Racial-ethnic disparities in health status are well documented (IOM 2002, DHHS 1999), but the role of occupational racial-ethnic segregation and hazardous job exposures remain relatively unexplored. Racial-ethnic health disparities may reflect exposure to hazardous work environments that are associated with poor health status. This analysis explores associations between job segregation, occupational skill levels, occupational physical demands, occupational environmental exposures and health status. This study uses individual level data from the 2002 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) and occupation level data from detailed US Census (2000) and the Occupational Information Network (O*Net 14.0). Preliminary models show that occupation-level demographic variables are significant predictors of both physical and mental health outcomes, although the patterns of associations are unique for each outcome. The percentage of black workers in occupations is associated with greater odds of reporting fair/poor physical health. Physically demanding occupations are protective for self-rated mental health, but not for physical health.

Las dos últimas décadas han visto una demanda creciente de trabajadores extranjeros, particularmente temporales. Las demandas del mercado laboral han sido satisfechas, al menos parcialmente, por trabajadores extranjeros, muchos de ellos en situación migratoria irregular, con los consecuentes desafíos para los Estados y riesgos para los migrantes mismos. Esto ha aumentado la presión para facilitar o mejorar las vías legales para encauzar la migración temporal como una alternativa a corto plazo, pero segura, y responder así a las necesidades laborales y de desarrollo de los países receptores. La regulación de la migración laboral no es, bajo ningún punto de vista, una tarea fácil, y son muy pocos los países que han desarrollado un sistema para cubrir sus necesidades laborales particulares con trabajadores extranjeros. Los esquemas existentes varían mucho, aunque algunos de ellos presentan grandes similitudes, y todos podrían aportar lecciones aprendidas y mejores prácticas. Las organizaciones empleadoras, los gobiernos locales o regionales, sector privado, las ONGs y las organizaciones internacionales se han involucrado de diversas formas, sustentados en medios legales, para atraer trabajadores extranjeros con diversos niveles de capacitación . . .

This paper argues that the existence of competitive labor markets, in combination with imperfect capital markets, can lead to increasing inequality. Formulating an infinite-horizon neoclassical growth model with missing capital markets and indivisible labor, I show that the population will group into three occupations, denoted capitalists, independents, and workers. Following a labor market improvement, income increases for people everywhere in the wealth distribution. However, while labor markets decrease inequality in the very short run, poorer agents will move toward having zero wealth in the long run, even with perfect foresight. The results are discussed mainly in light of the development of the Western world during industrial transition, but the model also has relevance for understanding the development process of today's developing countries in the twentieth century.

An analysis of data on the location of people and jobs in the 50 largest U.S metropolitan areas in 1990 and 2006–2007 finds that: n The poor are more suburbanized in metropolitan areas with greater employment decentralization. Overall, the poor are generally less likely to live in suburbs than the non-poor (55.8 percent versus 70.9 percent). Metropolitan areas with both high suburbanization of poverty and job sprawl are somewhat larger and lie mostly in the South and West, including Atlanta, Miami, San Francisco, Seattle, and Orlando. n Poor whites and Latinos are more suburbanized than poor blacks in metro areas with high job sprawl. This disparity is most marked in metropolitan areas with higher poverty rates, indicating that in such regions, poor blacks may be less able to suburbanize in response to the outward movement of jobs than other groups. n Metropolitan areas where jobs decentralized more over time experienced greater suburbanization overall, but not among the poor. This suggests that the outward movement of jobs in metropolitan areas in recent years does not by itself explain suburbanization of the poor during this time. Rather, other related factors may have propelled the decentralization of both the poor and jobs—such as lack of reverse commute public transit, or negative aspects of central cities. n Within suburbs, the poor generally live in communities that have somewhat below-average numbers of jobs. About 68 percent of all suburban residents live in areas with aboveaverage numbers of jobs compared with 62 percent of the suburban poor. Even lower shares of black and Latino suburban poor live in jobs-rich communities, particularly in higher-poverty metropolitan areas. Together, these findings . . .

This thesis is concerned with the economic consequences for individuals of two important U.S. labor market institutions: unionization and the military draft. The first chapter develops an econometric procedure for estimating quantile treatment effects in a regression discontinuity design. It shows nonparametric identification, develops estimators, including a data-driven bandwidth choice, and illustrates the methodology by estimating the effects of an Oklahoma universal pre-K program on the quantiles of student outcomes. The second chapter applies the econometric procedure developed in the first chapter and estimates effects of unionization on the distribution of employees' earnings using a regression discontinuity design based on union certification elections. The results suggest that unionization raises the lower end of the distribution by up to 25 log points, but has a large negative effect on the upper tail of earnings, with little effect on average earnings. Unionization also increases retention among workers with lower pre-election earnings, but decreases it for higher-earning workers. These effects are interpreted as reflecting the political incentives unions face in certification elections. The final chapter (joint with Joshua Angrist and Stacey Chen) explores the long-term effects of Vietnam-era military service on disability outcomes using a research design based on the draft lottery. We find no evidence that military service affected overall employment rates or overall work-limiting disability. At the same time, military service drastically increased federal transfer income, especially for lower skilled white men, among whom there was a large negative impact on employment and an increase in disability rates. The . . .

The advent of information technology facilitates geographic separation of production. Nevertheless, the research on inshoring has been limited, even though the literature on offshoring has flourished. This paper examines inshoring on both empirical and theoretical fronts. Empirically, it shows that business support services are increasingly sent to small localities for cost savings and being separated from their downstream industries. Theoretically, it analyzes welfare impact of inshoring. Contrary to predictions in the offshoring literature, support workers can be better off, primarily because they can benefit from higher urban productivity without bearing urban costs.

The last forty years have witnessed a remarkable boom in higher education around the world. Importantly, the boom in higher education has been concentrated among women, such that today in most higher-income countries, and many lower-income countries, more women than men attend and complete tertiary education. We present a model that explains the increase in higher education, particularly among women, in terms of a market for college graduates in which the supply of college graduates is function of the distribution of the costs and benefits of higher education across individuals. Examining evidence on these costs and benefits, we find no clear evidence that benefits are greater for women than men. Instead, it appears that differences in the total costs of college for women and men - primarily due to differences in the distributions of non-cognitive skills for women and men - explain the overtaking of men by women in higher education.

Cities in the U.S. with a higher initial share of college graduates have had a greater subsequent increase in this share over the past two decades. Concurrently, housing prices have grown faster in these skilled cities. This paper argues that the diffusion of computers and outsourcing may partly explain these two phenomena. In the presented model, skilled workers are more productive in skilled cities and need unskilled support services. The cities' unskilled workers can perform the support services, but when it is cheaper, such services can be undertaken by computers or outsourced to less-skilled cities. New technologies facilitating computerization and outsourcing can increase the skill share and housing prices in skilled cities relative to less-skilled cities, under reasonable assumptions. The basic economics is that the new technologies diminish the demand for unskilled workers in skilled cities and permit skilled workers to earn higher wages, which in turn increases the supply of skilled workers in skilled cities and drives up housing prices. Empirically, this paper documents five stylized facts that the theory can rationalize. Particularly important is rising skill premium in skilled cities relative to less-skilled cities, which supports a production theory involving shifts in labor demand.Keywords: Computerization; Domestic outsourcing; Migration; Technological change; Technologyskill complementarityJEL classification codes: J23; R12; R2; R3

Children are increasingly likely to live apart from their fathers for some period of time during their childhoods. Previous research suggests that high quality interaction with nonresident fathers is beneficial to children, but the limitations of many surveys - including potentially biased samples, biased third-party reporting of father involvement, and overly-general questions about father involvement - make it difficult to assess the level of involvement fathers have with nonresident children. We examine the data available in two surveys with very different methodologies: the American Time Use Survey and the National Survey of Family Growth. We ask how involved fathers are with their nonresident children; what characteristics are correlated with higher levels of involvement; and how well the two surveys compare in estimating nonresident father involvement. Preliminary results suggest that nonresident fathers are under-represented in the ATUS, but in general, reported levels of nonresident father involvement are higher in the NSFG.

Traditional database search uses pattern match in the comparison process. For a query with some search words, tuples are selected only if the words of the tuples exactly match the query words. In this paper, we propose a new method for evaluating relational ranking queries (or top-N queries) with text attributes. This method defines semantic distance functions and utilizes semantic match between words in database search. The attempt is that tuples, not only exactly matching, but also close to the query according to semantic distances, can both be fetched. The basic idea of the method is to create an index based on WordNet to expand the tuple words semantically. The candidate results for a query are retrieved by the index and a simple SQL selection statement, and then top-N answers are obtained. Extensive experiments are carried out to measure the performance of this new strategy for the evaluation of ranking queries over relational databases.

This paper examines demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of Africanimmigrants in the U.S. over time and compares them to native born and all foreign born.We use data from the 1980, 1990 and 2000 Census and 2007 American CommunitySurvey. We focus on trends and key characteristics of the African born in the U.S., andspecifically in New York City, which has historically been home to the largestconcentration of African immigrants. We find much to pursue in proposed futureresearch, including the interesting paradox of higher education and greater labor forceparticipation among African immigrants (versus both native born and all immigrants), yetgreater levels of poverty and lower incomes. The paper is currently descriptive, but wewill be developing a more analytical paper over the next months as we prepare to launcha pilot study of African immigrants in New York City in summer 2010.

Although some sociologists have suggested that Japanese Americans quickly assimilated into mainstream America, scholars of Japanese America have highlighted the heightened exclusion that the group experienced. This study tracked historical shifts in the exclusion level of Japanese and Japanese Americans in the United States surrounding World War II with homogamy and intermarriage with Whites for the prewar (19301940) and resettlement (19461966) marriage cohorts. The authors applied log-linear models to census microsamples (N = 1,590,416) to estimate the odds ratios of homogamy versus intermarriage. The unadjusted odds ratios of Japanese Americans declined between cohorts and appeared to be consistent with the assimilation hypothesis. Once compositional influences and educational pairing patterns were adjusted, however, the odds ratios increased and supported the heightened exclusion hypothesis.

The objective of this study is to provide continuous, consistent (as much as possible), annual series of the three variablesaverage expenditures, number of consumer units, average size of the consumer unitfrom 1900 to the present. This objective can be met only by use of both BLS data and data from other sources, governmental and private. Lack of data prevents generation of the series early than 1900. The current survey from 1984 onward is taken as the basis, and the series for 1900-1983 are constructed consistently with the 1984-onward segment. To the best of the present-authors knowledge, there has been no previous work that generates or simulates annual BLS CES series continuouslyexcept, of course, that done by the BLS itself from 1980 onward.

The recent recession and now the recovery have caused enrollment at many community colleges to soar as unemployed workers retrain for new occupations and students who might otherwise attend a four-year college choose to save money. In the Tenth District, the importance of community colleges is likely to rise even further as the economy continues to evolve and industries demand workers with new skills. ; Labor market projections over the next decade suggest that new jobs in the district will be filled more by workers with an associate’s degree or some college than by those with any other type of education. In the short run, with state and local government funding still falling, many community colleges will be challenged to educate a growing number of students. In the long run, evolving industries will likely further challenge community colleges to produce even more workers with newer skills--both nationwide and in the Tenth District. ; Felix and Pope describe how community colleges contribute to economic development in the Tenth District and the challenges they face in economic downturns. They then examine the implications of long-run job projections in district states for the demand for community colleges graduates--and whether the states’ current level of provision of community college education appears adequate.

The use of performance-based payments to compensate rank and le workers in the U.S. has increased substantially since the 1980s. This dissertation presents three papers that examine the empirical implications of these compensation structures on the U.S. labour market. The rst paper investigates whether performance pay is contributing to the difference in residual wage inequality between the March and the Merged Outgoing Rotation Group (MORG) samples of the Current Population Survey (CPS). Lemieux (2006) and Autor, Katz, and Kearney (2008) show 1) that residual inequality is about 30% higher in the March CPS than in the MORG CPS, and 2) that this measure of inequality grew between 1970 and the late 1990s in the March CPS but was relatively stable in the MORG CPS. Understanding why there should be such a substantial dierence in residual inequality between the two CPS samples is important because they dier in their support for widely accepted theories of wage inequality. Drawing on detailed earnings information contained in the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, I present results that suggest that performance pay is indeed playing a role in the discrepancy in residual inequality between the March and MORG CPS samples. The second paper examines whether employers that pay for performance learn . . .

Social networks are commonly understood to play a large role in the labor marketsuccess of immigrants. Using 2000 U.S. Census data, this paper examines whether access tonative networks, as measured by marriage to a native, increases the probability of immigrantemployment. We start by confirming in both least squares and instrumental variablesframeworks that marriage to a native indeed increases immigrant employment rates. Next, weshow that the returns to marrying a native are not likely to arise solely from legal status acquiredthrough marriage or characteristics of native spouses. We then present several pieces of evidencesuggesting that networks obtained through marriage play an important part in explaining therelationship between marriage decisions and employment.

Using data from the 2000 Census, this study examines the relationship between householdliving arrangements and economic resources among Mexican immigrant families with children. Imodel separately the relationships between family income and household structure and proportion oftotal household income contributed and household structure. The results show that families thatcoreside with extended kin and non-kin have higher incomes, all else equal, relative to those thatreside in single-family households. In addition, Mexican immigrant families that reside in extendedhouseholdliving arrangements contribute about three quarters of total household income. Whilefamilies may gain some economic efficiency through extended household living arrangements, theresults are consistent with expectations that Mexican immigrant families expend scarce resources insupport of the migration and settlement of extended kin. The Mexican delayed assimilation thesissuggests such support inadvertently diverts resources away from immigrant children and slowsintergenerational progress.

During the 1890s, Cherokee cattleman Zack Foreman struck a deal with the Kansas City Southern Railroad. If Foreman would prepare the roadbed, they would lay the steel. With large cattle herds and his own rail line, Foreman became one of the wealthiest men in Indian Territory.1 His wealth was exceptional because he had been born a slave. 2 Since emancipation, the wealth of former slaves and their descendents has greatly lagged behind that of whites. Higgs (1982; 1977) found that black total property holdings were just 1/36 those of whites . . .