We estimate the social benefits of homeownership using an exogenous instrument based on randomly assigned treatment status from a field experiment that subsidized saving for home purchase for low income renters through Individual Development Accounts (IDAs). This approach attempts to eliminate the potential correlation present in previous analyses between unobserved individual characteristicsleading to homeownership and traits leading to provision of social capital or local amenities. Consistent with previous work, we show that homeownership positively affects political engagement in simple probits. Instrumental variable probits, however, show no impact of homeownership on political involvement. IV results for other social outcomes are less conclusive. The analysis suggests that with the use of an exogenous instrument, it is possible to generate results that are different from the previous literature. Our results also suggest that being eligible to open an IDA did not spur households to provide more socialcapital or local amenities.

The sharpest increase in U.S. home ownership over the last century occurred between 1940 and1960, driven largely by a decrease in the age at first ownership. To shed light on the contributionof several coincident large-scale government interventions in housing finance, I examine veterans' home loan benefits provided under the postwar GI Bills. I apply a regression discontinuitydesign to two breaks in the probability of military service by date of birth, for cohorts comingof age at the end of World War II and the Korean War, to estimate the impact of veteran statuson home ownership. I find significant, positive effects of veteran status on home ownershipin 1960. Consistent with a model in which the impact of easier loan terms declines with age,these effects are larger for younger veterans, and diminish in 1970 and 1980 as the cohorts age.Complementary analyses suggest veterans' non-housing benefits and military service itself areunlikely to explain the observed differences in home ownership. I find suggestive evidence thatallowing earlier home purchase led to earlier family formation, and that veterans' housing benefits encouraged suburbanization. My baseline estimates imply that veterans' housing benefitscan explain approximately 10 percent of the increase in aggregate home ownership from 1940to 1960.

Based on a 1900 census sample of 34,166 post-reproductive females(R45 years), the birth month effect was put to the test, for both lifetime fertilityas well as child survival, controlling for maternal birth cohort (18261835,18361845, 18461855), Duncans SEI, urbanity, nativity, literacy and maritalduration. Testing for potential cohort effects did not indicate a temporal trendin fertility by maternal birth month (seasonal Mann-Kendall test, p=0.578),while a minute increase in offspring survival was detected (p<0.001, Sensestimator of slope=0.02, 95% CI=0.02 to 0.03). Further analyses of the maternalbirth month effect on child survival were therefore seized. For lifetime fertility,ANOVA results indicated that maternal birth month was a major predictor fortotal offspring count (F11, 33606=1809.0, p<0.001), accounting for 37.2% of thetotal variability. In addition to main effects, a statistically significant interactioneffect was observed (F538, 33606=2.2, p<0.001), with a corresponding effect size of2=0.40. Planned contrasts revealed that birth-month-specific differences infertility achieved statistical significance (F11, 31798=1712.9, p<0.001), while posthocmultiple comparisons for literacy and nativity displayed an inverse relationshipwith fertility, which meets demographic expectations. Controlling forall factors of interest, models of cohort-specific offspring counts (independentANOVAs for 18261835: F157, 3467=26.3, p<0.001; 18361845: F182, 10299=75.5,p<0.001; 18461855: F199, 19859=137.9, p<0.001) indicated that women born inthe first half of the year (particularly, January, February, April and May)achieved above-average parity, while those born in the latter half (namely,July, October, November and December) displayed markedly lower fertilityaverages. These monthly disparities are in line with previous observations andappear to be linked to seasonal optimal ripening of the oocyte or seasonalpreovulatory over-ripeness ovopathy (Jongbloet, 1992).

Low-skill workers are comparatively immobile. When labor demand slumps in a city,college-educated workers tend to relocate whereas non-college workers are disproportionatelylikely to remain to face declining wages and employment. A standard explanation of thesefacts is that mobility is more costly for low-skill workers. This paper proposes and tests analternative explanation, which is that the incidence of adverse shocks is borne in large partby (falling) real estate rental prices and (rising) social transfers. These factors reduce the realcost of living dierentially for low-income workers and thus compensate them, in part or infull, for declining labor demand. I develop a spatial equilibrium model which, appropriatelyparameterized, identi?es both the magnitude of unobserved mobility costs by skill and theshape of the local housing supply curve. Nonlinear reduced form estimates using U.S. Cen-sus data document that positive labor demand shocks increase population more than negativeshocks reduce population, that this asymmetry is larger for low-skill workers, and that such anasymmetry is absent for wages, housing values, and rental prices. Estimates of the full modelusing a nonlinear, simultaneous equations GMM estimator suggest that (1) the asymmetricpopulation response is primarily accounted for by an asymmetric housing supply curve, (2)the dierential migration response by skill is primarily accounted for by transfer payments,and (3) estimated mobility costs are at most modest and are comparable for high-skill andlow-skill workers, suggesting that the primary explanation for the comparative immobility oflow-skilled workers is not higher mobility costs per se, but rather a lower incidence of adverselabor demand shocks.Keywords: local l

This paper studies the evolution of interethnic attitudes, the integration or segregationdynamics of ethnic minorities and the conditions for the rising of ethnic-based socialhierarchies. By means of a cultural evolution framework, a dynamics of interethnicattitudes is provided and conditions for their convergence derived. Steady statesimplying a constant role of racism and no role for racism are identified. By derivingsufficient conditions for convergence, we find that the way in which ObliqueSocialization Schemes (the way children react to out-of-family stimuli when formingtheir cultural values) are defined and modelled becomes crucial for the structure of thederived long run equilibria. In particular, we find that Steady States implying an Ethnicbasedsocial ranking or full integration of ethnicities may be reached depending onwhether or not agents use Reciprocity and/or Ethnocentrism in their interethnic attitudesformation schemes. We study the conditions under which one group puts more effort inthe socialization process, it changes more in values and shows more frustration thanothers. At last, we provide an endogenization of socialization process by applying ahomophily rule, finding out when breaks in the convergence process happen.

The D.C. Office of Planning funded the first State of Washington, D.C.'s Neighborhoods report in 2008 with the purpose of tracking and measuring major demographic, economic, social, and environmental indicators in the District’s wards and neighborhoods. In this second report, we have updated the original indicators with the most recent data available, as well as added new indicators that were not previously available. For instance, the environment chapter has the largest number of new indicators, such as access to transportation and healthy food, but we have also included indicators about foreclosure in the housing chapter, as it is now such a pressing national problem. When possible, we compare how the indicators have changed across the wards and neighborhoods between the time of the first report and the latest data available. The purpose of tracking indicators is to identify broad patterns and trends across the city’s neighborhoods. Understanding where neighborhoods have strengths or challenges can assist District agencies, nonprofits, and community member in strategizing and making informing decisions. The report is organized into nine subject . . .

One of the most dramatic changes in the fiscal federalism landscape during the postwar period has been the rapid growth in state budgets, which almost tripled as a share of GDP and doubled as a share of government spending between 1952 and 2006. We argue that the greater role of states cannot be easily explained by changes in Tiebout forces of fiscal competition, such as mobility and voting patterns. Rather, we demonstrate that much of the growth in state budgets has been driven by changes in intergovernmental interactions. Restricted federal grants to states have increased, and federal policy and legal constraints have alsomandated or heavily incentivized state own-source spending, particularly in the areas of education and health and public welfare. These outside pressures moderate the forces of fiscal competition and mean that state spending cannot beinterpreted solely as an expression of state residents preferences.

This paper examines the role of migration networks in determining self-selection patterns of Mexico-U.S. migration. A simple theoretical framework shows the impact of networks on migration incentives at different education levels and how this affects the composition of migrant skills. Empirically, we find positive or education-neutral selection in communities with weak migrant networks but negative self-selection in communities with stronger networks. This is consistent with high migration costs driving positive or intermediate self-selection, as advocated by Chiquiar and Hanson (2005), and with negative self-selection being driven by lower returns to education in the United States than in Mexico, as advocated by Borjas (1987).

The objective of this paper is to analyze how Mexican immigrants patterns of time use compare to that of U.S. natives, taking into account assimilation and inter-generational effects. In particular, we want to know how the amounts of time immigrants devote to other activities change as they assimilate to the labor market. We do this analysis within a household production framework, considering the husband and wifes allocation of time to various activities. For our estimation we use the American Time Use Survey Data Extract Builder (ATUS-X) from 2003 to 2009. Our estimates indicate that at the time of arrival to the U.S. Mexican husbands work on the market for longer periods of time than NH natives, but they devote the same or less time to household work. On the other hand, newly arrived Mexican wives work more time on the household than NH natives, but they allocate the same or less time to market work. Furthermore, Mexican husbands commute more time than NH natives, while immigrant wives spend a similar amount of time than NH natives on this activity. As their American experience accumulates, immigrant husbands and wives allocate more time to market work, commuting, and household work than NH natives. We also find that Mexican couples sleep more and devote less time to care for other household members than NH whites, but they devote the same amount of time for these activities than NH blacks. The gaps on the sleeping and caring times between Mexican and NH white couples narrows with years since migration. Our results also indicate that Mexican couples enjoy less leisure time than NH natives and that this gap widens with years in the U.S. Furthermore, we find that first generation husbands exercise less than NH natives, whereas immigrant wives exercise a similar amount of time to whites and more than blacks. The gaps in the exercise times of immigrants and natives become insignificant with years in the U.S. In addition, we find that, at the time of arrival, immigrant wives purchase for the same amount of time as NH natives ones, while Mexican husbands shop more time than NH whites and the same as NH Blacks. Finally, we find that immigrant wives eat for longer periods of time than NH natives, while Mexican husbands eat for the same amount of time than NH whites but for longer periods than NH blacks.

Several studies using the American Community Survey have noted that the likelihood ofgrandparents claiming primary caregiving responsibility for their grandchildren variesby household type. In three-generation households with at least one parent present, it isunsurprising that grandparents do not claim responsibility for most of the basic needsof one or more of these grandchildren. But when no parents reside in the household andthe grandparents do not claim responsibility, who is responsible for rearing thesegrandchildren? This study uses the 2007 American Community Survey to explore thisquestion.Researchers have suggested several answers to this question: 1) other members of thehousehold such as aunts, uncles, older siblings or other relatives may be caring for thegrandchildren; 2) although parents do not live in the same household, they may providefinancial assistance and pay frequent visits, and thus may be thought of as primary careproviders; 3) cultural differences in the understanding of what it is to provide for mostof the basic needs of the grandchildren may vary, resulting in substantially higherresponsibility claims among some subpopulations than others; 4) the grandparentgrandchildco-residential arrangement could be a temporary one in which parents areunable to care for their children for only a short period of time; and 5) the relativeambiguity of the question asked at the Census and ACS whether the respondent iscurrently responsible for most of the basic needs of any grandchild(ren) under the age of18 living in the same house or apartment may affect the accuracy of the findings. Weuse multivariate analyses and indirect methods to test these possible explanations.

As the 20-year mark since the publication of an article by Kenneth C. Land, Patricia L. McCall, and Lawrence Cohen, “Structural Covariates of Homicide Rates: Are There Any Invariances Across Time and Social Space?” approaches, the question that these scholars originally posed is raised again: Have researchers been able to identify a set of robust structural covariates that consistently predict crime rates? Subsequent to the publication of this piece, numerous scholars have replicated and extended its conceptual, methodological, and empirical work in various ways—with more than 500 citations to date. In response to this attention, the authors first review the advances made by the Land et al. article. This is followed by a review of findings from studies published over the past 20 years to determine which structural predictors identified in the Land et al. piece continue to be prominent in the study of homicide and which structural predictors have surfaced in recent years as influential to crime rates. Using data on U.S. cities for the years 1970, 1980, 1990, and 2000, the authors then present a systematic empirical assessment of the explanatory power of the covariates of homicide rates identified in the Land et al. study. Twenty years later, we find support for the claims of invariance established in Land et al. and acknowledge the contributions of this piece to the macrolevel study of homicide rates.

Introduction: This report examines demographic and socioeconomic factors concerning Peruvians in the United States between 1980 and 2008. Methods: Data on Latinos and other racial/ethnic groups were obtained from the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey, reorganized for public use by the Minnesota Population Center, University of Minnesota, IPUMSusa. Cases in the dataset were weighted and analyzed to produce population estimates. Results: The Peruvian population of the U.S. increased dramatically between 1980 and 2008 from about 70,000 to over 550,000 people. Migration increased in each decade and there is no reason to believe that migration from Peru will decrease in the near future. Because of this continued migration the foreign-born sector of the Peruvian population has not diminished proportionally, despite the increase in the U.S.-born population of Peruvian origin in absolute numbers. The percentage of Peruvians living in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut has decreased between 1980 and 2008. Peruvians living in California have also decreased in relative terms, while Florida has become a major state of Peruvian settlement. Peruvians have relatively high median household incomes compared with other race/ethnic groups in the U.S. and other Latino national subgroups. These incomes have improved since 1980 in inflation-adjusted dollars. Discussion: Over time since 1980 more Peruvians who were born abroad became naturalized citizens and the citizenship rate rose continually to 2008. On the complex issue of race, more Peruvians declared themselves to be of some other race in 2008 than in previous census years, although a majority self declared as white. There were no major socioeconomic differences between Peruvians declaring themselves to be white or . . .

The accurate collection of unbiased behavioral data is an important component of theory building and ethnographic research. In this article, the authors review two approaches for the collection of behavioral data: time diary and instantaneous sampling. Time diary requires individuals to recall their behavior at specific time intervals; instantaneous sampling relies on researchers observing and recording the behavior of individuals. Each approach has specific strengths and weaknesses. The authors review recent methodological literature on both approaches, identify particular problems with both approaches, and contrast their respective methodological strengths and weaknesses.

The objective of this paper was to determine the extent to which male and female engineers are substitutes in production. A Translog Production function was used to obtain the Hicks Partial Elasticities of Complementarity between male and female engineers, as well as capital. The data suggest, in four different models, that male and female engineers are substitutes in production to the extent that a one percent increase in the quantity of female engineers implies a decrease of .04 percent to 2.33 percent in the prevailing male wage. From this we assert that competition from female engineers has very likely had a negative impact on the labor market for male counterparts.

We study US divorce rates, which despite the continuing rise in female labor force participation (FLFP), have been falling since the mid-1980s, reversing a two-decade trend. A cross section of U.S. states for the year 2000 displays a negative relationship between the divorce rate and FLFP. Abstract We present theory and evidence in support of the view that these recent trends are the product of two distinct economic forces: relative to their non-career counterparts, career women display greater selectivity in the search for marriage partners and greater flexibility in sharing the benefits of a marriage with their partners. Abstract Greater selectivity implies that career women will be older when they first marry and that their marriages will be of higher average “quality,” possibly making them less prone to breakup. Greater flexibility implies that it is easier for two-earner families to readjust the intrahousehold allocation to compensate for changes in outside oppor- tunities, making marriages more resistant to “shocks.” Our evidence shows that both effects may be playing a role in generating the trends the trends.

Our societies are heterogeneous in many dimensions such as cen-sus, education, religion, ethnic and cultural composition. The linksbetween individuals e.g. by friendship, marriage or collaboration are not evenly distributed, but rather tend to be concentrated withinthe same group. This phenomenon, called imbreeding homophily, hasbeen related to either (social) preference for links with owntype in-dividuals (choicebased homophily) or to the prevalence of individualsof her same type in the choice set of an individual (opportunitybasedhomophily). Choices determine the network of relations we observewhereas opportunities pertain to the composition of the (unobserv-able) social network individuals are embedded in and out of whichtheir network of relations is drawn. In this view, we propose a methodthat, in the presence of multiple data, allows one to distinguish be-tween opportunity and choice based homophily. The main intuitionis that, with unbiased opportunities, the effect of choicebased ho-mophily gets weaker and weaker as the size of the minority shrinks,because individuals of the minority rarely meet and have the chanceto establish links together. The occurrence of homophily in the limitof very small minorities is therefore an indicator of opportunity bias.We test this idea across the dimensions of race and education on dataon US marriages, and across race on friendships in US schools.

The New West, located in the interior West of the United States and includes the states of Arizona, Colorado, Montana, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming, is experiencing a large and growing population of internal migrants. This dissertation utilized data from the United States Bureau of the Census‘ County and City Data Book: 2007 and other sources to analyze migration patterns at the structuralcontextual level and the individual-level in the New West. At the structural-contextual level, ordinary least squares regression equations were estimated to predict a series of relationships between ecological factors and net migration rates for nonmetropolitan counties. Focus was placed on variables pertaining to amenity-based characteristics and sustenance organization in order to predict net migration rates. Findings suggest that areas with flourishing sustenance producing activities and more amenity-based characteristics are experiencing higher levels of in-migration. At the individual-level, multinomial logit equations were estimated for a sample of residents living in the state of Nevada based on age, educational background, sex, marital status, and racial/ethnic iv identification to predict the likelihood of an individual having engaged in an interstate migration into the state of Nevada. Individuals having recently migrated to Nevada were found to be older, having obtained higher levels of education, and of Hispanic or Asian descent. These findings confirm that both structural-contextual level and individuallevel predictors are essential in the understanding the patterns of migration occurring in the New West.