The Black-White gap in completed schooling among Southern born men narrowed sharply between the World Wars after being stagnant from 1880 to 1910. We examine a large scale school construction project, the Rosenwald Rural Schools Initiative, which was designed to dramatically improve the educational opportunities for Southern rural Blacks. From 1914 to 1931, nearly 5,000 school buildings were constructed, serving approximately 36 percent of the Black rural school-aged Southern population. We use historical Census data and World War II enlistment records to analyze the effects of the program on school attendance, literacy, high school completion, years of schooling, earnings, hourly wages, and migration. We find that the Rosenwald program accounts for at least 30 percent of the sizable educational gains of Blacks during the 1910s and 1920s. We also use data from the Army General Classification Test (AGCT), a precursor to the AFQT, and find that access to Rosenwald schools increased average Black scores by about 0.25 standard deviations adding to the existing literature showing that interventions can reduce the racial gap in cognitive skill. In the longer run, exposure to the schools raised the wages of blacks that remained in the South relative to Southern whites by about 35 percent. For blacks the private rate of return to a year of additional schooling induced by Rosenwald was about 18 percent. Moreover, Rosenwald significantly increased Northern migration of young adult Blacks, with no corresponding impact on schoolage Blacks or young adult Whites, likely fueling further income gains. Across all outcomes, the improvements were highest in counties with the lowest levels of Black school attendance suggesting that schooling treatments can have a very large impact among those at the bottom of the skill distribution.

In this paper we use historical census data from the U.S. to estimate the pecuniary returns to holding a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives during the 1850s and 1860s. We employ a regression discontinuity design (RDD) based on close elections and compare wealth accumulation in the decades between 1850 and 1870 among those who won or lost their first congressional race by a small margin. We fi nd no evidence of large returns to congressional seats for the 1850s or the second half of the 1860s. However, we do fi nd evidence of signifi cant returns for the first half of the 1860s, during the Civil War. Those who won their fi rst election by a narrow margin and served during the period 1861-1866 (37th-39th Congresses) accumulated, on average, 33-55% more wealth between 1860 and 1870 than candidates who lost the election and did not serve - for the median congressman this corresponds to an additional $700,000-$1,200,000 in present values. We hypothesize that the sudden spike in government spending during the war and the decrease in oversight from government agencies might have made it easier for incumbent congressmen - and probably other politicians - to collect rents. We fi nd evidence that wealth accumulation was particularly large for congressmen who represented states that were home to the major military contractors during the war, and for congressmen who served during the Civil War in committees that were responsible for most military appropriations - the latter accumulated up to 70% more wealth relative to those who never served. These results are robust to the inclusion of state fi xed effects, and to the inclusion of a broad set of controls including age, initial wealth and occupation dummies. Placebo regressions reveal that these results are not driven by pre-existing diff erences in wealth accumulation or other covariates prior to serving in congress. We also show that all of the main results hold when we use the number of domestic servants - a good proxy for wealth - as the dependent variable. Finally, we show that a simple "before-and-after" design using only winning candidates yields surprisingly similar estimates to the RDD.

A central organizing framework of the voluminous recent literature studying changes in the returns to skills and the evolution of earnings inequality is what we refer to as the canonical model, which elegantly and powerfully operationalizes the supply and demand for skills by assuming two distinct skill groups that perform two different and imperfectly substitutable tasks or produce two imperfectly substitutable goods. Technology is assumed to take a factor-augmenting form, which, by complementing either high or low skill workers, can generate skill biased demand shifts. In this paper, we argue that despite its notable successes, the canonical model is largely silent on a number of central empirical developments of the last three decades, including: (1) significant declines in real wages of low skill workers, particularly low skill males; (2) non-monotone changes in wages at different parts of the earnings distribution during different decades; (3) broad-based increases in employment in high skill and low skill occupations relative to middle skilled occupations (i.e., job polarization); (4) rapid diffusion of new technologies that directly substitute capital for labor in tasks previously performed by moderately skilled workers; and (5) expanding offshoring in opportunities, enabled by technology, which allow foreign labor to substitute for domestic workers specific tasks. Motivated by these patterns, we argue that it is valuable to consider a richer framework for analyzing how recent changes in the earnings and employment distribution in the United States and other advanced economies are shaped by the interactions among worker skills, job tasks, evolving technologies, and shifting trading opportunities. We propose a tractable task-based model in which the assignment of skills to tasks is endogenous and technical change may involve the substitution of machines for certain tasks previously performed by labor. We further consider how the evolution of technology in this task-based setting may be endogenized. We show how such a framework can be used to interpret several central recent trends, and we also suggest further directions for empirical exploration.

This study examines how familial contexts affect poverty disparities between the children of immigrant and U.S.-born blacks, and among black and nonblack children of immigrants. Despite lower gross child poverty rates in immigrant than in U.S.-born black families, accounting for differences in family structure reveals that child poverty risks among blacks are highest in single-parent black immigrant families. In addition, within two-parent immigrant families, child poverty declines associated with increasing assimilation are greater than the respective declines in single-parent families. The heads of black immigrant households have more schooling than those of native-black households. However, increased schooling has a weaker negative association with child poverty among the former than among the latter. In terms of racial disparities among the children of immigrants, poverty rates are higher among black than nonblack children. This black disadvantage is, however, driven by the outcomes of first-generation children of African and Hispanic-black immigrants. The results also show that although children in refugee families face elevated poverty risks, these risks are higher among black than among nonblack children of refugees. In addition, the poverty-reducing impact associated with having an English-proficient household head is about three times lower among black children of immigrants than among non-Hispanic white children of immigrants.

In this study, language transition among the children of Caribbean immigrants in the US is examined from two main perspectives. First, speeds of language transition among children in French- and Spanish-Caribbean immigrant families are compared. Second, the mediating roles of socio-demographic factors and sibling characteristics in language transition are also examined. The results reveal that, with increasing assimilation, children in French-Caribbean families experience a faster transition to English monolingualism than their counterparts with Spanish-Caribbean parents. Transition to English monolingualism is also negatively associated with the number of first-generation siblings within a household. However, increases in the number of second- and first-generation monolingual-English siblings significantly shift children's language use towards complete Anglicisation. Instructively, this impact offsets the influence which ethnically endogamous parents have on the retention of the mother-tongue within immigrant families.

During the air conditioner industrys first four decades, most installations were commercial comfort air conditioning systems, purchased by retailers to increase demand for their products. Air conditioning spread unevenly through the commercial sector and across the country. Using data from a variety of sources, I offer a quantitative account of this diffusion, viewed through an interpretiveframework that emphasizes differences across geographic markets and industries in the costs and benefits to retailers of installing air conditioning. Correlates ofearly adoption of commercial air conditioning include electricity rates and consumer income and education levels.

Using geological variation in oil abundance in the Southern US, I examine the long term effects of resource-based specialisation through economic channels. In 1890 oil abundant counties were similar to other nearby counties but after oil was discovered they began to specialise in its production. From 194090 oil abundance increased local employment per square kilometre especially in mining but also in manufacturing. Oil abundant counties had higher population growth, higher per capita income and better infrastructure.Does resource abundance facilitate or impede long term economic development? This question has long puzzled economists but despite much research the answer remains controversial.1 This article contributes to the debate by investigating the long term effect of resource abundance on local economic development in the US South.Some economic theories suggest that resource abundance can facilitate local development through various channels. For example, resource abundance may raise local demand for workers prospecting for natural resources, extracting them, or working in closely related upstream and downstream industries. This, in turn, may lead to population inflows that give rise to agglomeration effects, which raise local productivity.2But not all theories predict beneficial effects from resource abundance and some of the mechanisms discussed in the Resource Curse literature might actually hinder local economic development. First, some market linkages from natural resources (often referred to as Dutch Disease) might harm industries that are not closely related to the resource extraction industry. For example, wealth effects (sometimes known as spending effects) might depress labour supply or reallocate resources away from the tradeable non-resource sector. Or direct demand by resource extraction firms and workers may raise local prices, again hurting some producers. Another concern is that increases in local factor price volatility, due to commodity price volatility, might deter the entry of some firms. Second, natural resource revenues might increase local rent-seeking, patronage or embezzlement. While such concerns might seem minor for the US South today, they may have been more of a problem in the past and this may have had negative long lasting effects. Finally, pollution might make resource-abundant locations unattractive when incomes rise.

Abstract The paper develops a tractable econometric model of optimal migration, focusing on expected income as the main economic influence on migration. The model improves on previous work in two respects: it covers optimal sequences of location decisions (rather than a single once-for-all choice), and it allows for many alternative location choices. The model is estimated using panel data from the NLSY on white males with a high school education. Our main conclusion is that interstate migration decisions are influenced to a substantial extent by income prospects. The results suggest that the link between income and migration decisions is driven both by geographic differences in mean wages and by a tendency to move in search of a better locational match when the income realization in the current location is unfavorable.

This article presents an analysis of a 2008 community needs assessment survey of a convenience sample of 179 Pacific Islander respondents in southern California; the needs assessment focused on HIV knowledge, HIV testing behavior, and experience with intimate partner/relationship violence. Multivariate logistic regression results indicated that race/ethnicity and reported experience with intimate partner/relationship violence were the most important variables in explaining the variation in reported HIV testing among Chamorro/Guamanian and Samoan respondents. However, when analyzed separately, self-reported experience with intimate partner/relationship violence was associated with reported HIV testing only for Chamorro respondents and not for Samoan respondents. As U.S. Pacific Islanders experience a high degree of HIV health disparities, additional research is needed to clarify the links among race/ethnicity, intimate partner/relationship violence, and HIV testing behavior.

This study explores the effects of month of birth (a proxy for early-life environmental influences) on the chances of survival to age 100. Months of birth for 1,574 validated centenarians born in the United States in 18801895 were compared to the same information obtained for centenarians 10,885 shorter-lived siblings and 1,083 spouses. Comparison was conducted using a within-family analysis by the method of conditional logistic regression, which allows researchers to control for unobserved shared childhood or adulthood environment and common genetic background. It was found that months of birth have significant long-lastingeffect on survival to age 100: siblings born in SeptemberNovember have higher odds to become centenarians comparedto siblings born in March. A similar month-of-birth pattern was found for centenarian spouses. These results support the idea of early-life programming of human aging and longevity.

Agriculture on the American Great Plains has been constrained by historical water scarcity. After World War II, technological improvements made groundwater from the Ogallala aquifer available for irrigation. Comparing counties over the Ogallala with nearby similar counties, groundwater access increased irrigation intensity and initially reduced the impact of droughts. Over time, land-use adjusted toward water-intensive crops and drought-sensitivity increased; conversely, farmers in water-scarce counties maintained drought-resistant practices that fully mitigated higher drought-sensitivity. Land values capitalized the Ogallala's value at $26 billion in 1974; as extraction remained high and water levels declined, the Ogallala's value fell to $9 billion in 2002.

A central role of political institutions is to control politicians and prevent the abuse of political power for personal gain. An empirical question in this context is understanding the environments or conditions under which democratic political institutions may be less eff ective at controlling politicians behavior. In this paper we use historical census data from the U.S. to estimate the rents from holding a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives during the 1850-1880 period. We employ a regression discontinuity design (RDD) based on close elections and compare wealth accumulation in the decades between 1850 and 1880 among those who won or lost their fi rst congressional race by a small margin. Remarkably, we find no evidence of large returns to congressional seats for the 1850s, the second half of the 1860s or during the 1870s. This stands in contrast to evidence for other countries and provides suggestive evidence on the e ffectiveness of U.S. political institutions during "normal times". However, we do fi nd evidence of signifi cant returns for the first half of the 1860s, during the Civil War. Those who won their first election by a narrow margin and served during the period 1861-1866 accumulated, on average, 40% more wealth between 1860 and 1870 (approximately an additional $1,000,000 in present values) relative to those who ran but did not serve. We hypothesize that increased opportunities from the sudden spike in government spending during the war and the decrease in control from government agencies, voters andthe media might have made it easier for incumbent congressmen - and probably other politicians - to collect rents. Consistent with our hypothesis, we fi nd evidence thatwealth accumulation was particularly large for congressmen who represented states that were home to the major military contractors during the war, and for congressmen who served during the Civil War in committees that were responsible for most military appropriations. Our results can be interpreted more broadly and are suggestive that rent-seeking may be more prevalent in episodes of crisis such as natural disasters, wars or other types of political and economic turmoil. During these periods governmentexpenditure often increases substantially, increasing the amount of resources on which politicians might prey, and at the same time control and oversight by the media andother state institutions may be less eff ective than in normal times.

Female entrepreneurs may be less networked than their male counterparts, and so derive less benefit from agglomeration. They may also have greater domestic burdens, and therefore have higher commuting costs. This paper develops a theoretical model showing that either of theseforces can lead to the segregation of male- and female-owned businesses, with female entrepreneurs choosing locations farther from agglomerations and commuting shorter distances. Empirical analysis is consistent with these predictions. Female-owned businesses are segregated, often to a degree similar to black-white residential segregation. Female-owned enterprises are less exposed to agglomeration, with 10 to 20 percent less own-industry employment nearby.

Payday lenders have become the banker of choice for many residents of distressed urban communities in the United States. By offering cash advances on postdated checks, these businesses provide a growing number of financially strapped families the money they need to get by at least in the short run. As just one piece of a growing fringe banking industry (consisting of check cashers, pawn shops, rent-to-own stores, and other high-cost financial services), payday lenders provide services but at a heavy cost to some of the most financially vulnerable families.Much attention has been given to the costs the customers of such services are incurring. Yet additional broader community costs mighthave been ignored in recent debates and in the scholarly literature. One of those costs, and the focus of this research, is a possible link between payday lending and neighborhood crime rates.

The advent of peer-to-peer databases and the recent rise of cloudstores as key large-scale data management paradigms, have led researchers to look into the problem of supporting complex queries in a fully decentralized manner. Among the classes of queries considered in related centralized work, there is one that stands out as largely overlooked in widely distributed settings, albeit very common in real-world workloads: top-k joins. With this work we tackle such queries over data distributed across an internet-scale network. Our contributions include: (a) a novel distributed indexing scheme, allowing access to tuples in both a random and an ordered manner; (b) a set of query processing algorithms based on a novel adaptation of rank-join and threshold algorithms, appropriate for use in a distributed environment; (c) a novel use of Bloom Filters and histograms to further reduce the bandwidth consumption of the above algorithms; a proof that ensures that our algorithms based on Bloom filters and histograms produce the correct top-k results; and (d) an in- depth discussion of the design space and related performance trade-offs. We further investigate the efficiency and quality of the proposed solutions through an elaborate experimental evaluation, showcasing their appropriateness for widely-distributed and massively decentralized environments and highlighting related trade-offs.

Has economic turbulence increased over the past decades? The question has received much attention butrelatively little empirical support. Using a consistent occupational classification together with the (March)CPS files from years 1971 to 2009, this paper examines two dimensions of worker reallocation acrossoccupations that are directly tied to economic turbulence: (i) the dynamics of total employment reallocatedacross occupations and (ii) the content of the reallocation process, as measured by the direction of flows ofworkers from middle-wage to lower- or higher-wage occupations. The data reveals a rise in net reallocationof unskilled workers, a decrease in that of skilled workers and an increasing gap between middle-wage andhigh-wage occupations. These findings are consistent with an increase in economic turbulence, taking theform of a polarization of the labor market.

In this article, the authors describe a collaboration of theMinnesota Population Center (MPC), the U.S. Census Bureau, and the National Archives and Records Administration to restore the lost data from the 1960 Census. The data survived on refrigerated microfilm in a cave in Lenexa, Kansas. The MPC is now converting the data to usable form. Once the restored data are processed, the authors intend to develop three new data sources based on the 1960 census. These data will replace the most inadequate sample inthe series of public-use census microdata spanning the years from 1850 to 2000, extend the chronological scope of the public census summary files, and provide a powerful new resource for the Census Bureau and its Research Data Centers.