Rural households across the globe engage in both migration and natural resource use as components of livelihood strategies designed to meet household needs. Yet, migration scholars have only recently begun to regularly integrate environmental factors into empirical modelling efforts. To examine the migration‐environment association in rural South Africa, we use vegetation measures derived from satellite imagery combined with detailed demographic data from over 9000 households at the Agincourt Health and Demographic Surveillance Site. Results reveal that household‐level temporary migration is associated with higher levels of local natural capital, although no such association exists for permanent migration. Further, more advantaged households exhibit a stronger association between migration‐environment, in‐line with the ‘environmental capital’ hypothesis, suggesting that natural resource availability can facilitate household income diversification. We argue that a focus on migration's environmental aspects is especially timely in the contemporary era of climate change and that natural capital availability and variability represent critical pieces of the empirical migration puzzle, especially regarding cyclical livelihood migration.

This paper examines the role of agricultural diversity in the process of economic development. Evidence from U.S. counties shows that early agricultural diversification affected structural change and long-run economic performance. Using a novel identification strategy that relies on exogenous variation in patterns of agricultural production generated by climatic features, I find sizable effects of agricultural diversification in the mid-19th century on income per capita in recent decades. A positive impact of agricultural diversity can be traced back to the advance of the industrialization process in the course of the Second Industrial Revolution. An assessment of mechanisms suggests that agricultural diversity boosted the relative size and productivity of the manufacturing sector by fostering manufacturing diversification (in terms of sectors and skills), formation of new skills, and technological progress.

As thousands of West Virginians approach retirement age, workplace retirement plans, along with Social Security and personal savings, are of growing importance. A secure retirement allows retired workers to live independently, pay for healthcare, and continue to contribute to the state's economy.

In this article, the relationship between racial/ethnic composition and violence is revisited. This includes efforts to conduct a deeper exploration of the ethnic composition effects of discrete Latino-origin populations. This is an important extension for a number of reasons. First, recent research has demonstrated the dangers of pan-ethnic classifications in the study of race, ethnicity, and crime. Different histories of migration, settlement, opportunity, and intergenerational advancement have produced different levels of successful integration for some groups relative to others, with different implications for crime. One of the distinguishing features of the contemporary Latino population is a disproportionately young average age. Specifically, Latinos in the United States include a higher percentage of adolescent and young adults than the national averagea period of the life course where criminal behavior tends to peak. Thus, I also examine how racial and ethnic composition and change in these areas is associated with variation in violence perpetrated by youth and emerging adults specifically.

Recent studies have highlighted the high net undercount of children, particularly young children, in the 2010 U.S. Decennial Census. However this issue has received little systematic attention from demographers historically. Given the extensive use of decennial census data, the high net undercount of young children is both a data and a social equity problem. This study examines patterns and trends in the net undercount of children in the U.S. Decennial Census from 1950 to 2010. The focus is on trends in the net undercount of children relative to adults. The initial emphasis on all children (age 0 to 17) shifts to a focus on young children (age 0 to 4) where net undercount rates are the higher than any other age group. Differences between net undercount rates . . .

Industry privatizations that result in exogenous job displacement of public employees can be exploited to estimate public sector wage rents. I report the findings of an original survey I administered to examine how wages of displaced government workers were affected by a 2012 privatization of liquor retailing in Washington State. Based on a panel difference-in-differences estimator I find that privatization reduced wages by $2.51 per hour or 17 percent compared to a counterfactual group of nearly identical non-displaced workers, with larger effects for women. I decompose wage losses into three rents identified in the literature: public sector rents, union premiums, and industry-specific human capital. Public sector wage premiums separately account for 85 to 90 percent of overall wage losses, while union premiums and industry-specific human capital account for just 10 to 15 percent. The results are consistent with a roughly 16 percent public sector wage premium.

Background Screening mammography utilization in Vermont has declined since 2009 during a time of changing screening guidelines and increased interest in personalized screening regimens. This study evaluates whether the breast cancer risk distribution of the states screened population changed during the observed decline. Methods We examined the breast cancer risk distribution among screened women between 2001 and 2012 using data from the Vermont Breast Cancer Surveillance System. We estimated each screened womans 5-year risk of breast cancer using the Breast Cancer Surveillance Consortium risk calculator. Annual screening counts by risk group were normalized and age-adjusted to the Vermont female population by direct standardization. Results The normalized rate of low-risk (5-year breast cancer risk of <1%) women screened increased 8.3% per year (95% confidence interval [CI] = 4.8 to 11.9) between 2003 and 2008 and then declined by 5.4% per year (95% CI = 8.1 to 2.6) until 2012. When stratified by age group, the rate of low-risk women screened declined 4.4% per year (95% CI = 8.8 to 0.1; not statistically significant) for ages 40 to 49 years and declined a statistically significant 7.1% per year (95% CI = 12.1 to 2.0) for ages 50 to 74 years during 2008 to 2012. These declines represented the bulk of overall decreases in screening after 2008, with rates for women categorized in higher risk levels generally exhibiting small annual changes. Conclusions The observed decline in women screened in Vermont in recent years is largely attributable to reductions in screening visits by women who are at low risk of developing breast cancer.

Scholars have been examining the relationship between fertility and unemployment for more than a century. Most studies find that fertility falls with unemployment in the short run, but it is not known whether these negative effects persist, because women simply may postpone childbearing to better economic times. Using more than 140 million US birth records for the period 19752010, we analyze both the short- and long-run effects of unemployment on fertility. We follow fixed cohorts of US-born women defined by their own state and year of birth, and relate their fertility to the unemployment rate experienced by each cohort at different ages. We focus on conceptions that result in a live birth. We find that women in their early 20s are most affected by high unemployment rates in the short run and that the negative effects on fertility grow over time. A one percentage point increase in the average unemployment rate experienced between the ages of 20 and 24 reduces the short-run fertility of women in this age range by six conceptions per 1,000 women. When we follow these women to age 40, we find that a one percentage point increase in the unemployment rate experienced at ages 2024 leads to an overall loss of 14.2 conceptions. This long-run effect is driven largely by women who remain childless and thus do not have either first births or higher-order births.

I examine the impact of the Great Depression on marriage outcomes and find that marriage rates and local economic conditions are positively correlated. Specifically, poor labor market opportunities for men negatively impact marriage. Conversely, there is some evidence that poor female labor markets actually increase marriage in the period. While the Great Depression did lower marriage rates, the effect was not long-lasting: marriages were delayed, not denied. The primary long-run effect of the downturn on marriage was stability: marriages formed in tough economic times were more likely to survive compared to matches made in more prosperous time periods.

The United States government recently enacted a number of policies designed to increase the number of American born students graduating with degrees in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), especially among women and racial and ethnic minorities. This study examines how the earnings benefits of choosing a STEM major vary both by gender and across the distribution of academic achievement. I accountfor the selection into college major using propensity score matching. Measures of individual educational preferences based on Holland's theory of career and educational choice provide a unique way to control for college major selection. Findings indicate that the earnings benefit to STEM major choice ranges from 5 to 28 % depending both on academic achievement and on gender and that high-achieving students benefit more from STEM major choice. Further, high achieving men benefit more from STEM majors than high-achieving women. Earnings differences in major choice may play an important role in explaining the underrepresentation of women in STEM major fields, especially among high achieving students.

Objectives: One of the central concerns of developmental and life-course criminology is an understanding of risk factors for offending at different ages. Because interruptions in key life events can significantly alter normative development, it is critical to fully understand the sources of risk for healthy development. The present study moves life-course criminology in a slightly different direction, shifting analysis to the macro level, to examine the differential vulnerability of age cohorts to environmental adversity. This dissertation also recognizes that normative development is highly contextualized by a wealth of racial and ethnic differences. Methods: Using age- and race/ethnic-specific homicide rates at city-, county- and community-levels of aggregation, the differential vulnerability of age cohorts to environmental adversity is examined. Results: The impact of disadvantage on homicide is consistently high for youth and emerging adults, but wanes over older developmental stages of the lifecourse. The association between economic disadvantage and homicide over developmental stages of the life-course seems to cut across racial / ethnic lines. While the protective effects of recent immigration have been well documented in recent years, the evidence here suggests these effects are more pronounced for Blacks. Conclusions: By identifying and better understanding the role of macro predictors of crime by race/ethnic-specific developmental stages, the findings offer new insights for developmental and life-course theories of crime.

Focusing on macro-level processes, this article combines Decennial Census and Current Population Survey data to simultaneously test longitudinal and cross-sectional effects on ethnic intermarriage using structural and cultural explanations. Covering a 130 year period, the results of our multilevel analysis for 140 national-origin groups indicate that structural characteristics explain why some origin groups become more “open” over time while others remain relatively “closed”. Ethnic intermarriage is more likely to increase over time when the relative size of an immigrant group decreases, sex ratios grow more imbalanced, the origin group grows more diverse, the size of the third generation increases and social structural consolidation decreases. Cultural explanations also play a role suggesting that an origin group’s exogamous behavior in the past exerts long-term effects and exogamous practices increase over time when the prevalence of early marriage customs declines. For some of the discussed determinants of intermarriage, longitudinal and cross-sectional effects differ calling for a more careful theorizing and testing in terms of the level of analysis (e.g., longitudinal vs. cross-sectional).

Increasingly, scholars have argued that immigration politics are inseparable from racial politics, which implies that organizations and individuals who mobilize around racial group interests influence racial and immigration attitudes and behaviors. How does the racial- political context influence anti-immigration lawmaking? In what ways does this influence vary at different stages of lawmaking? To address these questions, we combine comprehensive datasets of racially conservative organizations and state immigrant legislation and use negative binomial regression to estimate the count of anti-immigrant bills and laws in the fifty states from 1991 to 2010. We find that the presence of racially conservative organizations encourages the introduction of exclusionary proposals, but only in contexts with a Republican- dominated government. At the approval stage, on the other hand, racially conservative organizations foster the passage of exclusionary laws, and this effect is heightened in contexts with a growing foreign-born population or where a majority of voters report anti- immigrant opinions or identify as conservative. This indicates that the institutionalization of the colorblind racial ideology (in the form of racially conservative organizations) resonates with lawmakers, but in a different manner when the stakes are higher. These findings have important implications and challenge previous research on the conditions under which advocacy organizations influence lawmaking and additional forms of group behavior.

What determines the distributions of skills, occupations, and industries across cities? We develop a theory to jointly address these fundamental questions about the spatial organization of economies. Our model incorporates a system of cities, their internal urban structures, and a high-dimensional theory of factor-driven comparative advantage. It predicts that larger cities will be skill-abundant and specialize in skill-intensive activities according to the monotone likelihood ratio property. We test the model using data on 270 US metropolitan areas, 3 to 9 educational categories, 22 occupations, and 21 manufacturing industries. The results provide support for our theory's predictions.

How do supply chains affect the intensity with which an industry uses labor? I derive the network-adjusted labor intensity as the answer to this question. The network-adjusted labor intensity measures not just the direct labor intensity of a given industry, but also takes into account the labor intensity of all its inputs, its inputs inputs, and so on. I show that this measure is the relevant sufficient statistic determining labors share of income, the propagation of demand shocks, the relative rankings of government employment multipliers, and the composition of optimal fiscal policy. I use network-adjusted labor shares to decompose labors share of income into disaggregated industrial components. Using a sample of 34 countries from 1995 to 2009, I find that labors share of income has declined primarily due to a universal decrease in labor-use by all industries, rather than changes in households consumption demands or firms input demands. This is in contrast to the popular value-added decomposition, which gives a much larger role to industrial composition.

The successes and failures of President Lyndon Johnsons War on Poverty have been debated for decades. This paper contributes a novel quantitative analysis to the vast historical literature on the War on Povertys political economy. We find that the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) overwhelmingly directed its funds toward high-poverty areas, while also investing in Democratic strongholds and areas with bigger swings in favor of the Democrats in the 1964 Presidential election. Finally, we find quantitative support for Alston and Ferries hypothesis about the role of the Southern paternalism in shaping the modern U.S. welfare state.

The U.S. minimum wage declined in real terms since the late 1970s. In the same time, the wage of the least skilled workers fell in real terms, while the wage of the highest skilled workers increased. To shed light on these issues, I use a simple model of routinization. High-ability workers receiving additional education, can substitute low-ability workers receiving additional education and in a declining wage for low-ability workers. A government opposes both unemployment and wage inequality. I calibrate the model and show that technical progress induces the government to lower the minimum wage. Hence, the model contributes to understand the decline in the U.S. minimum wage.

This paper focuses on the relationship between age and injuries in the mining industryspecifically, gold and coalfor the last two decades using publicly available data collected from a variety of sources. In the U.S., the Department of Labor, through the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), regulates the mining industry. As per the Mine Act of 1977, MSHA is required to inspect surface (underground) mines at least two (four) times per year.