The present study investigates nativity status and place-of-birth differences in suburban residence among black ethnic groups. The main objective is to evaluate the extent to which the relationship between black immigrants' individual-level socioeconomic status characteristics and suburban outcomes conforms to the tenets of the spatial assimilation model. Using micro-data from the 2006-2010 American Community Survey, we employed logistic regression models to determine the effects of the relevant predictors on suburban residence of whites and black ethnic groups. The results reveal that black immigrants' suburban outcomes vary depending upon the racial/ethnic background and nativity status of the reference group. While both black Caribbean and African immigrants are less likely to reside in the suburbs than native-born white households, they are more likely to do so than native-born black Americans, even when controlling for differences in income, education, and homeownership. We also find black immigrants' probability of suburban residence varies by English language proficiency and length of time spent in the United States in ways that contradict the tenets of the spatial assimilation model.

Explores the demographic trends and implications for higher education, based on the observation that college attendance is driven by income and educational attainment of head of household.

Recent immigrants to the United States drive autos less than the US-born, with rapid increases in their ownership and use of autos. over time, and a persistently lower level of auto use even when controlling for socioeconomic characteristics and time in the US. Quantitative studies have not yet explained these phenomena. Given that population growth in the US is largely dependent on immigration, understanding auto ownership and use among immigrants is important for transportation sustainability. We conducted six focus groups with US residents born in India, the Philippines, and Latin America. Our findings confirm, complicate and contradict the existing literature explaining differences in auto use among immigrants and the US-born, and we identify some new hypotheses with implications for policy-relevant research. More difficult driving conditions in the US and remittances back home may contribute to the initially lower auto ownership and use among immigrants. The rapid transition to auto use may be a function of household changes having more dramatic effects among immigrants given their initially high-density residential locations. The growth of non-English speaking transit riders, an increase in private transit services, and different residential location priorities may all contribute to the persistently lower auto use by immigrants even after many years in the US. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

In recent years the prospect of green jobs or green growth policies have become increasingly prominent, proposed to solve both the environmental challenges associated with global climate change and the persistent unemployment problems observed in many industrialized countries. This short article begins by describing the conceptual, definitional, and measurement issues related to green jobs. I then review the existing evidence from the primarily simulation-based studies that attempt to assess the impact of green policies on employment. I draw two main conclusions from this exercise. First, my descriptive analysis of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data on green jobs highlights that green jobs currently represent a small share of overall employment in the U.S, and one that has seen relatively weak growth in the last decade. Second, due to the sizable heterogeneity in the scope and assumptions made in the existing simulation studies of the labor market impacts of green policies, it is difficult to make a definitive conclusion about their likely impact. More careful and detailed empirical research is needed to assess the job creation potential of green job policies.

Objective: This paper details the validation of a methodology which spatially allocates Census microdata to census tracts, based on known, aggregate tract population distributions. To protect confidentiality, public-use microdata contain no spatial identifiers other than the code indicating the Public Use Microdata Area (PUMA) in which the individual or households can only be obtained in a Census Research Data Center (CRDC). Due to restrictions in place at CRDCs, a systematic procedure for validating the spatial allocations methodology needs to be implemented prior to accessing CRDC data.Methods: This study demonstrates and evaluates such an approach, using historical census data for which a 100% count of the full population is available at a fine spatial resolution. The approach described allows for testing of the behavior of a maximum entropy imputation and spatial allocation model under different specifications. The imputation and allocation is performed using a microdata sample of records drawn from the full 1880 Census enumeration and synthetic summary files created from the same source. The results of the allocation are then validated against the actual values from the 100% count of 1880.Results: The results indicate that the validation procedure provides useful statistics, allowing an in-depth evaluation of the household allocation and identifying optimal configurations for model parametrization. This provides important insights as to how to design a validation procedure at a CRDC for spatial allocations using contemporary census data.

Abstract We examine Becker's (1960) contention that children are “normal.” For the cross-section of non-Hispanic white married couples in the United States, we show that when we restrict comparison...

SimplyMap is a subscription product produced by Geographic Research, Inc. It began as a means to provide researchers needing geospatial demographic and population data a way to produce maps without having to know a complex geographic information systems (GIS) tool. Early versions required one to produce a map to obtain data. Although most reviews have focused on the GIS aspects, many in business and economics are more interested in the underlying data. SimplyMap now allows the researcher to begin in either the mapping or the report module.

Using a 9-year follow-up of 69,224 mothers aged 2050 from the National Longitudinal Mortality Survey, we investigate whether there is heightened mortality of mothers after the death of a child. Results from Cox proportional hazard models indicate that the death of a child produces a statistically significant hazard ratio of 2.3. There is suggestive evidence that the heightened mortality is concentrated in the first two years after the death of a child. We find no difference in results based on mother's education or marital status, family size, the child's cause of death or the gender of the child.

We assess the extent to which differences in socio-economic status are associated with racial and ethnic gaps in a fundamental measure of population health: the rate at which infants die. Using micro-level Vital Statistics data from 2000 to 2004 for whites, blacks, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Asians, and Native Americans, we first examine how infant mortality and its subcomponents are associated with background characteristics. Although the racial and ethnic groups differ along several observable dimensions, each of the between-group mortality gaps is strongly associated with three background characteristics: maternal marital status, education, and age. For example, if whites had the distribution of these three characteristics found among the high-IMR groups, we estimate that the white infant mortality rate would increase by about 1.9 deaths per 1000 live births, roughly one-third of the actual white infant mortality rate. Using data on new mothers from the Census, we further show that these three characteristics are each strongly associated with income and poverty. Overall, these results suggest that SES differences play a substantial role in the IMR gaps across these groups

This paper uses Census IPUMS data from 1970 to 2010 to estimate the impact of the oil boom and bust on wages and human capital formation in the US. The paper finds that the oil boom between 1970 and 1980 was associated with a slower growth in the relative demand for skills in the oil and gas sector and regions where the sector had a large presence. Overall, the oil boom led to a sharp rise in real wages in oil areas relative to non-oil parts of the nation, raising the opportunity cost of additional schooling. Real wage premium for a college degree declined during the oil boom in oil-rich regions such as Texas, compared with non-oil areas. The oil boom of the 1970s potentially had an impact on human capital investment through two channelsby raising the opportunity cost of additional schooling as well as by lowering the returns from going to college. Using a synthetic cohort approach the paper finds that relative to cohorts who went to high school in the pre-boom period, the cohort reaching high school age during the oil boom was about 2 percentage points less likely to have a college degree by the time they turned 34 to 37 years of age in 2000.

This paper provides a new perspective on intergenerational mobility in the UnitedStates in the late 19th and early 20thcenturies. We devise an empirical strategy that allows to calculate intergenerational elasticities between fathers and children of both sexes. The key insight of our approach is that the information about socio-economic status conveyed by first names can be used to create a pseudo-link not only between fathers and sons, but also between fathers and daughters. The latter is typically not possible with historical data. We fi nd that the father-son elasticity in economic status grows throughout the sample period. Intergenerational elasticities for daughters follow a broadly similar trend, but with some di fferences in timing. We argue that most of the increase in the intergenerational elasticity estimate in the early part of the 20th Century can be accounted for by the vast regional disparities in economic development, with increasing returns to human capital contributing to explain the residual. Other mechanisms such as changes in fertility, migration, and investment in public schooling, appear to have had only a minor role in explaining the trends.

The U.S. stands out among other industrialized nations for having above-replacement level fertility. Nonetheless, the proportion of childless women aged 40-44 almost doubled between 1976 and 2008 (Dye 2010; Lundquist et al. 2009). This profile documents changes in the proportion of childless women in the U.S. between 1995 and 2010 by educational attainment, race/ethnicity, and marital status.

The “Federalist financial revolution” may have jump‐started the U.S. economy into modern growth, but the Free Banking System (1837–1862) did not play a direct role in sustaining it. Despite lowering entry barriers and extending banking into developing regions, we find in county‐level data that free banks had little or no effect on growth. The result is not just a symptom of the era, as state‐chartered banks seem to have strong and positive effects on manufacturing and urbanization.

Se estudia el ámbito económico, social e institucional de las políticas de fomento al empresarismo presentando datos recientes sobre el mercado laboral, factores asociados a la pobreza en Puerto Rico y esfuerzos realizados para ampliar la participación laboral de sectores pobres. Se discuten conceptos vinculados al estudio del empresarismo y se identifican los programas públicos y privados que concentran esfuerzos en la creación de microempresas por personas pobres. Observamos dispersión y fragmentación en los esfuerzos dirigidos a promover el microempresarismo. No existe una política pública definida sobre el empresarismo como alternativa para incorporar a los pobres al mercado laboral formal. The economic, social and institutional framework of policies gear to promote entrepreneurship are studied by presenting recent data on the labor market, factors associated with poverty in Puerto Rico and efforts to expand the labor participation of the poor. We discuss concepts related to the study of entrepreneurship and identify public and private programs that concentrate efforts on the creation of microenterprises by poor people. Dispersion and fragmentation in efforts to promote micro-entrepreneurship are observed. There is no de ned policy towards the promotion of entrepreneurship as an alternative to incorporate the poor into formal labor markets.

Starting in the 1990s, San Francisco launched a series of bold but relatively unknown public policy experiments to improve wages and benefits for thousands of local workers. Since then, scholars have documented the effects of those policies on compensation, productivity, job creation, and health coverage. Opponents predicted a range of negative impacts, but the evidence tells a decidedly different tale. This book brings together that evidence for the first time, reviews it as a whole, and considers its lessons for local, state, and federal policymakers.

Book ReviewJohn L. Rury and Shirley A. Hill use a wide array of qualitative and quantitative data to provide a sweeping account of African American efforts to improve secondary education within their own communities, challenges they faced, and the long-term improvements in educational and socioeconomic attainment that resulted. Encapsulating forty years of educational progress in the United States, zeroing in on the South and then shifting to the North, where the urban educational drama would gain so much attention, the authors are attuned to differences in social class, gender, and the urban/rural divide that not only account for differences in attainment but also shape demands for education. Throughout the book, the power of black communities in broadening their childrens educational opportunities features prominently.Addressing the United States as a whole, with a particular emphasis on the South, Rury and Hill combine a vast array of qualitative and quantitative data to provide a holistic account of black education during this forty-year period. The authors integrate findings from yearbooks, black newspapers, and oral histories from archival repositories around the country with interviews and IPUMS data, to present regression models comparing factors predicting black and white high school attendance and completion. Although a bit unclear how the specific archival sources and cities were chosen, the multitude of empirical sources used to generate a deep understanding of the experiences with segregation and efforts to improve education during these decades is a clear strength of the book...

The health effects of menstruation are a controversial explanation for gender gaps in absenteeism and earnings. This paper provides the first evidence on this issue using data that combines labor market outcomes with information on health. We find that menstrual problems could account for some of the gender gap in illness-related absences, but menstrual problems are associated with other negative health conditions, suggesting that our estimates may overstate causal effects. Nevertheless, menstrual problems explain very little of the gender gap in earnings.

Explaining the causes of unequal global distribution of wealth today is a major task economists and economic historians are still struggling with. Although a lot of empirical evidence has been added in recent decades, the lively and controversial debate on which factor matters more for a positive economic development is still going on. The fact that history plays an essential role is hardly challenged anymore; however, as Nunn (2009:88) states, “less well understood are the exact channels of causality through which history matters.” Broadly speaking, one can distinguish two main strands of explaining the long term economic growth performance of countries. The one strand considers factors that were determined already long time ago as profound sources of today’s wealth, for example geographical environment, climate, factor endowment etc. In contrast, the proponents of the other strand do not take the development as determined from early-on . . .

The Census Bureau has been a leader in data visualization since the late 1870’s. The production of statistical graphics and interactive tools for contemporary decision makers continues today. This paper reviews the Census Bureau’s historical traditions of mapping and telling stories with statistics for the American public that reflect the important demographic, economic, and social issues of our time.

As the United States becomes more racially and ethnically diverse and draws more students from across the globe, more representative data are needed to understand at-risk and underrepresented populations in higher education, particularly in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. The authors argue that the current reporting standards for the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) result in the misrepresentation of racial and ethnic populations in STEM by forcing non-U.S. students into a master status category regardless of their racial or ethnic group membership. This study uses data from IPEDS and the American Community Survey to estimate the possible misrepresentation of reported bachelor degree completions by racial and ethnic group and citizenship status in the biological and biomedical sciences and engineering. We found that nearly all of the racial and ethnic groups in IPEDS may be significantly misreported because of the reporting standards for U.S. citizenship. With these findings, various implications are discussed, including higher education decision-making policies; interpretation of academic and social experiences of diverse peoples (race, ethnicity, and nationality); and creation of effective structures for academic success, particularly for students of color, regardless of citizenship.