Richer, better-educated people live longer than poorer, less-educated people. This correlation is well-known but the causal link is not yet certain. In this paper we will use the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividends (APFD) as an income shock to Alaska residents and examine the health outcomes of newborns. Almost every Alaska resident has received the same amount of APFD once per year regardless of their age or income since 1982. Due to a long legal battle and unconstitutionality of the proposed dividend distribution plan by US Supreme Court the first and second dividend distribution in 1982 and 1983 respectively was unexpected shock to public. We use this random income shock as an instrument of family income to identify causal link between income and health. By focusing on birth weight we haveaccurate measure of outcome for census of all births and minimize reverse causality concern. We found that income statistically significantly improves birth weight, but the effect is moderate in magnitude. One thousand dollar income improves the birth weight by 14 grams. Low birth weight is also slightly decreased with higher income. We also examined the possible mechanism of birth weight improvementbut higher medical care utilization or lower labor supply did not provide supporting evidence.

Gender-typical educational choices and the glass ceiling are widely believed to explain why older women earn far less than observably similar men. Using large panels drawn from the National Science Foundations (NSF) NationalSurvey of College Graduates and other data representative of U.S. college graduates from the 1990s, the author documents the small role of personal choices and finds evidence contrary to the predictions of both human capitaland discrimination models. Rather than the differential wage growth rates predicted by these models, she finds similar average rates of earnings growth for women and men across numerous specifications, which suggests that thegender gap in earnings is determined by factors already present early in the career. Her findings reveal slower earnings growth in only two subsets of women: young mothers, who experience slower earnings growth during theearly career relative to men the same age, but then compensate with faster growth later in their careers; and women with exceptionally high earnings levels. The latter are underrepresented among workers winning the largestpromotions, when compared to similarly successful men the same age, and face a glass ceiling at the very top of the career ladder.

Demographics on Language in Illinois is a tabulation of the number of children ages 0 to 5 (inclusive) that live in homes where the primary language is something other than English and a list of the languages spoken in Illinois. Developed in 2006, IECAM is part of the Early Childhood and Parenting Collaborative (ECAP) at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. IECAM is currently funded by the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) and the Illinois Department of Human Services (IDHS

Why are unemployment benefits more generous in some countries? This article argues that citizens trade off the redistributive and insuring effect of social insurance. As a consequence, the distribution of risk in a society has important consequences via popular demand for social policy making. At the micro-level, the article shows that, in addition to income, the risk of unemployment is a key predictor of individual-level preferences for unemployment benefits. Based on the micro-level findings, the article argues that at the macro-level the homogeneity of the risk pool is an important determinant of benefit generosity: The more equally unemployment risk is distributed the higher unemployment replacement rates are. Empirical testing at both levels finds strong support for this account of social policy by popular demand.

A presentation and analysis of new data on green jobs in the United States and its regions

We discuss approaches to estimating the effect that immigration has on wages of native workers which assume a three-level CES model, where immigrants and natives are allowed to be imperfect substitutes within an age-education cell, and predict the wage impact based on estimates of the elasticities of substitution at each level. We argue that this approach is sensitive to immigrants downgrading at arrival, and we illustrate the possible bias in estimating the elasticity of substitution between immigrants and natives.

information that allows the reconstruction of house- holds and the tracking of family changes across time, allows the analysis of family diseases, and facilitates a variety of social science research. One particular topic of interest in historical census data analysis are households and linking them across time. This enables tracking of the majority of members in a house- hold over a certain period of time, which facilitates the extraction of information that is hidden in the data, such as fertility, occupations, changes in family structures, immigration and movements, and so on. Such information normally cannot be easily acquired by only linking records that correspond to individuals. In this paper, we propose a novel method to link households in historical census data. Our method first computes the attribute-wise similarity of individual record pairs. A support vector machine classifier is then trained on limited data and used to classify these individual record pairs into matches and non- matches. In a second step, a group linking approach is employed to link households based on the matched individual record pairs. Experimental results on real census data from the United Kingdom from 1851 to 1901 show that the proposed method can greatly reduce the number of multiple household matches com- pared with a traditional linkage of individual record pairs only.

At the micro-level (individuals), this paper argues and shows that partisanship is not only shapedby the traditionally suggested socio-economic factors, but also by the uncertainty of future income(risk exposure): people tend to identify with the Democratic Party when they are poor, or whenthey face a high degree of risk exposure. The reverse is true for Republican Party identifiers. Thisimplies that rich individuals facing a high degree of risk exposure (or poor people facing low riskexposure) are cross-pressured: while their income suggests that they should identify with theRepublican Party, their risk exposure makes them sympathize with the Democrats.This has implications at the macro-level (country). To understand a societys polarization onre-distributional issues, it is of interest to know how risk exposure is distributed across the incomescale. It is shown that the U.S. experienced increasing risk exposure at the lower end of the incomedistribution (risk polarization). This could explain increased polarization in the Americansociety.

The terms “family” and “household” are used interchangeably in the literature. But do interactions between family members residing in separate households affect individual outcomes? I address this question by testing whether children’s human capital accu- mulation was affected by the earnings shocks of their nonresident kin during the 1997-8 financial crisis in Indonesia. The crisis produced sudden, heterogeneous changes in the real earnings of Indonesian workers, providing a natural experiment for conducting this test. Earnings shocks to children’s nonresident kin – including extended family and rel- atives living in other districts – significantly affected their human capital accumulation between 1997 and 2000. These effects were persistent. Results from 2007, nearly a decade after the crisis hit, indicate that the shocks affected children’s ultimate educational attain- ment. I explore several possible channels of causation and find evidence that intra-family transfers, underpinned by ex-post altruism as opposed to ex-ante insurance contracts, were important. Additional evidence highlights the role of family networks as a source of vulnerability to households reliant upon transfers to finance human capital investments. The results have implications for the design of surveys, as well as the targeting and eval- uation of policies aimed at improving educational outcomes and protecting individuals from the long-term consequences of economic shocks.

Background and aim The childhood obesity epidemic seems to be levelling out but groups with low socio-economic status (SES) remain disadvantaged in this context. Successful community–based prevention should be targeted and adopt a health promotion approach. To reach and maintain a healthy weight, children at risk for overweight and obesity (OW) need skills to understand the meaning of information and messages related to energy balance. The general aim of this thesis is to explore the prerequisites for prevention of childhood obesity, focusing on areas with low SES and many immigrants and refugees. Specific aims are: (i) to explore dietary patterns, physical activity (PA), perceived relationships between lifestyle and health and OW prevalence among children in areas with different SES; (ii) to assess secular trends in these variables among children in a low-SES community and (iii) to investigate school nurses’ counselling of OW pupils in multilingual settings. Methods Surveys were conducted in January 2003 and 2008. A school in a residential area with low SES and many refugees was surveyed at both times. A school in an area with high SES was surveyed in 2008 only. All pupils in the fifth and sixth grades (n=347) were invited to participate. The surveys consisted of a questionnaire and interview covering habitual dietary pattern, PA and belief in ability to affect health; weight and height were also measured. Comparisons were made between the high- and low- SES school (2008) and, for the school in the area with low SES, between 2008 and 2003. To investigate current practice in school nurses’ supportive work, theme-oriented discourse analysis and qualitative content analysis were undertaken, based on 22 audio recordings from eight school nurses’ counselling sessions with 20 OW children. The quantitative distribution of the discourse space was analysed statistically. Results In 2003, 31% of the children were OW. About half of the children thought they could benefit from a healthy lifestyle at this time. Many children reported a high intake of sugar-rich products. In 2008, compared to 2003, significantly more children in the same low-SES school believed that their lifestyle could affect their health. Furthermore, a downward shift in BMI z- score and decreased intake of sugar were only significant for girls and the prevalence of obesity had decreased non-significantly in both genders. In the high-SES school, the corresponding prevalence in 2008 was significantly lower. Numerous lifestyle habits differed between the schools, all in favour of the high-SES school. Qualitative analyses suggested that misunderstandings in school nurses’ counselling with OW pupils originated from their belief that they knew what advice the pupils needed, insensitivity to the pupils’ concerns and poor linguistic comprehension. Nurses occasionally provided inadequate/inappropriate explanations about food and exercise. Inadequate skills in managing the process of enabling children and their parents were observed. Counselling families with languages and food cultures differing from the traditional Swedish ones met with additional difficulties. Conclusions Differences in obesity prevalence and many lifestyle parameters between children living in areas with varying SES may partly be regarded as a consequence of a society that fails to meet the needs of some of its inhabitants. The studies in this thesis suggest that preventive interventions should be developed and implemented in cooperation with the targeted groups. Measures should be taken to ensure that interpreters are available when needed. To enhance person-centred counselling, school nurses need improved nutritional knowledge and communication skills. To accomplish this, they should be provided with opportunities to cooperate with other professions.

Although rarely the primary focus of study, housing subsidies and prices influence the most fundamental decisions about family living. This analysis uses 1980, 1990 and 2000 US Census data to examine the effects of housing prices and subsidies on the living arrangements of mothers with young children while controlling for welfare benefit levels, unemployment rates, gender ratios, child support enforcement and personal characteristics. Results suggest that housing prices are positively associated with all shared arrangements relative to living alone, while housing subsidies are negatively associated with marriage and living with family relative to living alone.

For researchers interested in the impact of income on life outcomes, the 'Social Security Notch' provides a rare source of variation in incomes not caused by these same life outcomes. This paper addresses the usefulness of this variation to researchers. First, it demonstrates that simulated benefit levels by cohort are very significant predictors of reported benefits and total incomes for the affected cohorts in large data sources, such as the Current Population Survey. Second, it examines whether these are large enough to disentangle the impact of changes in income from underlying cohort variability in outcomes. It shows that the cohorts with higher benefits due to law changes are also observed to have higher earned incomes in retirement. Furthermore, the difference in mortality rates between affected cohorts is similar in magnitude to the gaps between other successive cohorts. These results imply that cohort variability overshadows the effects of this potential instrument.

One of the most dramatic changes in the fiscal federalism landscape during the postwar period has been therapid growth in state budgets, which almost tripled as a share of GDP and doubled as a share of governmentspending between 1952 and 2006. We argue that the greater role of states cannot be easily explained bychanges in Tiebout forces of fiscal competition, such as mobility and voting patterns, and are not accounted forby demographic or income trends. Rather, we demonstrate that much of the growth in state budgets has beendriven by changes in intergovernmental interactions. Restricted federal grants to states have increased, andfederal policy and legal constraints have also mandated or heavily incentivized state own-source spending,particularly in the areas of education, health and public welfare. These outside pressures moderate the forcesof fiscal competition and must be taken into account when assessing the implications of observed revenue andspending patterns.

This dissertation contains three essays that study the effects of intermarriage on immigrants' labor market outcomes. The first essay uses the 2000 U.S. Census to examine immigrants in the U.S. as a whole. I use three methods to address the possible endogeneity and selection bias: instrumental variables estimation, a sample selection model, and a counterfactual construction method. All three methods suggest that the causal intermarriage premium received by a typical immigrant is small and perhaps nonexistent. However, I find larger premiums for immigrants from Latin America, Africa, or the Middle East; high school dropouts and immigrants with at least a Bachelor's degree; and immigrants older than twelve upon arrival in the United States. The second essay estimates the value of access to the U.S. labor market by comparing intermarriage premiums received by Mexicans and Puerto Ricans. Both groups face similar language and cultural obstacles, but Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens by birth. Therefore, only Mexican immigrants can gain new work privileges by marrying a U.S. citizen. Instrumental variables are used to address endogeneity bias. Results indicate a significantly larger intermarriage premium for Mexicans, suggesting that legal advantages are a major mechanism through which intermarriage affects immigrants' wages. The third essay further studies the nature of the intermarriage premium. The Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986 provides a case study on the role of legal benefits associated with intermarriage. Using Census data from 1990, this essay studies the immigrant wage gain associated with intermarriage received by two groups of Mexican immigrants who arrived before and after the cutoff date of eligibility. The pre-82 undocumented Mexican workers can obtain legal status through the amnesty while the control group obtains legal status through marriage to a U.S. citizen. Instrumental variables estimates show a significantly larger intermarriage premium for Mexican immigrants who migrated after the cutoff point and no statistically significant intermarriage premium is found in the treatment group. The 35 percent premium gap indicates that legal benefits are the major mechanism through which intermarriage affects immigrants' labor market outcomes.