This paper explores the level of community food insecurity in Clay and Poinsett Counties in the Mississippi Delta region of Northeast Arkansas. A team of graduate students from the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service partnered with the East Arkansas Planning & Development District to research this topic. The study investigated the important contributing factors and significant barriers to healthy food choices. The USDA Community Food Security Assessment Toolkit provided a template for the parameters and research methods of this study. Methods used include secondary data research and analysis, focus groups, household food security surveys, and food store surveys. Results include data for the following assessment categories: community socioeconomic and demographic characteristics; community food resources; household food security; food resource accessibility; food availability and affordability; and community food production resources. Preliminary findings indicate that Clay and Poinsett Counties have multiple high risk factors for high levels of community food insecurity.

Since the 1970s, firm-internal opportunities for advancement have waned, and more employees have switched employers to build their career. The author compares the effect of staying and leaving one's employer and how each career avenue reproduces or alleviates race-based earnings inequality. Using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics 1976-2009, the author finds that racial differences among women are unaffected by external mobility. Among men, the effect of switching depends on education: Since the 1970s, the Black-White gap first widened and then narrowed among male high school graduates. In contrast, the race gap first narrowed and then widened among male college graduates.

We build on recent developments in social organization theory to examine the sexual partnering of Mexican men in a new area of immigrant destination. We elaborate on two levels of contextual influence: (1) how differences in social capital between sending and receiving communities affect partner formation and (2) how neighborhood social cohesion influences immigrants' behavior. Data come from an original survey conducted in Durham, North Carolina, and migrant sending communities in Mexico. We show dramatic differences in sexual partnering between Mexico and the United States, which are directly linked to lack of social networks and familial support. Neighborhood-level social cohesion in part counteracts those effects. The role of social capital and neighborhoods, however, is highly gendered. The presence of women is a critical dimension of the social organization of immigrant communities and its effect extends beyond mere partner availability.

We document for nine countries ranging from rich (Canada, U.S.) to poor (India, Indonesia) that average wages are higher in non agriculture than in agriculture. We measure sectoral human capital and find that it accounts for the entire wage gap in the U.S. and most of the wage gaps elsewhere. We develop a multi sector model that explains these findings if: (i) Mincer returns to schooling are equal in both sectors; (ii) more able workers sort into non agriculture; (iii) distortions to the allocation of labor between sectors are negligible in the U.S. and small elsewhere.

The TRA project is a unique research approach based on the nationwide collection of historical individual-level data on the personal, occupational and economic situation of people having married or died between the early nineteenth century and the mid-twentieth century. Coinciding with the release of the first part of the data produced by the project, this article looks at the project’s founding principles and sources before going on to assess its geographical and temporal representativeness. Taking as an example the trend in the proportion of individuals leaving no wealth behind when they die, as established using the database, a tool such as this provides an interesting basis for writing an economic history that is both micro- and macro-social. Our analysis then shows how the approach adopted for the TRA project can be extended to any new individual-level data. This is the very principle and purpose of the TRA project, which, far from being closed, is a matrix for studying the transformations that have affected French society and many other societies over the last two centuries.

Objective: To provide state-level estimates of obesity-attributable costs of absenteeism among working adults in the United States. Methods: Nationally representative data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey for 1998 to 2008 and from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System for 2012 are examined. The outcome is obesity-attributable workdays missed in the previous year because of health and their costs to states. Results: Obesity, but not overweight, is associated with a significant increase inworkdays absent, from 1.1 to 1.7 extra days missed annually compared with normal-weight employees. Obesity-attributable absenteeism among American workers costs the nation an estimated $8.65 billion per year. Conclusions: Obesity imposes a considerable financial burden on states, accounting for 6.5% to 12.6% of total absenteeism costs in the workplace. State legislatures and employers should seek effective ways to reduce these costs.

The aim of this paper is twofold: a) To explore the evolution of occupational segregation of women and men of different racial/ethnic groups in the U.S. during the period 1940-2010; and b) to assess the consequences of segregation for each of them. For that purpose, this paper proposes a simple index that measures the monetary loss or gain of a group derived from its overrepresentation in some occupations and underrepresentation in others. This index has a clear economic interpretation. It represents the per capita advantage (if the index is positive) or disadvantage (if the index is negative) of the group, derived from its segregation, as a proportion of the average wage of the economy. Our index seems a helpful tool not only for academics but also for institutions concerned with inequalities related to gender, race, ethnicity, and migration status, among others, since it makes it possible to rank different groups in an economy or a target group across time according to its segregation nature.

When the economy declines, racial minorities are hit the hardest. Although existing explanations for this effect focus on institutional causes, recent psychological findings suggest that scarcity may also alter perceptions of race in ways that exacerbate discrimination. We tested the hypothesis that economic resource scarcity causes decision makers to perceive African Americans as Blacker and that this visual distortion elicits disparities in the allocation of resources. Studies 1 and 2 demonstrated that scarcity altered perceptions of race, lowering subjects psychophysical threshold for seeing a mixed-race face as Black as opposed to White. In studies 3 and 4, scarcity led subjects to visualize African American faces as darker and more stereotypically Black, compared with a control condition. When presented to nave subjects, face representations produced under scarcity elicited smaller allocations than control-condition representations. Together, these findings introduce a novel perceptual account for the proliferation of racial disparities under economic scarcity.

Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in the United States, which predominately occurs in the manufacturing sector, remains critically important for a strong regional and local economy, due to the resulting increase in employment, wages, and tax revenue. Traditionally, local economic development strategies have focused on attracting external manufacturing plants or facilities as the primary route to economic growth, through the expansion of the tax base and/or an increase in employment. In comparison, Sustainable Local Economic Development (SLED) emphasizes the establishment of a minimum standard of living for all and an increase in this standard over time; a reduction in the steady growth in inequality among people; a reduction in spatial inequality; and the promotion and encouragement of sustainable resource use and production (Blakely & Leigh, 2010). These essential SLED principles motivate this study, which will seek to develop a better understanding of whether and how FDI contributes to SLED in terms of its spatial patterns and its impact on middle class earnings. By selecting Georgia as a case study area, this research specifically examines whether and how the location of manufacturing FDI has reduced (or increased) spatial inequality at the intra-state and intra-metropolitan levels. It also identifies whether and how manufacturing FDI has reduced (or increased) inequality among people, focusing on its impact on middle class earnings. This study finds a strong spatial concentration of manufacturing FDI employment in metropolitan areas, particularly in a large metropolitan area, at the intra-state spatial pattern analysis. The results of panel regression analysis suggest that presence of agglomeration economies in metropolitan areas has positively influenced the location of manufacturing FDI jobs. The study also finds a suburbanization pattern of manufacturing FDI employment in the intra-metropolitan spatial pattern analysis. This intra- metropolitan suburbanization of FDI in manufacturing jobs is associated with loss of urban industrial land in the central areas within a large metropolitan area. These uneven distribution patterns of manufacturing FDI jobs indicate increased spatial inequality at both intra-state and intra-metropolitan levels, but the implications of this finding are mixed. Using individual earnings data from the American Community Survey Public Use Microdata Sample files, this study also conducts a quantile regression to estimate the earnings distribution effects that a concentration of manufacturing FDI may have on different earnings groups. The findings both from place-of-work and place-of-residence earnings analysis suggest that manufacturing FDI generally has reduced inequality among people. The concentration of manufacturing FDI in a certain area show the largest distribution effects on area workers in the lower earnings group and residents in the middle earnings group.

Research literature were reviewed regarding the land-use economic theory of bid- rent curves and the modern emergence of polycentric cities. Two independent Geographic Information System (GIS) analyses were completed to test the hypothesis that bid-rent methodology could be used to tease out trends in residential locations, and hence contribute to present-day urban planning efforts. Specifically, these analyses sought to address the relationships between place of work and place of residence in urban areas. A generalizable set of benchmarks for identifying urban employment centers were established for 10 study cities in the United States, and bid-rent curves were calculated under separate monocentric assumptions and polycentric assumptions. The results presented wide variations in real bid-rent curves that a) overall deviated dramatically from the hypothetical distribution of rent, and b) spoke to the unique residential patterns in individual U.S. cities. The implications of these variations were discussed with regard to equitable housing for marginalized groups and access to centers of employment.

This paper proposes an index that quantifies the well-being (ill-being) of a target group associated with its occupational segregation: that is, this index assesses the gains/losses of that group which are derived from its underrepresentation in some occupations and overrepresentation in others. This index has several good properties. In particular, it is equal to zero when either the group has no segregation or all occupations have the same wage, and increases when individuals of the group move into occupations that have higher wages than those left behind. This well-being measure permits to rank different demographic groups using distributive value judgments that are in the line of those conducted in the literature on economic inequality.

Purpose: To compare pay gap estimates across 3 different national survey data sets for people with disabilities relative to those without disabilities when pay is measured as wage and salary alone versus a (total compensation) definition that includes an estimate of the value of benefits. Method: Estimates of the cost to the employers of employee benefits at the occupational level from an employer survey data set are matched to individual-level data in each of the 3 data sets. Multiple regression techniques are applied to estimate wage and salary and total compensation gaps between full-time men with and without disabilities. Results: For full-time working men with disabilities (relative to those without disabilities), there is a consistently larger percentage wage and salary gap than percentage total compensation gap and breadth of the definition of pay affects the size of any estimated pay gap. In addition, there are differences in the estimated pay gaps depending on data source and disability measure. Conclusions: Results obtained from a single data set or definition of key variables may not be broadly generalizable. Studies containing such limitations should be interpreted cautiously. Our research further suggests employers looking to hire persons with disabilities or those offering employment placement services should put substantial weight on the nonbase pay component of the total compensation package.

We examine how the distribution of party ideological positions affects legislatures capacity to produce compromise legislation in particular, one of the United States most significant bipartisan social policy compromises, the Earned Income Tax Credit. We depart from the current literature by arguing that it is not partisan polarization that is responsible for causing stalemate on this issue. Rather, the asymmetry in party ideologies matters more than the ideological distance between the parties in explaining the success of this traditionally bipartisan proposal. Our results have important implications for the study of party ideology and social policy development, and suggest that ideological asymmetry needs to be considered as an important factor in legislative gridlock.

The children of Mexican immigrants face formidable barriers to achieving socioeconomic mobility due to their parents' precarious economic position and high rates of unauthorized status. In the short term, Mexican immigrants often coreside in extended household living arrangements with extended kin and unrelated friends and associates to shelter themselves from economic deprivation and insecurity of unauthorized status. Using individual-level Census data, the present study examines how family economic resources relate to household living arrangements. The results are consistent with various theories of immigrant household formation, especially those that explain household structure in terms of economic need and processes of immigration. Families residing in extended arrangements are unique, however, in terms of how often they include a householder and how much they contribute to total household resources, indicators that families may hold more supportive roles within extended households. The implications of the findings for the well-being of immigration children are discussed.

The average BMI is rising even as the U.S. population grows increasingly diverse. Prior research by examining BMI trends in diverse groups including whites, blacks, Chinese, Filipinos, Asian Indians, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and Cubans who are U.S. born, recent immigrants, or long-term immigrants was extended.

Lincoln, as a metro city in Nebraska, shows signs of segregation phenomena as well as other metro cities in Midwest. The analysis tool used for this study is Geographic Information System (GIS) spatial analysis. This tool enables us to examine the segregation culstering in Lincoln by using Weighted Overlay Spatial Analysis. Multivariable that will use to overlay are including segregation variables (economic segregation, social segregation, education segregation) and housing quality variables (median housing value and year structure built).

Often, research strategies are guided by principles developed based on mainstream U.S. cultural norms. Immigrants,however, may differ in their cultural backgrounds and previous exposure to research. Commonly adopted research procedures, such as the informed consent process, may be culturally inappropriate for research with culturally diverse populations, and hence require cultural adaptations. Based on two qualitative studies, this paper describes the methodological issues encountered in the field when working with Chinese and Kenyan immigrants, and explains how these issues were resolved. Comparing and synthesizing experiences from the two studies, recommendations for methodological adaptations when working with immigrant populations are provided. Specifically, suggestions on how to prepare the research protocol, recruit participants, obtain informed consent, deal with unanticipated incidents during the research process, and choose the interview language(s) are discussed in depth.

Mathematics and science course graduation requirement (CGR) increases in the 1980s and 1990s might have had both intended and unintended consequences. Using logistic regression with Census and American Community Survey (ACS) data (n = 2,892,444), we modeled CGR exposure on (a) high school dropout, (b) beginning college, and (c) obtaining any college degree. Possible between-groups differences were also assessed. We found that higher CGRs were associated with higher odds to drop out of high school, but results for the college-level outcomes varied by group. Some were less likely to enroll, whereas others who began college were more likely to obtain a degree. Increased high school dropout was consistent across the population, but some potential benefit was also observed, primarily for those reporting Hispanic ethnicity.