We assemble a new dataset that links census records for more than 5,000 African American males from 1910 to 1930, the first two decades of the Great Migration from the South. We use the new dataset to engage major themes in research on the Great Migration. We find that literacy in 1910 is weakly correlated with subsequent inter-regional migration, but distance to major northern cities is a strong predictor even when controlling for personal and local characteristics. New estimates of race- and region-specific earnings indicate that the migrants nominal and real gains were large on average, even among men from the same county or same household. There is some evidence consistent with positive selection into migration, but this can account for a small portion of the earnings difference between migrants and non-migrants.

We present new estimates of home ownership for black and white households from 1870 to 2007. Black ownership increased by 46 percentage points, whereas white ownership increased by 20 points. Remarkably, 25 of the 26 point narrowing occurred between 1870 and 1910. Part of this early convergence is accounted for by falling white ownership due to movement out of agriculture, but most is accounted for by post-emancipation gains among blacks. After 1910, white and black households increased ownership, but the racial gap barely changed. We discuss the influence of residential segregation, public policy, and permanent income on the ownership gap.

Understanding patterns of daily life among contemporary retirement-age Americans ages 60 to 75 is of heightened importance as growing numbers of boomers and those in the cohort preceding them move through this life stage. In this paper, we focus on time spent in healthy behaviors—key risk factors for health and wellbeing—which are even more important because they are potentially modifiable. We take a gendered life course approach considering gender as a primary organizing factor in daily life as well as the structuring effects of work and the potential rolelessness of non-work for older Americans. We use OLS regression to analyze daily time allocations to healthy and unhealthy behavior (sleep, exercise, meal preparation, leisure, and paid work) among retirement-age men and women using the American Time Use Survey (2006-2008). Along with employment status and gender, we consider the effects of health status and day of the week on time patterns.

Theory and evidence on disaster-induced population displacement have focused on individual and population-subgroup characteristics. Less is known about impacts on households. I estimate excess incidence of household breakup resulting from Hurricane Katrina by comparing a probability sample of pre-Katrina New Orleans resident adult household heads and non-household heads (N = 242), traced just over a year later, with a matched sample from a nationally representative survey over an equivalent period. One in three among all adult non-household heads, and one in two among adult children of household heads, had separated from the household head 1 year post-Katrina. These rates were, respectively, 2.2 and 2.7 times higher than national rates. A 50% higher prevalence of adult children living with parents in pre-Katrina New Orleans than nationally increased the hurricane's impact on household breakup. Attention to living arrangements as a dimension of social vulnerability in disaster recovery is suggested.

This analysis uses March Current Population Survey data from 1999-2010 and a differencesin-differences approach to examine how Californias first in the nation paid family leave (PFL)program affected leave-taking by mothers following childbirth, as well as subsequent labormarket outcomes. We obtain robust evidence that the California program more than doubledthe overall use of maternity leave, increasing it from around three to six or seven weeks forthe typical new mother with particularly large growth for less advantaged groups. We alsoprovide suggestive evidence that PFL increased the usual weekly work hours of employedmothers of one-to-three year-old children by 6 to 9% and that their wage incomes may haverisen by a similar amount.

This paper compares changes in relative wages of university educated new immigrant workers in Canada and the United States over the period 1980—2005 and finds that outcomes were generally superior in the United States. Wages of university educated new immigrants declined relative to domestic born university graduates over the study period in Canada but rose between 1990 and 2000 in the United States. The university wage premium for new immigrants was similar in both countries in 1980 but by 2000 was considerably higher in the United States. Accounting for compositional shifts did not alter these basic results.

The objective of this dissertation is to evaluate the quality of the decennial Census through the use of Demographic Analysis (DA), which is a methodology that estimates population size by using data on births, deaths, in-migration, and out-migration. Using DA, the quality of the 2000 Census will be assessed by using estimates of Census undercount for children aged 0 – 9, as well as measures of relative undercount for the 1990 and 2000 Censuses for Hispanics of older ages. In cleaning the data that measure the components of the Hispanic population, the chapters of this dissertation address topics on the sociology of the Hispanic population. The first chapter critiques the measurement of the Hispanic population in general, arguing that the Census Bureau’s use of Hispanic identifiers is politically charged and ambiguous. Logistic regression is used to demonstrate that the personal identification with the Hispanic ethnicity is affected by dynamics of assimilation, race, and social context. The second chapter argues that the quality of the 1990 Census was compromised by the political atmosphere in which the Census was embedded, while producing alternate estimates of emigration using models informed by recent research. The third chapter re-visits the Hispanic Mortality Paradox by accounting for its counter-explanations (i.e. death undercount and emigration). Using life tables, it will be shown that the existence of the Mortality Paradox largely depends on the assumptions that one makes regarding the quality of the data used, although it continues to hold when the most plausible data are used. Chapter four demonstrates that interethnic childbirth is largely influenced by a mother’s race and ethnicity, although social factors such as education and the marriage market serve to “break down” ethnic divisions and stir the melting pot. Chapter five tests the success rates of a number of imputation methodologies for parental ethnicities and predicts the number of Hispanic births that have occurred throughout the 90s. Putting all these pieces together, the conclusion presents a range of estimates of undercount of Hispanic children aged 0 – 9, as well as relative undercount that compares the counts of the 1990 and 2000 Censuses.

El servicio doméstico figura entre los mercados de trabajo secundarios que han cobrado vigencia en el contexto de la globalización. Su dinamismo se relaciona con la demanda de fuerza de trabajo femenina barata para satisfacer necesidades de atención en la esfera de la reproducción doméstica. La caracterización del mercado de trabajo del servicio doméstico en Estados Unidos a principios del siglo xxi con base en datos de encuesta muestra que —ahora como antaño— su crecimiento descansa principalmente en en afluencia de fuerza de trabajo inmigrante, que en nuestros días es principalmente latinoamericana. El nivel de pobreza que acusan y su baja escolaridad, corroboran que el crecimiento de este mercado de trabajo en las sociedades desarrolladas es una más de las secuelas regresivas del mundo del trabajo en el contexto de la globalización. Domestic service is one of the secondary labor markets that have grown in the context of globalization. Its dynamism is linked to the demand for cheap female labor to satisfy needs within the sphere of domestic reproduction. The characterization of the U.S. domestic service labor market in the early 21st century on the basis of survey data shows that (now as in the past) its growth is based mainly on the influx of immigrant labor, nowadays mainly from Latin America. Domestic workers' poverty levels, coupled with their low educational achievement, merely corroborate the fact that the growth of this labor market in developed societies is yet another of the regressive consequences observed in the world of work within the context of globalization.

The Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) caused a population shift in the United States in the 1930s. Evaluating the effects of the AAA on the incidence of malaria can therefore offer important lessons regarding the broader consequences of demographic changes. Using a quasi-first difference model and a robust set of controls, we find a negative association between AAA expenditures and malariadeath rates at the county level. Further, we find the AAA caused relatively low-income groups to migrate from counties with high-risk malaria ecologies. These results suggest that the AAA-induced migration played an important role in the reduction of malaria.

This paper estimates the high school graduation rate for five states in the Ninth Federal ReserveDistrict (Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wisconsin) by adjusting theupward bias in the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) high school statuscompletion rate. We follow the methodology used by Heckman and LaFontaine (2007) byexcluding GED holders and immigrants never enrolled in U.S. secondary schools, including theinstitutionalized population, and adjusting for response bias and low sample coverage. AsHeckman and LaFontaine find for the United States, the adjusted Ninth District graduation rate issubstantially lower than the completion rate (83.4 percent vs. 90.1 percent in 2000). In addition,the adjusted Ninth District graduation rate has not increased over the past 40 years and theadjusted majority/minority graduation rate differentials remain. Finally, after adjusting forbiases, the gap between the Ninth District and U.S. graduation rates is wider; however, over timethe U.S. graduation rate has been catching up with the Ninth District.

Building on a new data set which is constructed from a combination of national micro-data bases, we highlight differences in the structure of migrants to four countries - namely, France, Germany, the UK and the US - which receive a substantial share of all immigrants to the OECD world. Looking at immigrants by source country, we illustrate the important role of distance, both geographical and cultural, immigration policies and migrant networks. Differentiating immigrants by their educational attainments, we observe interesting patterns in the skill composition, employment opportunities and wages of migrants to the different destination countries. Focusing on migration between the four countries in our data set, we find that migration within western Europe is small and rather balanced in terms of skill structures, while there appears to be a brain drain from Europe to the US.

This paper examines why smart cities are growing by investigating who moves to smart cities and who stays. Smart cities are often centers of higher education, so students moving to pursue higher education may play an important role. I find that the greater in‐migration to smart cities is mostly due to persons enrolled in higher education. Smart cities are growing in part because in‐migrants often stay in the city after completing their education. The growth of smart cities is also mostly attributable to population redistribution within the same state and has little effect on population growth at the state level.

This analysis presents data on reported field of bachelor's degrees for Black people in the United States based on the 2009 American Community Survey (ACS) and National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) population of institutions. The ACS is a nationwide survey designed to provide demographic, social, economic, and housing data for the nation, states, congressional districts, counties, places, and other localities every year. It has an annual sample size of about 3 million addresses across the United States and Puerto Rico. (For information on the ACS visit <www.census.gov/acs/www>). Data from National Center for Education Statistics are for degree-granting institutions. Degree-granting institutions grant associate's or higher degrees and participate in Title IV federal financial aid programs. In 2009, across all disciplines, 270,582 Black females and 133,026 Black males graduated from a four-year college or university (See Table 1). During the same year, 1,683,338 Black males and 2,514,135 Black females in the U.S. population reported having at least a bachelor's degree (See Table 2). Black males and females reported a wide variation of major selections, which has some implications for the representation of Black people in certain fields.

A striking negative correlation exists between an area's residential racial segregation and its population characteristics, but it is recognized that this relationship may not be causal. I present a novel test of causality from segregation to population characteristics by exploiting the arrangements of railroad tracks in the nineteenth century to isolate plausibly exogenous variation in areas' susceptibility to segregation. I show that this variation satisfies the requirements for a valid instrument. Instrumental variables estimates demonstrate that segregation increases metropolitan rates of black poverty and overall black-white income disparities, while decreasing rates of white poverty and inequality within the white population.

Great teachers have the ability to transform and enrich the lives and living standards of Americans. According to recent research, a student’s kindergarten teacher has long-lasting influence on important lifetime outcomes, such as future earnings. These effects are so important that the difference between having an above-average kindergarten teacher and a below-average kindergarten teacher could translate into a difference of more than $300,000 in future earnings for a classroom of 20 students (Chetty et al. 2010). Therefore, continuing to attract and retain the most effective teachers is a necessary step in raising the achievement of American students. But attracting highly-effective teachers is an increasing challenge as today’s teachers are asked to do more than ever before and because the most salient form of teacher pay—salaries—has been in relative decline.

We investigate the hypothesis that rising wage inequality caused declines in the U.S. aggregate marriage hazard since 1970. Despite confirming previous findings that inequality accounts for much of the decline among young adults before 1990, we find that the aggregate marriage hazard became much less sensitive to inequality thereafter. Our explanation for the weakened relationship relies on the theoretical prediction, which we verify empirically, that inequality influences marital decisions of young singles much more than those of older singles. The aggregate marriage hazard thus became less responsive to inequality over this period because the unmarried population became older.

This web-based technical appendix contains additional supplementary material for the paper.Sections II.-VII. mirror the sections of the same name and number in the paper. In SectionII., no additional material is required. In Section III., we provide further detail on the model,including the derivations of all expressions and results reported in the paper. In Section IV.,we report detailed information on the construction of the U.S. MCD and county data. In Section V., we present additional results for the baseline empirical evidence section of the paper. In Section VI., we include additional results for the further evidence section of the paper. In Section VII., no additional material is required. In Section VIII., we discuss the construction of the Brazilian data and report the results of the robustness test using these data that is discussed in the paper.

How do we account for patterns of U.S. internal migration during the nineteenth century? This is an old question in American economic history. Interest in this topic stems in part from the sheer number of people who moved great distances during this period. Between 1850 and 1880, more than 20 percent of white native-born Americans were residing outside their state of birth, a figure that masks considerable within-state mobility. But much of the interest in internal migration patterns stems from their apparent departure from economic theory.Although much internal migration occurred within states, the dominant direction of moves during this period was east to west. Frontier migration is puzzling because of the Easterlin paradox, that midwestern per capita incomes were lower than those in the northeast. Part of this puzzle can be explained by regional price differences. Coelho and Shepherd (1976) find that, between 1850 and 1880, nonfarm wages in the midwest were actually higher than they were in the northeast when deflated by regional price indexes. Similarly, Margo (1999) finds that real wages were higher in the midwest than the northeast between 1820 and 1860.