Chapter one examines the long-term impact of the state prohibitions of alcohol in the United States. Between 1851 and 1920, thirty-four states enacted statewide prohibitions of alcohol at different times. Making use of the variation in state prohibition as a natural experiment, the adult labor market and educational outcomes of cohorts exposed to state prohibition during the critical early development period is examined. Female cohorts exposed to alcohol-reduced environments during the critical interval from the prenatal period and up to three years of age are shown to have increased labor force participation and increased income in 1960. The results are mainly driven by exposure in the prenatal . . .

Non-employment risk is a large portion of life-time income risk and the level of exposure is tied to occupation. As governments can affect the level of risk individual’s bear, we analyze social insurance (SI) in a general equilibrium model of occupational choice. SI provides welfare gains through two channels: (i) risk sharing, and (ii) reallocating labor into risky occupations. Reallocation improves productive efficiency and increases all workers’ welfare, even those without non-employment risk. However, the risk sharing channel can compromise efficiency gains. In a calibrated economy resembling the US, welfare gains from socially optimal SI are reduced by reallocation: the risk sharing provided leads to more labor in risky occupations than is productively efficient.

Research suggests that immigrants from the English-speaking Caribbean surpass the earnings of U.S.-born blacks approximately one decade after arriving in the United States. Using data from the 19802000 U.S. censuses and the 20052007 American Community Surveys on U.S.-born black and non-Hispanic white men as well as black immigrant men from all the major sending regions of the world, I evaluate whether selective migration and language heritage of immigrants birth countries account for the documented earnings crossover. I validate the earnings pattern of black immigrants documented in previous studies, but I also find that the earnings of most arrival cohorts of immigrants from the English-speaking Caribbean, after residing in the United States for more than 20 years, are projected to converge with or slightly overtake those of U.S.-born black internal migrants. The findings also show three arrival cohorts of black immigrants from English-speaking African countries are projected to surpass the earnings of U.S.-born black internal migrants. No arrival cohort of black immigrants is projected to surpass the earnings of U.S.-born non-Hispanic whites. Birth-region analysis shows that black immigrants from English-speaking countries experience more rapid earnings growth than immigrants from non-English-speaking countries. The arrival-cohort and birth-region variation in earnings documented in this study suggest that selective migration and language heritage of black immigrants birth countries are important determinants of their initial earnings and earnings trajectories in the United States.

Using a difference-in-differences estimation framework and state-level data, we investigate the potential role of HIV/AIDS in contributing to declining abortion utilization in the United States. Our results suggest that the perceived risk of HIV contraction negatively affected unwanted pregnancies. Specifically, a 10% increase in HIV incidence is associated with 0.341.1% fewer abortions per live births, an effect that can account for at least one-tenth of the sharp decline in abortions observed from the early 1980s to mid-1990s.

The US child population is rapidly becoming more racially and ethnically diverse, yet there are persistent racial/ethnic gaps in child health. Improving and expanding policies to reduce these gaps is increasingly a mandate of government agencies. Identifying effective policies requires a rigorous approach, yet there is a lack of information about which policies improve equity. This article introduces the Policy Equity Assessment, a framework that combines policy assessment and rigorous equity methods to both synthesize existing research and identify and conduct new analyses of policies ability to reduce racial/ethnic inequities. We applied the Policy Equity Assessment to three policies: Head Start, the Family and Medical Leave Act, and a federal housing assistance program known as Section 8. Our results show racial/ethnic inequities in access to benefits and substantial data and evidence gaps regarding the impact of policies in improving racial/ethnic equity. These results should motivate policy makers to strengthen equity analysis.

Steady increases in womens labor force participation over the past half century have occurred alongside the ratcheting up of expectations for intensive parenting. We know little about how mothers fare in the context of dual devotions to work and parenting. Using a new module in the 2010 and 2012 American Time Use Surveys, we assess mothers subjective well-being in parenting in the context of her and her partners work arrangements. Preliminary results suggest that compared to non-working mothers, working mothers do less of the desirable parenting tasks like play and more of that which is less desirable. This differential may explain working mothers lower happiness and higher stress and fatigue in parenting.Further, mothers working full-time while theirpartners work less than full time report less happiness, more stress, and more fatigue inparenting than those with other workarrangements, even full-time working mothers withfull-time working partners.

In 1978, California passed one of the most significant tax changes initiated by voters in the United States. Proposition 13 lowered property tax rates, restricted future property tax increases, and tied property assessments for tax purposes to housing tenure. In this paper, we study the implications of Proposition 13 on house prices, housing turnover, and welfare of the households in an economy populated with overlapping generations of agents who derive utility from consuming goods and housing. For our benchmark calibration, the introduction of Proposition 13 leads to an 18% increase in house prices and a 17% decrease in the probability of moving. We study the transition dynamics of moving from an economy featuring Proposition 13 to alternative revenue-neutral regimes with proportional real estate taxes. Overall, our findings indicate that elimination of Proposition 13 leads to small changes in house prices and modest increases in mobility depending on how revenue neutrality is achieved. Welfare gains of reform are quite large and stem mostly from the decline in the tax burden when young and borrowing constrained.

Skyline queries have recently received considerable attention as an alternative decision-making operator in the database community. The conventional skyline algorithms have primarily focused on optimizing the dominance of points in order to remove non-skyline points as efficiently as possible, but have neglected to take into account the incomparability of points in order to bypass unnecessary comparisons. To design a scalable skyline algorithm, we first analyze a cost model that copes with both dominance and incomparability, and develop a novel technique to select a cost-optimal point, called a pivot point, that minimizes the number of comparisons in point-based space partitioning. We then implement the proposed pivot point selection technique in the existing sorting- and partitioning-based algorithms. For point insertions/deletions, we also discuss how to maintain the current skyline using a skytree, derived from recursive point-based space partitioning. Furthermore, we design an efficient greedy algorithm for the k representative skyline using the skytree. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithms are significantly faster than the state-of-the-art algorithms.

Amid confusing and alarmist media claims about our changing culture, Claude Fischer sets the record straight on social trends in America. The promise of America has long been conceived as the promise of happiness. Being American is all about the opportunity to pursue one's own bliss. But what is the good life, and are we getting closer to its attainment? In the cacophony of competing conceptions of the good, technological interventions that claim to help us achieve it, and rancorous debate over government's role in securing it for us, every step toward happiness seems to come with at least one step back. In Lurching toward Happiness in America, acclaimed sociologist Claude Fischer explores the data, the myths, and history to understand how far America has come in delivering on its promise. Are Americans getting lonelier? Is the gender revolution over? Does income shape the way Americans see their life prospects? In the end, Fischer paints a broad picture of what Americans say they want. And, as he considers how close they are to achieving that goal, he also suggests what might finally get them there.

This study models the jobless recovery phenomenon, based on four stylized facts concerning both aggregate and goods sector employment and indicating a post-1990 skill-biased structural change in the service sector. This structural change prevents unemployed goods sector workers from relocating to the service sector, causing a sluggish recovery in aggregate as well as goods sector employment. A two-sector model is developed where the structural change is incorporated via a labor adjustment cost and a reallocation shock. The model successfully generates a jobless recovery.

While analysts and pundits often note the dramatically changing face of America, there is a bit of constancy in what is imagined to be the face of urban poverty: largely African-American, frequently jobless, and often struggling with the social and economic obstacles that confront parents raising children on their own. While this is certainly a key feature of the poverty challengeand it is one sure to rightly receive attention in this symposiumit is also the case that the poor in America increasinglyhail from the ranks of newer and non-citizen immigrants.

Thirty-eight percent of US children depend on publicly financed health insurance, reflecting both its expansion and the steady erosion of employment-based coverage. Continued funding for the Childrens Health Insurance Program (CHIP) is an immediate priority. But broader reforms aimed at improving the quality of coverage for all insured children, with a special emphasis on children living in low-income families, are also essential. This means addressing the family glitch, which bars premium subsidies for children whose parents have access to affordable self-only employer-sponsored benefits. It also means addressing the quality of health plans sold in the individual and small-group marketswhether or not purchased through the state and federal exchangesthat are governed by the essential health benefit standard of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). In this article we examine trends in coverage and the role of Medicaid and CHIP. We also consider how the ACA has shaped child health financing, and we discuss critical issues in the broader insurance market and the need to ensure plan quality, including the scope of coverage, use of a pediatric medical necessity standard that emphasizes growth and development, the structure of pediatric provider networks, and attention to the quality of pediatric health care.

This paper reconsiders the traditional approach to human capital measurement in the study of cross-country income differences. Within a broader class of neoclassical human capital aggregators, traditional accounting is found to be a theoretical lower bound on human capital difference across economies. Implementing a generalized accounting empirically illustrates the possibility that capital variation may now account (even fully) for the large income variation between rich and poor countries. These findings reject the constraints on human capital variation that traditional accounting has imposed.

Faced with diminishing prospects for a comprehensive immigration reform at the federal level, states have started to take immigration matters into their own hands. For example, many states have been mandating the use of employment verification (E-Verify) systems to confirm work eligibility. Some of the consequences of these E-Verify mandates remain unclear. In this paper, we focus on the effect of anti-illegal immigrant laws on foreign investment. Specifically, we exploit the state-level and time variation in the enactment and implementation of E-Verify mandates to explore if punitive measures against the firm impact states’ ability to attract foreign direct investment. We quantify foreign direct investment through the employment by U.S. affiliates owned by foreign firms. Our results suggest that E-Verify mandates adversely affect employment among these majority-owned U.S. affiliates and, therefore, work against states trying to attract foreign direct investment.

More than one million people reported their race as American Indian/Alaska Native (AIAN) in the 2000 U.S. census but did not do so in the 1990 census. We ask three questions. First, which subgroups had the greatest numerical growth? Second, which subgroups had the greatest proportional increase? And third, are the 2000 single-race AIANs and the 1990 AIANs the same set of people? We use full-count and high-density decennial census data; adjust for birth, death, and immigration; decompose on age, gender, Latino origin, education, and birth state; and compare the observed subgroup sizes in 2000 with the sizes expected based on 1990 counts. The largest numerical increases were among adolescent and middle-aged non-Latinos, non-Latino women, and adults with no college degree. Latinos, women, highly educated adults, and people born in Eastern states had the largest proportionate gains. The ability to report multiple races in 2000 and the new federal definition of "American Indian" may have especially affected these groups, although personal-identity changes are probably also involved. We find that thousands of new Latino AIANs reported only one race in 2000, but many 1990 AIANs reported multiple races in 2000. Thus, the 1990 AIANs and 2000 single-race AIANs are not always the same individuals.

Prior to ACA, twenty-six states required insurers to cover dependents into young adulthood, but One provision of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which went into effect on September 23, 2010, requires insurers who provide coverage for dependents to extend this benefit until the dependents' 26th birthda. Prior to ACA, twenty-six states required insurers to cover dependents into young adulthood, but this extension was often contingent upon the dependents college enrollment, marital status, and other factors. ACA created a uniform national policy and extended an existing federal tax benefit to parents who enrolled their adult children into their employer-based plans(see Box 1 on page 6 for details on eligibility for coverage under the ACA provision). Further, ACA requires that states provide coverage through age 25 to Medicaid recipients who turned 18 while in foster care.

After years of increasing screening mammography utilization in Vermont, there was a decline in screening, which coincided with the release of the 2009 USPSTF recommendations. The age-specific patterns in utilization were generally consistent with the USPSTF recommendations, although there was also evidence that the percentage of women aged 5074 years screened in the past 2 years declined since 2009.

We provide a theory of the interaction between intergenerational living arrangements and economic development. We show that, when technical progress is fast enough, the economy experiences a shift from stagnation to growth, there is a transition from coresidence to non-coresidence, and the social status of the elderly tends to deteriorate.

The Current Population Survey is used to investigate effects of Common Law Marriage (CLM) on whether young US-born adults live in couples in the US CLM effects are identified through cross-state and time variation, as some states repealed CLM over the period examined. Analysis based on Gary Becker’s marriage economics helps explain why CLM affects couple formation and does so differently depending on education, sex ratios, age, and parent status. CLM reduces in-couple residence, and more so for childless adults and where there are fewer men per woman. Effects are larger for college-educated men and women without college. CLM effects on likelihood of marriage and cohabitation and likelihood of being divorced if ever-married are also estimated.