The U.S. National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) is theworlds longest survey time series of health data and a rich source of information on health conditions, behaviors, and care from the 1960s to the present. NHIS public-use files are difficult to use for long-term analysis, due to complex file structure, changes in questionnaire content, and evolving variable names and coding schemes. Researchers at the Minnesota Population Center have created the Integrated Health Interview Series (IHIS) to overcome these problems.IHIS provides access to thousands of consistently coded andwell-documented NHIS variables on the Internet and makes it easy to analyze health trends and differentials. IHIS multiplies the value of NHIS data by allowing researchers to make consistent comparisons over half a century and thus to study U.S. health status as a dynamic process. This article describes the main features of IHIS and suggests fruitful avenues for historical research using these invaluable health data.

Divorce rates rose throughout the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, peaked around 1980, and have fallen ever since. In this paper, I use data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation(SIPP) and 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), along with four different empirical methods, to demonstrate that age at marriage is the main proximate cause of the decrease in divorce for cohorts marrying from 1980 to 2004. That is, although factors such as female labor force participation and access to reproductive technology almost certainly caused changes in the family, these and other driving forces largely impacted divorce by changing age at marriage. I further develop an economic model to demonstrate the historical consistencyof my findings. The model demonstrates that as the gains to marriage decrease, the contemporaneous divorce rate will increase but future marriages will become more stable. Thus, the model explains how monotone decreases in the gains from marriage over the second half of the 20th century can imply a rise and subsequent fall in divorce rates.

Hydrologic science has largely built its understanding of the hydrologic cycle using contemporary data sources (i.e., last 100 years). However, as we try to meet water demand over the next 100 years at scales from local to global, we need to expand our scope and embrace other data that address human activities and the alteration of hydrologic systems. For example, the accumulation of human impacts on water systems requires exploration of incompletely documented eras. When examining these historical periods, basic questions relevant to modern systems arise: (1) How is better information incorporated into water management strategies? (2) Does any point in the past (e.g., colonial/pre-European conditions in North America) provide a suitable restoration target? and (3) How can understanding legacies improve our ability to plan for future conditions? Beginning to answer these questions indicates the vital need to incorporate disparate data and less accepted methods to meet looming water management challenges.

Market research projects involving data become more efficient and effective if a proper workflow is in place. A workflow is a strategy to keep track of, enter, clean, describe, and transform data. These data may have been collected through surveys or may be secondary data. Haphazardly entering, cleaning, and analyzing bits of data is not a good strategy, since it increases ones likelihood of making mistakes and makes it hard to replicate results. Moreover, without a good workflow of data, it becomes hard to document the research process and cooperate on projects. For example, how can you outsource the data analysis, if you cannot indicate what the data are about or what specific values mean? Finally, a lack of good workflow increases ones risk of having to duplicate work or even of losing all of your data due to accidents. In Fig. 5.1, we show the steps necessary to create and describe a data set after the data have been collected.

I analyze the impact of the early 1990s state waivers from Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) guidelines to understand how changes in options outside of marriage affect household expenditures. AFDC waivers decreased the public assistance available to impoverished divorced women and thereby reduced a womans bargaining threat point in marriage. Using the Consumer Expenditure Survey (CEX) and an empirical synthetic control approach, I find that decreases in potential welfare benefits altered the expenditure patterns of two-parent families. Waivers were associated with increased expenditure on food at home relative to restaurant meals and decreased expenditure on child care and womens clothing, suggesting greater home production and decreased consumption by women. Such changes are evident only for households containing a woman with a reasonable probability of receiving welfare benefits if her marriage ended. The changes in expenditure patterns suggest that reductions in a wifes outside options cause her utility within marriage to decline.

This paper presents a new framework for human capital measurement. The generalized framework can (i) substantially amplify the role of human capital in accounting for cross-country income differences and (ii) reconcile the existing conflict between regression and accounting evidence in assessing the wealth and poverty of nations. One natural interpretation emphasizes differences across economies in the acquisition of advanced knowledge by skilled workers.

This dissertation examines how three types of actorsparents, private schools and public schoolsrespond to the implementation of a voucher program, the means-tested Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Program.The first study uses t-tests to describe individual characteristics and characteristics of childrens public school and private school market contexts that predict application for, and take up of, a voucher among elementary school-aged children observed in public schools in the 2007-08 school-year. I use data from a wide variety of sources, including microdata on individual student characteristics and administrative and survey data on public and private schools. Compared to eligible non-applicants, applicants disproportionately come from low-performing, more disruptive public schools. They face more competitive private school markets from the perspective of proximity, but their proximate private school options are of lower average parent rated quality than are non-applicants.The second study uses data from the Private School Universe Survey and an interrupted time series design with a comparison group to explore whether Floridas private school market supply expanded due to the policy introduction. While Floridas private school sector grew more quickly than did other states following the policy introduction, this was simply a continuation of pre-existing trends rather than a causal effect of the policy; there may have been a heightened response for certain types of schools.The third study examines the effect of competitive pressure on public school studentstest performance. This chapter uses a difference-in-differences estimation strategy on microdata from all students in Florida from 1998-1999 to 2006-2007. We find positive effects of competition on public school student test scores; these effects are more pronounced for certain types of schools and grow over time.The final study extends this work by looking at instructional and staffing policy changes by schools in response to competitive pressure. This study uses a difference-in-differences strategy on survey data from a census of Florida principals and administrative data. I find that competitive pressure is positively associated with introducing scheduling reforms, and somewhat negatively related to the formal teaching qualifications of a schools staff.These studies together paint a modestly sanguine view of Floridas means-tested voucher policy.

Lynching has in the last couple of decades moved into the center of scholarly attention and much recent sociological research and theorizing on lynching converges on understanding it as southern whites reaction to real or perceived threats from blacks to their dominant position and privileged access to scarce resources, above all economic or material ones. That is to say, to explain why lynching occurred in particular times and places recent research relies on theories of intergroup relations and conflict, above all Blalocks seminal work on intergroup relations (Blalock 1967), that consider lynching a mechanism for racial social control aimed at reducing the competition from free African-Americans and maintain their position as subjugated labor in the post-bellum South (for an exemplar study in this tradition, see Tolnay and Beck 1995). Research in this vein has generated important insights and substantially furthered our knowledge about lynching, but its strong focus on economic and material conditions causes it to downplay relevant cultural and ideational dynamics, causes, and consequences of lynching, rendering certain highly significant aspects of thephenomenon inexplicableone of which is its occasionally salient ritual and symbolism.

Immigrants make up a large and growing share of the US labor force. The number of immigrants in the US workforce has increased steadily since the 1970s and is now approaching rates last experienced at the peak of the previous great wave of immigration at the turn of the 20th century. As the baby boom generation moves gradually toward retirement, immigrants and their children will assume a critical role in sustaining US output and productivity against the backdrop of an increasingly competitive global economy.The United States has historically offered unparalleled economic opportunity to successive generations of immigrants and their children and, in the absence of explicit policies aimed at integrating newcomers, the workplace has arguably been one o the country's most powerful immigrant-integrating institutions. In contrast to other major immigrant receiving countries, immigrants in the United States tend to be strongly attached to the labor force and typically experience low unemployment. But they are also more likely to work low-wage and low status occupations. Even among highly skilled immigrants, skill underutilization is widespread.The 2007-09 global economic crisis accentuated immigrants' vulnerability in the labor market and in its wake, it is not clear if past trends in immigrants' economic integration will continue. The lasting impact of job loss and poverty in the context of a weak, protracted recovery could realign the economic and social forces that have historically propelled immigrants' upward socioeconomic mobility. Over the next decade the US economy is expected to grow more slowly than in the past. Inevitably, slower growth will translate into fewer opportunities for all workers and as is frequently the case, immigrants may prove the most vulnerable.

This article examines the formation, determination, and quality of employment concentration for low-skilled Latino immigrants. Comparative evidence is drawn from the threemetropolitan areas of Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington, DC. Using 2000 Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS), gender-specific ethnic niches where Latino immigrants disproportionately concentrate are identified and niche effects on wage earnings are analyzed. This study finds thatwhile ethnic niches are evident in all three cities, they are most prevalent among women and newly arrived immigrants, and in the emerging gateway of Washington, D.C. Niche employment is almost uniformly characterized by earnings disadvantage as compared to non-niche employment, withlower returns premium on workers human capital and work experience, especially for men. Niche effects on earnings vary across metropolitan areas in accordance with their economic structure as well as with the size and profile of immigrants.

Over the past decade, the population of children of immigrants in the United States has continued to climb.1 Most of these children and their families live in the country’s large metropolitan areas, and their growth has continued to remake the nation’s metros from the bottom up, with the very young leading a transformation of the country’s metropolitan landscape. The early imprint of this growing and spreading diversity among the young in the large metros is a harbinger of the changes ahead for the makeup of the country as a whole.

Research on coresidence between parents and their adult children has challenged the myth that elders are the primary beneficiaries, and instead has shown that coresidential households benefit the younger generation more than their parents. Nevertheless, the rise in nonfamily living in the later 20th century has reshaped the process. Further, the economic fortunes of those at the older and younger ends of the adult life course have shifted with increasing financial well-being among older adults and greater financial strain especially among the young adult parents of children (Preston 1984). This paper examines the extent to which changes over time in generational financial well-being are reflected in the likelihood of coresidence and in the relative position of both generations in parent-adult child households. We use U.S. Census data from 1960 and 2000 to see whether the processes leading to such households have changed.

Building on a large sample of elderly French individuals, we evaluate the resources that were available to the old. We find that a considerable percentage of the French population did not have sufficient assets to live off of when aged. We compare the savings behaviors of pensioners and non-pensioners at a time when only a small part of the labor force was entitled to a pension. We show that pensioners were better able to accumulate wealth than were non-pensioners, even when we take into account their occupation and inherited wealth.

We analyze how sexual orientation is related to household financial decisions using 2000 US Census data, and find that lesbian couples pay higher annual mortgages relative to house value than do heterosexual or gay couples. We also estimate that cohabiting heterosexuals pay more than their married counterparts. We link this homosexual-specific differential to homeowners propensity to save. This differential reflects the gender composition of same-sex households, and their very low fertility, in addition to the precautionary motives increasing cohabiting couples propensity to save relative to married ones. Evidence from retirement and social security income of older couples exhibits the same pattern of differentials by sexual orientation and cohabiting status.

This dissertation examines the travel mode choices of residents of ethnic enclaves, a subject that has received scholarly attention only recently. Previous studies of ethnic neighborhoods have not differentiated between ethnic neighborhood types, though the scholarship on these neighborhoods themselves suggests considerable diversity in neighborhood type, primarily as a function of the ethnic economic niches in which residents participate. This dissertation seeks to tie together disparate literatures on ethnic neighborhoods and mode choice by explicitly modeling one aspect hypothesized to differentiate ethnic neighborhoods: the co-ethnic boundedness, or inward focus, of these neighborhoods.I hypothesize that this inward focus, in addition to other known influences, helps to explain the increased propensity of residents of ethnic neighborhoods to use alternative modes of transportation, such as public transit, walking, and bicycling. Using national data and a nested logistic mode choice model, I first validate prior findings on the independent effect of ethnic neighborhoods on the choice of these modes. The analysis suggests that the neighborhood-level effect on travel mode choice associated with immigrant neighborhoods is prevalent across the United States, and that the effect is considerably stronger for immigrants living in immigrant neighborhoods than for nonimmigrants living in the same neighborhoods. The effect associated with immigrants living in immigrant neighborhoods on the choice to use non-motorized (walking, bicycling) modes for all trip purposes is particularly strong. The estimated effects on the use of public transportation and carpools are also considerable for immigrants. For nonimmigrants, the carpooling effect is present, though weak, and there is no effect associated with the use of transit. Next, I turn my focus to the Los Angeles Consolidated Metropolitan Statistical Area (CMSA), in order to focus on specific (and often well-documented) immigrant/ethnic neighborhoods. I differentiate these neighborhoods by the degree to which one may consider them inwardly focused. In this section, I develop new measures of co-ethnic geographic boundedness and co-ethnic affinity using commute data as a proxy for the connection between local residents and local activity sites. Using concepts of ethnic economic geography delineated by Kaplan (1998) and others, I hypothesize that a significant number of ethnic neighborhoods in the Los Angeles region are inwardly focused, and that this inward focus contributes to the use of modes of transportation other than the single-occupant vehicle (SOV). Contrary to this expectation, I find in my analysis that most ethnic neighborhoods in the Los Angeles region are considerably more outwardly focused than the region-wide average, with residents commute destinations significantly more distant and more diffuse than is typical for the region. A small number of exceptions exist; in particular, ethnic neighborhoods that are geographically distant from the regions core tend to be considerably more inwardly focused. I find a number of other (non-ethnic) neighborhoods to be highly inwardly focused, including neighborhoods near universities and other large institutions. Finally, I use the measures of inward focus in conjunction with regional travel diary data to help differentiate the neighborhood effect on travel mode choice. I hypothesize that, among the various ethnic neighborhood types, those that are more inwardly focused will exhibit greater use of transit and non-motorized modes, resulting from more proximate trip ends and denser trip chains. The analysis suggests that, while neighborhood inward focus does have an independent effect on the use of non-auto and carpool travel modes, it does not explain any of the observed effect associated with living in an ethnic neighborhood.

Elemzésünk a romániai magyar kötõdésû romák szociodemográfiai leírására vállalkozik. Noha tudatában vagyunk, hogy a romák tekintetében nemcsak Romániában, hanem más országokban is a népszámlálások rendre alacsonyabb számot „mérnek”, mint ami más vonatkozó társadalomtudományi kutatásokból megbecsülhetõ, mégis fontosnak tartjuk, hogy a rendelkezésre álló hivatalos adatok alapján felvázoljuk a roma népesség és azon belül a magyar kötõdéssel is rendelkezõ populációk fõbb statisztikai jellemzõit. Mivel jómagunk is úgy gondoljuk, hogy a népszámlálás önbevallásra épülõ nemzetiségi és anyanyelvi kérdései nem teljes mértékben egyeznek meg a külsõ kategorizálás által, társadalmilag kreált romák számával, tanulmányunk végén vonatkozó más kutatások alapján rövid kísérletet teszünk a magyar cigányok számarányának megbecsülésére. Tesszük ezt úgy, hogy szintén tudatában vagyunk, hogy ilyen becsléseket csak célirányos kutatásokkal, korábbi vonatkozó kutatások mintavételi eljárásainak tesztelésével, a népszámlálási adatfelvétel kvalitatív-, illetve másodelemzésével lehetne megbízhatóbban elvégezni.