This paper studies the effects of English proficiency on employment of U.S. foreign-born immigrants, using data from the 2001 American Community Survey (ACS). It shows that English proficiency plays an important role in immigrants' employment and its effects on employment patterns across genders are different. Probit regressions show that immigrants with a higher level of English proficiency are more likely to participate in the labor force and find employment. Such likelihood is greater in each category of English proficiency for female immigrants. However, the penalty for being deficient in English in each category is greater in finding employment than in participating in the labor force. Such penalties for female immigrants are much greater than male immigrants at each English proficiency level. There is a complementary relationship between English proficiency and skill levels in terms of employment. High-skilled immigrants benefit more from greater English proficiency than their low-skilled counterparts in finding employment. Such benefits are greater for immigrant women than men at each English proficiency category. However, being proficiency in English is not an important determinant of participation and employment for the low-skilled immigrants. Using Ordered Probit techniques, the results indicate that English proficiency does not seem to be an important contributor for immigrants' work status improvement, especially for male immigrants' work status. The Multinomial Logit analysis is applied to examine how English proficiency affects immigrants' occupational choices. The expected risk of staying in the higher-ranking jobs is higher for those with high English proficiency. In addition, immigrants with more educational attainment are more likely to choose science/academic occupations over managerial/professional/technical occupations. Such a pattern remains for both genders. JEL Classification: J15, J24

The inequality analysis plays an important role since the beginning of the last century, in the economic, social and political debate. From the first pioneering paper of Gini, this subject has become more and more fascinating. The several tools proposed in the literature for evaluating the inequality belong basically to two families: on the one hand there are inequality curves which represent (also graphically) the local pattern of inequality in all segments of the considered population; on the other hand, inequality indexes (that often can be derived from a particular inequality curve) which summarize its measure in one number. Different indexes are needed to reveal different viewpoints toward inequality. In this paper, the features of the relatively new inequality I(p) curve are described. Beyond many theoretical results, also an empirical analysis based on real income data of Flint is performed.

Over the past three decades, states have been increasing high school math curriculum requirements with a major goal of improving students college attainment in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields. Using data from the 2009-2012 American Community Survey, this paper examines the impact of stricter high school math curriculum requirements on STEM degree completion. I exploit cross-state variation in the timing of requirement increases on the number of years of math courses required for high school graduation from two waves of nationwide math reforms, the first in the 1980s, and the second in more recent years. I find that the average rate of STEM degree completion increased by about four percent after states adopted stricter high school math curriculum requirements. However, there was a considerable amount of variation in treatment effects across the population. Math reforms in the 1980s substantially increased STEM degree completion of traditionally underrepresented groups, particularly black and Hispanic males, and white females. By contrast, the more recent reforms disproportionally benefited white males, but had little impact on other groups. For both waves of reforms, I find no significant changes in the composition of students graduating from high school and attending college. However, there were negative impacts on non-STEM degree completion, suggesting that stricter high school math curriculum requirements might have shifted students away from non-STEM fields into STEM fields.

This project investigates how changes in Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA)-level house prices affect household fertility decisions. Recognizing that housing is a major cost associated with child rearing, and assuming that children are normal goods, we hypothesize that an increase in house prices will have a negative price effect on current period fertility. This applies to both potential first-time homeowners and current homeowners who might upgrade to a bigger house with the addition of a child. On the other hand, for current homeowners, an increase in MSA-level house prices will increase home equity, leading to a positive effect on birth rates. Our results suggest that indeed, short-term increases in house prices lead to a decline in births among non-owners and a net increase among owners. The estimates imply that a $10,000 increase leads to a 5% increase in fertility rates among owners and a 2.4% decrease among non-owners. At the mean U.S. home ownership rate, these estimates imply that the net effect of a $10,000 increase in house prices is a 0.8% increase in current period fertility rates. Given underlying differences in home ownership rates, the predicted net effect of house price changes varies across demographic groups. In addition, we find that changes in house prices exert a larger effect on current period birth rates than do changes in unemployment rates. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Objective: To draw on the experiences under Massachusettss 2006 reform, the template for the Affordable Care Act (ACA), to provide insights into the potential impacts of the ACA Medicaid expansion for low-income childless adults in other states. Data Sources/Study Setting: The study takes advantage of the natural experiment in Massachusetts and combined data from two surveysthe Massachusetts Health Reform Survey (MHRS) and the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS)to estimate the impacts of reform on low-income adults.Study Design: Difference-in-differences models of the impacts of health reform using propensity-score reweighing to improve the match between Massachusetts and the comparison states. Data Collection/Extraction Methods: Data for low-income adults are obtained by combining data from the MHRS and the NHIS, where the MHRS provides a relatively large Massachusetts sample and the NHIS provides data for samples in other states to support the difference-indifferencesmodel. Supplemental data on county economic and health care market characteristicsare obtained from the Area Health Resource File. Principal Findings: There are strong increases in coverage and access to health care for low income adults under health reform in Massachusetts, with the greatest gains observed for childless adults, who were not eligible for public coverage prior to reform. Conclusions: In the states that implement the Medicaid provisions of the ACA, we would expect to see large increases in coverage rates and commensurate gains in access to care for low-income childless adults. Linking state and federal surveys offers a strategy for leveraging the value of state-specific survey data for stronger policy evaluations.

We examine the influence of neighborhood peer effects on the decision of women to work using 1985-1993 American Housing Survey data that follows clusters of adjacent homes over time. Modeling assumptions imply rank order restrictions on the effect of nearby working and non-working peers and non-peers that guide the analysis. Estimates indicate that female labor supply is sensitive to peer effects and at least in part because women emulate the work behavior of nearby women with similar age children. For men, peer effects are present in simply specified models but disappear in more robust specifications, consistent with inelastic work decisions. Findings confirm eh value of geographically concentrated panel data and other modeling features when attempting to identify peer effects.

Chapter 3 Examining the Relationship between Public Policy and Performance in Five States What We Did With contributions by Awilda Rodriguez How can a state use public policy to improve the performance of higher education to maximize the individual and societal benefits in light of state-­ specific characteristics of their state? To address this overarching question, we conducted case studies of the relationship between public policy and performance in five states. We constructed each case study to address the following two questions: 1. What is the performance of higher education in the selected states, where performance is measured by indicators of preparation, participation, completion, affordability, and equity across groups in these indicators? 2. What is the role of public policy in explaining changes from the early 1990s until 2010 in higher education performance in the selected states? The following chapters address these two questions for each of five states. The final chapter identifies the themes that emerged from our cross-­ state analyses. Why These Five States For our examination of the relationship between public policy and higher education performance we selected Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Texas, and Washington . Although it is impossible for five states to be representative of all 50 U.S. states, collectively these five states include some of the largest and most impor- The Five States 39 tant states in the nation as well as states that vary along many critical dimensions, including their current and recent records of higher education performance and the public policies in place. We used a number of criteria to select these states with the goal of including states that are not only home to large numbers of the U.S. population but also represent diversity on multiple dimensions. For instance, the selected states have high, low, improving, and declining higher education performance. The five states all are home to at least one major urban center but vary in the overall size of their populations and are located in different geographic regions. They vary in the racial/ethnic diversity in their current and projected college-­going population and include states with differing fiscal resources and constraints. The states have different political cultures, with variations in the relative constitutional powers of the governor and legislature. They also diverge in terms the characteristics of their higher education systems, with variations in the distribution of enrollments across different sectors and the characteristics of their higher education governance structures. State Higher Education Performance As in states across the nation, all five of our study states are home to at least some colleges and universities that are performing quite well. Despite the presence of excellent institutions in all U.S. states, however, most have considerable unmet educational need. Our work focuses on understanding how well a state’s higher education system is serving its residents rather than considering only individual institutional rankings or other institutional indicators of performance. We define the state system of higher education not as a formal sector or governance structure (such as the University System of Maryland) but as the collection of public and private not-­ for-­ profit and for-­ profit institutions in the state. Defining the unit of analysis as the state rather than the institution, the five states in our study exhibit a range of past and present higher education performance . Although all five of the selected states must improve the educational attainment of their populations, the degree of improvement required is greater in Georgia and Texas than in Maryland, Illinois, and Washington. In Georgia and Texas, the current educational attainment of the adult population is below the national average. Table 1 (pp. 18–19) shows that the share of adults age 25 to 64 who hold at least an associate degree ranges from a high of 44% in Maryland, 42% in Washington, and 41% in Illinois to just 36% in Georgia and 33% in Texas.1 Of even greater concern than the low overall rates of educational attainment is 40 The Attainment Agenda the fact that in several of our study states educational attainment is lower among the younger generation than among the older generation. Nationwide, similar shares of adults age 25 to 34 and adults age 45 to 64 have attained at least an associate ’s degree: 38% and 37%, respectively. But table 1 shows that a smaller share of younger (age 25 to 34) adults than of older (age 45 to 64) adults has attained at least an associate degree in Georgia (34% versus 36%), Texas (31% versus 34...

We study the competitive forces which shaped ideological diversity in the US press in the early twentieth century. We find that households preferred like-minded news and that newspapers used their political orientation to differentiate from competitors. We formulate a model of newspaper demand, entry, and political affiliation choice in which newspapers compete for both readers and advertisers. We use a combination of estimation and calibration to identify the model's parameters from novel data on newspaper circulation, costs, and revenues. The estimated model implies that competition enhances ideological diversity, that the market undersupplies diversity, and that optimal competition policy requires accounting for the two-sidedness of the news market.

Childbearing and rearing contributes to women experiencing greater working career interruptions than men, impacting future employment outcomes. I use New Jersey's 2009 mandate requiring employers to provide workers paid leave during their child's first year of life to assess how it affects subsequent employment. A spatial differencing method is carried out using American Community Survey from 2005 to 2012. The method compares difference-in-differences estimates of how the policy impacts potentially eligible women's employment in New Jersey to those same estimates for women living further away from New Jersey. A woman is deemed potentially eligible if she had a child in 2009 or later. This differencing strategy allied to the use of state by year fixed effects seeks to capture heterogeneity in local economic conditions that may bias estimated policy impacts. I find the policy increases married women's employment probability by approximately 3 percentage points in the year of potential leave take-up and this effect persists in the three subsequent years. Results are stronger for married women whose spouses are highly educated and no significant effects are found for men or single women.

The United States experienced large increases in educational attainment starting in the late nineteenth century and well into the twentieth century. Years of schooling among those in the labor force rose by about six years, from about 7.5 years in 1915 to 13.5 years in 2005 (Goldin and Katz 2008). Incomes also rose quite substantially, with real gross domestic product (GDP) per capita growing an average of 2.23 percent per year in the same period. A large amount of research has been devoted to understanding the factors that led to the rise in education, whether these increases in education led to the higher incomes we observe, or whether other factors led to the rapid increases in both (Card 2001).

Loneliness, or perceived social isolation, is associated with a range of adverse physical and emotional outcomes. In particular, feeling lonely has been linked with anxiety, anger, stress, and depressive symptoms. Although loneliness has been extensively investigated with respect to depression and social anxiety, few studies have considered the relationship between loneliness and obsessive-compulsive symptoms (OCS). Loneliness may be particularly relevant to OCS given the social stigma associated with obsessions and compulsions along with high comorbidity between OCS and depression. The overarching aim of this investigation was to examine the relationship between OCS and loneliness in a young adult sample (N = 395) recruited from a large university. Participants completed self-report measures of OCS, loneliness, depression, and social anxiety. Higher levels of OCS were associated with greater perceived loneliness, and this relationship remained significant despite controlling for depression and social anxiety. OCS had a significant association with the isolation facet of loneliness, and loneliness in turn was uniquely associated with obsessions and checking symptoms. Gender differences were examined, which indicated that females with high OCS endorsed the greatest levels of loneliness. Implications for clinical research and treatment are discussed.

The boom and bust in housing during the early twenty-Wrst century has led to renewed interest in the boom and bust in housing between 1920 and 1940. Numerous people have been clamoring for comparisons of the booms and bust in the housing markets in the two periods. In this volume Alex Field, Eugene White, and Steve Gjerstad and Vernon Smith have provided careful analyses to meet this call, based on currently available data. Accurate comparisons of housing markets require good measures of home ownership, homebuilding, and housing prices. In this chapter, we provide new estimates of home values that help to better elucidate the trajectory of prices for the critical years of 1920 to 1940.

Research on family structure and child well-being rarely includes children in same sex parent families, a notable omission since 28% of lesbian couple households contain children. Using the 2010-2013 pooled Current Population Survey, we examined children's economic well-being by family structure. These data were ideal for this study because they included a sizable number of children in same-sex cohabiting families and the CPS measured both official and supplemental poverty, incorporating the cohabiting partner. Using the official poverty measure, children in cohabiting mother families were more likely to be poor than their counterparts in either the other cohabiting (two biological parent or stepparent) or married parent families. Yet, using the supplemental poverty measure, these children were no longer worse off and did not differ from children in different-sex two parent families, indicating that partner contribution vary considerable by family structure.

The Supreme Court in Shelby County v. Holder (2013) effectively enjoined the preclearance regime of the Voting Rights Act. The Court deemed the coverage formula, which determines the jurisdictions subject to preclearance, insufficiently grounded in current conditions. This paper proposes a new, legally defensible approach to coverage based on between-state differences in the proportion of voting age citizens who subscribe to negative stereotypes about racial minorities and vote accordingly. The new coverage formula could also account for racially polarized voting and minority population size, but, for constitutional reasons, subjective discrimination by voters is the essential criterion. We demonstrate that the racial-stereotyping, polarized-voting, and population-size criteria would yield similar patterns of coverage, at least with respect to African Americans, and we show, ironically, that the new pattern of coverage would coincide with historic coverage under the "outdated" formula invalidated by Shelby County. Recently developed statistical techniques permit the new coverage formula to be further refined based on estimates of racial stereotyping within sub-state geographic units, such as cities and counties. We suggest that Congress establish default rules for coverage based on our state-level results, and delegate authority to make sub-state coverage determinations to an administrative agency (along with other responsibilities for keeping the coverage formula up to date). Finally, we show that if Congress does not act, the courts could use our results to reestablish coverage in a number of states, entering much broader "bail in" remedies for constitutional violations than would otherwise be justified.

Much research has been done on the causes of metropolitan consolidation and its rarity. However, the causes of metropolitan fragmentation are rarely considered. Without considering the reasons for fragmentation, it is difficult to make wise decisions, especially when state policies granting power to local governments cause fragmentation. This article proposes that city formation follows a niche model, much like the formation of interest groups, and that the factors governing interest group origination also affect city formation. To form, cities need residents, resources and entrepreneurs to come together such that a new city can be affordably created. It tests this theory against data from the US Census of Governments and other sources, and finds that Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) fragment differently from non-MSA counties, state grants of local power increase fragmentation, and more resources allow for more fragmentation. It concludes with a discussion of the results and how they should influence urban policy.

This paper is an analysis of highway alignments based on the census tracts that surround them. First, I perform a quantitative analysis of the tracts with highways and the percentage of non-white and African-Americans in these tracts as opposed to in the state and region in general. In areas where the T-Tests noted a significant difference, a case study approach was employed to conjecture as to the reasoning for these suspect alignments.

This paper considers two types of technological change in a unified model. Type A is unskilled-biased, and yet leads to greater income inequality. Type B increases the scale of operation for an occupation, allowing workers to cheaply produce more. This hurts the least talented workers while possibly benefitting the most talented ones. Together, these technological changes may have contributed to the continuous rise in income inequality that developed economies have witnessed in recent decades. The paper compares the theoretical results with U.S. data and finds support for the predictions.

During the first round of open enrollment under the ACA, millions of Americans learned whether they qualify for subsidized health insurance coverage through the law’s exchanges. At that time, one significant feature of the law became especially apparent: the dramatic cutoff of premium assistance for individuals who do not qualify for Medicaid in their state, but also earn too little to qualify for subsidies through the exchanges.

We implement a randomized experiment offering Salvadoran migrants matching funds for educational remittances, which are channeled directly to a beneficiary student in El Salvador chosen by the migrant. The matches lead to increased educational expenditures, higher private school attendance, and lower labor supply of youths in El Salvador households connected to migrant study participants. We find substantial crowd-in of educational investments: for each $1 received by beneficiaries, educational expenditures increase by $3.72. We find no shifting of expenditures away from other students, and no effect on remittances.