The number of people living in high-poverty neighborhoods stabilized in the 1990s, prompting a series of studies about the trend and what it meant for families and children. Analysis of the 2000 Census raised hopes that the problem of concentrated poverty had receded. Recent Census results, coupled with analysis of long-term trends in neighborhood poverty, allow us to revisit the rise and fall of concentrated poverty after a decade of profound economic dislocations. At the request of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, Pendall, Davies, Freiman and Pitingolo tracked the persistence of concentrated poverty in U.S. metropolitan areas over a period of nearly 40 years, and looked at a subset of urban neighborhoods characterized as the original ghetto, extensive areas whose cores were almost exclusively nonwhite and poor in 1970. 366 metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) from 1970 to present were used to construct a dataset which included census tract-level population estimates from three primary sources: (1)GeoLytics/Urban Institute National Neighborhood Change Database (1970, 1980, 1990, and 2000), a unique tool presenting data from the Decennial Census of Population and Housing within year-2000 tract boundariesi; (2) American Community Survey (2005-2009 five-year average), and (3) National Historic Geographic Information System (1970 county-level estimates).

This paper evaluates the status exchange hypothesis for Australia and the United States, two Anglophone nations with long immigration traditions whose admission regimes place different emphases on skills. Using log-linear methods, we demonstrate that foreign-born spouses trade educational credentials via marriage with natives in both Australian and U.S. marriage markets and, moreover, that nativity is a more salient marriage barrier for men than for women. With some exceptions, immigrant spouses in mixed nativity couples are better educated than native spouses in same nativity couples, but status exchange is more prevalentamong the less-educated spouses in both countries. Support for the status exchange hypothesis is somewhat weaker in Australia partly because of lower average levels of education compared with the United States and partly because of the less sharply defined educational hierarchy at the postsecondary level.

As there is a resurgence of immigrants to U.S. in past decades and the current economic struggle persists, attention has been driven to evaluate the impacts of current crisis on immigrants. Using data from Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) for United States during 2006 to 2010, this paper examines the impacts of current big recession on immigrants. Specifically, it attempts to answer the question whether immigrants are hurt more disproportionally than their native counterparts during economic downturns. Strong evidence shows that foreign-born workers experienced larger decreasing in income than native-born workers. Additionally, immigrants receive less social assistance income both before and during crisis period. Furthermore, the industries where immigrant workers concentrated are hurt substantially. Yet, contrary to hypothesis, foreign-born workers are not more likely to be unemployed in economic depressed times.

Economists frequently hypothesize that industrialization contributed to the United States’ nineteenth-century fertility decline. I exploit the circumstances surrounding industrialization in South Carolina between 1881 and 1900 to show that the establishment of textile mills coincided with a 6–10 percent fertility reduction. Migrating households are responsible for most of the observed decline. Higher rates of textile employment and child mortality for migrants can explain part of the result, and I conjecture that an increase in child-raising costs induced by the separation of migrant households from their extended families may explain the remaining gap in migrant-native fertility.

Durante las últimas tres décadas cerca de cuarenta millones de inmigrantes, tanto documentados como indocumentados, llegaron a los Estados Unidos (Portes & Rumbaut, 2006). Sin embargo, desde la aprobación de la Ley de Reforma y Control de Inmigración o IRCA (Immigration Reform and Control Act) en 1986, el congreso de ese país ha sido incapaz de aprobar una nueva legislación nacional comprensiva en materia migratoria (Escobar & Martin, 2008, p. 108). A raíz de ese fracaso, diversos estados, e incluso condados y ciudades, han buscado enfrentar, por sus propios medios, el proceso migratorio a través de medidas políticas, policiacas y legislativas. En la última década, el estado de Arizona ha puesto en práctica una “política migratoria” que vale la pena analizar por su extremismo y virulencia. Así, la frontera entre ese estado y Sonora se ha convertido no sólo en paso y tumba de cientos de migrantes mexicanos y centroamericanos, sino también en laboratorio de las tendencias de otros estados en materia migratoria. Para cumplir con el objetivo de analizar las tendencias de la política migratoria que están llevando a cabo estados y localidades en Estados Unidos, y particularmente Arizona, este trabajo está dividido en dos partes. La primera hace un repaso del debate migratorio en Estados Unidos desde los años noventa, la segunda analiza la política migratoria que ha sido impulsada por los estados en ese país y, sobre todo, las medidas legislativas y de política pública que ha adoptado Arizona respecto a la migración.

Recent studies have documented substantial penalties associated with motherhood and suggest that discrimination plays an important role in producing them. In this article, I argue that the degree to which motherhood is conceptualized as a choice affects the penalties associated with making this choice. Two methods are employed to evaluate this argument. The first method is an analysis of state differences in the wage penalties for motherhood, in which hierarchical linear modeling is used with data from the 19882004 Current Population Survey. The second method is a hiring experiment in a highly controlled setting. The wage analysis shows that, net of the usual individual and state-level factors that affect wages, mothers are penalized more in states where motherhood is perceived to be a woman's choice. The hiring experiment distinguishes between productivity-based and discrimination-based explanations for the penalty and provides strong evidence for a causal relationship between perceptions of choice and discrimination against mothers.

Widespread automobile use has left a distinctive mark on urban transportation in the United States, where growth has been tailored to automobiles. Although cars enable people to travel farther than at any point in human history, evidence of their costs has grown. In particular, the environmental impacts of automobiles are extensive, including air and water pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, and reductions in urban transportation ecoefficiency (TE). Overall, TE is the environmental impact per unit of travel; as a concept it can capture differential impacts of different transportation modes and travel distances. There are large variations in TE between metropolitan areas, and it is important to investigate factors that influence it to determine what measures can reduce the environmental impact of transportation.This dissertation describes the concept of TE in depth, arguing that it captures the systemic environmental impacts of transportation and is ideal for macro-level transportation studies. A TE measure using readily available data is then proposed, with four components: 1) percent of commuters driving to work; 2) percent of commuters taking public transit; 3) percent of commuters walking or riding a bicycle; and 4) population density. A confirmatory factor analysis and discussion of TE trends demonstrate that these components are useful for measuring TE and consistent in their relationships over time. Using this measure the trend for TE is downward most U.S. metropolitan areas have seen TE decline over the last 30 years.

For west Michigan to remain a world class center of innovation and production, it must develop and attract the workforce talent that businesses demand. Today, approximately one-third of west Michigans workers hold a two-year degree or higher; however, some local leaders are suggesting that the level is already insufficient to meet their demands. In this report we examine what the future workforce supply and demand may look like by 2025, as well as the major issues that the region might consider addressing in an effort to improve future workforce outcomes

Recent studies have shown that occupational licensing is an important, measurable, labor market institution associated with 18 percent higher wages. However, a gap in the research exists as it applies to American Indian Country. This gap is partially due to tribal sovereignty, which prevents uniform application of state level licensure laws from applying to American Indian Country. Our research sought to investigate this gap by employing a mixed methods approach. We first looked at the experiences of American Indians as it pertains to occupational licensing for mental health within the Minnesota Ojibwe Tribe, finding a gradual increase of licensure and an associated decrease in service complaints. Secondly, we examined the effects of occupational licensing and location (on American Indian Territory or not) for Non-Hispanic Whites and American Indians as well as by Gender. First, we found a positive effect on both labor force participation and earnings associated with licensing. Secondly, we saw a negative penalty on both labor force participation and earnings for living in a homeland. Thirdly, the effects of licensing with a Homeland are a significant only for women and white men. Our findings suggest that further research should be focused on the effects of licensing within an Indian Reservation instead of using a proxy such as the Homeland Variable. We also find that a close examination of winners and losers, focusing on barriers to entry, should take place. Finally, we find that labor force participation and earnings are not as great for American Indians as has been found for the broader population previously.

Este trabajo cuantifica la magnitud de la segregación residencial en Cali a través de índices globales y locales de correlación espacial por sectores urbanos. Los resultados corroboran la presencia y persistencia de los patrones de segregación residencial a través de una métrica de densidad de capital humano.

Selective attrition potentially biases estimation of intergenerational links in health and economic status. This paper documents attrition in the PSID through 2007 for a cohort of children, and investigates attrition bias in intergenerational models predicting adult health, education and earnings, including models based on sibling differences. Although attrition affects unconditional means, the weighted PSID generally maintains its representativeness along key dimensions in comparison to the National Health Interview Survey. Using PSID, sibling correlations in outcomes and father-son correlations in earnings are not significantly affected by attrition. Models of intergenerational links with covariates yield more mixed results with females showing few robust impacts of attrition and males showing potential attrition bias for education and earnings outcomes. For adult health outcomes conditional on child background, neither gender shows significant impacts of attrition for the age ranges and models considered here. Sibling models do not produce robustly higher attrition impacts than individual models.

Mobility research is largely descriptive and has not established a causal role of education. Further, the mechanism linking education and occupations is debated. If education increases attainment through human capital, expanding access should increase intergenerational mobility. If education is a status marker, expansion could dilute its value and yield no effect on mobility. Using IPUMS Linked Representative Samples (individuals in the 1850-1930 censuses linked to their record in the 100% 1880 census), I exploit state differences in the timing of early compulsory schooling laws, which increased class equality at an important level of education attendance. Using a regression discontinuity approach, I estimate an intent-to-treat effect (to capture unintended spillover effects) of equalization on intergenerational occupational mobility using both continuous and categorical measures of class. Results, from analysis of both individuals and sibling pairs, suggest that expanding educational access slightly reduced mobility. However, findings suggest a nonlinear relationship. In both individual and sib-difference analyses, the first cohorts after the compulsory law experienced reduced mobility, while later cohorts saw greater mobility. Equalizing access to education may initially amplify inequality, but later reduce it after all of the secondary changes. While most work examines the marginal impact of schooling, this research approximates a general equilibrium estimate, telling a more complicated story. Public school funding and historical documents suggest the nonlinear pattern is due to institutional lag. Schools were unprepared for the policy change and quality for lower class students initially declined.

This thesis deals with the phenomenon of racial discrimination in the U.S. labor market. The first part outlines the existing theories of discrimination and history of immigrants residence in the U.S. It also brings some statistics from the U.S. labor market and finally reviews some literature in the field of labor market discrimination. The second part of the thesis is devoted to the empirical analysis of wage discrimination in the U.S. using the American Community Survey 1980 and 2007. With the help of Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition we break down the log-wage differential between whites and other racial groups into two parts. The first, explained, part is the part of the differential that can be explained by differences in average race characteristics. The other, unexplained, part is the part of the differential that remained unexplained. That part is then assigned as a result of discrimination. We find that while in 1980 Asians earned on average 5% more than whites, by 2007 this difference reached 15%. 15% - 21% of this difference remained unexplained. The opposite situation is observed in the case of Hispanics and Blacks. While in 1980 both, Hispanics and Afro-Americans, had on average 10% lower wage than whites, by 2007 this difference reached as much as 30%.In case of Afro-Americans, 50% - 60% remained unexplained, in case of Hispanics 46% remained unexplained. It seems that employers in the U.S. labor market have strong tendency to discriminate against human capital of minorities.

The origin of African Americans relatively low marriage rate is often traced to conditions undermining family formation during slavery. We focus instead on transformations in African American marriage following abolition. Immediately following the Civil War, Southern legislatures rushed to recognize African Americanmarriages. They reversed the legal status of African American unionsfrom strictly forbidden to encouraged and even mandated for cohabiting couples in some jurisdictionsto secure control over the new workforce and reduce rates of child dependency via family labor contracts. We find evidence that reliance on slavelabor bolstered African American marriage after emancipation. We estimate large, positive effects of Southern counties involvement in slavery in 1860, instrumented by their territorial suitability for cotton production, on their African American marriage rates in 1880. These results are robust to comparisons with white marriage rates and are confirmed by analysis of microdata tracing individuals marital transitions.

Explore different types of American households and see how they have changed over time.

This study estimates the cost of the Vietnam draft by applying hedonic methods to the decision to attend college and the decision to voluntarily enlist. In 2009 dollars, the estimated cost of the draft is roughly $115,000 for the marginal military recruit. For the marginal college student, the estimated cost is only $30,000 and probably understates the true amount because men were credit-constrained and college required an upfront cost. Supposing that the costs other than fatality risk were positive, our preferred specifications produce an upper bound on the Value of a Statistical Life ranging from $7 million to $12 million.

While much attention has focused on health disparities between socio-economic groups. We examine trends in overall health inequality - measured by realized length-of-life inequality - through the lens of social justice, similar to traditional analysis of income inequality. We find that throughout most of the length-of-life distribution, inequality has declined dramatically over the past century. It has continued to decline even in the past 40 years, a period over which it is generally thought that income inequality has risen considerably. Most of the decline in length-of-life inequality appears to be driven by reductions in inequality within socio-economic groups. Using a reasonable estimate of the value of a quality-adjusted life year (QALY) we find that, on a lifetime basis, the least healthy individuals in society have gained more than eight times as much as the healthiest. In dollar terms, the relative gain for the 10th percentile of health relative to the 90th percentile of health is more than $400,000.

Despite public opinion favoring reduced immigration, U.S. immigration policy since the 1980s has led to increased inflows of both legal and unauthorized immigrant workers, and migrants accounted fo...