Subjective well-being data reveal that blacks are less happy than are whites. However, much of this racial gap in happiness has closed over the past 35 years. We investigate measures of subjective well-being that indicate that the well-being of blacks has increased both absolutely and relative to whites. These changes in well-being are found across various datasets and measures of subjective well-being. However the gains in happiness are concentrated among prime-age women and those living in the south. While the opportunities and achievements of blacks have improved over this period, the happiness gains far exceed that which can be attributed to these objective improvements.

Past research has linked homeownership to a significant health advantage, which has typically been assumed to apply equally to all groups. However, this assumption warrants greater scrutiny because racial and ethnic minorities experience large disadvantages in both access to and returns from homeownership. Substantially smaller proportions of non-Whites are homeowners compared to Whites, and they experience diminished returns to housing quality, wealth accumulation, and neighborhood quality. This study is the first to examine racial and ethnic stratification in homeowners advantage in self-rated health. Using the 2009 March Current Population Survey, regression results initially suggest that all homeowners experience a significant health advantage on average. However, this advantage is considerably larger for White homeowners. Under more rigorous examination, there is much less evidence for a non-White homeowner health advantage. The health advantage is 1.43 to 1.75 times smaller for Blacks than Whites, 1.35 to 1.56 times smaller for Latinos, and 1.21 to 1.27 times smaller for Asians. A secondary set of analyses on a sub-sample of the data reveals that this pattern varies among low-income households. There is more evidence for a significant health advantage for low-income non-White homeowners, and less inequality relative to Whites. The analyses provide evidence implying that remedying racial/ethnic inequalities in homeownership rates would not be sufficient to alleviate housing-related health disparities. More generally, it also points to the interactive nature of racial/ethnic stratification in the generation of health disparities through both access to and returns from socioeconomic resources.

I analyze two issues on the efficiency of schooling choice. The first chapter analyzes changes in the distribution of college enrollment rates that occurred between 1980 and 2000. It aims not only to explain the 69% increase in the overall college enrollment rates, but also changes in the distribution of college attendees by their ability and financial status. College attendance increased by 27% less than the overall trend for individuals in the lowest quartile of the joint family income and ability distribution. However, it increased by 12% more than the trend for individuals in the highest quartile. To explain these changes, I construct a quantitative life-cycle model of labor supply and human capital formation. The model is calibrated to match schooling patterns and labor market outcomes for the 1980 and 2000 cohorts. I explicitly model four potential driving forces to explain the observed changes. First, college wage premium increased during the 1980 - 2000 period. This increase had a positive effect on enrollment across all profi les and the largest gain was for the low-ability and low-income groups. Second, there was a merit-oriented reform in distribution of grants which mostly increased college attendance of high-ability students. Third, increase in tuition costs led to reduced attendance across all profi les. This effect was particularly strong for students from low-income families. Fourth, the joint distribution of ability and family income shifted, affecting allocation of grants as well as educational success and expected college wages. This shift had the largest positive effect on students in the center of the ability distribution as they experienced rising incentives to attend college. The second chapter studies the role of college dropout risk premium on returns to education and attendance decisions. Attending college has been considered one of the most profitable investment decisions, as its estimated annualized return ranges from 8% to 13%. However, a large fraction of high school graduates do not enroll in college. Using a simple risk premium approach, I reconcile the observed high average returns to schooling with relatively low attendance rates. A high dropout risk has two important effects on the estimated average returns to college: selection bias and risk premium. Once taking into account dropout risk, a simple calculation of risk premium accounts for 51% of the excess of return to college education. In order to explicitly consider the selection bias, I further explore the dropout risk in a life-cycle model with heterogeneous ability. The risk-premium of college participation accounts for 29% of the excess of returns to college education for high-ability students, and accounts for 27% of the excess return for low-ability students, since they face a larger college dropout risk. Risk averse agents are willing to reduce their return to college in order to avoid the dropout risk. The effect is not uniform across ability levels.

This dissertation examines the effect of long work hours ("overwork") on gender inequality by examining how it affects men and women's labor market outcomes. Long work hours have become increasingly prevalent in many advanced industrial societies and established workplace norm. By working long hours, employees demonstrate professional competence and work commitment, especially in many professional and managerial jobs. By adopting a theoretical perspective emphasizing gendered organizations and institutions, I argue that although seemingly gender neutral, the overwork norm disadvantages many women, who have less time available to do paid labor because they are expected to do more housework and perform most of the caregiving responsibilities. To demonstrate this argument, I conduct three empirical analyses, which apply quantitative methods to longitudinal data drawn from the Survey of Income and Program Participation and data from the Current Population Surveys, conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. The results show that overwork increases gender inequality in three important labor market outcomes: occupational mobility, employment, and earnings. The project has broader theoretical implications for the study of gender, social inequality, and organizations.

Great achievements in knowledge are produced by older innovators today than they were a century ago. Nobel Prize winners and great inventors have become especially unproductive at younger ages. Meanwhile, the early life cycle decline is not offset by increased productivity beyond middle age. The early life cycle dynamics are closely related to age when the PhD was received, and I discuss a theory where knowledge accumulation across generations leads innovators to seek more education over time. More generally, the narrowing innovative life cycle reduces, other things equal, aggregate creative output. This productivity drop is particularly acute if innovators' raw ability is greatest when young.

This paper exploits cross-state variation in minimum wages to investigate the impact of minimumwage changes on employer-provided health insurance. In contrast to the existing empiricalliterature, I consider an environment where some firms are constrained by nondiscriminationlaws that govern the provision of health insurance. For these firms, minimum wage changes donot reduce the probability that workers will receive employer-provided health insurance. Forfirms not covered by the nondiscrimination law, and free to tailor their fringe benefits, lowskilledworkers experience a disproportionate reduction in the availability and generosity ofhealth insurance after a minimum wage increase.

This article describes the development of the U.S. health insurance system and its growth in the twentieth century. It examines the roles of important factors including medical technology, hospitals and physicians, and government policy culminating in the development of Medicare and Medicaid.

The main cross-sectional and time-series properties of state-level gross and net worker flows, wages, and rents are characterized using micro-data from the U.S. Census. A dynamic general equilibrium model of worker migration is introduced to explain the stylized facts. In the model, a location may experience simultaneous inflows and outflows of workers. Recent migrants choose to migrate more often than incumbent workers. Thus, locations that attract high numbers of migrants also tend to experience high outflow rates. This pattern is a robust feature of the data and cannot be explained by models of net flows only. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

In this article, we argue for understanding immigrant suburbanization as one outcome of the mass migrations associated with economic globalization, a process that has coincided with and shaped the decentralization and reconfiguration of the American metropolis. We contend, as well, that economic differentiation among the foreign-born translates into distinctive residential patterns that reflect the diversity of new metropolitan geographies. Using individual and tract-level data from metropolitan Philadelphia since 1970, we describe the intersection of spatial differentiation (suburban variety) with both demographic diversity (ethnic and racial differentiation) and linked patterns of ethnic and racial population growth and decline. We highlight the importance of immigration to population and economic growth, the diversity among immigrants, the inability of suburb to capture the region's residential ecology, and the surprising links between the growth of immigrant and African-American populations in the same places. We clearly show how the residential experience of African Americans differs from that of both immigrants and native-born whites.

This paper imposes structure on the model presented in Roback (1988) by employing Elickson's (1971) single-crossing condition and predicts that local wage distributions will contract with an improvement in amenities. The range of estimated amenity-wage gradients across the wage distribution reveals the misleading nature of the average amenity-wage gradient, which is generally estimated in the literature. Workers at the lower end of the wage distribution are shown to earn more in locations with better amenities while those in the higher end are shown to earn less. In addition, both theimplicit price paid for amenities and the implicit share of income spent on amenities are shown to increase substantially with wage level. The latter provides the rst empiricalevidence of an assumption that it commonly employed in urban models, namely, that amenities are luxury goods.

Scholars have most often concentrated on the retention and upkeep of native languages along with the trend in assimilation to American society and the dominant English language. Seldom have we studied other languages that are spoken and maintained by the immigrant communities. This paper examines new data available through the Minnesota Population Center and the newly developed Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) data base. By analyzing past and current U.S. Census data, distinct trends in languages spoken at home are encountered helping us project changes to come in years ahead. Questions of dominant languages across the United States reveal that Spanish speaking Nordic Americans are increasing at high rates. Regional clustering of Spanish speakers and surprising findings as to the rank of each national language within each ethnic group are investigated. These findings are significant in helping us gain a better understanding of the changing linguistic practices of each Nordic group.

This study examines the relative importance of demographic, resource, and assimilation statuses in explaining the living arrangements of foreign- and native-born Asian and Hispanic elders from 11 origins in 2000 and accounting for why these groups have higher levels of extended living than native-born Whites. Drawing on the 2000 Public Use Microdata 5% Sample (PUMS) files and using logistic regression, the findings show that demographic characteristics are the major determinants of elderly extended living, followed by resource availability, assimilation, and group origin. Assimilation, on the other hand, is the major determinant of group differences between native White and Asian and Hispanic elders. While findings provide support for assimilation theory, the persistence of differentials across Asian and Hispanic groups after controlling for model covariates, and modest increases in extended living for most native-born Asian and Hispanic groups as well as native Whites in the 1990s underscores the enduring nature of ethnic diversity in living arrangements.

How many "American jobs" have U.S.-born workers lost due to immigration and offshoring? Or, alternatively, is it possible that immigration and offspring, by promoting cost-savings and enhanced efficiency in firms, have spurred the creation of jobs for U.S. natives? We consider a multi-sector version of the Grossman and Rossi-Hansberg (2008) model with a continuum of tasks in each sector and we augment it to include immigrants with heterogeneous . . .

Supporters claim that entrepreneurship is critical to building and sustaining the economy of urban and rural areas across the nation. Proponents argue that economic development practices that enhance and support entrepreneurship are essential because they cultivate innovation which, in turn, provides the area with new jobs, new wealth, and a better quality of life. However, self-employment income growth in South Carolina in particular and in the United States in general has lagged growth in income from other sources. This fact raises the need to study the determinants of self-employed income. Using the literature as a guide, a conceptual model was developed that consist of independent variables based on personal characteristics, resource availability, and economic structure. The investigation of the determinants of self-employed income in South Carolina is carried out using a regression of the natural logarithmic of self-employed income in 2008 on the variables selected from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Samples (IPUMS) database based on the conceptual model. In general, empirical results are consistent with expected outcomes. Policy implications focus on numerous programs that economic development agencies can implement to increase the availability of resources to entrepreneurs and help meet training needs.

The literature examining the relationship between obesity and wages has fairly consistently found that BMI has a negative impact on earnings for women, and less (if any) consequences for men. In the first study in my dissertation, co-authored with Christopher J. Ruhm, we relax the assumption–largely unquestioned in this research–that the conditional mean of wages is linear or piecewise linear in body mass index (BMI). Using data from the 1986 and 1999-2005 Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we estimate semi-parametric wage models that allow earnings to vary with BMI in a highly flexible manner. For women, the results show that earnings peak at levels far below the conventional threshold of obesity or even overweight. For men, our main estimates suggest a reasonably flat BMI-wage profile that peaks early in the "overweight" category. The findings for females (and the IV estimates for males) suggest that it is not obesity but rather some other factor – such as physical attractiveness – that may be producing the observed relationship between BMI and wages. In the second essay of this dissertation, I examine the effect of obesity–and body mass more generally–on wages across the age distribution, using conventional parametric and more flexible semiparametric approaches. My parametric results suggest that the literature may overstate the effect of BMI and obesity on wages for women and almost certainly understates any negative association for men. For women, my results show that the negative effects of BMI and obesity are concentrated among women between 25 and 35 years old. While women in this age group experience an average 0.5 to 0.7 percent decrease in wages for each point increase in body mass (roughly 7.5 pounds), women over 40 will suer a 0.25 percent decrease in wages for each extra point of body mass, and may not experience any wage penalty at all. Similarly, women who are 31-35 years old experience a 7.7 percent decrease in wages for being obese, while women over 40 experience only a 3.9 percent decrease. . .

The goal of this paper is to develop and calibrate a quantitative general equilibrium model to account for the joint evolution of educational attainment and relative wages among education groups in the U.S. over the 20th century. The key exogenous explanatory variables we consider are skill-biased technical change, U.S. education policies, and demographic changes. The main features of the model are: heterogeneity in ability among individuals; three levels of sequential educational attainment: less than high school, high school, and college; public and private colleges, frictionless asset market; endogenous schooling costs and skill prices; skill-biased technical change.