Disparities in teen pregnancy rates are explained by different rates of sexual activity and contraceptive use. Identifying other components of risk such as race/ethnicity and neighborhood can inform strategies for teen pregnancy prevention. Data from the 2005 and 2007 New York City Youth Risk Behavior Surveys were used to model demographic differences in odds of recent sexual activity and birth control use among black, white, and Hispanic public high school girls. Overall pregnancy risk was calculated using pregnancy risk index (PRI) methodology, which estimates probability of pregnancy based on current sexual activity and birth control method at last intercourse. Factors of race/ethnicity, grade level, age, borough, and school neighborhood were assessed. Whites reported lower rates of current sexual activity (23.4%) than blacks (35.4%) or Hispanics (32.7%), and had lower predicted pregnancy risk (PRI=5.4% vs. 9.0% and 10.5%, respectively). Among sexually active females, hormonal contraception use rates were low in all groups (11.6% among whites, 7.8% among blacks, and 7.5% among Hispanics). Compared to white teens, much of the difference in PRI was attributable to poorer contraceptive use (19% among blacks and 50% among Hispanics). Significant differences in contraceptive use were also observed by school neighborhood after adjusting for age group and race/ethnicity. Interventions to reduce teen pregnancy among diverse populations should include messages promoting delayed sexual activity, condom use and use of highly effective birth control methods. Access to long-acting contraceptive methods must be expanded for all sexually active high school students.

Objectives. We estimated trends in breast cancer incidence rates for specificAsian populations in California to determine if disparities exist by immigrantstatus and age.Methods. To calculate rates by ethnicity and immigrant status, we obtaineddata for 1998 through 2004 cancer diagnoses from the California Cancer Registryand imputed immigrant status from Social Security Numbers for the 26% ofcases with missing birthplace information. Population estimates were obtainedfrom the 1990 and 2000 US Censuses.Results. Breast cancer rates were higher among US- than among foreign-bornChinese (incidence rate ratio [IRR]=1.84; 95% confidence interval [CI]=1.72, 1.96)and Filipina women (IRR=1.32; 95% CI=1.20, 1.44), but similar between US- andforeign-born Japanese women. US-born Chinese and Filipina women who wereyounger than 55 years had higher rates than did White women of the same age.Rates increased over time in most groups, as high as 4% per year among foreignbornKorean and US-born Filipina women. From 20002004, the rate among USbornFilipina women exceeded that of White women.Conclusions. These findings challenge the notion that breast cancer rates areuniformly low across Asians and therefore suggest a need for increasedawareness, targeted cancer control, and research to better understand underlyingfactors. (Am J Public Health. Published online ahead of print February10, 2010: e1e7. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2009.163931)

How do technological progress and the adoption of new technology respond to the availabilityof complementary factors or the price of such factors? This paper attempts to answerthis question in the context of US agriculture in the first half of the twentieth century andits response to immigration flows at the local level. Using the past prevalence of immigrantsas an instrument for the location choice of waves of immigration between 1900 and 1940, thepaper estimates the impact of an increase in the number of immigrant farmers on measuresof capital and technology adoption at the county and state level using data from the Censusof Agriculture. It finds that larger immigrant flows led to slower adoption of labor-savingtechnologies, as proxied by various sources of draft power, and a shift towards more laborintensivecrops. At the same time, an increase in the number of immigrants in a particularcounty led that countys farms to be less capital intensive: a one percent increase in the numberof immigrant farmers translated into a fall in the capital to labor ratio in that county ofabout 0.2 percent. This holds even when one controls for the potential scale effects, changes inthe crop mixes and controls for state-level variations over time. A fall of similar magnitude isobserved for the capital to output ratio but in this case, it seems to be driven by the changes inthe crops planted. Overall, these results seem to indicate that, although technology adoptionresponded to the labor influx of capital, it was unable to entirely absorb the change caused byimmigration into local agricultural markets.

How are hourly wages affected by the Earned Income Tax Credit? Using variation in stateEITC supplements, I find that a 10 percent increase in the generosity of the EITC is associatedwith a 5 percent fall in the wages of high school dropouts and a 2 percent fall in the wages of thosewith only a high school diploma, while having no effect on the wages of college graduates. Giventhe large increase in labor supply induced by the EITC, this is consistent with most reasonableestimates of the elasticity of labor demand. Although workers with children receive a much largerEITC than childless workers, and the effect of the credit on labor force participation is larger forthose with children, the hourly wages of both groups are similarly affected by an EITC increase.As a check on this strategy, I also use federal variation in the EITC across gender-age-educationgroups, and find that those demographic groups that received the largest EITC increases also experienceda drop in their hourly wages, relative to other groups.

Researchers continue to question fathers willingness to report their biological children in surveys and the ability of surveys to adequately represent fathers. To address these concerns, this study evaluates the quality of mens fertility data in the 1979 and 1997 cohorts of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79 and NLSY97) and in the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG). Comparing fertility rates in each survey to population rates based on data from the Vital Statistics and the U.S. Census Bureau, we document how the incomplete reporting of births in different surveys varies according to mens characteristics, including their age, race, marital status, and birth cohort. In addition, we use Monte Carlo simulations based on the NSFG data to demonstrate how birth underreporting biases associations between early parenthood and its antecedents. We found that in the NSFG, roughly four out of five early births were reported, but in the NLSY79 and NLSY9, almost nine-tenths of early births were reported. In all three surveys, incomplete reporting was especially pronounced for nonmarital births. Our results suggest that the quality of male fertility data is strongly linked to survey design and that it has implications for models of early male fertility.

The employment-to-population rate of high-school aged youth has fallen by about 20 percentage points since the late 1980s. The human capital implications of this decline depend on the reasons behind it. In this paper, I demonstrate that growth in the number of less-educated immigrants may have considerably reduced youth employment rates. This finding stands in contrast to previous research that generally identifies, at most, a modest negative relationship across states or cities between immigration levels and adult labor market outcomes. At least two factors are at work: there is greater overlap between the jobs that youth and less-educated adult immigrants traditionally do, and youth labor supply is more responsive to immigration-induced changes in their wage. Despite a slight increase in schooling rates in response to immigration, I find little evidence that reduced employment rates are associated with higher earnings ten years later in life. This raises the possibility that an immigration-induced reduction in youth employment, on net, hinders youths' human capital accumulation.

Economic History & Labor, 1850-1870, Dr. James Curtis Jr. PhD, Director & Senior Fellow, Internet Graduate Research Institute, June 29, 2022, "Leon Litwack (1961) and Ira Berlin (1974) provide the most comprehensive historical accounts of free blacks in the north and south respectively. This paper attempts to build upon their successes by presenting a national study that combines the legal, demographic and economic experiences of free blacks, with an extended analysis of antebellum wealth inequality. In doing so, I propose the asymmetry hypothesis, which is an investigation of the link between the social conditions and economic outcomes of free blacks relative to whites. For the empirical portion of the study, I employ cross-sectional variables from the IPUMS samples. This paper finds that economic differences between free blacks and whites were intertwined with asymmetrical social constraints. While the legal and social status of free blacks was significantly better than slaves, their status did not equal that of whites. Yet free blacks did attempt to overcome the social conditions by structuring their households to provide a basic foundation for the pursuit of happiness."

The early decades of 19th century America witnessed many social modifications over its vast geographic space. These social assimilations were heavily influenced by contemporary political, economic and social currents. In 1840, these tangible and intangible forces accumulation produce the extant effects of modernitythe concepts and processes manifesting improvements for transportation of ideas and objects across time and space. Due to modernitys irregular presence across geography, certain areas of America in 1840 embodied modernitys consciousness more than others. Within modernitys patchwork, people pursued ancient cultural rituals; one of those was music. Beginning in the early 1840s, the banjo, a symbol of African-American culture, was ubiquitously adopted by blackface minstrelsy in America and carried over the world. Joel Sweeney, a white Virginian, performed a pivotal role in presenting the black banjo to popular white culture through their favorite entertainment medium: blackface minstrelsy and then the creolization the black banjo.Chapter I sets the scene in which banjos became significant in popular American culture and how GIS techniques can help map its emergence into this culture. Chapter II builds an understanding about why the black banjo became such a nationwide fad. Using ideas about cultural formation, lifeworld experiences, centers of modernity and Joel Sweeneys role within these processes, the historic social and racial context of the 1840s emerges that enveloped the northern movement of the southern black banjo. Chapter III discusses the application and display of these ideas and concepts through Historical Geographic Information Systems (HGIS). HGIS offer a unique chance to retrace the echoes of Joel Sweeneys modernized banjo and recreate the social environments in which he performed. Using historical census data from the University of Minnesotas Population Center, Joel Sweeneys performance tour from 1836 to 1842 is plotted against demographics depicting racial, age, gender and employment populations, as well as contemporary access and presence of communication and transportation networks. Together, these demographics insinuate the breadth of particular lifeworlds. Chapter IV examines the results these series of maps based upon economic, transportation and communication, racial, age and gender demographics from 1840. Chapter V offers conclusions derived from this project and further research options.This is an interdisciplinary project utilizing Appalachian Studies, historical geography and HGIS. It looks at differences in historical life experiences between the northern and southern United States in 1840 based upon modernitys power centers within these regions, and the affects these power centers exerted upon the mass adoption of the banjo into blackface minstrelsy. This project illustrates the southern black banjos northward migration into the white dominated North through Joel Sweeneys 1836-1842 performance tours.

We use several different sources (a 1970 Roster of Organizations in Data Processing and the 1960 and 1970 Censuses of Population) to study patterns of geographic clustering at the very origins of the software industry. We find a strong trend toward clustering of the industry in a few metropolitan areas. Furthermore, we uncover a tendency in the early software industry to agglomerate in close proximity to some of its main customers. This tendency holds even after controlling for region-specific heterogeneity and for the potentially endogenous nature of the software customers' location decisions. We explore the factors that may have driven the observed clustering patterns and suggest directions for further research.

Sleep is a basic human need and takes up more time in a day than any other activity, but we know surprisingly little about how gender shapes sleep duration in the general population. Previous research shows that women sleep longer than men do, but also report lower sleep quality and greater fatigue. These seemingly contradictory findings from different disciplinary literatures can be unified by drawing on theoretical debates about gender and time use, and by placing sleep time in the context of social roles – worker, spouse or partner, and parent – and the gendered expectations for their fulfillment. Data from the nationally-representative 2003-2007American Time Use Surveys show that the overall gender gap in sleep duration favors women, but varies with work and family responsibilities, and because of this it changes over adulthood. Moreover, this study provides novel empirical evidence of women’s greater likelihood of sleep interruption for caregiving work, particularly among parents of young children. The female advantage in sleep time is negligible in many comparisons made in this study, and is tempered by the greater burden of interrupted sleep that women face during the childbearing years and the larger male advantage in leisure time throughout midlife.

We discover and document errors in public-use microdata samples ("PUMS files") of the 2000 Census, the 2003-2006 American Community Survey, and the 2004-2009 Current Population Survey. For women and men age 65 and older, age- and sex-specific population estimates generated from the PUMS files differ by as much as 15 percent from counts in published data tables. Moreover, an analysis of labor-force participation and marriage rates suggests the PUMS samples are not representative of the population at individual ages for those age 65 and over. PUMS files substantially underestimate labor-force participation of those near retirement age and overestimate labor-force participation rates of those at older ages. These problems were an unintentional byproduct of the misapplication of a newer generation of disclosure-avoidance procedures carried out on the data. The resulting errors in the public-use data could significantly impact studies of people age 65 and older, particularly analyses of variables that are expected to change by age.

Does the postponement of marriage affect fertility and investment in human capital? Istudy this question in the context of a 1957 amendment to the marriage law in Mississippi that wasaimed at delaying the age of marriage. Changes included raising the minimum age for men andwomen, parental consent requirements, compulsory blood tests and proof of age. Using difference indifferences at the county level, I find that overall marriages per 1000 in the population decreased bynearly 75%; crude birth rate decreased by nearly 9.5%; and school enrollment increased by 3% afterthe passage of the law (by 1960). An unintended consequence of the law change was that illegitimatebirths among young black mothers increased by 7%. I show that changes in labor market conditionsduring this period cannot explain the changes in marriages, births and enrollment. I conclude thatstricter marriage-related regulation leading to a delay in marriage can postpone fertility and increaseschool enrollment. However, my findings suggest that these changes had no effect on completedfertility and could also increase illegitimacy.

This paper develops an overlapping generations model that incorporates twosector (market and non-market) production, gender heterogeneity, and fertility choice. We extend the gender-gap model of Galor and Weil (Am Econ Rev 86(3):374387, 1996) by adding a third use of time, non-market work, into household time allocation. Our model can explain the joint evolution of production structure, household time allocation, and fertility broadly observed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in the Western world as part of a single process of economic development: (i) production shifted out of households and into the market, (ii) there was first an increase in the supply of male labor to the market, followed by an increase in the female labor supply; married-female participation in paid work outside the home dramatically increased in the latter half of the twentieth century, and (iii) there has been a two-century long secular decline in fertility, interrupted by a temporary rise in the mid-twentieth century (a baby boom). We also provide a quantitative analysis and examine how well our model replicates the patterns observed in U.S. data.

A microdata file is a compilation of data records. Each record contains values of attributes about a single unit—say a person with the attributes of their height, attitude toward minimum wage laws, cell-phone usage, and diastolic blood pressure. Microdata are special. Expanding Access to Research Data: Reconciling Risks and Opportunities (National Research Council, 2005) recognizes both the enthusiasm for the research potential of microdata and the trepidation about the risk microdata pose to confidentiality. In this chapter we help reconcile the inevitable tension of both protecting and providing microdata. We lay out the principles of microdata confidentiality and identify ways of improving DSO practice.

Breast cancer incidence is higher in U.S.-born Hispanic women than foreign-born Hispanics, but no studies have examined how these rates have changed over time. To better inform cancer control efforts, we examined incidence trends by nativity and incidence patterns by neighborhood socioeconomic status (SES) and Hispanic enclave (neighborhoods with high proportions of Hispanics or Hispanic immigrants).