Abstract The end of the Civil War, the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, and the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution ended slavery as an institution in the US. For years slavery divided the country, North and South. With the end of slavery, it was expected that slaves, as freed men and women, would be able to improve their economic status, moving freely and pursuing jobs in which they could earn a decent living. But there were forces at work in the South that made it impossible to find decent employment, and the first Great Migration of the Black population began between 1910 and 1930. Nevertheless, Blacks began leaving the South (especially the Deep South) earlier. In this paper I follow the occupational careers of several age-cohorts of former Black slaves and free Blacks using the 1870 - 1920 census data. Results from my analysis point out that the Black population, comprising a combination of former slaves and free Black persons, experienced some upward mobility, but only if they moved north. Living in the South shortly after the Civil War and into the latter part of the 19th century did not bode well economically for the Black population.

Emigration of highly qualified professionals from Ukraine is a serious problem. Several recent surveys have provided useful information about this phenomenon, but their sample size does not allow one to analyze in detail migration to the United States. Data from US population censuses and annual American Community Surveys provides detailed information about the recent migration stream from Ukraine to the US, and allows one to analyze high level professional migrants. According to the US Bureau of the Census there were 63 thousand professionals from Ukraine with university degree in the US in 2010, with three thousands of them Ph.D.s. A significant number of these professionals are working in occupations below their level of education: 35 % Bachelors, 22 % Masters, 40 % Professionals and 12 % Ph.D.s. Persons with doctor degrees have been quite successful in obtaining jobs consistent with their level of education in universities, research institutes and high technology industries. Most of these professionals acquired their university education in Ukraine and thus can be viewed as a loss for the country. Comparisons are made between these professionals and US born Ukrainian-American professionals, as well as respective professionals in the total US population.

In this review article, I focus on the changing trends and main explanations of gender wage inequality in the United States. First, I briefly describe the most prominent trends in gender wage inequality since the end of the 1970s. I then summarize theoretical explanations of these trends at both the individual level and the structural level. At the individual level, neoclassical human capital theory highlights the sharp increase in women’s educational attainment as the reason for the narrowing trend in the gender pay gap, while using the gender differences in educational and work experience to explain the persistence of this gap. An emerging debate about the human capital explanation is whether the observed gender disparities in educational and work experiences are the result of individuals’ personal choices or the consequences of social construction. I subsequently numerate three main sociological theories—gendered socialization, statistical discrimination, and social capital—to show how social values, conventions, and systems shape individuals’ “free” choices. At the structural level, I emphasize the fundamental shift in the industrial structure and employment arrangements driven by the skill-biased technology change (SBTC) and globalization. I conclude this article by summarizing both the positive and the worrisome trends in gender wage inequality, and by outlining policy implications for achieving gender equity in the future development of the U.S. labor market.

In the American South, post-bellum economic development may have been restricted in part by white landowners' access to low-wage black labor. This paper examines the impact of the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 on black out-migration and subsequent agricultural development. Flooded counties experienced an immediate and persistent out-migration of black population. Over time, landowners in flooded counties modernized agricultural production and increased its capital intensity relative to landowners in nearby similar non-flooded counties. Landowners resisted black out-migration, however, benefiting from the status quo system of labor-intensive agricultural production. 

Suffering is multifaceted and encompasses pain, depression, anxiety, grief, existential suffering, and social suffering. These types of suffering were operationalized in the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) of non-institutionalized adults in the USA. Over 6,000 were interviewed in 2010 on pain-related topics. Estimates were derived for 14 types of suffering, many of which tend to occur together. About 52 million people, or one in four of Americans 18 or older, reported having a recent, significant case of pain, depression, or anxiety. Even if we limit our count of the suffering to extreme sufferingthose who describe their experience with pain to be excruciating and unbearable or their depression so bad that they sometimes cannot get out of bed, we find that 13 % Americans (25 million adults) struggle nearly every day. Most types of suffering, except existential suffering, are more common among women, those over age 55, and those with a relative low income. One of the important findings was that suffering plays a greater role in predicting quality of life (QOL) than does health, income, and social support. Finding so much suffering in a contemporary, affluent society raises the possibility that affluence itself through lifestyles and beliefs produces suffering not typically found in poverty stricken nations.

In this paper, we examine the evolution of prices, wages, employment and output across U.S. states during the Great Recession. To do so, we use over 76 billion price observations from the Nielsen Retail Scanner Database between 2006 and 2011 to construct state specific price indices. We document that local retail prices, controlling for good and store fixed effects, varies with local economic conditions. In particular, we find that a one percentage point increase in the unemployment rate between 2007 and 2010 was associated with a 0.4 percentage point lower price growth during the same period. Nominal wages also responded differentially across U.S. states during the 2007-2010 period. A 1 percentage point increase in the unemployment rate was associated with a 1.2 percentage point lower nominal wage growth during the same period. However, we conclude that failure to account for the differential local inflation rates leads one to overstate the variation in real wage growth across U.S. states during the recession. We conclude by constructing a multi-region New Keynesian model with both price and wage rigidity. Using the regional variations in prices and wages, we estimate the relative importance of price and wage stickiness as a nominal rigidity in explaining the regional differences in employment.

Between 1930 and 2010 the share of single-person, or solo, households in the US increased from 6 per cent to almost 28 per cent, whereas the share of married-couple households decreased from 79 per cent to 49 per cent. Yet solo households have received little attention in urban planning and transport research. Given the significant increase of solo households in US cities, this study identifies the distinctive dwelling, moving and travel characteristics of the American solo households, and examines the reasons for their attraction to cities. It uses historical data from census Public Use Microdata Samples and recent national data from the American Housing Survey and the National Household Travel Survey. Descriptive statistics, basic statistical tests, binary logit models and Heckman sample selection models are used to examine various relationships. Some of the transport-related and environmental implications of the findings are discussed.

The stigma associated with long-term unemployment spells could create large inefficiencies in labor markets. While the existing literature points toward large stigma effects, it has proven difficult to estimate causal relationships. Using data from a field experiment, we find that long-term unemployment spells in the past do not matter for employers hiring decisions, suggesting that subsequent work experience eliminates this negative signal. Nor do employers treat contemporary short-term unemployment spells differently, suggesting that they understand that worker/firm matching takes time. However, employers attach a negative value to contemporary unemployment spells lasting at least nine months,providing evidence of stigmaeffects.

Background:Kin effects can be difficult to distinguish from those of spatial proximity, since kin tend to live close to each other. Thus, past research showing correlations between the wealth of relatives may be showing the effects of proximity and shared locations, not the effects of kin.Objective:What are the effects of kin and of spatial proximity upon wealth? This is studies both for fathers and sons and for brothers.Methods:Data comes from a genealogical sample that has been linked to the US census of 1860. the genealogies allow us to identify fathers, sons, and brothers, information that is not available from the census itself. A Bayesian hierarchical approach can model family and spatial effects at the same time, thereby distinguishing them from each other.Results:Data on fathers and sons is difficult to interpret from a single time. Many of the fathers in the census had died, so the sample size was small. A man's wealth was positively associated with his brothers' average wealth, even after their father had died. Therefore, there was evidence for lasting family effects; however, proximity to the other brothers was not related to an individual's wealth.

Glaeser E. L., Ponzetto G. A. M. and Tobio K. Cities, skills and regional change, Regional Studies. One approach to urban areas emphasizes the existence of certain immutable relationships, such as Zipf's or Gibrat's law. An alternative view is that urban change reflects individual responses to changing tastes or technologies. This paper examines almost 200 years of regional change in the United States and finds that few, if any, growth relationships remain constant, including Gibrat's law. Education does a reasonable job of explaining urban resilience in recent decades, but it does not seem to predict county growth a century ago. After reviewing this evidence, a simple model of regional change is presented and estimated, where education increases the level of entrepreneurship. Human capital spillovers occur at the city level because skilled workers produce more product varieties and thereby increase labour demand. It is found that skills are associated with growth in productivity or ...

The history of population growth in the United States has been largely tied to immigration. Current high levels of immigration combined with a slower growing U.S.-born population is changing our demography, and transforming the racial, ethnic, linguistic, religious, age, and skills composition of many places across the country. While the more than 42 million foreign-born U.S. residents comprise 13 percent of the population, these shares differ widely across metropolitan areas.

In the next 10 years, there is likely to be a tight labor market, largely due to the ongoing retirement of baby boomers. This paper focuses on the details of occupations, industries, and regions in which there will be the highest risk of labor shortages in the United States. Twelve determinants of labor shortages were investigated to compile indices of labor shortage risk. These indices are presented and discussed for those occupations and industries that face the highest risks of labor shortages.

PURPOSE: Wide geographic variations in cardiac rehabilitation (CR) participation in the United States have been demonstrated but are not well understood. Socioeconomic factors such as educational attainment are robust predictors of many health-related behaviors, including smoking, obesity, physical activity, substance abuse, and cardiovascular disease. We investigated potential associations between state-level differences in educational attainment, other socioeconomic factors, CR program availability, and variations in CR participation.METHODS: A retrospective database analysis was conducted using data from the US Census Bureau, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the 1997 Medicare database. The outcome of interest was CR participation rates by state, and predictors included state-level high school (HS) graduation rates (in 2001 and 1970), median household income, smoking rates, density of CR program (programs per square mile and per state population), sex and race ratios, and median age.RESULTS: The relationship between HS graduation rates and CR participation by state was significant for both 2001 and 1970 (r = 0.64 and 0.44, respectively, P < .01). Adding the density of CR programs (per population) and income contributed significantly with a cumulative r value of 0.74 and 0.71 for the models using 2001 and 1970, respectively (Ps < .01). The amount of variance accounted for by each of the 3 variables differed between the 2000 and 1970 graduation rates, but both models were unaltered by including additional variables.CONCLUSIONS: State-level HS graduation rates, CR programs expressed as programs per population, and median income were strongly associated with geographic variations in CR participation rates.

By integrating insights from economic and sociological theories, this article investigates whether and through which mechanisms friends' fertility behavior affects an individual's transition to parenthood. By exploiting the survey design of the Add Health data, our strategy allows us to properly identify interaction effects and distinguish them from selection and contextual effects. We use a series of discrete-time event history models with random effects at the dyadic level. Results show that, net of confounding effects, a friend's childbearing increases an individual's risk of becoming a parent. We find a short-term, curvilinear effect: an individual's risk of childbearing starts increasing after a friend's childbearing, reaches its peak approximately two years later, and then decreases.

Problem, research strategy, and findings: We evaluate the role of transportation in improving the employment outcomes of participants in the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) for Fair Housing Voucher Program, a 10-year demonstration project designed to enable low-income families to improve their outcomes by moving out of high-poverty neighborhoods. We use longitudinal data from the MTO program to assess the role of transportation-automobiles and improved access to public transit-in moving to, and maintaining, employment. We use multinomial logistic regression to predict changes in employment status as a function of change in automobile availability and transit accessibility, controlling for other potential determinants of employment. We find that keeping or gaining access to an automobile is positively related to the likelihood of employment. Improved access to public transit is positively associated with maintaining employment, but not with job gains. Although we cannot say for certain whether car ownership preceded or followed employment, it is clear that having a car provides multiple benefits that facilitate getting and keeping a job. Takeaway for practice: Policies to increase automobile access among low-income households-even in dense urban areas-will most clearly enhance job gain and job retention. While auto programs are unpopular with many planners, they would improve the lives of low-income families who currently have the least access to cars. In addition, supporting moves to transit-rich neighborhoods may help households maintain consistent employment.

This paper inverts the dominant perspective of the consumer in academic work on ethnic food by inserting the habits, memories, work and dreams of immigrant entrepreneurs in an examination of taste in an American city. Although such a perspective has been ignored in most theoretical discussions, taste has for long been co-produced by immigrants and natives in American cities. Taste is transactional in a number of ways, minimally between producers, consumers, and commentators, but also between domains of value- economic, aesthetic, and ethical- denoted by the locution "tasteless."

This dissertation consists of three essays on the effect of changes in family law in the United States since the divorce revolution in the 1970s on household outcomes.

Barbados was one of the most concentrated settings for wealth production in the early Atlantic world, but research is lacking on visualization of patterns of wealth on this sugar island during the colonial era. Colonial maps of Barbados provide information on over 800 sugar plantations through remarkably detailed symbolization. These maps were digitized and georeferenced to modern elevation data, and a database of a dozen variables was constructed from each map's symbology, including size, location, and elevation of plantations, number and type of sugar mills, and their distance from roads and towns. Parish boundaries help situate census records of landowners, servants, and slaves. These data layers reveal patterns of wealth on the island. The project seeks to contextualize these patterns within the broader economic geography of the colonial Caribbean sugar industry as well as address issues of symbolization for historical data and the accuracy of locational information in historical cartography.

Fertility research has traditionally assumed male fertility behavior was constant, overlooking the role of male economic factors, due largely to data restrictions. I use three models to analyze separate perspectives of data from the 2011 - 2013 Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC) of the Current Population Survey (CPS) to determine whether male circumstances have a statistically significant effect on fertility behavior. This paper shows that the assumption that male fertility behavior is constant is invalid. Just like women, men prefer childbearing at certain life stages and will delay to maximize their own utility. Student enrollment has a particularly strong affect on delayed fertility. As such, policy measures that help society adapt to qualification inflation and other issues are important for continued near-replacement fertility in United States.