In the last three decades over a million abortions were performed annually in the United States. Recent empirical studies assess the impact of legalization of abortions on living conditions of children and argue that legalization of abortions provides better living conditions and human capital endowments to surviving children. This paper takes seriously the hypothesis that legalized abortion can improve the living conditions of children and hence alter their future labor market outcomes. The main question of the paper is what are the implications of abortions for long-term income inequality. A model of marriage, fertility, human capital transmission, contraception and abortion decisions is built to answer this question quantitatively. Inequality will be higher in a world without abortions. The main reason for this is the higher and more unequally distributed number of children across households. Children also receive less human capital.

We consider the problem of computing efficient anonymizations of partitioned databases. Given a database that is partitioned between several sites, either horizontally or vertically, we devise secure distributed algorithms that allow the different sites to obtain a k-anonymized and -diverse view of the union of their databases, without disclosing sensitive information. Our algorithms are based on the sequential algorithm [20] that offers anonymizations with utility that is significantlybetter than other anonymization algorithms, and in particular those that were implemented so far in the distributed setting. Our algorithms can apply to different generalization techniques and utility measures and to any number of sites. While previous distributed algorithms depend on costly cryptographic primitives, the cryptographic assumptions of our solution are surprisingly minimal.

Higher prior exposure to water-borne lead among male World War Two U.S. Army enlistees was associated with lower intelligence test scores. Exposure was proxied by urban residence and the water pH levels of the cities where enlistees lived in 1930. Army General Classification Test scores were six points lower (nearly 1/3 standard deviation) where pH was 6 (so the water lead concentration for a given amount of lead piping was higher) than where pH was 7 (so the concentration was lower). This difference rose with time exposed. At this time, the dangers of exposure to lead in water were not widely known and lead was ubiquitous in water systems, so these results are not likely the effect of individuals selecting into locations with different levels of exposure.

We know little about the data reuse practices of novice data users. Yet large scale data reuse over the long term depends in part on uptake from early career researchers. This paper examines 22 novice social science researchers and how they make sense of social science data. Novices are particularly interested in understanding how data: 1) are transformed from qualitative to quantitative data, 2) capture concepts not well-established in the literature, and 3) can be matched and merged across multiple datasets. We discuss how novice data users make sense of data in these three circumstances. We find that novices seek to understand the data producers rationale for methodological procedures and measurement choices, which is broadly similar to researchers in other scientific communities. However we also find that they not only reflect on whether they can trust the data producers decisions, but also seek guidance from members of their disciplinary community. Specifically, novice social science researchers are heavily influenced by more experienced social science researchers when it comes to discovering, evaluating, and justifying their reuse of others data.

Starting in the 1970's, wage inequality and the number of hours worked by employed U.S. prime-age male workers have both increased. We argue that these two facts are related. We use a labour market model with on-the-job search where by working longer hours individuals acquire greater skills. Since job candidates are ranked by productivity, greater skills not only increase worker's productivity in the current job but also help the worker to obtain better jobs. When job offers become more dispersed, wage inequality increases and workers work longer hours to obtain better jobs. As a result, average hours per worker in the economy increase. This mechanism accounts for around two-thirds of the increase in hours observed in data. Part of the increase is inefficient since workers obtain better jobs at the expense of other workers competing for the same jobs.

The nation’s racial and ethnic minority groups—especially Hispanics—are growing more rapidly than the non-Hispanic white population, fueled by both immigration and births. This trend has been taking place for decades, and one result is the Census Bureau’s announcement today that non-Hispanic whites now account for a minority of births in the U.S. for the first time. The bureau reported that minorities—defined as anyone who is not a single-race non-Hispanic white—made up 50.4% of the nation’s population younger than age 1 on July 1, 2011. Members of minority groups account for 49.7% of children younger than age 5, the bureau said, and for 36.6% of the total population. The findings are included in the bureau's first set of national population. . .

In Medicare Part D, low income individuals receive subsidies to enroll into insurance plans. This paper studies how premiums are distorted by the combined effects of this subsidy and the default assignment of low income enrollees into plans. Removing this distortion could reduce the cost of the program without worsening consumers' welfare. Using data from the first five years of the program, an econometric model is used to estimate consumers demand for plans and to compute what premiums would be without the subsidy distortion. Preliminary estimates suggest that the reduction in premiums of affected plans would be substantial.

Purpose: Historically, men have received PSA tests in primary care without comprehensive discussions with their providers about the harms and benefits associated with cancer screening. We explore whether primary care providers have altered their discussion with their patients to discuss PSA screening in more detail following availability of evidence from two large screening trials about the potential harms of screening relative to its small absolute benefit.Methods: Data among men over age 40 from the cancer supplement to the nationally representative National Health Interview Survey was analyzed for 3,596 men in 2000, and 4,702 men in 2010, representing 25.5 million and 43.6 million Americans, respectively.Results: The age-standardized proportion of men reporting their provider engaged them in a discussion of PSA testing declined to 31.0% in 2010 from 38.0% in 2000 (p<0.001). More men reported receiving a PSA test in the past five years than reported having a discussion with their provider in both study periods, with the rate of testing declining to 44.4% in 2010 from 57.7% in 2000 (p<0.001). Testing rates and the frequency of discussions were highest among men over age 80, with 70.2% in 2010 reporting being tested in the past 5 years, and 49.5% indicating their doctor had discussed testing. Men in 2010 reported that 39.5% felt their provider recommended testing, 27.5% felt their providers discussed the advantage of PSA testing, while 14.1% indicated their providers discussed the disadvantages of testing.Conclusion: Despite an increased emphasis to more fully inform men about the harms and benefits of PSA testing, the frequency of these discussions in primary care has declined. When discussions do occur, providers are much more likely to highlight the advantages of testing. PSA testing is declining; however, testing remains highest among older men for whom some guidelines recommend against testing.

Objectives. We examined changes in the relative risk of death among current and former smokers over recent decades in the United States.Methods. Data from the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) and National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) were linked to subsequent deaths. We calculated age-standardized death rates by gender and smoking status, and estimated multivariate discrete time logit regression models. Results. The risk of death for a smoker compared with that for a never-smoker increased by 25.4% from 1987 to 2006 based on NHIS data. Analysis of NHANES data from 1971 to 2006 showed an even faster annual increase in the relative risk of death for current smokers. Former smokers also showed an increasing relative risk of death, although the increase was slower than that among current smokers and not always statistically significant. These trends were not related to increasing educational selectivity of smokers or increased smoking intensity or duration among current smokers. Smokers may have become more adversely selected on other health-related variables.Conclusions. A continuing increase in the relative risk of death for current and former smokers suggests that the contribution of smoking to national mortality patterns is not decreasing as rapidly as would be implied by the decreasing prevalence of smoking among Americans.

Poverty experts and researchers are interested in developing Supplemental Poverty Measure(SPM) local area estimates using the American Community Survey (ACS). One challenge is that detailed information does not exist about the interpersonal relationships of individuals not relatedto the householder. The Census Bureau assumes those individuals are their own resource unit. Taking advantage of family interrelationship variables from the 2010 ACS Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS), this paper investigates how poverty estimates change when additional interpersonal relationship information is available. It also analyzes what happens to poverty estimates when cohabiting partners, foster children, and other children unrelated to the householder are grouped with the primary resource unit. We find that having additional information about subfamily interrelationships of unrelated individuals does not change overall poverty estimates. However, including the cohabiting partner of the householder, foster children, and other unrelated children in the primary resource unit does influence poverty estimates.

This paper investigates the roles of manufacturing employment, neighborhood poverty, and family structure in determining wages among Detroit, MI workers, just prior to the current economic crisis. Employment in manufacturing has been crucial for blacks and whites: 39% of black and of white men in the Detroit metropolitan area worked in manufacturing in 2000. Regression analysis in this paper estimates employment in manufacturing raised wages 15.8% for all workers in the metropolitan area, 24.4% for blacks and 13.8% for whites. It finds a higher wage penalty (4.7%) for blacks in non-manufacturing industries than is found when manufacturing sector jobs are included (2.6%). Wage returns to education were greater in the non-manufacturing employment sector, especially for blacks. Residence in the poorest central city neighborhoods reduced wages significantly for white manufacturing and non-manufacturing workers. Its coefficient was insignificant for black workers. Gender and marital status effects on wages differed between blacks and whites in magnitude: White women suffered a larger penalty for their sex than black women (22.6 versus 9.6%) yet black men enjoyed a greater return to marriage than white men (27.5 versus 25.0%). Controlling for manufacturing reduced the gender wage gap and the returns to marriage for men. These findings suggest greater accessibility for women; and lower returns to marriage in non-manufacturing sectors. Among employed blacks access to manufacturing jobs has been their main source of decent wages. The adverse effects of the industry’s job loss in the 1980s and 1990s impacted all Detroit residents. Other high wage industries have employed relatively few blacks, have not paid them well; and have suffered job loss and slow growth over the period. Education could have raised wages for non-manufacturing workers, but not as much as access to manufacturing jobs. Today as in 2000, Detroit’s residents desperately need job creation or relocation to the central city; and job training and . . .

A Historical wage data The data are from the Bureau of Economic Analysis Industry Accounts, Martin (1939) and Kuznets (1941). Kuznets (1941) gives estimates of net income, wages and salaries, and the number of employees separately for banking, insurance, and real estate over the period 1919-1938. The banking category, however, covers only commercial banks, savings banks, and federal reserve banks; brokerage, investment banking, and other …nancial activities are not included. As a result, the size of the industry is smaller than that implied by BEA data. Fortunately, there is large overlap of 10 years with the BEA data over which the correlation between the two series is 96.6%. It seems therefore quite safe to impute values for the period 1919-1928 using Kuznets'data. Martin (1939) provides data for …nance, insurance, and real estate, but not for …nance and insurance only. For the period 1909-1929 the estimates are based on data collected from banking, insurance, and real estate. For the period 1899-1908, however, the 1909 estimate is "projected to 1899 on the basis of other data indicating a probable trend for this period."We …nd this procedure questionable, and therefore truncate our sample in 1909. We collected additional data from Mitchell (1921) for the banking sector in 1909-1919. The implied banking wage calculated from Mitchell (1921) is quite similar to the implied wage from Martin (1939) and the census data to measure the number of employees, except that it grows slightly faster. As mentioned, the data from Martin (1939) includes real estate. This does not appear to be a problem for the long-run trends. Using BEA data for the period 1929-2005, we …nd a correlation of 0.993 between the relative wage series including real estate and that excluding real estate.

Literature to date has not yet included a comprehensive examination of barriers to participation in treatment for Latino populations, incorporating the role of acculturation. This study reports on the process of developing and implementing a culturally adapted treatment for promoting parent involvement by Latino parents in Head Start preschool programs and examines engagement factors affecting participation in the treatment. Results show that Latino parents with higher native cultural competence perceived more benefits to the treatment and reported fewer barriers than parents with lower native cultural competence. Also, the total number of barriers to participation that parents perceived before treatment was negatively associated with treatment participation, above and beyond the influence of acculturation factors, parent perceptions of economic stress, and perceived program benefits. Results are discussed in terms of how to establish effective community-based mental health and educational outreach programs to promote engagement with Latino families. The importance of using bidimensional models of acculturation within research designs with Latino populations and ideas for future research are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

This profile provides key demographic information on Latino eligible voters1 and other major groups of eligible voters in Colorado. 2 All demographic data are based on Pew Hispanic Center tabulations of the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2010 American Community Survey. . .

Childcare wage construction: In IPUMS CPS data (King et al. 2010), we use the occupation codes 1992-2002 of: childcare workers (406), family childcare providers (466), early childhood teacher (467), childcare workers (468) for 1997 and 2002. For the year 2007, we use the occupation codes 2003-2010 of childcare workers (4600).

From 1980 to 2000, the substantial rise in the U.S. college-high school graduate wage gap coincided with an increase in geographic sorting as college graduates increasingly concentrated in high wage, high rent metropolitan areas, relative to lower skill workers. The increase in wage inequality may not reflect a similar increase in well-being inequality because high and low skill workers increasingly paid different housing costs and consumed different local amenities. This paper examines the determinants and welfare implications of the increased geographic skill sorting. I estimate a structural spatial equilibrium model of local labor demand, housing supply, labor supply, and amenity levels. The model allows local amenity and productivity levels to endogenously respond to a citys skill-mix. I identify the model parameters using local labor demand changes driven by variation in cities industry mixes and interactions of these labor demand shocks with determinants of housing supply (land use regulations and land availability). The GMM estimates indicate that cross-city changes in firms' demands for high and low skill labor were the underlying forces of the increase in geographic skill sorting. An increase in labor demand for college relative to non-college workers increases a citys college employment share, which then endogenously raises the local productivity of all workers and improves local amenities. Local wage and amenity growth generates in-migration, driving up rents. My estimates show that low skill workers are less willing to pay high housing costs to live in high-amenity cities, leading them to elect more affordable, low-amenity cities. I find that the combined effects of changes in citieswages, rents, and endogenous amenities increased well-being inequality between high school and college graduates by a significantly larger amount than would be suggested by the increase in the college wage gap alone.

When a city experiences a decline in income or population, do all neighborhoodswithin the city decline equally? Or do some neighborhoods decline more thanothers? What are the characteristics of the neighborhoods that decline the most?We answer these questions by looking at what happened to neighborhoods withinDetroit as the city experienced a sharp decline in income and population fromthe 1980s to the late 2000s. We fi nd patterns of changes in income and populationthat are consistent with the model and empirical patterns of gentrifi cationpresented in Guerrieri, Hartley, and Hurst (2011), only playing out in reverse.

This article analyzes the emergence of national public health capacity in the United States. Tracing the transformation of the federal government's role in public health from the 1910s through the emergence of the CDC during World War II, I argue that national public health capacity emerged, to a great extent, out of the attempts of government officials to deal with the problem of tropical disease within the southern United States during periods of mobilization for war.

This research determines the economic assimilation experience of Mexican immigrants and Chinese immigrants towards natives level over time after controlling for human capital and demographic characteristics. Using Census data from multiple years, this research follows cohorts of Mexican and Chinese immigrants who migrated to the U.S. prior to 1994 to investigate the impact of assimilation on the level of earnings for these immigrants. Multiple regression and simulation techniques are used to compare the earnings growth pattern for the two immigrant groups. Results show that over time there is wage convergence for Chinese immigrants toward the native level and they do show rapid economic assimilation in the United States. However, there is wage divergence and no economic assimilation of Mexican immigrants towards natives over time. The underlying explanation can be the changing demand of the U.S. labor market as it becomes more and more knowledge-based and information-driven.

Monetary policy has shown that it is not sufficient to stimulate economic activity to produce full employment. But the author argues that fiscal policy would not be enough, either. We need a robust wage policy specifically designed to increase what people make on the job.