We find that changes in hours volatilities since the mid-1980s are non-monotonic in skill levels: the standard deviation of detrended total hours of middle-skilled workers has dropped by 40 percent, while that of low-skilled workers decreased by 20 percent and that of high-skilled workers increased by 12 percent. These non-monotonic changes are driven by jobless recoveries that have dampened hours volatility of routine occupations since the mid-1980s. As a result, jobless recoveries lower hours fluctuations of middle-skilled workers since the majority of such employees are employed in routine occupations.

To evaluate the association between body mass index (BMI: kg/m2) and mortality among Hispanic adults, we acquired 8 years (1997-2004) of National Health Interview Survey data linked to public-use mortality follow-up data through 2006. Using Cox proportional hazards regression, we fit separate models for two attained age strata (18 to <60 years, 60 years) adjusting for sex, smoking, and physical activity with over 38,000 analyzable respondents. We found that, among those aged 60 years, underweight (BMI 18.5) associated with elevated mortality (hazard ratio [HR] = 2.19; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.38-3.46) while overweight (BMI of 25 to <30) and obesity grade 1 (BMI of 30 to <35) associated with reduced mortality (HR's = 0.79; 95% CI, 0.65-0.95 and 0.71; 95% CI, 0.56-0.91), respectively. There were no significant associations between BMI and mortality among the 18 to <60 years attained age strata or among never smokers for either age strata. Overweight and obesity are not obviously associated with elevated mortality among Hispanic adults.

While it is hard to gauge the effect of multicultural policies within countries, it is even harder to measure it across countries. However, this paper uses fundamental multicultural changes that have occurred in Israeli society in recent decades as a case study, and tracks their effect on the identification of Israelis who reside in the US. Analysing the US census and the American Community Survey, this research focuses on three groups of Israeli-born immigrants in the US: Israeli-Arabs, Ultra-Orthodox Jews, and the Jewish-majority. Findings indicate that originating from a minority community in the homeland predicts not only a different rate, but also different longitudinal trends of Israeli identification. Several possible explanations for these variations are offered here, but an in-depth analysis of the Israeli case underlines the transnational effect of the changing multicultural agenda in Israel as the leading mechanism.

BACKGROUND:Environmental epidemiology, when focused on the life course of exposure to a specific pollutant, requires historical exposure estimates that are difficult to obtain for the full time period due to gaps in the historical record, especially in earlier years. We show that these gaps can be filled by applying multiple imputation methods to a formal risk equation that incorporates lifetime exposure. We also address challenges that arise, including choice of imputation method, potential bias in regression coefficients, and uncertainty in age-at-exposure sensitivities.METHODS:During time periods when parameters needed in the risk equation are missing for an individual, the parameters are filled by an imputation model using group level information or interpolation. A random component is added to match the variance found in the estimates for study subjects not needing imputation. The process is repeated to obtain multiple data sets, whose regressions against health data can be combined statistically to develop confidence limits using Rubin's rules to account for the uncertainty introduced by the imputations. To test for possible recall bias between cases and controls, which can occur when historical residence location is obtained by interview, and which can lead to misclassification of imputed exposure by disease status, we introduce an "incompleteness index," equal to the percentage of dose imputed (PDI) for a subject. "Effective doses" can be computed using different functional dependencies of relative risk on age of exposure, allowing intercomparison of different risk models. To illustrate our approach, we quantify lifetime exposure (dose) from traffic air pollution in an established case-control study on Long Island, New York, where considerable in-migration occurred over a period of many decades.RESULTS:The major result is the described approach to imputation. The illustrative example revealed potential recall bias, suggesting that regressions against health data should be done as a function of PDI to check for consistency of results. The 1% of study subjects who lived for long durations near heavily trafficked intersections, had very high cumulative exposures. Thus, imputation methods must be designed to reproduce non-standard distributions.CONCLUSIONS:Our approach meets a number of methodological challenges to extending historical exposure reconstruction over a lifetime and shows promise for environmental epidemiology. Application to assessment of breast cancer risks will be reported in a subsequent manuscript.

Healthcare utilization has particular relevance in the national efforts presently occurring to improve US health care delivery system. Understanding and ultimately eliminating barriers to health care utilization is a major public health and social concern. The main objective of this study was to examine whether forgoing medical health care due to cost vary by health insurance coverage and uninsurance. Methods: This cross-sectional study examined associations between health insurance status and delayed medical visits, sociodemographic factors, and health factors among adults. Data from the Integrated Health Interview Series 2000 to 2011 were analyzed using logistic regression (n= 649,143; size = 70,107,444). Results: Results show 10.3 % of adults reported forgoing medical care due to costs in the previous year. Significant associations were found between health insurance and delayed medical care visits. Respondents without health insurance coverage were 6.7 times (95% CI 6.29-7.21, P<0.000) more likely to forgo medical visits than those with Medicaid and those with private insurance were 1.2 times (95% CI 1.11-1.27, P<0.000) more likely to forgo medical visits than those with Medicaid. Among covariates assessed, only poverty was not significant. Significant covariates included race and ethnicity, sex, age, education, marital status, self-rated health and whether or not a respondent had a usual place of health care. Conclusion: These results suggest insurance coverage, underlying sociodemographic and health factors are important in the context of healthcare utilization among adults in the U.S. Future public health research might investigate whether results are similar in other insurance coverage subpopulations.

This paper contributes to the literature on the impact of immigrants on native female labour supply. By segmenting the market by educational levels, we are able to investigate which nativeborn women are more a ffected by an increase of low-skilled immigrants working in the household service sector. We present a model of individual choice with home production and, using an harmonized dataset (CNEF), we test its main predictions. Our sample includes countries implementing diff erent family policies. Our results suggest that the share of immigrants working in services in a given local labour market is positively associated with the probability of native-born women to increase their labour supply at the intensive margin (number of hours worked per week), if skilled, and at the extensive margin (participation decision), if unskilled. Moreover, they show that these eff ects are larger in countries with less family-supportive policies.

Recently there has been a robust discussion on the question of Latina/o racial subjectivity, particularly whether Latinas/os are more apt to identify as "white" or as people of color. Scholars focused on contemporary identification patterns have examined key variables, including age, education, income, and nativity in an effort to understand Latinas/os' racial choices. However, dimensions of time and space are frequently unanalyzed. Focusing on the seven-county region of Southern Californiahome to the United States' largest concentration of Latinas/oswe use the American Community Survey (2008-10) to consider a range of variables, including spatial and temporal characteristics, to better understand Latina/o, especially Mexican American, racial subjectivity. Focusing on Latinas/os who identify as either "white" or "some other race" and utilizing a regression analysis to isolate the relative impact of each variable, we find that Latinas/os who live in more segregated neighborhoods as well as those who live among a high proportion of Latinas/os, are more likely to identify as "some other race."

There are numerous urban problems that could not be addressed in single use development. Mixed use development as a new theory claims to have the solutions to the urban issues associated with single use development. However, mixed use developments have been criticized are also failing to address their purported claims. This research focuses on analyzing and evaluating the tenets of mixed-use development to determine whether claims of accommodating mixed-income residents, increased density, improved racial diversity, provision of affordable housing, and improved employment trends are achieved. In doing so, 632 single use Black Groups and 84 mixed-use development Block Groups that are located in majority of larger metropolitan areas of the US cities are examined. The study employs a number of techniques including regression and other statistical analysis. The results were mixed. Density issues were not found to be different between single use areas and mixed use areas. On the other hand, affordability, employment and mixed-income issues were better accommodates in mixed use areas than in single use areas.

Volunteer labor is generally modeled as an individualistic pursuit, akin to leisure or to human capital accumulation. Some activities labeled as volunteering, however, may be more usefully thought of as quid pro quo time commitments that are part of securing services for family members. Parents are frequently expected to volunteer, for example, when their children participate in youth sports leagues or school marching bands. In such cases, volunteering is essentially an instance of household production undertaken outside the home. Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we divide volunteering into three categories—youth-related, religious, and non-youth-related secular—according to the likelihood that an instance of volunteering in the category represents household production. We find evidence that husbands and wives respond to one another’s time pressures such that youth-related volunteering looks like a task for which husbands’ and wives’ time inputs substitute for one another. Further, we find this pattern for housework, and not for other forms of volunteering. An increase in either spouse’s hours of market work will significantly reduce that spouse’s likelihood of volunteering for youth-related activities while raising the partner’s likelihood of volunteering. A similar pattern holds for hours volunteered to youth-related activities, with the wife’s responses achieving statistical significance.

I explore how a gender's scarcity may impact educational investments using exogenous variation in the marriage market of second generation Americans in early twentieth century. I find that worse marriage market conditions spur higher pre-marital investments: the effect for males is significant, while, for females, it is only observed in highly endogamous groups. When faced with an exogenously larger number of males per females, males' marriages appear to be less stable and more likely to involve natives and highly educated spouses, while women are less likely to work and, for those in high endogamous groups, marry more immigrants

Existing literature focuses on economic competition as the primary causal factor in Southern lynching. Political drivers have been neglected, as findings on their effects have been inconclusive. We show that these consensus views arise from selection on a contingent outcome variable: whether mobs intent on lynching succeed. We constructed an inventory of averted lynching events in Georgia, Mississippi, and North Caroline - Instances in which lynch mobs formed but were thwarted, primarily by law enforcement. We combined these with an inventory of lynching and analyzing them together to model the dynamics of mob formation, success, and intervention. We found that low Republican vote share is associates with a higher lethality rate for mobs. Lynching is better understood as embedded in a post-conflict political system, wherein all potential lynching events, passing through the prism of intervention, are split into successful and averted cases.

Los Angeles is the epicenter of the American gang problem. Rituals and customs from Los Angeles eastside gangs, including hand signals, graffiti, and clothing styles, have spread to small towns and big cities alike. Many see the problem with gangs as related to urban marginalityfor a Latino immigrant population struggling with poverty and social integration, gangs offer a close-knit community. Yet, as Edward Orozco Flores argues in Gods Gangs, gang members can be successfully redirected out of gangs through efforts that change the context in which they find themselves, as well as their notions of what it means to be a man. Flores here illuminates how Latino men recover from gang life through involvement in urban, faith-based organizations. Drawing on participant observation and interviews with Homeboy Industries, a Jesuit-founded non-profit that is one of the largest gang intervention programs in the country, and with Victory Outreach, a Pentecostal ministry with over 600 chapters, Flores demonstrates that organizations such as these facilitate recovery from gang life by enabling gang members to reinvent themselves as family men and as members of their community. The book offers a window into the process of redefining masculinity. As Flores convincingly shows, gang members are not trapped in a cycle of poverty and marginality. With the help of urban ministries, such men construct a reformed barrio masculinity to distance themselves from gang life. Edward Orozco Flores is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Loyola University Chicago.

This paper examines the role of social skills, as distinct from standard wage-determining human capital, in determining economic outcomes in labor and marriage markets. Social skill, or social capacity, is understood in our framework as the abilityto maintain long-term relationships, whether professional or personal. Using a Mincer-Jovanovic (1981) framework and evidence on job and marital separations in the PSID, we argue that social capacity can be understood as an individual fixed factor a ffectingthe durability of relationships both in the formal work and informal household sectors.We then use merged PSID and O*NET data to develop and estimate a life cycle model of schooling, job search and marriage. The model allows us to examine quantitatively how social capacity aff ects optimal schooling and occupational decisions, as well as to estimate the joint distribution of social capacity and human capital in the population. Preliminary evidence suggests that social capacity strongly increases the return to education, conditional on an individual's human capital, since it lowers the probability of being red from "good" jobs that require substantial human interaction, which in turn makes it easier to climb the career ladder.

This paper reviews a growing literature investigating how ‘immigrant’ diversity relates to urban economic performance. As distinct from the labor-supply focus of much of the economics of immigration, this paper reviews work that examines how growing heterogeneity in the composition of the workforce may beneficially or harmfully affect the production of goods, services and ideas, especially in regional economies. Taking stock of the existing literature, the paper argues that the low-hanging fruit in this field has now been picked, and lays out a set of open issues that need to be taken up in future research in order to fulfil the promise of this work.

Over the last two decades we have witnessed the global rise and spread of urban development policies aimed at stimulating the cultural economy. However, with the onset of the global financial crisis and recession, the cultural economy may experience a dramatic reorganization and even decline. Given the attention many cities place on the cultural sectors it is important to examine how they fare following this major economic event. To do so, this article examines the occupational distribution and geographic structure of the cultural economy in the 30 largest US metropolitan areas during recession and captures the changes that have occurred over the last decade. Based on this analysis, we identify a set of key trends, which highlight that while the boom period is generally characterized by widespread and, in some places, extreme growth in the cultural sectors, the recession is a period of selective growth and not a period of total decline. These findings have implications for determining the relevance of the arts and cultural sectors as targets of urban economic development policy in the post-recession era.

This paper introduces new data on state-level physical capital by sector and land in the farm sector for the states of the United States from 1840 to 2000. These data are incorporated into aggregate accounting exercises with the aim of comparing cross-state results to those found in cross-country samples. Our aggregate results agree closely with the cross-country literature: input accumulation accounts for most of output growth, between three-fifths and three-quarters, but variation in the growth of TFP accounts for about three-quarters of the variation in the growth rate of output per worker. In convergence accounting, convergence of log TFP accounts for about seventy percent of the observed convergence in log output per worker.

The homeownership rate in the US reached an all-time high of 69.2 percents by 2006, attributed to factors like favorable mortgage lending practice, economic boom, and incentive policies. The recent subprime mortgage crisis and economic recession, however, widened the gap in homeownership between racial minorities and whites. A sharp drop in housing price also posed a threat to the amount of equity one could accumulate. In this paper, we examined how the changing economy and both structural and individual-level factors affected the racial disparities in homeownership and home equity, using the 2005 and 2009 American Housing Survey national data. The major finding was that the economic recession affected Blacks the most, followed by Hispanics. Asians, though showing a decline in their home equity, were able to maintain their advantages in the housing market. Key words: economic recession, minority groups, homeownership, home equity

Christians from the Middle East and North Africa occupy a particular racial-ethnic-religious nexus in the US post-9/11: classified as white by race, sometimes Arab or Middle Eastern or North African by ethnicity and Eastern Christians by religion, but often conflated with Islamic culture and assumed to be Muslim. This study finds that Arab American Christians are deeply divided over the white racial category - some lay a claim to whiteness, some consider themselves persons of color and yet others are ambivalent. The contours of race and ethnicity change over time but the U.S. state remains hegemonic in its racial classification of Arab Americans, reclassifying those who answer Arab or Middle Eastern or country ancestries such as Lebanese or Palestinian on the Census form to the white population statistics. Secular and sectarian differences combine with national origins and political positions to create microspaces that fuel alternative self-identifications. Arab Christians in the Washington DC metro area, the focus of this study, reported high levels of mis-attributed religious affiliations as Muslims, which reflects conceptual conflations of Arab and Muslim in state policies, federal agencies and in the media. Using ethnographic research methods, interviews, oral histories and archival work, this dissertation demonstrates that Arab American Christian identity is inextricably caught up in a broader politics and ideologies surrounding race, ethnicity/nation in a contemporary moment.

This study examines a sharp decline of school attendance among white children in the Southern US after the Civil War. According to Census data, the school-attendance rate among whites in the Confederate states declined by almost half from 1860 to 1870, whereas that in the Northern states was approximately stable. This shock left the South approximately three decades behind its antebellum trend. We use micro data to examine a variety of hypotheses for this drop. In statistical terms, the decline is related to the postwar drop in local wealth and public-school income. Yet our analysis shows that the relationship between literacy and school attendance appears to be quite stable pre-and postwar , which suggests for only a minor role for a drop in school quality (or constraints on time in school). As supporting evidence, we show that the return to schooling, measured by the wage premium for skilled workers, declined substantially in the South after the War. Using longitudinally-linked census samples, we show that well-educated Southerners migrated out of the South among cohorts who attended schools after the War.