This study analyzes US immigrants returns to education that was obtained in the home country. Linear estimates of these returns are strongly biased by the nonlinearity of actual returns, and by migrant selection. Higher migration costs imply selection of more educated migrants, and thus due to returns being convex higher linear estimates. New non-biased estimates of returns to college are significantly correlated with indicators of education quality in the home country. Yet returns to secondary education are not. Inference regarding the importance of education quality for low income levels in many countries is therefore not supported.

The “New Great Migration” of blacks to the South was and continues to be one of the most important demographic shifts in recent U.S. history, and refers to a black net-migration reversal in the South from negative to positive in the 1970s for the first time since before the Great Migration of blacks out of the region in the early and middle parts of the twentieth century. While prior research has told the story of the New Great Migration with respect to the size- dimension of migration flows to the South, in this paper, we take a different approach and apply a temporal lens to consider whether more migration to the South resulted in more permanent migration with respect to the amount of time that blacks could ultimately be expected to live in the region. Motivated by conceptual and substantive debates on the inherently temporal nature of migration, we summarize the temporal dynamics and stability of black migration to the South by exploiting age patterns of region-to-region migration within and across four censuses from 1970 to 2000. We document a pronounced increase in the amount of time that blacks could be expected to live in the South beginning in the 1980s, one decade after the heralded turn-around of black net-migration, due to heightened in-migration at younger ages marking entry into the labor force. This increase was particularly pronounced for persons born in the South, a finding consistent with previous research on the importance of ties to “home” during the New Great Migration.

Poverty rates are particularly high among households headed by single women, and childbirth is often the event preceding these households' poverty spells. This paper examines the relationship between legal access to the birth control pill and female poverty. We rely on exogenous cross-state variation in the year in which oral contraception became legally available to young, single women. Using census data from 1960 to 1990, we find that having legal access to the birth control pill by age 20 significantly reduces the probability that a woman is subsequently in poverty. We estimate that early legal access to oral contraception reduces female poverty by 0.5 percentage points, even when controlling for completed education, employment status, and household composition.

This article presents a new structural framework for estimating the impact of the last decades of immigration on the structure of wages in the US. The arguments of the proposed partial equilibrium model are skills instead of workers. From this simple difference follows several important theoretical advantages over models used previously. Empirically the proposed model outperforms previous models in explaining developments in the US wage structure over the last 50 years, and the results are more in line with theoretical expectations. In contrast to what is found in previous studies, the simulated aggregate impact of immigration is very small for all workers, including for high school dropouts. This aggregate result masks important variation by immigrant origin though, where Latin American immigration has contributed to increasing earnings dispersion among native workers and all other immigration to decreasing it.

This paper examines the effects of foreign- and native-born STEM graduates and non-STEM graduates on patent intensity in U.S. metropolitan areas. I find that both native and foreign-born STEM graduates significantly increase metropolitan area patent intensity, but college graduates in non-STEM fields have a smaller and statistically insignificant effect on patenting. These findings hold for both cross-sectional OLS and 2SLS regressions. I also use time-differences 2SLS regressions to estimate the effects of STEM-driven increases in native and foreign college graduate shares and again find that both native and foreign STEM graduates have a statistically significant and economically large effects on innovation. Together these results suggest that policies that increase the stocks of both foreign and native STEM graduates increase innovation and provide considerable economic benefits to regions and nations.

A top-k query shortlists the k records in a dataset that best match the user's preferences. To indicate her preferences, the user typically determines a numeric weight for data dimension (i.e., attribute). We refer to these weights collectively as the query vector. Based on this vector, each data record is implicitly mapped to a score value (via a weighted sum function). The records with the k largest scores are reported as the result. In this paper we propose an auxiliary feature to standard top-k query processing. Specifically, we compute the maximal locus within which the query vector incurs no change in the current top-k results. In other words, we compute all possible query weight settings that produce exactly the same top-k result as the user's original query. We call this locus the global immutable region (GIR). The GIR can be used as a guide to query vector readjustments, as a sensitivity measure for the top-k result, as well as to enable effective result caching. We develop efficient algorithms for GIR computation, and verify their robustness using a variety of real and synthetic datasets.

Politicians, the media, and the public express concern that immigrants depress wages by competing with native workers, but 30 years of empirical research provide little supporting evidence to this claim. Most studies for industrialized countries have found no effect on wages, on average, and only modest effects on wage differentials between more and less educated immigrant and native workers. Native workers’ wages have been insulated by differences in skills, adjustments in local demand and technology, production expansion, and specialization of native workers as immigration rises.

In a time when graduation rates are showing notable improvement among students of color and students with disabilities, there are still great challenges that remain. The National Dropout Prevention Center for Students with Disabilities has published a monograph that explores the problem of high school dropout rates among American Indian, African American, and Latino males with disabilities. Its purpose is to provide an in-depth look into the specific obstacles that impede this young population from graduating, while offering direction and articulating crucial changes that must be made to better serve these students. [Following the Introduction, this monograph is divided into three reports: (1) "Factors Impacting the Graduation and Dropout Rates of American Indian Males with Disabilities" (Susan C. Faircloth); (2) Decreasing the Dropout Rates for African American Male Youth with Disabilities" (Ivory A. Toldson); and (3) "Latino Males with Disabilities and School Dropout" (Robert Lucio). This report was edited by Mary Grady and Loujeania Williams Bost.]

This paper exploits variation in the mandated insurance coverage of assisted reproductive technology (ART) across US states and over time to examine the connection between increased access to ART and female marriage timing. Since ART increases the probability of pregnancy for older women of reproductive age, greater access to ART will make marriage delay less costly for younger single women of reproductive age. Linear probability models are estimated to investigate the effects of ART state insurance mandates on changes in marital status of women in different age groups using the 19772010 Current Population Survey. Results show that greater access to ART is associated with marital delay for white (but not for black) women: white women in states with an ART insurance mandate are significantly less likely to marry between the 2024, 2529, and 3034 age ranges, but significantly more likely to marry between the 3034 and 3539 age ranges.

N kpuna, Native Hawaiian elders, are recognized as major sources of wisdom and knowledge in the Native Hawaiian community. Yet, due to many factors, including Western acculturation and historical trauma, n kpuna suffer serious health and social disparities. Although over 36%of n kpuna reside outside of Hawaii, almost no data areavailable on their well-being. Kpuna, caretakers, and key informants in Hawaii and Los Angeles were interviewed, and the Census 2000 and 2010 Public Use Microdata Samples were analyzed to determine the particular challenges facing kpuna outside of Hawaii. Kpuna in the continental United States had a better socioeconomic status than those in Hawaii, but they had much less access to cultural activities and less family support. Several communities in the continental US have formed cultural and civic groups to provide this support.

This paper examines the effect of expanding transportation networks on changes in industry location within the United States. I use the construction of the Interstate Highway System, from 1962 to 1996, to measure how improvements in transportation infrastructure and market access alter industry concentration. To address the endogenous placement of highways, the paper instruments for eventual highway location using a military map of high priority routes designed after the First World War. To address the endogeneity surrounding the timing of highway construction, , I use a network theory algorithm to predict when each segment of the highway network should have been constructed. The algorithm ranks predicted highway segments based on their importance for network connectivity and uses a simple social planners problem to determine the order of predicted segment construction. Results indicate that counties that received interstate highways experience more overall employment growth than non-highway counties and the magnitude of this growth varies by industry. Employment in high way counties is also much more concentrated and this concentration is being captured in both more establishments and larger establishment sizes.

Previous research suggests that the local stock of human capital creates positive externalities within local labor markets and plays an important role in regional economic development. However, there is still considerable uncertainty over what types of human capital are most important. Both national and local policymakers in the U.S. have called for efforts to increase the stock of college graduates in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, but data availability has thus far prevented researchers from directly connecting STEM education to human capital externalities. This paper uses the 2009-2011 American Community Survey to examine the external effects of college graduates in STEM and non-STEM fields on the wages of other workers in the same metropolitan area. I find that both types of college graduates create positive wage externalities, but STEM graduates create much larger externalities.

Although theories of group threat and racialized social systems can help explain labor market outcomes across racial and ethnic groups, they fail to account for gender differences in labor market outcomes. Intersectionality, the dominant feminist framework, suggests that identities such as race, ethnicity, and gender interlock to create a system of “multiplicative” disadvantage for minority women in the workplace. Additionally, contemporary changes in the labor force have witnessed increasing numbers of immigrant women entering the workplace – thus adding new challenges to the multiplicative disadvantages for some women. This study explores the changing pattern of Intersectionality barriers on labor market outcomes for women in the United States, focusing on the differences between subgroups of Latina workers and Black women. Using Current Population Survey (CPS) 1% sample data from Integrated Public Use Micro Data (IPUMS) I examine women’s racial and ethnic variation in professional and STEM fields from 2001 to 2011, and explore associated wage and salary income changes while offering two complimentary sociological theories within an intersectional framework that may be useful in racial and ethnic variation in labor market outcomes in the U.S. Bonilla-Silva’s Tri-Racialization Theory suggests that lighter skinned, more assimilated people of color act as a buffer group in the social hierarchy cementing a place t the bottom for darker skinned, less assimilated People of Color. Alba’s Non-Zero Sum Mobility Theory suggests that in strong economic periods the dominant social group will feel less threat and all groups, both White and People of Color will experience upward mobility. The results of my study suggest that while Black women have higher odds of being in STEM/STEM skilled fields than white women, they do not see the same returns to labor. Of the Latinas in my study, Mexican women had the lowest odds of being in STEM/STEM skilled fields compared to White women, and the lowest returns to labor compared to their White counter parts. While foreign born women as a whole had higher odds of being in STEM/STEM skilled fields than U.S born women, Puerto Rican women had lower odds of being in STEM/STEM skilled fields than native born women. Similarly, with the exception of the most assimilated women, as assimilation increased, so did odds of being in STEM/STEM skilled fields compared to U.S. born women. My findings suggest that undeniably, variations in race and ethnicity are associated with variations in labor market outcomes, though race and ethnicity race and ethnicity do not stand alone as explanatory variables in women’s labor market outcomes. Indeed, nativity and assimilation are also associated with labor market outcomes.

This paper revisits the income maximization hypothesis on immigrant self- selection. The traditional Roy model predicts that negative selection would arise when income distribution in the source country becomes more unequal relative to the destination country. However, the previous literature provides mixed evidence. Using data from the World Bank and U.S. Census between 2000 and 2010, we estimate a new specification that controls for country-specific fixed effects and unobserved global trends in immigration. The estimation results show that there exists no statistically significant relationship between immigrant skill composition and source-country income inequality, indicating that cross-sectional analysis suffers from omitted variable biases.

In 1934 the US government passed significant legislation governing American Indian reservations, the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA). Adoption of the IRA was voluntary and tribes declining the IRA faced less federal oversight. This paper measures the impact of IRA adoption on current reservation development. To mitigate selection concerns, I exploit IRA voting results from the mid-1930s by restricting my analysis to tribes that held close elections. Empirical results using 1990 reservation-level census data indicate that IRA adoption stifled economic development. Per capita income is over 40 percent lower among IRA reservations. Educational differences and a disparity in racial integration explain a large fraction of the income differential. Legislation in the late 1980s reduced federal oversight; as a result these income differences diminish marginally by 2010. The results are robust to demographic, geographic, and resource endowment controls. These results indicate increased self-governance is necessary for development on Indian reservations.

Housing price dynamics is an important topic in urban economics. Housing plays a crucial role in households location choice and leads to the sorting of households by skills. As one of the most important consumption markets in the U.S., the performance of the housing market is closely related to the overall economy. Given these considerations, it is important to examine the housing price dynamics and their effects theoretically and empirically. Essay one focuses on the role of housing prices and wages in allocating people to locations with different levels of amenities. Different from the traditional Rosen (1979) and Roback (1982) model, we make a more realistic assumption of differential ability across households. Using a spatial equilibrium model where households are sorted by ability, we find that the standard quality of life estimates are significantly biased with unobserved heterogeneity. Essay two investigates across metropolitan housing price dynamics. Specifically, we examine the effect of amenities on rents, housing prices, and price-to-rent ratio over time in response to an income shock using a dynamic general equilibrium model. Although households marginal utility from increases in amenity levels goes up as productivity rises, the increasing returns to productivity with ability make amenities less important in the bidding process. Essay three studies non-price spillover effects of foreclosure during the crisis, which is potentially due to the information or norms that are created by exposure to foreclosure of housing units at the neighborhood level. I find no evidence of spillover effects of foreclosure after controlling for effects that operate through housing price dynamics and systematic patterns of trends in foreclosure at the neighborhood level.