Wage inequality has risen dramatically in the United States since at least 1980. This paper examines the role that the tax policies of the federal and state governments haveplayed in mitigating wage inequality. The analysis, which isolates the contribution of federal taxes and state taxes separately, employs two approaches. First, cross-sectionalestimates compare before-tax and after-tax inequality across the 50 states and the District of Columbia. Second, inequality estimates across time are calculated to assessthe evolution of the effects of tax policies. The results from the first approach indicate that the tax code reduces wage inequality substantially in all states. Most of this compression of the income distribution is attributable to federal taxes. Nevertheless, there is substantial cross-state variation in the extent to which state tax policies compress the income distribution. Cross-state differences in gasoline taxes have a surprisingly large impact on income compression, as do sales tax exemptions for food and clothing. The results of the second approach indicate that the mitigating influence of tax policy on wage inequality has increased very modestly since the early 1980s. The increase is due to the widening of the pre-tax wage distribution interacting with a progressive tax structure. In contrast, legislated tax changes over this period decreased income compression somewhat.

In this paper, we estimate the language effects on the earnings distribution among child immigrants. Utilizing U.S. Census data, we find: (1) there exists a larger heterogeneity in language premiums across the earnings distribution, and the patterns change over time (2) occupation and education channels explain most of the language effects and the large heterogeneity in them. However, the importance of these two channels has decreased over time.

This paper studies the occupational choices of highly educated native-born American males and links their choices to cultural attitudes towards pecuniary rewards and social prestige in their ancestral countries. These cultural attitudes were reported in the World Values Survey, which surveyed individuals' opinions on a series of subjects in various societies. The empirical analysis verifies that both income and respect are positively valued in occupational selection. The cultural attitudes play a significant role in these choices when other factors that may be correlated with one's opportunity and advantageare controlled for: a stronger cultural demand for pecuniary rewards leads individuals to choose more lucrative jobs; and a stronger demand for social prestige leads them to choose more prestigious jobs. The paper further explores the neighborhood effects on cultural transmission and finds a positive relationship between the proportion of the population from the same ancestry in the residential area and the effects of cultural attitudes on occupational selection.

Douglas Almond's use of the 1918 U.S. influenza pandemic as a natural experiment led to the seminal works on the subject of in utero health's impact on later life outcomes. The identi fication strength of his work, though, is driven by the inherent natural experiment supposition of random assignment. By using data from the 1920 and 1930 U.S. Censuses, this study investigates this keystone assumption and shows that the families of the \treatment" cohort were signifi cantly less literate and economically prosperous than the families of the \control" group. Additionally, when proxies for childhood environment are added to Almond's analyses, his fi ndings are appreciably reduced inmagnitude and signifi cance. This research implies that failing to control for the fi rst order eff ect of parent's education and wealth on a child's long-run outcomes, eliminates Douglas Almond's ability to use the 1918 U.S. influenza pandemic to make direct inferences regardingfetal health's impact on long-term wellbeing.

This paper deals with the issue of using infant and childhood mortality as an indicator of inequality. The case is that of the United States in the 20th century. Using microdata from the 1900 and 1910 Integrated Public Use Microsamples (IPUMS), published data from the Birth Registration Area in the 1920s, results from a number of surveys, and the Linked Birth & Infant Death Files from the National Center for Health Statistics for 1991, infant and child mortality can be related to such other variables as occupation of father or mother, education of father or mother, family income, race, ethnicity, and residence. The evidence shows that, although there have been large absolute reductions in the level of infant and child mortality rates and also a reduction in the absolute levels of differences across socioeconomic groups, relative inequality has not diminished over the 20th century.

We use longitudinal data from the 1984 through 2007 waves of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to examine how occupational status is related to the health transitions of 30 to 59 year-old U.S. males. A recent history of blue-collar employment predicts a substantial increase in the probability of transitioning from very good into bad self-assessed health, relative to white-collar employment, but with no evidence of occupational differences in movementsfrom bad to very good health. These findings are robust to a series of sensitivity analyses. The results suggest that blue-collar workers wear out faster with age because they are more likely, than their white-collar counterparts, to experience negative health shocks. This partly reflectsdifferences in the physical demands of blue-collar and white-collar jobs.

This paper investigates the relationship between ancestral scholarly culture and educational attainment by examining second-generation immigrants in the United States. The cultural value placed on education is proxied by average educational attainment among the adult population in the second generation's country of ancestry. The cultural proxy shows significant correlation with the second generation's educational attainment: given the same family background,market and institutions, higher cultural values on education predicts more years of schooling of the second generation, and this correlation is stronger among males than females. The paper also finds a weaker correlation between paternal scholarly culture and offspring's educational attainment when the mother is from another culture. Maternal scholarly culture is verified to be important, whereas the relevance of paternal culture is more salient than that of maternal culture, especially among the second-generation males.

Statement of Problem The pressure of learning English in a very short period of time, often leaves families in a very difficult place where they have to make a choice between one language and another. Some students were able to maintain a very “high” level of proficiency in their heritage language, while others had remained at a very “low” level of language proficiency. This thesis looks into the factors that influence Russian language maintenance and loss among Russian-American students. The research focuses on students’ language use and language attitudes towards their home language in relation to maintenance or loss of their home language. Sources of Data A sample of sixty Russian six graders took the Language Use and Attitude Survey. Data from the survey was the basis of this study, which compared each student’s attitude towards the language to the students’ language use and loss. Conclusions Reached The result of this study showed that, even though students have positive attitudes towards their heritage language, their use of Russian language outside of the family setting and in some cases within the family setting is very low. More contexts outside of the home need to be available to facilitate, require and promote the appreciation and development of the Russian language.

We describe changes over time in inequality in postsecondary education using nearly seventy years of data from the U.S. Census and the 1979 and 1997 National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth. We find growing gaps between children from high- and low-income families in collegeentry, persistence, and graduation. Rates of college completion increased by only four percentage points for low-income cohorts born around 1980 relative to cohorts born in the early 1960s, but by 18 percentage points for corresponding cohorts who grew up in high-income families. Among men, inequality in educational attainment has increased slightly since the early 1980s. But among women, inequality in educational attainment has risen sharply, driven by increases in the education of the daughters of high-income parents. Sex differences in educational attainment, which were small or nonexistent thirty years ago, are now substantial, with women outpacing men in every demographic group. The female advantage in educationalattainment is largest in the top quartile of the income distribution. These sex differences present a formidable challenge to standard explanations for rising inequality in educational attainment.

Droughts can produce a wide range of adverse impacts on diverse economic sectors and environmental conditions depending on their intensity, duration, and location and on the actions taken by those affected. Often, the overall consequences of a drought are not fully understood until some time has passed and comprehensive data are collected and analyzed. A good example is the recent multi-year drought in California from 2007 through 2009. During the drought, there was considerable concern and controversy throughout the state about the nature and severity of water shortfalls, and the impacts on individual communities. Here, we present updated information on impacts of the recent drought on Californias economy and environment, and, where possible, its costs. We also assess what this drought tells us about Californias vulnerability to future droughts. The states growing population, the declining health of ecosystems, and climate change all contribute to rising pressure on water resources. It will be increasingly important to have robust and resilient strategies to cope with these pressures. The recent drought provides a unique opportunity to retrospectively examine how the drought affected different sectors and how those sectors responded, in turn. This information can helpimprove drought planning and management and, ultimately, help minimize negative impacts of future droughts.According to the California Department of Water Resources, water years 2007-2009 were the 12th driest three-year period in recorded climatic history (DWR 2010). From a purelyhydrological perspective, droughts in the late 1920s, 1970s, and 1980s were more severe. The 2007-2009 drought, however, coincided with a period of increased demands for freshwater, changes in operating rules at reservoirs, and environmental protections that reduced pumping of water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to state and federal water users south of the Delta (DWR 2010). Among the sectors affected by reduced water availability were agriculture, ecosystem health, and hydropower production. We discuss each in this assessment. During the drought, there was considerable controversy around the role that environmental protections, and in particular, the Endangered Species Act (ESA), played in the reduced exports to south-of-Delta water users. Some critics contended that environmental protections forced dramatic reductions in water supply that hurt agricultural sector production and employment in the Central Valley. Yet, data and analyses from the California Department of Water Resources and the Congressional Research Service now estimate that legal environmental protections accounted for less than a quarter of the overall reductions in 2009 (Cody et al. 2009). The remaining reductions were related to precipitation and runoff. In addition, the Commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation and the Congressional Research Service have found that these reductions were not due to the ESA alone but to a wide range of federal and state policies, including the Clean Water Act, the state Porter-Cologne Act, the state Fish and Game Code, and the Central Valley Project Improvement Act. Finally, local differences in water-supply impacts also resulted from the priority of use: some federal water project users settlement and exchange contractors received 100% of their desired supplies throughout the drought, while others received only 10% (USBR 2009). As a result, contract priority was a critical factor in the disparity in water deliveries during the drought.

This article investigates the causes in the reduction of labor force participation ofthe old. We argue that the changes in social security policy and in technology, and theintroduction of Medicare may account for most of the changes in retirement over thesecond part of the last century in the U.S. economy. We develop a dynamic generalequilibrium model with endogenous retirement that embeds social security legislationand Medicare. The model is able to match very closely the increase in the retirementrate of American males and also to reproduce many stylized facts, such as retirementrate by age, by health status and income. We ?nd that changes in social securitypolicy - that became much more generous - account for a sizeable part of the expansionaggregate retirement rate (45% of the observed increase). They also explain, togetherwith Medicare, most of the variation of the retirement pro?le by age. We found thatwealth shocks can in?uence retirement behavior, so that the strong run-up in stockmarket in the nineties may have aected the decision of older workers to leave thelabor force.

Over the past 60 years, the definition of the American family has been transformed. Here is a glimpse of how some traditional and some more modern family configurations are spread across the United States and New York City.

The socioeconomic circumstances of persons and the places where they live and work strongly influence their health (1,2). In the United States, as elsewhere, the risk for mortality, morbidity, unhealthy behaviors, reduced access to health care, and poor quality of care increases with decreasing socioeconomic circumstances (2,3). This association is continuous and graded across a population and cumulative over the life course (2,3). Educational attainment and family or household income are two indicators used commonly to assess the influence of socioeconomic circumstances on health (4). Education is a strong determinant of future employment and income. In the majority of persons, educational attainment reflects material and other resources of family of origin and the knowledge and skills attained by young adulthood. Therefore, it captures both the long-term influence of early life circumstances and the influence of adult circumstances on adult health. Income is the indicator that most directly measures material resources. Income can influence health by its direct effect on living standards (e.g., access to better quality food and housing, leisure-time activities, and health-care services).

The city of Detroit (Michigan) has experienced social, economic, and climatic changes throughout the 20th century. Detroit was once an embodiment of exemplary industrialization and a utopia for automotive innovation. With the post-industrial stress and the abandonment that came with the fall of the automotive industry, however, the city saw drastic changes in structure and urban development. We use economic and social history records to assess the sustainability of Detroit during 1913 - 1976 time period by calculating its Sustainability Index (SI). We used climate data to correspond the decadal changes in SI with changes in precipitation and temperature in the Detroit area. A steady decrease in a citys winter temperatures may have a great impact on the population, especially the poor, and may contribute to a decrease in its sustainability.

This thesis examines the earnings of artists. The determinants of earnings are examined, and compared to the earnings of the remaining workforce to determine if artists receive differential treatment. The One Percent Public-Use Micro-data Samples from the 1990 and 2000 Censuses were used to assess any variation in this treatment between 1990 and 2000. The results show that there is an increase in the rate at which artists are compensated in salaried employment from 1990 to 2000, relative to the rest of the workforce. The Oaxaca decomposition is also applied to the wage differential between artists and non-artists, and results show that the major portion of the differential can be explained by observable characteristics.

The release of the latest Census data reveals that Cleveland's population has fallen since the last census and dipped below the 400,000 mark. From 2000 to 2010, the city's population fell from around 478,000 to about 397,000 (a 17.1 percent drop). Cleveland's recent loss of population is not uncommon for cities in the Great Lakes region. Even the largest city in the region, Chicago, has shrunk over the past 10 years. Chicago's population fell to about 2.7 million in the latest census, a 6.9 percent drop from 2000. Interestingly, both cities experienced their peak population in 1950. Since then, Cleveland has lost over half of its population, while Chicago has lost slightly more than a quarter.

The difference between average hours worked in the US and average hours worked in Continental European countries has been increasing since the early 1970s. To explain this phenomenon, this paper develops an endogenous growth model with two key properties: agents are heterogeneous in their rates of time preference and labor skills, and the model incorporates progressive income taxes. The model is calibrated to US and German data for the periods 1971-1974 and 1986-1989. Our findings suggest that the degree of progressivity is a major factor in explaining the patterns of the US and German labor supply over time. Predictions of the model also match the distributional trends in both countries during this time period. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.