Objective In this study, the "racial threat" and "racial contact" hypotheses are evaluated in relation to voting for the Liberty and Free Soil Parties in the North during the 1840s. Methods Regression models are used to predict the effect of county-level black populations on Liberty and Free Soil vote percentages in relation to types of employment. Results Racial threat occurred in high manufacturing counties, but racial contact/threat emerged in more agricultural counties. The effects vary by party and region of the North. Conclusion The effects of racial context on political behavior during this era are mixed, much like modern political studies have uncovered.

Much is made of the contemporary Red States-Blue States partisan divide and of the importance of race and income for defining partisan conflict. Less scholarly attention has been paid to place-character as a defining and dividing principle of American politics. This essay links literatures on urban politics and American political development to argue that a distinctly urban perspective is at the core of the current Blue alignment, and proposes a city delegation theory to explain how a cohesive urban bloc grew out of the local politics of the New Deals urban wing and has solidified steadily since. Empirical tests of the theorys implications, employing cohesion and likeness scores and multivariate regression, provide support for the importance of local parties in national legislative behavior. Initially concentrated in Northeastern and Midwestern industrial centers, this progressive urban bloc has nationalized and emerged as a dually liberal partisan pole in national political conflict, representing the full articulation of the New Deal realignment even as the original industrial core upon which it was built continues to wane.

The 1986 Commission on the Future of the South observed a "flash-flood of change rushing over the South . . . leaving many workers stranded." That flood was globalization. Since then, the floodwaters have only risen. Merchandise imports have grown faster than domestic output, and close to half the value of all imports comes from developing countries such as China. Most experts consider that trade helps the United States on the whole, but we also recognize that it rewards certain workers while hurting others. . .

The year 1965 marked an important inflection point in the struggle for racial justice in the United States, underscoring two fundamental points about race in America. First, that racial inequality and division were not onlySouthern problems attached to Jim Crow segregation. Second, that the nature of those inequalities and divisions was amatter not merely of formal civil status and law, but also of deeply etched economic arrangements, social and politicalconditions, and cultural outlooks and practices. Viewed in full, the racial divide was a challenge of truly nationalreach, multilayered in its complexity and depth. Therefore, the achievement of basic citizenship rights in the Southwas a pivotal but far from exhaustive stage of the struggle.

There are fundamental tasks common to every society: children have to be raised, homes need to be cleaned, meals need to be prepared, and people who are elderly, ill, or disabled need care. Day in, day out these responsibilities can involve both monotonous drudgery and untold rewards for those performing them, whether they are family members, friends, or paid workers. These are jobs that cannot be outsourced, because they involve the most intimate spaces of our everyday livesour homes, our bodies, and our families. Mignon Duffy uses a historical and comparative approach to examine and critique the entire twentieth-century history of paid care workincluding health care, education and child care, and social servicesdrawing on an in-depth analysis of U.S. Census data as well as a range of occupational histories. Making Care Count focuses on change and continuity in the social organization along with cultural construction of the labor of care and its relationship to gender, racial-ethnic, and class inequalities. Debunking popular understandings of how we came to be in a care crisis, this book stands apart as an historical quantitative study in a literature crowded with contemporary, qualitative studies, proposing well-developed policy approaches that grow out of the theoretical and empirical arguments.

This report presents findings from a two-year study exploring how nonprofit organizations and religious congregations strive to advance the rights, economic standing, and overall well-being of low-income Latina immigrants in Atlanta, GA; Phoenix, AZ; and Northern Virginia, a region within the Washington, DC, metropolitan area. It examines the challenges that service providers, clergy, and advocates in these areas see immigrant women grappling with on a daily basis, as well as the broad array of resources that religious and secular organizations offer to address these challenges. In documenting these resources, the report highlights the remarkable efforts of groups that strive to assist immigrant women in contexts often shaped by strong anti-immigrant sentiment and restrictive public policies. It also explores the gaps in resources that continue to remain despite these efforts and captures the views of organizational leaders on how programsand policies can be improved to support Latina immigrants.Based on the research findings, the report makes recommendations for changes in policies and practices that would benefit immigrant women and their families. We hopethese recommendations will be useful to advocates, clergy, service providers, policymakers, and others who support the inclusion of immigrant women in communities and society.

In the aftermath of Barack Obamas victory in 2008 was lauded as a sign of a diminished importance of race in American politics and the potential dawn of a post-racial era. While it is well-known that social inequalities persist across ethnoracial groups and racialized discoursehas been resilient, an underlying premise of the notion of post-racial politicsthat the election of a minority-race candidate was marked by an election that had transcended racial electoral politicshas not been directly considered. Using a new measure useful in comparing the extent to which electorates are organized along racial lines, this paper explores trends in racial division in voting in American politics, arguing that the 2008 election was not characterized by post-racial voting patterns, but rather that recent electoral politics in the United States havebeen notably divided along ethnic lines in both historical and cross-national comparative terms. Far from post-racial, the 2008 election must be included in any list of most-racial elections. A subsequent subnational analysis identifies drivers of and exceptions to this reality.

This research explores how interstate elderly migration behavior through the life course has changed over time by examining the role of individual characteristics in different types of moves. The authors focus on disability, veteran, and socioeconomic status, which research suggests are linked with differing motives for elderly migration. Using data from the 1970-2000 Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS), descriptive and multivariate analyses show that disability status has grown in importance while veteran and socioeconomic status have declined or remained stable. These changes are unique to the elderly. The growing role of disability in elderly migration is geographically universal, extending to both return (a proxy for assistance-related migration) and nonreturn migration. Possible explanations include a tendency for the first (amenity-based) elderly move to occur at younger ages and a decline in primarily milder disabilities that leads to relatively more severe disabilitiesand need for assistanceof those remaining.

The aging of the baby boomers represents a demographic tidal wave that will profoundly affect housing needs and living arrangements in coming years. The authors examine three possible scenarios for the projected number and mix of households in New Orleans in 2020. But regardless of the scenario, the increase in households headed by elderly will greatly surpass the increase in any other household type. This report concludes with strategies for attracting new residents to the city and ensuring we meet the housing needs of aging residents, including the desire of many seniors to stay in their homes as long as possible.

Using previously unexploited data, this paper explores the ages at which slaves were manumitted. OLS estimates reveal that mixed-race slaves, slaves in the tobacco-producing Piedmont, and female slaves of female slave owners were manumitted at younger ages. Weibull proportional hazards estimates imply that the same groups were more likely to be manumitted. The results also reveal a markedly diminishing likelihood of manumission after Nat Turner's 1831 insurrection in south-central Virginia. The results are consistent with a principal-agent model in which slave owners contracted with slaves over consumption and future manumission to elicit effort and control shirking or other unproductive activities.

his paper evaluates the presence of racial disparities in the issuance of consumer credit. Using a database of credit histories, this paper links location-based information on race with individual credit files. After controlling for place-specific factors such as housing vacancy rates and general population demographics, the paper finds qualitatively large differences in the amount of credit offered to similarly qualified applicants living in Black versus White areas. High data quality allows distinguishing between issuer-provision (supply) and utilization of credit (demand). Additional estimates using information on payday lending provide support for idea that issuers condition lending on location.

Jeffrey Passel surveys demographic trends and projections in the U.S. youth population, with an emphasis on trends among immigrant youth. He traces shifts in the youth population over the past hundred years, examines population projections through 2050, and offers some observations about the likely impact of the immigrant youth population on American society.

Economists have long recognized a connection between outcomes in the home and outcomes in the labor market. A large theoretical and empirical literature has explored the implications of this connection for men and women in traditional families - primarily heterosexual, married couples who live together, often with their children. Families have evolved considerably in the last half-century, however, and traditional families comprise a declining proportion of households in the United States. This dissertation contributes to a broader scope for family economics with essays that examine the work-family trade-offs of two groups of non-traditional couples: same-sex couples and committed couples who live apart. The results presented in the dissertation show that families are innovative in the face of changing constraints and suggest that those in the vanguard of family change have much to teach us, not just about their own family lives, but about family life in general.

Based on the success of Boston, Silicon Valley and the Research Triangle, po licy makers are increasingly looking to universities and colleges as engines of technological innovation and economic growth. Using panel data on metropolitan areas from 1980 to 2000, this paper estimates the spillover effects of activities of universities and colleges on economic outcomes of individuals in a local economy. Per capita academic R&D, share of science degrees in total bachelors' degrees and stock of college graduates in a metropolitan area are the measures of university activity. The panel structure of the data allows me to include fixed effects for metropolitan areas and time. To further investigate causality, I use deep lags of university activities and presence of land grant universities interacted with a dummy variable for decades, as instrumental variables. Per capita academic R&D and stock of college graduates in a metropolitan area have positive and significant effect on individual wages. The stock of college graduate in a metropolitan area is an important determinant of individual employment. In contrast, the effect of share of science degrees and per capita academic R&D appear to have more important effect on average employment. The results are also empirically important. One standard deviation increase in academic R&D increases wages by .8% and probability of individual employment probability by 0.02%. One standard deviation increase in share of science degrees increases wages by .4% and the probability of individual employment by 0.03%. One standard deviation increase in stock of college grads degrees increases wages by 4% and the probability of individual employment by 1%. JEL Classification: O18, O31, O32, R11, J01 I wish to thank Bruce Weinberg, Francisca Richter, Paul Bauer and Mark Schweitzer for helpful discussions; seminar participants at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Cleveland State University and The Ohio State University for comments. 2

To most economists, personal grooming is a non-market activity. The standard view is that time spent in non-market activities is counterproductive as it reduces work effort and job commitment (). But grooming may be different. Grooming provides an important source of communication about workers, their values, social identities and personalities. There is reason to believe that certain productive personality traits may be inferred on the basis of personal grooming. In this paper, we use data from the American Time Use Survey's (2009) pooled cross-section 20032007 to investigate the effect of additional time spent grooming on earnings. The results show that the effect of grooming on earnings differs significantly by gender and race. These results cannot easily be reconciled with any one particular theory, but imply a complex interaction between several possible effects.

Across the past two decades, public officials have debated and social scientists have studied the importance of tourist amenities in attracting and retaining human capital. Few studies, however, have examined the relationship between tourist amenities and the migration of educated workers. Information of this nature is needed by public officials considering the best use of tax dollars to attract human capital and advance local economies. This dissertation addresses this need an analysis of the relationship between built amenities and the migration of educated workers. This studys focus was on the importance of built amenities such as sports facilities, museums, and restaurants. Public investments can change the distribution of these amenities; in contrast, the advantages provided by natural amenities (e.g., weather, coastlines, and mountains) are less susceptible to public interventions. For that reason, areas lacking in those assets have focused on sports, the arts, and culture to attract human capital. Knowing if any of those investments have an effect on migration patterns is essential for cities across the North American Midwest and in many other parts of the world. This study focused on both migration (attraction) and non-movement (retention) of different types (age, education) of workers. Empirical tests using IPUMS (Integrated Public Use Micro-data Series) data between 2005 and 2008 show that small tourist amenities help retain workers while some big amenities do have an impact on the immigration of some groups of educated workers. These findings can help cities create the desired environments to foster attraction and retention of educated workers for economic development.

This study examines urban/suburban differences in educational outcomes in light of Tilly's conception of "opportunity hoarding." Data from the U.S. Census reveal the changing circumstances of 17-year-olds in central city and suburban settings across the post-World War H period. Focusing on the metropolitan Northeast and Eastern Midwest, we consider a range of factors associated with differences in educational attainment. Using a multilevel analytic strategy, we find evidence that clear distinctions emerged in this period, marking the educational status of youth in central city and suburban settings. While there were signs of urban/suburban inequality in certain metropolitan contexts and for specific types of suburbs in 1940, 40 years later the urban-suburban divide was clearly evident across all metropolitan settings. A wide range of factors became associated with this form of spatial differentiation in school experiences during the postwar era, suggesting that a prolonged process of systematic exclusion characterized this dimension of metropolitan development. We close with a brief discussion of policy implications for addressing school-related factors that may contribute to these differences.