We study the formation of social ties among heteogeneous agents in a model where who meets who is determined through a random search process. Our aim is to understand how theincentives to connect with similar agents vary across social groups, and what role is played by groups' sizes. The key element of our approach is that search is more e effective when exerted in large pools. We show that search equilibrium is characterized by a threshold in terms ofgroup size, so that larger groups only search among similar agents, while smaller groups search among the whole population. Under the assumption that search is subject to small frictions, this type of equilibrium behaviour is shown to generate patterns of homophily which are consistentwith empirical evidence from diverse social environments, such as high school friendships and interethnic marriages. In particular, homophily is largest in medium sized groups, while very small and very large groups are characterized by a mix of social connections that approximates their population shares.

I use U.S. census data to perform the first large-sample, nationally representative tests of outcomes for children raised by same-sex couples. The results show that children of same-sex couples are as likely to make normal progress through school as the children of most other family structures. Heterosexual married couples are the family type whose children have the lowest rates of grade retention, but the advantage of heterosexual married couples is mostly due to their higher socio economic status. Children of all family types (including children of same-sex couples) are far more likely to make normal progress through school than are children living in group quarters (such as orphanages and shelters).

The most straightforward approaches to temporal mapping cannot effectively illustrate all potentially significant aspects of spatio-temporal patterns across many regions and times. This paper introduces an alternative approach, bicomponent trend mapping, which employs a combination of principal component analysis and bivariate choropleth mapping to illustrate two distinct dimensions of long-term trend variations. The approach also employs a bicomponent trend matrix, a graphic that illustrates an array of typical trend types corresponding to different combinations of scores on two principal components. This matrix is useful not only as a legend for bicomponent trend maps but also as a general means of visualizing principal components. To demonstrate and assess the new approach, the paper focuses on the task of illustrating population trends from 1950 to 2000 in census tracts throughout major U.S. urban cores. In a single static display, bicomponent trend mapping is not able to depict as wide a variety of trend properties as some other multivariate mapping approaches, but it can make relationships among trend classes easier to interpret, and it offers some unique flexibility in classification that could be particularly useful in an interactive data exploration environment.

Media reports all over the USA reported that a wave of Islamophobia had gripped the USA after the September 11, 2001 attacks. It seemed as though the American population were blaming not the radicals but the Middle Easterners and the Muslims in general for the inhumane act. Some reports even suggested a new sort of McCarthyism in the USA but this time against the Middle Eastern populace. This paper investigates whether such discrimination transformed itself in the US labor market by conducting an econometric analysis, taking Becker’s taste for discrimination theory as its theoretical basis. It first analyzes whether there was a significant change in wage differentials between Middle Eastern population groups compared to native Americans pre and post 2001. Secondly, it accomplishes a regional analysis to see whether the populations from certain Middle Eastern regions were discriminated more than other regions. Lastly, the paper examines other labor market outcomes such as labor force participation rates and unemployment rates, to determine whether discrimination was present in other avenues and to provide an all encompassing picture of Middle Eastern immigrants in the US labor market before and after the attack of September 11th.

Employment to population ratios differ markedly across OECD countries relative to rates in the U.S., especially for persons aged 55-69. Social security features also differ across the OECD, particularly with respect to replacement rates, entitlement ages and earnings tests. I conjecture that differences in social security features explain many differences in employment to population ratios at older ages. I assess my conjecture quantitatively with a life cycle general equilibrium model of retirement. At ages 60-64 the correlation between my model's simulations and observed data is about two thirds. The replacement rate and the earnings test explain 90% of observed variability, implying that differences in entitlement ages do not explain differences in employment to population rates at older ages.

We study the formation of social ties among heteogeneous agents in a model where meetings are governed by agents' directed search. The aim is to shed light on the important issue of homophily (the tendency of agents to connect with others of the same type). The essential contribution of the model is to provide a basic microfoundation for the opportunity/meeting biases that, as the literature highlights, are a crucial element of the phenomenon. Under the assumption that search is more effective in large pools, the equilibrium is characterized by a threshold in terms of group size: large groups only search among similar agents while smaller groups search in the whole population. This threshold behavior is consistent with the empirical evidence observed in a range of social environments such as high school friendships and interethnic marriages. And assuming that search is subject to small frictions, it also generates the bell-shaped form of the so-called Coleman index observed in the data. Other implications of the model supported by the evidence concern the pattern of cross-group ties among small groups, the linearity of excess homophily for large groups, and the positive effect on it of overall population size.

In 2005, Congress passed the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act (BAPCPA) to deter those with means from evading their debts in a Chapter 7 bankruptcy. The law substantially increased the cost to debtors of filing bankruptcy. We use national data gathered at the zip code level to estimate how the law affected debtor filing rates at different income levels and by homeownership. We consider econometric models that account both for observed and unobserved differences across neighborhoods, as well as allow for arbitrary differences in bankruptcy time trends across neighborhoods. Results suggest that the law disproportionately reduced filings among poor neighborhoods by about 32% and that poorer filers also shifted 12% more towards pricier Chapter 13 filings with these effects being exacerbated by differences in homeownership.

Despite ominous signs of housing market stress in the US, the homeownership rate reached an all-time high in 2006. The conventional definition of homeownership, which is based on the share of households and ignores the effects of variable household formation, confounds the measurement of success in achieving homeownership. It is found that, from 1990 to 2006, declining household formation led to an elevated homeownership rate in the US and that this effect varies substantially between racial/ethnic groups. Asians, who achieve high homeownership rates, have the lowest propensity to form independent households, in sharp contrast to African Americans. Asians do not have better access per capita to owner-occupied housing than do Blacks. The conventional measure of homeownership is an incomplete measure of homeownership opportunity because it fails to account for variable household formation. The changing population mix in the US includes groups with different propensities for household formation, thus confusing future assessments of homeownership and the housing market.

In the effort to search available activity data for use in health risk assessment models, the staff looked into various data sources including the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) census data, the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) survey data, the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) survey data, and the National Longitudinal Surveys (NLS) data. The data sources examined and their preliminary statistical analysis results for the two basic factors, years lived at home location and time at home per day, are discussed in this report.

The Population Reference Bureau INFORMS people around the world about population, health, and the environment, and EMPOWERS them to use that information to ADVANCE the well-being of current and future generations.

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

This paper presents a business cycle model where different beliefs on the accuracy of news about future technological progress lead to heterogeneous expectations among households. The model shows that over-optimism of home-buyers causes housing-market boom-bust cycles if home-buyers are credit-constrained and savers do not share the over-optimism. If prices are sticky, the inflation rate and the nominal policy interest rate are low during booms and rising around the ends of booms, as typically observed in developed countries. The sensitivity of boom-bust cycles to monetary policy depends on the elasticity of labour supply. Higher availability of mortgage debt amplifies boom-bust cycles.

Empirical studies consistently find that non-metropolitan status is negatively associated with poverty. But why is poverty more prevalent and deep in rural areas of the United States than in urban places? Many studies have tried to explain the pervasiveness of rural poverty as a result of individual characteristics and structural conditions. Both of these factors have been found to affect poverty rates, but neither completely explains poverty in rural places and suggests that there is a “rural effect” beyond structural conditions and individual characteristics that makes rural residents more likely to live in poverty than if they lived in an urban area. To answer this question, this study will examine differences in rural and . . .

Gay men and lesbians work less and earn less in the labor market than heterosexual men, but work more and earn more than heterosexual women. Same-sex couples share market work more equally and have fewer children than different-sex couples. This paper identifies marriage markets as a theoretical source of these differences. The paper characterizes marital matching and premarital human capital investments in the context of one-sided and two-sided marriage markets. It shows that, because gay men and lesbians, but not heterosexual men and women, compete with their prospective partners in the marriage market, sexual minorities make more moderate human capital investments than heterosexual men and women. When there are frictions in the marriage markets, same-sex couples are more likely than different-sex couples to share market work equally and are less likely to have children. The analysis suggests that the relative scarcity of children in same-sex households may be a consequence, as well as a cause, of less extensive specialization. participants in the labor economics seminar at the University of Michigan. I would also like to thank the Institute for Research on Women and Gender at the University of Michigan for the support I received from their Community of Scholars fellowship program.

In Massachusetts, as in every other place in the world, there are children needing care and education, people with physical and mental health needs, and those who require assistance with the daily tasks of life because of illness, age, or disability. The labor of meeting these needs— care work—is a complex activity with profound implications for personal, social, and economic well-being. Care work is not just a cornerstone of our economy—it is its foundation. Care work . . .

Over the past 40 years, the fraction of mixed race black-white births has increased nearly nine-fold. There is very little empirical evidence on how these children fare relative to their single-race counterparts. This paper describes basic facts about the behaviors and outcomes of black-white mixed race individuals. As one might expect, on a host of background and achievement characteristics as well as adult outcomes, mixed race individuals fall in between whites and blacks. When it comes to engaging in risky and antisocial adolescent behavior, however, mixed race adolescents are stark outliers compared to both blacks and whites. We argue that these behavioral patterns are most consistent with a two-sector Roy model, in which mixed race adolescents-not having a predetermined peer group-engage in more risky behaviors to be accepted.

The share of metropolitan residents living in central cities declined dramatically from 1950 to 2000. We show that, if not for a series of demographic factors – notably renewed immigration, delayed child bearing, and a decline in the share of households headed by veterans, who are eligible for military housing benefits – cities would have contracted even further over this period. We provide causal estimates of the relationship between the living in the central city and the presence of children in the household using the occurrence of twins as an exogenous event and of the relationship between the living in the central city and veteran status, relying on a discontinuity in the probability of military service during and after the mass mobilization for World War II. Demographic trends were only strong enough to stanch the flow of population from cities, not to generate an urban revival.