This paper examines the extent to which Mexican emigrants to the United States are negatively selected. Previous studies have been limited by the lack of nationally representative longitudinal data. This one uses a newly available household survey, that identifies emigrants before they leave. On average, U.S.-bound Mexican emigrants from 2000 to 2004 earn lower wages and have less (more for females) schooling than nonmigrant Mexicans, evidence of negative selection. This argues against Chiquiar and Hanson's (2005) findings. The discrepancy is primarily due to an undercount of unskilled migrants in U.S. sources and secondarily to the omission of unobservables in their methodology.

This dissertation consists of three essays studying the economic impact of corpo- rate taxation. Chapter 1 models and estimates the incidence of the corporate income tax under imperfect competition. IdentiÖcation comes from variation in the e§ective marginal tax rates across industry and time. The empirical results suggest that la- bor shares the burden of corporate taxes. A ten percentage increase in the tax rates decreases the average wage rate by 0.45-0.56 percent. Consistent with the theoreti- cal prediction, the elasticity of wage with respect to the tax rates increases with the industry concentration. Labor bears at least 87 percent of the burden of corporate income taxes. The U.S. corporate income tax system provides investment incentives that vary across asset types. In Chapter 2, I study the e§ect of corporate income taxes on the allocation of new capital investment by constructing an industry-level panel data from 1962 to 1997. My preferred-IV estimates of the asset substitution elasticities suggest a sizable interasset distortion e§ect of corporate income taxes. Substitutability is the strongest between machinery equipment and computing and electronic equip- ment. Compared to a revenue-neutral uniform tax scheme, di§erential corporate income taxes cause under-investment in computing and electronic equipment and over-investment in machinery and transportation equipment. Corporations were taxed at a lower rate than non-corporate Örms in the early twentieth century. Chapter 3 examines the e§ect of relative taxation of corporate to non-corporate income using state-level panel data during 1909-1919. I Önd that the tax cost to incorporate had a signiÖcant impact on the corporate share of establish- ments and related economic activities including employment and production. The regression results suggest a large response of income shiftingñabout 1.5 to 2 more times than the largest estimates in studies using more recent data. Income shift- ing was more responsive to the tax policies during the early days of income taxes. The implicit tax subsidy encourage about 8,300 business to be organized under the corporate form during this period.

This paper aims to shed light on the characteristics of those who moved to Alaska prior to the development of the territory. Most migrants were drawn to Alaska by the burgeoning gold industry. Other prospectors followed to provide lodging, banking and other amenities. These early Alaskans gained a reputation for being exceptionally resilient. Newspapers were quick to praise the heroism of Alaskans who were in constant battle with their natural environment. Despite romanticized stories of adventure and instant fortune, it was not uncommon for prospectors to freeze to death, starve, drown or commit suicide (Berton, 1958). Frostbite, scurvy and tuberculosis also posed common threats. This paper answers two questions about migration to frontier regions. First, in light of the many dangers life in Alaska presented, what type of people chose to migrate to Alaska in the early 1900s? Second, did the evolution of national immigration policies during the 1920s affect the skill composition of migrants to the Last Frontier and the contiguous US?

This article describes the methods that social scientists use to measure and compare the risks that various populations face of being murdered. It demonstrates that the West was unusually homicidal compared to the rest of the Western world, except for the most violent areas of the South during Reconstruction.

In the 1980s and 1990s, many states began to provide funding for prekindergarten programs for the first time. This paper takes advantage of the staggered timing inprogram funding to investigate the effect that increased availability of prekindergarten programs has on the labor supply of mothers with four year olds. I find that mothers with a four year old and no younger children were significantly more likely to be in the labor force and employed once prekindergarten became available, and that these effects were largest for single, low-educated mothers and married, college-educated mothers. Mothers with a four year old and other younger children were also significantly more likely to be in the labor force and employed, although these effects were smaller in magnitude and not significant for specific subpopulations.

We examine whether women's rising labor force participation led to increased intergenerational transmission of occupation from fathers to daughters. We develop a model where fathers invest in human capital that is specific to their own occupations. Our model generates an empirical test where we compare the trends in the probabilities that women work in their father's versus their father-in-law's occupation. Using data from birth cohorts born between 1909 and 1977, our results indicate that the estimated difference in these trends accounts for at least 13-20 percent of the total increase in the probability that a woman enters her father's occupation.

Analiza strucnrrii, stratificlrii gi mobilitittii sociale este unul din cele mai impor- tante capitole ale sociologiei. Aceasta intrucflt sunt avute in vedere nu numai mecanismele organiz[ni sau structurlrii sociale, ci Si modurile de distribugie a inegalitililor sau de mobilitate a persoanelor in spaliul social. Teoriile gi cercettrrile sociologice referitoare la aceste tematici au fost generate de observafia conform clreia toate societiigile complexe sunt caracteruate de existenla inegalitltrilor sociale, cu alte cuvinte, sunt societil$ stratificate. Studiul modului in care indivizii se pozigioneazl gi se migcil in ierarhiile sociale ale societtrgilor stratificate $i al modului in care sunt generate inegalittrgile sociale constituie aria analizelor stratifictrrii gi mobilitiltii sociale. Pentru a intrelege procesele de stratificare gi mobilitate sociall, este necesartr analiza modului de organizare a societtrlli, amlizd, care constituie obiecnrl studiilor structurii sociale. Prin urmare, in acest capitol ne vom referi mai intAi la amlizasociologictr a soucturii sociale, pentru ca apoi s[ consideriim stratificarea gi mobilitatea sociall.

Aggregate labor market hours differ dramatically across OECD countries. However, differences in hours worked by gender do not necessarily match aggregate market hour differences. Continental Europe has experienced a smaller rise in formal female employment compared with the United States or Scandinavia. Additionally, Continental Europe has a substantially smaller service sector. These facts coincide with job requirements shifting from physical strength to intellectual abilities. This paper gives empirical evidence on why women predominately work in the service sector. Given the empirical evidence, a model is developed where technical change favoring women drives female employment through the growth of the service sector.The key is households can produce a substitute for market services and women are, on average, less productive in sectors requiring more brawn, giving them a comparative advantage with respect to staying home and working in the service sector. Therefore, an economy that imposes high taxes does not facilitate the movement of women into the labor market causing service production to remain at home. This reduces the demand for market services, which feeds back into low total hours worked by women (and the total economy). Subsidies to female employment can circumvent the high tax effect, but will lead to welfare loses.

By operationalizing Gordon’s definition of structural assimilation, I examine occupational prestige, income, and educational attainment across four immigrant groups: 1.5 generation, 2nd generation, 3rd generation, and 4th generation. Additionally, I analyze the effect of religious affiliation, frequency of attendance, religious conversion, context of reception, and selective acculturation on each of the three measures of structural assimilation. Ethnic origin, gender, and age are implemented as control variables. Results provide evidence that religion does affect measures of structural assimilation. While impacts on occupational prestige and income seem minimal to non-existent, the effect of religion on educational attainment is more substantial. Religion indirectly affects occupational prestige and income outcomes due to their strong relationship to educational attainment.

This paper investigates whether Wisconsin public employees are overpaid at the expense of Wisconsin taxpayers. The research is timely. Newly sworn-in Gov. Scott Walker believes that public employee compensation must be cut to make it comparable to private sector pay at the state, local, and school levels. Walker is promoting public employee pay cuts, changes in collective bargaining laws, major benefits reductions, and a possible decertification of public employee unions as the antidote to the alleged overpayment of public employees in Wisconsin and the key to reducing the state’s budget deficit (Bergquist and Stein 2010). However, the data indicates that state and local government employees in Wisconsin are not overpaid. Comparisons controlling for education, experience, organizational size, gender, race, ethnicity, citizenship, and disability reveal that employees of both state and local governments in Wisconsin earn less than comparable private sector employees. On an annual basis, full-time state and local government employees in Wisconsin are undercompensated by 8.2% compared with otherwise similar private sector workers. This compensation disadvantage is smaller but still significant when hours worked are factored in. Full-time public employees work fewer annual hours, particularly employees with bachelor’s, master’s, and professional degrees (because many are teachers or university professors). When comparisons are made controlling for the difference in annual hours worked, full-time state and local government employees are undercompensated by 4.8%, compared with otherwise similar private sector workers. To summarize, our study shows that Wisconsin public employees earn 4.8% less in total compensation per hour than comparable full-time employees in Wisconsin’s private sector.

When Jeffrey Isaac approached us to review some recent works in American politics from a comparative perspective, we gladly accepted the task, believing it important to help overcome what some see as the “splendid isolation” of American politics. Indeed, the invitation arrived at a propitious time because, after completing our most recent book, we critically reflected on the fact that we had unfortunately written almost nothing on the oldest, and one of the most diverse, democracies in the world, the United States. We thus agreed to contribute some thoughts on the matter, recognizing the limits of our knowledge of the entire field of American politics, but acknowledging, too, our belief that the current distancing of the study of America from the analysis of other democracies impoverishes modern political science.

This study highlights findings from focus groups on parent–child connectedness conducted with English- and Spanish-speaking parents of high-risk youth in the southern United States. The primary aim of the study was to extend research on parent–child connectedness, a broad protective factor for adolescent risk behavior. In addition to describing strategies and obstacles for enhancing closeness between parents and children, parents in Spanish-speaking focus groups also raised issues related to immigration, acculturation, and bicultural stress. Findings provide valuable insights for practitioners and policymakers seeking to improve parent–child connectedness and reduce adolescent risk behavior, with special insight about Mexican-origin, Spanish-speaking families.

Researchers have used the positive relationship between height and earnings to shed light on the productivity of health as well as the effect of health on economic growth. Aprominent explanation for this relationship is that physical growth and cognitive development share inputs, inducing a correlation between height and two productive skills, strength and intelligence. This paper uses data from Mexico to examine the skill returns underlying the labor market height premium in poorer countries. Consistent with the shared inputs hypothesis, parental socioeconomic status and childhood living conditions are positively associated with height, cognitive skill, and educational attainment in adulthood. Cognitive test scores account for a limited portion of the earnings premium to taller workers, but roughly half of the premium can be attributed to these workers higher educational attainment or to their more lucrative occupations, which have greater intelligence requirements and lower strength requirements. These patterns suggest that the height premium partly reflects a return to cognitive skill, even in an economy reliant on manual labor.

Ethnography, qualitative interviews and census data document a new process of spatial and racial exclusion among Brown and Black Latino workers in New York's service sector. Unlike manufacturing, many service workers directly interact with customers, and therefore employers use race, gender and immigrant status to position workers in front or back stage jobs; depending on their interaction with mainstream clientele. The sorting of workers is a largely hidden process outside the reach of labor regulations. Racialization of workers is more evident in minority neighborhoods undergoing rapid gentrification, as owners import their labor force and clientele from outside the neighborhood.

Using data from the 2001 Chinese National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Survey, I studied the relationship between prenatal exposure to the 1959-1961 Great Leap Forward Famine and the risk of infant death of the next generation. The results show that, on one hand, prenatal exposure to mild malnutrition reduced children’s risk of infant death; on the other hand, prenatal exposure to severe malnutrition in- creased children’s risk of infant death. Such a findings provides the first human-based supportive evidence to the developmental origins of health and disease argument and demonstrates the crucial role played by famine severity in determining the relation- ship between the effect of developmental plasticity and the effect of developmental disruption, the two distinctive forms of the developmental origins effects.

Neste trabalho desenvolvemos um modelo de acessibilidade aplicvel, a partir dos dados histricos disponveis, a uma realidade j desaparecida. A partir deste modelo examinamos como o aumento da acessibilidade, com a introduo do caminho-de-ferro na regio da Cova da Beira em 1891-93, se reflectiu na evoluo demogrfica, entre 1878 e 1930, desta regio tradicionalmente isolada do interior de Portugal.Na generalidade dos censos, os dados da populao esto associados s freguesias. No entanto, a populao tende a agregar-se espacialmente. Assim, para ser alcanada a desagregao dos dados de populao desenvolvemos dois mtodos: um de interpolao por reas, que originou a identificao da superfcie de implantao de cada aglomerado populacional, e outro, de extrapolao dos valores do censo de 1911, que resultou nos valores da populao de cada agregado.O modelo de acessibilidade proposto consiste num modelo matricial de dados espaciais que define uma superfcie de custo da acessibilidade rede ferroviria usando como indicadores a mdia do declive, as distncias s estaes de comboio, s estradas e a classificao destas ltimas e dos rios.As metodologias empregues desenvolvem-se num contexto de interdisciplinaridade, entre a Histria e a CIG, onde a confrontao de dados histricos e estatsticos e a anlise espacial em SIG permitem estudar o impacto do caminho-de-ferro na evoluo demogrfica da zona da Cova da Beira, numa perspectiva de longo prazo.

This report sets out to estimate the total annual expenditures on children in New York City and to createa fiscal map to detail them. This fiscal map describes these expenditures according to a series of classifications,including age of child (early childhood, elementary, and high school); source of funding (public, tax-related, and philanthropic); level of government (city, state, and federal); and child disadvantage as measured using poverty criteria. The goal of the map, derived from analysis of budgetary data and official sources, is to depict expenditures on children in a clear and comprehensive fashion.Based on data for 2010, we estimate that annual fiscal spending for the average child in New York City is $15,630, which, adjusting for inflation, represents a slight decline over the period since 2005. For all 2.02 million city children, this amounts to a total of $31.5 billion, Most of that money is spent on schooling; expenditures for developmental supports for children, such as early childhood care and education and out-of-school time programs, as well as medical care and critical programs such as homeless services, amount to less than one-third of the total. Over the period, the pattern of expenditures changed significantly.Our fiscal map also shows that the primary source of funding for New York City children is the city government, which provides almost half of the direct funding for programs for children. The state is the next largest source. Direct expenditures by the federal government are nearly equaled by the resource implications of rules on tax-related expenditures (such as the Earned Income Tax Credit). Notably, the map does show that public investments are disproportionately allocated toward disadvantaged children. Whereas average annual direct public spending per child is $13,340 (net of tax-related expenditures andphilanthropic contributions), spending for a child who lives in a household with an income that is less than 185% of the federal poverty level is $19,280. However, we caution that the full amount of this spending gap should not be interpreted as a redistribution to benefit those with the greatest needs: it includes spending on rehabilitative programs and the juvenile justice system, for example, and includes very little spending that might be classed as preventive.

I develop a model in which a child's acquisition of a given form of human capital incentivizes adults in his household to either learn from him (if children act as teachers then adults' cost of learning the skill falls) or lean on him (if children's human capital substitutes for that of adults in household production then adults' benefi t of learningthe skill falls). I exploit regional variation in two shocks to children's human capital and examine the eff ect on adults. The rapid introduction of primary education forblack children in the South during Reconstruction not only increased literacy of children but also of adults living in the same household (\learning" outweighs \leaning"). Conversely, the 1998 introduction of English immersion in California public schools appears to have increased the English skills of children but discouraged adults living with them from acquiring the language (\leaning" outweighs \learning"). In both examples, the results are driven by households with children of school-going age, suggesting that children's human capital acquisition, and not some omitted variable, is driving the eff ect on adults.