Estimating the disclosure risk of a Statistical Disclosure Control (SDC) protection method by means of (distance-based) record linkage techniques is a very popular approach to analyze the privacy level offered by such a method. When databases are very large, some particular record linkage techniques such as blocking or partitioning are usually applied to make this process reasonably efficient. However, in this case the record linkage process is not exact, which means that the disclosure risk of a SDC protection method may be underestimated.In this paper we propose the use of kd-trees techniques to apply exact yet very efficient record linkage when (protected) datasets are very large. We describe some experiments showing that this approach achieves better results, in terms of both accuracy and running time, than more classical approaches such as record linkage based on a sliding window.We also discuss and experiment on the use of these techniques not to link a whole protected record with its original one, but just to guess the value of some confidential attribute(s) of the record(s). This fact leads to concepts such as k-neighbor l-diversity or k-neighbor p-sensitivity, a generalization (to any SDC protection method) of l-diversity or p-sensitivity, which have been defined for SDC protection methods ensuring k-anonymity, such as microaggregation.

This paper analyzes the impact of college enrollment expansion on student academic achievements and labor market outcomes. When public policies promote "access" to college education, colleges adjust their curricula: Non-elite public colleges adopt a less demanding curriculum in order to accommodate the influx of low-ability students. This adjustment benefi ts low-ability students at the expense ofmiddle-ability students. At the same time, it reduces the competitive pressure faced by elite private colleges, as public colleges are now a less appealing alternative formiddle-ability students. Private colleges hence adopt a more demanding curriculum to better serve their high-ability students, again at the expense of middle-ability students. The model predicts that, during times of enrollment expansion, college educated workers at the high and low ends of the wage income distribution will see their incomes grow more than those in the middle. This prediction is consistent U.S. income dynamics from the 1960s to the present.

Economists and social scientists have long been interested in intergenerational mobility, and documenting the persistence between parents and children's outcomes has been an active area of research. However, since Gary Solon's 1999 Chapter in the Handbook of Labor Economics, the literature has taken an interesting turn. In addition to focusing on obtaining precise estimates of correlations and elasticities, the literature has placed increased emphasis on the causal mechanisms that underlie this relationship. This chapter describes the developments in the intergenerational transmission literature since the 1999 Handbook Chapter. While there have been some important contributions in terms of measurement of elasticities and correlations, we focus primarily on advances in our understanding of the forces driving the relationship and less on the precision of the correlations themselves.

Models of technological revolutions imply that if production using personal computers (PCs) demands less physical and more cognitive skills than previous technologies, then its effect on relative demand for cognitive skills increases with the pre-PC relative supply of cognitive skills. Using variation across U.S. metropolitan areas, we first show that, before PCs, male-female wage gaps were increasing in the relative supply of cognitive skills, consistent with other evidence that women are cognitive intensive compared to men. Second, we show that the decline in the male-female wage gap in recent decades was not uniform across the U.S., as would be predicted by standard models of ongoing skill-biased technological change, but was larger in markets which had an initial advantage in PC adoption because of their high relative supply of cognitive skills, consistent with the PC revolution model. Our estimates are consistent with the diffusion of PCs being responsible for most of the decline in gender wage gaps between 1980 and 2000.

Background: Mexican Americans and non-Hispanic blacks have higher stroke recurrence rates and lower rates of secondary stroke prevention than non-Hispanic whites. As a potential explanation for this disparity, we assessed racial/ethnic differences in access to physician care and medications in a national sample of US stroke survivors.Methods: Among all 4,864 stroke survivors aged =45 years who responded to the National Health Interview Survey years 20002006, we compared access to care within the last 12 months by race/ethnicity before and after stratification by age (4564 years vs =65 years). With logistic regression, we adjusted associations between access measures and race/ethnicity for sex, comorbidity, neurologic disability, health status, year, income, and health insurance.Results: Among stroke survivors aged 4564 years, Mexican Americans, non-Hispanic blacks, and non-Hispanic whites reported similar rates of no generalist physician visit (approximately 15%) and inability to afford medications (approximately 20%). However, among stroke survivors aged =65 years, Mexican Americans and blacks, compared with whites, reported greater frequency of no generalist visit (15%, 12%, 8%; p = 0.02) and inability to afford medications (20%, 11%, 6%; p < 0.001). Mexican Americans and blacks more frequently reported no medical specialist visit (54%, 49%, 40%; p < 0.001) than did whites and rates did not differ by age. Full covariate adjustment did not fully explain these racial/ethnic differences.Conclusions: Among US stroke survivors at least 65 years old, Mexican Americans and blacks reported worse access to physician care and medications than whites. This reduced access may lead to inadequate risk factor modification and recurrent stroke in these high-risk minority groups.

The author improves on the measurement of U.S. state public opinion by (1) applying previous methods used only on cross-sectional data to create dynamic measures of state public opinion and (2) providing a systematic comparison of the performance of the various methodological approaches on these dynamic measures. The author shows that scholars can use multilevel regression, imputation, and poststratification (MRP) coupled with a simple moving average to measure state public opinion over time. Compared to aggregation, the MRP approach has less error and is more reliable, particularly for the less populated states. The author shows the applicability of the MRP approach by measuring and validating state partisanship and state ideology over time. The validated measures are available for public use. Armed with a method to measure state public opinion over time, scholars can begin to more fully understand the dynamic relationship between public opinion and policy in the U.S. states.

A birth certificate establishes a child's legal identity and is the sole official proof of a child's age. However, quantitative estimates on the economic significance of birth registration are lacking. Birth registration laws were enacted by the majority of U.S. states in late 19th and early 20th centuries. Controlling for state of birth and cohort effects, the differential timing of birth registration laws across US states is used to identify whether birth registration changed the effectiveness of child labor legislation between 1910 and 1930. The incidence of child labor declined significantly in the early 20th century. The study finds that if a birth registration law had been enacted by the time a child was born, the effectiveness of minimum working age legislation in prohibiting under-aged employment more than doubled. This effect was stronger for children residing in non-agricultural areas.

How much do people with limited resources pay for cars, public transit, and other means of travel? How does their transportation behavior change during periods of falling employment and rising fuel prices? This research uses in-depth interviews with 73 adults to examine how rising transportation costs impact low-income families. The interviews examine four general areas of interest: travel behavior and transportation spending patterns; the costs and benefits of alternative modes of travel; cost management strategies; and opinions about the effect of changing transportation prices on travel behavior. Key findings include: Most low-income household are concerned about their transportation costs. Low-income individuals actively and strategically manage their household resources in order to survive on very limited means and to respond to changes in income or transportation costs. In making mode-choice decisions, low-income travelers—like higher-income travelers—carefully evaluate the costs of travel (time and out-of-pocket expenses) against the benefits of each of the modes. Some low-income individuals in our sample were willing to endure higher transportation expenditures—such as the costs of auto ownership or congestion tolls—if they believed that they currently benefit or would potentially benefit from these increased expenses. Although low-income households find ways to cover their transportation expenditures, many of these strategies had negative effects on households. The report concludes with recommendations on how to increase transportation affordability, minimize the impact that new transportation taxes or fees have on low-income people, and develop new research and data collection to support the previous two efforts.

Identification of the export nature of an industry in a center within a regionhas proven difficult because of the complexities, dynamic nature and maturation ofregional economies. Location Theory and the work of Jan Tinbergen imply that someindustries (hybrid industries) in a center may produce both for local consumption andfor export within a region. We focus on hybrid industries in Metropolitan StatisticalAreas (MSAs) in the Census Midwest region.We present new statistical tests designedto identify the export component of three different types of hybrid industries. The firsttype of industry is present in virtually all MSAs, and appears to produce for export ina subset of thoseMSAs.We present a test to identify the subset of MSAs for which theindustry is hybrid. The second type of hybrid industry is absent in a number of MSAsand appears to produce for export in some or all the MSAs in which it is present.Our statistical technique seeks to identify the portion of employment in the industryin the region which produces for export production. Finally, we focus on high-orderbusiness services in the five largest MSAs in the Midwest region. While these industriestypically produce for local consumption they may produce for export, especiallyin large MSAs. We present a statistical test for identifying the export component ofthese industries in large MSAs. To varying degrees, we compare our tests with resultsobtained using location quotients.JEL Classification R11 R12

This study offers the first research data on the interest of divorcing parents in marital reconciliation. A sample of 2,484 divorcing parents was surveyed after taking required parenting classes. They were asked about whether they believed their marriage could still be saved with hard work, and about their interest in reconciliation services. About 1 of 4 individual parents indicated some belief that their marriage could still be saved, and in about 1 in 9 matched couples both partners did. As for interest in reconciliation services, about 3 in 10 individuals indicated potential interest. In a sub-sample of 329 matched couples, about 1 in 3 couples had one partner interested but not the other, and in 1 in 10 couples both partners were interested in reconciliation services. Findings were consistent across most demographic and marital factors. The only strong predictors of reconciliation interest were gender, with males being more interested in than females, and initiator status, with far greater interest among those whose partner initiated the divorce. These findings are discussed in terms of attachment theory and future prospects of divorce services.

Economists have frequently hypothesized that industrialization contributed to the United States' 19th 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 610 percent reduction in fertility. 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 childraising costs induced by the separation of migrant households from their extended families may explain the remaining gap in migrantnative fertility.

Social Security is a crucial source of income for many Americans. This is particularly true for women and people of color, who tend to have fewer alternative sources of income, experience higher poverty rates, and earn less on average throughout their working years (Hartmann, Hayes, and Drago 2011). Latinas are one group for whom Social Security is especially important. This is, in part, because Latinas have a higher life expectancy than the majority of the population: those who were age 65 in 2010 have an average life expectancy of 89 years, compared with 85 years for all women and Hispanic men and 82 years for all men (U.S. Social Security Administration 2010). Moreover, Latinas who participate in the labor force tend to be concentrated in low-wage jobs without pensions (League of United Latin American Citizens 2010). Because Social Security provides benefits even after other resources may be exhausted, is annually adjusted for inflation, and returns a greater percentage of earnings to lower-wage workers, it is a crucial form of support for Latinas.

I structurally estimate an incomplete markets lifecycle model with endogenous labor supply, using data on the joint distribution of wages, hours and consumption. The model is successful at matching the evolution of both the first and second moments of the data over the lifecycle. The key challenge for the model is to generate declining inequality in annual hours worked over the first half of the working life, while respecting the constraints imposed by the data on consumption and wages. I argue that this is a robust feature of the data on lifecycle labor supply that is strongly at odds with the intra-temporal first order condition for labor supply. Allowing for a realistic degree of involuntary unemployment, coupled with preferences that feature non-separability in the disutility of the extensive and intensive margins of hours worked, allows the model to overcome this challenge. The results imply that labor market frictions are important in jointly accounting for observed cross-sectional inequality in labor supply and consumption and may have quantitative relevance for analyses that exploit the intra-temporal first-order condition for labor.

The retirement security landscape has changed drastically for most workers over the last thirty years except for public school teachers and other state and local government employees. Many private-sector employers have stopped offering traditional retirement plans, while most state and local employees remain covered by defined benefit (DB) pension plans. Research shows that DB plans have had strong effects on worker retention in the private sector, as workers delayed retirement until they cash in on large pension wealth accruals late in their careers and then retire abruptly. We explore these effects for teachers, using data that includes measures of teacher qualifications and job satisfaction. We find that dissatisfied teachers respond much more to pension incentives than satisfied teachers do, first delaying retirement while pension wealth is still accumulating and then retiring abruptly.

In this third annual Wisconsin Poverty Report, we use the Wisconsin measure to examine need in 2009 and changes in economic security from 2008 to 2009. Unveiled by Institute for Research on Poverty researchers in 2010, the Wisconsin Poverty Measure more broadly assesses needs and resources to better understand the impact of state and federal policies. The basic results of IRPs 2011 Wisconsin Poverty Project are found in the Wisconsin Poverty Report: Were Antipoverty Policies Effective in 2009? Two companion technical reports offer additional details to serve as a resource to other states and localities. The reports look at antipoverty programs during the Great Recession. We find that expanded tax credits and food assistance benefits offset a drop in families earnings and cash income in 2009 and kept child poverty from rising between 2008 and 2009.