Geografische Informatiesystemen kennen zoveel verschillende toepassingen in de alfawetenschappen dat het verstandig is om ze op enigerlei wijze van elkaar te onderscheiden. Dat kan op diverse manieren. Je kan bijvoorbeeld een onderverdeling maken volgens de verschillende subdisciplines van de alfawetenschappen, zoals bijvoorbeeld geschiedenis, kunstgeschiedenis, archeologie of letterkunde. Ook is een indeling mogelijk op basis van de regionale reikwijdte van het GIS: internationaal, nationaal, regionaal of lokaal, of op basis van het soort gegevens dat in het GIS wordt gebruikt: kwantitatief of kwalitatief, numeriek of alfanumeriek. De indeling van dit boek is gebaseerd op een ander onderscheid, namelijk op de verschillende functies die geografische informatiesystemen kunnen vervullen in het alfa-onderzoek. Volgens ons kan GIS op ten behoeve van zeven verschillende . . .

Blue collar immigrant Latinos have increasingly gained employment within North Carolina’s growing meatpacking industry and declining textile industry from 1980 to 2000. This paper uses three decades of Census data to provide a theoretically descriptive discussion about trends and patterns that have emerged within these industries. Results indicate that in meatpacking, Latinos are being crowded into low wage ghettos, despite cases where they are substituting for exiting white workers or where they have been queued upward into better paying jobs. In textiles, Latinos gained employment because they are inexpensive labor or because they are substituting for whites and slowing growth among blacks. Within narrow occupational categories, interpretations of growing Latino presence were consistent from macro to micro levels while in other cases crowding in meatpacking and wage discrimination in textiles were not foreshadowed. Overall, Latinos appear to be affecting employment rates of whites more than blacks in both industries.

An emerging literature empirically connects obesity with urban sprawl, with an increasing interest in identifying causal pathways. I focus on the built environment's effect on agents' constraints, and hypothesize that households’ spatial isolation increases requisite travel time which limits leisure time available as inputs to health production. I analyze cross-sectional data from the American Time Use Survey (2003-2008) to quantify decreases in health-related activity participation due to commuting and labor time. I examine the data for associations between commute length and time spent in exercising, food preparation, eating, and sleeping behaviors. I augment the data with activity strenuousness scores to test whether physically-draining commutes induce lower-intensity activity substitutions. I find small but highly significant associations consistent with the conjecture that commuting time cost impacts health-promoting behaviors. Each minute spent commuting is associated with a 0.0257 minute exercise time reduction, a 0.0387 minute food preparation time reduction, and a 0.2205 minute sleep time reduction. I find trade-offs due to commuting often exceed trade-offs due to labor time on a per-minute basis. Longer commutes are also associated with an increased likelihood of non-grocery food purchases and substitution into lower intensity exercise activities. Recognizing self-selection bias, I also utilize daily metropolitan traffic accidents as instruments which exogenously influence commute length on that day.

This paper analyses the relationship between unexplained racial/ethnicwage differential and integration of social networks. Our analysis is basedon both US and Estonian surveys, supplemented with Estonian telephonecommunication data. We compare network segregation and unexplainedwage differentials by distinct geographic regions.Our analysis finds a clear negative relationship between the size of thedifferential and network integration: regions with more integrated socialnetworks exhibit smaller unexplained wage differential. The relationshipis insiginificant for the US communities but highly significant for Estoniancounties where we possess detailed communication data. It is robustwith respect to controlling for the minority percentage. The network integrationexplains around 5% (for the US) and 50% (for Estonia) of theregional variation of the differential.

This study evaluates the effects of the introduction of iodized salt in the United States in1924. Using U.S. census data and the geographic distribution of goiter, the most visiblemanifestation of iodine deficiency, I find that areas with higher prior goiter rates experiencedgreater improvements in schooling among children, greater occupational gains among adults andbetter long-term economic outcomes. Exposure to iodized salt of the adults and children in theshort-term study is entirely postnatal; therefore the results make a novel contribution to theexisting economics literature on iodine deficiency which has focused solely on in utero treatmentimpacts. In general, the results emphasize the important role of micronutrients for economicdevelopment, and highlight the cost-effectiveness of treatment programs that tend to the mostbasic elements of health, thereby generating sustainable human capital gains. The extremely lowcost of iodization and the relative ease of its implementation are particularly relevant fordeveloping countries which face extremely tight budget constraints.

Using a large sample of US urban areas, we provide systematic evidence that mean household income rises with city size (agglomeration), that this effect is stronger for the top of the income distribution (polarization), and that household income inequality increases at a decreasing rate in city size (inequality). To account simultaneously for these facts, we develop a microfounded model of endogenous city formation in which urban centres select the most productive agents. Income inequality is driven by both the poverty and the superstar margins: whereas the least productives agents fail in a thougher urban environment, which increases poverty, the most productive agentsbecome superstars who reap the benefits from a larger urban market. At equilibrium, the returns to skills are increasing in city size, thereby dilating the income distribution. Our model is both rich and tractable enough to allow for a detailed investigation of when cities emerge, what determines their size, how they interact through the channels of trade, and how inter-city trade influences intra-city income inequality.

Using both IPUMS and the Colored Troops Sample of the Civil War Union Army Data, I estimate the effects of literacy and health on the migration propensities of African-Americans from 1870 to 1910. I find that literacy and health shocks were strong predictors of migration and the stock of health was not. There were differential selection propensities based on slave statusformer slaves were less likely to migrate given a specific health shock than free blacks. Counterfactuals suggest that as much as 35% of the difference in the mobility patterns of former slaves and free blacks is explained by differences in their human capital, and more than 20% of that difference is due to health alone. Overall, the selection effect of literacy on migration is reduced by one-tenth to one-third once health is controlled for. The low levels of human capital accumulation and rates of mobility for African-Americans after the Civil War are partly explained by the poor health status of slaves and their immediate descendants.

Understanding the health and well-being of Asian American and Pacific Islander women involves discussion of many complex and contextual issues. This chapter reviews the demographics, health status, and health behaviors of Asian American and Pacific Islander women, as well as three important contextual factors: health access, immigration, and acculturation. These factors are then combined in discussions of two cross-cutting issues: violence against women and reproductive health and rights. The chapter ends with recommendations to promote the future health and well-being of Asian American and Pacific Islander women.

"The emergence of Southern California as a 'metrosea' of fragmented and insular local sovereignties often depicted in urbanist literature as an 'accident' of unplanned growth was in fact the result of deliberate shaping" (Davis 1990, 164)."In the suburb one might live and die without marring the image of an innocent world, except when some shadow of its evil fell over a column in the newspaper... This was not merely a child-centered environment; it was based on a childish view of the world, in which reality was sacrificed to the pleasure principle." (Lewis Mumford quoted in Jackson 1985, 155-156).To best attempt this goal, I chose to use municipal incorporation as my primary metric, due in part to data acquisition issues. For the purposes of this paper, I define in-corporation as the creation of a self-governing municipality from either unincorporated county lands (i.e. Los Angeles County), or another municipality through secession (in this case, the City of Los Angeles). As a first step in evaluating the relationship between incorporation and residential segregation, I will use the following as a guiding research question: is there a spatial correlation between regional changes in black population and incor-poration in Los Angeles?

This study provides the first quantitative test of a conceptual framework that addresses multiple levels of contextual influence on college enrollment (Perna & Thomas, 2008). Using three-level Hierarchical Generalized Linear Modeling (HGLM), we analyzed the Education Longitudinal Study (ELS: 2002) data to examine student, high school, and state-level effects on Latino students’ college participation. ELS: 2002 offers the most current national data about high school students’ postsecondary trajectories; therefore, this data source is particularly suitable for exploring educational experiences of the growing Latino population. Our findings suggest that parental involvement in college planning, financial aid support, and academic preparation continue to be central policy issues for Latino students and families in promoting college enrollment. Factors related to a high school’s academic and social climate also appear to affect Latinos’ college participation.

The impending mass retirement of the Baby Boom generation in the United States may cause a drastic talent drain. Companies should pay attention to this upcoming problem now to alleviate an exodus by encouraging Baby Boomers to continue working past their normal retirement age. One solution is to offer them effective incentives. The most compelling incentives for Baby Boomers are the ability to choose their own hours (how many hours they wish to work, and when they wish to work them), the ability to telecommute from wherever they choose, and the offer of extra health care benefits.

This paper demonstrates that although modern BMIs have increased, 19th century Middle-Atlantic black and white BMIs were in the normal range; neither underweight nor obese individuals were common. Farmers BMIs were consistently heavier than non-farmers. Philadelphia residents BMIs were lower than elsewhere within Pennsylvania, indicating that urbanization and agricultural commercialization were associated with current biological living standards in urbanized areas.

I use differences in educational attainment by birth cohorts to estimate the risein the return to education in the United States. If average ability is similar amongnearby cohorts, then differences in educational attainment lead to differencesin earnings only if education is productive. The results reveal that (i) the returnto a year of schooling increased from 4.8 percent to 8.4 percent between 1964and 2003, (ii) the ability bias rose from 1.8 percent to 4.7 percent during thesame period, and (iii) the acceleration in the education premium after 1980 isexplained almost entirely by the rise in the ability bias.