment flexibility encourages married women to continue working when they have young children, raising womens median lifetime earnings by 2.4%. Overall, my findings offer evidence that inflexible work causes mothers to leave the labor force in response to the high costs of managing work and family.

In her 2004 presidential address to the Population Association of American, Sara McLanahan argued that in the USA and other Western countries, the second demographic transition was leading to two very different trajectories for womenwith very different implications for children. Whereas for children born to mothers with a college degree, the changes in family behavior were associated with gains in parental resources, for children born to less educated mothers, the changes were associated with relative and, in some instances, absolute losses in resources. The authors extend the 2004 paper by updating the evidence with recent trends in the USA and new analyses from other countries, including Japan, Australia, and the EU countries, and by reviewing evidence on the causes of change. They conclude by noting that the changes in family formation are associated with negative outcomes for parents, children, and society and by discussing possible solutions to the growing disparities in family behaviors.

Heritage language (HL) speakers have received scholarly attention in recent years as an interdisciplinary research theme, but relatively less attention has been paid to their demographics. Existing studies of HL speakers demographics often focus on young children in areas of high immigrant concentration (i.e., California, Florida, and New York); no study has systematically investigated cross-regional and chronological demographic patterns of adult HL speakers. From the perspective of HLs as a national resource, such demographic data on adult HL speakers are useful to gauge the availability of a bilingual workforce and determine structures needed to support and develop a bilingual U.S. population. Using the Integrated Public User Microdata Series (Ruggles & Sobek, 1997), which is based on data from the U.S. Census and the American Community Survey, this study makes geographical and chronological comparisons among groups of adult HL speakers from 1980 to 2010. The data show major differences in the demographics of adult HL speakers in different regions. The analyses also reveal differences by language, specifically between the adult HL speakers of Spanish and other languages. Implications of these patterns are discussed.

The first chapter of this dissertation examines the existence and cause of occupational hierarchies among immigrant worker groups in the United States. It first documents the persistent ranking of immigrant labor groups as reflected by their position in occupational distribution. We do this by examining the United States Census data for the period 1940-2011 and constructing the empirical occupational distribution of immigrant labor for major metropolitan regions using the Duncan Socioeconomic Index values. Having established the persistence of rankings across regions and time we estimate a structural model which maps immigrant workers into the occupational distribution on the basis of employers' perception of their perceived productivity. The estimates from the model strongly suggest that while individual human capital characteristics are important determinants of location in the occupational distribution a key factor, and the cause of persistence, is the presence of immigrant networks in occupations. In the second chapter we examine whether ethnicity plays a significant role in inter-generational transfer of human capital. Relying on heteroskedasticity to identify parameters in presence of endogeneity, we revisit the Borjas ethnic capital hypothesis. In line with the literature, we find evidence that the OLS estimates of the effect of parental human capital on the children's educational attainment is biased upwards. The same is true for the estimates of the effects of the ethnic capital on intergenerational transmission of education. We also find that while parental capital has a relatively constant effect over time, the effect of ethnic capital has declined over the years. Interestingly, we also find evidence that women benefit from the quality of their ethnic environment while men appear to be unaffected by it.

This dissertation consists of three empirical studies, each using administrative data from the U.S. Army, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), and the U.S. Social Security Administration. The first chapter investigates the correlation between local labor markets and VA Disability Compensation (DC) receipt among National Guard veterans who deployed to a combat zone between 2003 and 2006. I find that veterans from hometowns with low employment-to-population ratios are more likely to receive DC for both PTSD and physical conditions than veterans from hometowns with high employment-to-population ratios, but this association is stronger for PTSD than it is for physical conditions. PTSD awards that result in monthly benefit payments of at least $1,500 account for most of the correlation between employment-to-population ratios and PTSD, while only physical awards that generate relatively low payments are associated with employment-to-population ratios. The second chapter, a joint project with David Autor, Mark Duggan, and David Lyle, analyzes the effect of the DC program on Vietnam veterans' labor force participation and earnings. Exploiting the 2001 Agent Orange decision, which expanded DC eligibility for Vietnam-era veterans who served in-theater but not for other Vietnam-era veterans, we assess the causal effects of DC eligibility by contrasting the outcomes . . .

There is limited existing evidence justifying the economic case for state education policy. Using newly-developed measures of the human capital of each state that allow for internal migration and foreign immigration, we estimate growth regressions that incorporate worker skills. We find that educational achievement strongly predicts economic growth across U.S. states over the past four decades. Based on projections from our growth models, we show the enormous scope for state economic development through improving the quality of schools. While we consider the impact for each state of a range of educational reforms, an improvement that moves each state to the best-performing state would in the aggregate yield a present value of long-run economic gains. . .

Previous research on understanding race-ethnic differentials in employment and economic contributions by married women has primarily focused on Blacks, Hispanics, or Whites. This study investigates variations in wives earning contributions as measured by wives earnings as a proportion of total annual household earnings among six Asian groups, Asian Indian, Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese relative to native born non-Hispanic White. I disaggregate the six Asian groups by their ethnicity and nativity status. Using pooled data from 20092011 American Community Survey, the findings show significance of human capital, hours of paid labor market engagement and nativity status. There is strong and negative association between husbands human capital and labor supply with wives earning contributions suggesting near universality of male-breadwinner status. Notwithstanding the commonalities, there is significant intergroup diversity. While foreign born and native born Filipina wives despite their spouses reasonably high human capital and work hours, contribute one of the highest shares, the same cannot be said for the Asian Indians and Japanese. For foreign born Asian Indian and to some extent Japanese women, their high human capital is not translated to high earning contribution after controlling for husbands human capital. Further, nativity status impacts groups differentially. Native born Vietnamese wives contribute the greatest. Overall, the findings underscore the relevance of employing multiple conceptual frameworks in understanding earning contributions of foreign and native born Asian wives belonging to the six Asian groups, Asian Indian, Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese.

Over the past 20 years, local and regional governments in the Los Angeles metropolitan area have invested significant resources in building rail transit infrastructure that connects major employment centers. One goal of transit infrastructure is to catalyze the development of high density, mixed-use housing and commercial activity within walking distance of rail stations, referred to as Transit Oriented Development (TOD). This project examines the quantity, type, and mix of economic activity that has occurred around newly built rail stations in Los Angeles over the past 20 years. Specifically, have the number of jobs or housing market characteristics changed near stations? We use establishment-level data on employment and property-level data on housing transactions to analyze changes in several employment and housing outcomes. Results suggest that new rail stations were located in areas that, prior to station opening, had unusually high employment density and mostly multifamily rental housing. There is no evidence of changes in employment density, housing sales volume, or new housing development within five years after station opening. Regressions suggest that a subset of stations saw increased employment density within five to ten years after opening.

The goal of the thesis was to describe and demonstrate principles of the process of knowledge discovery in databases - data mining (DM). In the theoretical part of the thesis, selected methods for data mining processes are described as well as basic principles of those DM techniques. In the second part of the thesis a DM task is realized in accordance to CRISP-DM methodology. Practical part of the thesis is divided into two parts and data from the survey of American Community Survey served as the basic data for the practical part of the thesis. First part contains a classification task which goal was to determinate whether the selected DM techniques can be used to solve missing data in the surveys. The success rate of classifications and following data value prediction in selected attributes was in 55–80 % range. The second part of the practical part of the thesis was then focused of determining knowledge of interest using associating rules and the GUHA method.

Comparing demographic small area estimates across multiple time periods is hindered by boundary changes in census enumeration units. Areal interpolation can resolve temporal incompatibilities, but underlying assumptions of uniform population density within units is sometimes flawed and results in distorted estimates. Dasymetric modeling refines spatial precision by limiting areal interpolation to the most likely residential areas. Here, a systematic examination of the impacts of dasymetric refinement on temporal interpolation accuracy compares errors that emerge as a consequence of differing time spans. This paper compares the accuracy of three commonly utilized methods of areal interpolation for temporal analysis of population data over the 19902010 decades. It examines whether multitemporal dasymetric refinement prior to areal interpolation improves the accuracy of small area estimates, comparing two different demographic contexts. Data sets include tract-level demography exhibiting dramatic growth (Las Vegas, Nevada), and relative stability (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania). Areal interpolation with and without the dasymetric refinement is validated using block level data. The dasymetrically refined target density weighting (TDW) provides the overall best performance for the 2000 source data and the expectation maximization (EM) method gives the overall best performance for the 1990 source data; effects of refinement are more prominent in areas of faster population change.

Because African immigrants have become a significant presence in the United States in the past few decades, understanding the dynamics of their immigrant labor market has become increasingly impOliant. In this paper, I follow a COhOli of immigrants from 2001-2012 to see whether African immigrants assimilate with natives. I also investigate the effects of immigrant specific variables such as education, time of an-ivaI in the U.S., and English-speaking abilities, on their wages in the U.S. labor market. Using a COhOli over time and cross sectional data sets, respectively, from the American Community Survey, this study employs OLS regression analysis to test hypotheses about the progression of immigrant wages with natives and the effect of immigrant specific variables on immigrant and native earnings. Results show immigrants experience incomplete assimilation with natives. Also, after controlling for education and demographic variables, African immigrants are at an earnings disadvantage compared to natives. Lastly, I find that African immigrants that are non-citizens are at a greater disadvantage than those that are naturalized citizens, and late arrivals are at a greater disadvantage than early arrivals.

Efforts to evaluate the impact of programs designed to safeguard the well-being of older adults in the US are stymied by the absence of adequate tools to answer a key question: how much income is enough in later life? The purpose of this paper is to report on a new indicator of income adequacy designed to correct this measurement gap. The Elder Economic Security Standard Index (Elder Index) is a geographically specific measure of the cost of living independently for older adults aged 65 and over. This paper provides an overview of the development of the Elder Index, demonstrates the variability in Elder Index values both geographically and across different residential settings, and provides an illustration of how the Elder Index may be used in establishing differences in economic hardship across subgroups of older adults. The paper concludes with a discussion of the potential research and policy uses of this new measure.

This article presents the method and first results of using the 1881 England and Wales Census Enumerators' Books (CEBs) to identify and extract employer records using occupational information. Over 230,000 employers are identified, of which about four fifths employ others. Important sub-groups are also identified of the own account selfemployed, company proprietors, directors and partnerships. The article demonstrates the feasibility of the method and uses the example of the building industry to illustrate firm-size distribution at parish level across England and Wales. The paper indicates the applicability of the extraction method to other censuses, which is now possible using the recently released I-CeM database. The paper also demonstrates some difficulties in the database for 1881, including data keying and coding errors, ranging from 0.5 to 5.5 per cent of entries for larger businesses. Gender miscoding appears to be a systematic error of about 0.7 per 1,000 people. The analysis suggests that where small or atypical sample groups are involved, users of the census database should make detailed checks with manuscript CEBs.

When President Andrew Jackson removed the public deposits from the Bank of the United States, he set off an economic and political crisis from which, scholars agree, the Whig Party emerged. We argue that petitioning in response to removal of the deposits shaped the emergence of the Whig Party, crystallizing a new line of Jacksonian opposition and dispensing with older lines of National Republican rhetoric and organization. Where petitioning against removal of the deposits was higher, the Whigs were more likely to emerge with organization and votes in the coming years. We test this implication empirically by using a new database of petitions sent to Congress during the banking crisis. We find that petitioning activity in 1834 is predictive of increased support for Whig Party candidates in subsequent presidential elections as well as stronger state Whig Party organization.

Using the farm tractor as a case study, I show that lags in technology diffusion arise along two distinct margins: scale and scope. Though tractors are now used in nearly every agricultural field operation and in the production of nearly all crops, they first developed with much more limited application, and early diffusion was accordingly limited in scope until tractor technology generalized. Other historically important innovations share similar histories. The results suggest that the key to understanding technology diffusion is not only in explaining the number of different users, but also in explaining the number of different uses.

Previous studies reveal that, using solely U.S. census data, over 60% population could be uniquely identified with (gender, zip code, date of birth) in 1990 and 2000. This paper extends these studies to examine spatial variation of uniqueness in 2010. We provide (1) the comparison of national level uniqueness between 2000 and 2010, and (2) the investigation of spatial variation of uniqueness in different regions and at different scales. The comparison between 2000 and 2010 reveals that, although overall uniqueness changes little, the uniqueness of middle-age group has significantly decreased. Spatial variation studies show that similar characteristics in age-group uniqueness exist in different regions. Finally, the analysis at different scales discloses that overall uniqueness decreases, and the difference between age-group uniqueness reduce, when geographical scales focus on the cores of urban area. This study offers contributions to geographic information privacy, particularly relevant to reverse geocoding and related spatial aggregation techniques.

This study examines the reasons for differences in the prevalence of intermarriage with Whites between racial minorities in 283 U.S. metropolitan areas. The analysis demonstrates that Asians have the highest and Blacks the lowest rate of intermarriage with Whites, with Hispanics falling in between. We tested two theories for these group differences. First, the structural explanation, which posits that differences in the relative size of each racial group in marriage markets affects their chances for intermarriage. Second, the assimilation explanation, which suggests that differences in social distance with Whites influences the propensity for intermarriage. The decomposition analysis shows that the cultural assimilation explanation is the primary reason for the HispanicBlack gap in intermarriage. However, both explanations predict BlackAsian and AsianHispanic differences in intermarriage with Whites.

The decades following 1970 to the present were an important period because they marked an era in which measures such as Affirmative Action were introduced to improve opportunities for American minorities and women. Ironically, this also was a period when income inequality dramatically increased in the United States. We analyze Census data from 1970 to 2009 to assess whether inequality in the earnings received by women and minorities has changed in this period. We find a complicated set of results. Racial inequalities persist though to a lesser extent than they did four decades earlier. Asian workers in particular have seen improvements and a lessening of inequality relative to White workers. Gender inequality also persists, though more in some groups than others. Overall, the results of this study underscore the persistence of racial and gender inequality in the United States.

The use of body mass index values (BMI) to measure living standards is now a well-accepted method in economics. Nevertheless, a neglected area in historical studies is the relationship between 19th century BMI and family size, and this relationship is documented here to be positive. Material inequality and BMI are the subject of considerable debate, and there was a positive relationship between BMI and wealth and an inverse relationship with inequality. After controlling for family size and wealth, BMI values were related with occupations, and farmers and laborers had greater BMI values than workers in other occupations.