Employment in the informal sector is thought to be large, growing, and connected toworkers on the margin, specifically low-wage workers and immigrants. Additionally, informalwork is expected to be connected to immigration through the growth of ethnic economies andbecause some immigrants lack legal documentation to work in the U.S. We develop state-levelproxies for informal employment using differentials between measures of total employment andofficially sanctioned employment. We rely largely on self-reports in population surveys tocapture total employment and ES-202 employment records for officially sanctioned employment.In two industries commonly associated with under-the-table labor, construction and landscaping,we develop another set of proxies for informal work based on productivity per officiallysanctioned worker. We relate each set of proxies for informal employment to changes inimmigrant population and composition. We find some evidence that corroborates publicperception; immigration appears to be associated with informal employment generally, and in theconstruction industry when prevailing wages are low. States with high concentrations of lowskilled male immigrants appear to have higher levels of informal employment in the landscaping industry.

We evaluated how ambitions, community ties, monetary sufficiency, employment, and alcohol consumption related to whether young American Indian adults had moved from their Northern Plains reservation. Of 518 Northern Plainsreservation residents in 1993, we located 472 in 20032005 and found that 89 lived more than a four-hour drive from the reservation. Coding the 472 as to whether they had stayed on/near the reservation or moved away, we ran logistic regressions on data they reported in 1996 to determine which demographic and attitudinal variables were associated with having moved. We found ambitions and goals were moreassociated with moving away than were ties to the community, which in turn were more related than monetary and personal characteristics that promote independence and prosperity. The more importance they placed on getting a good education orcarrying on the tribes traditions, the more likely they were to have moved away. We found too that the odds of moving away decreased with greater alcohol consumption. Tribal council members and college administrators therefore may wish topromote policies that increase opportunities for young adults to achieve higher education goals while remaining on reservation to carry on tribal traditions. Benefits may also come from encouraging and assisting reservation members studying off reservation to return after completing their education. These findings would argue too for greater investment in alcohol services for reservation-dwelling populations. Keywords American Indian Reservation population Young adult Migration Mobility Movement Residence Goals and ambitions Education Alcohol consumption Tribal policy

This thesis evaluates the decisions of the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) over a 40-year period, during which over 22,000 properties were designated in historic districts. The methodology develops a system of measuring social indicators of land use within districts relative to the rest of the city, both at the time of designation and in the decades following. This is applied across various intensities and indicators. The 260 measurements evaluate five basic categories: proximity to new development, racial composition, owner occupancy by race, education by race, and income by race.The results show across nearly every indicator that the decisions of the LPC have favored whites over minorities, even when accounting for differences in income, owner occupancy, and education levels. Affluent, white neighborhoods have received the lions share of designations, while poor, minority neighborhoods have been designated disproportionately more than poor white ones. Given uneven costs and benefits of designation across different social groups, this thesis concludes that the LPC is preserving a racial divide.Finally, policies are recommended to improve diversity and social equity.

Collecting data from a hidden population is difficult because of the absence of a sampling frame, which makes conventional survey techniques problematic. A recent variant of snowball sampling, "Respondent Driven Sampling" (RDS) has attracted considerable interest as a method of collecting data on difficult to reach populations. In this paper, we show that conventional snowball and RDS methods can be very inaccurate when sampling networks that exhibit substantial clustering due to social homophily. To solve this problem, we propose an alternative approach based on the collection of network data from respondents and an adaptive web sampling design (Thompson 2006), which combines a conventional snowball sample with a periodic "adaptive step" to jump to less explored areas of the network and guide the sample away from bottlenecks of clustered cases. In the adaptive step, we first use community detection techniques to identify clusters in the accumulated network data. Subsequently, we give sampling priority both to clusters that have been undersampled-based on an estimate of cluster size derived from the within-cluster density of sampled cases-and to cases that represent potential bridge ties to unexplored clusters. Monte Carlo results indicate that in highly clustered networks our approach is considerably more accurate than RDS and snowball sampling, resulting in a mean absolute deviation that is 80% lower than RDS samples-and close to the accuracy of random sampling-as long as the within-cluster density of ties reaches a minimum threshold.

This paper examines variation in the labor market success of female and male immigrants in the US across different countries of origin. Labor market success is measured by the wages of immigrants, and the regression model includes the Gender Development Index (GDI) and Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM), published by the United Nations, to reflect different cultural and institutional conditions that shape gender inequalities in the immigrants home countries. The GEM reflects womens access to leadership positions and economic wealth, while the GDI indicates the basic living standard of women.According to the regression results, the GEM and the GDI have different effects on women and men. The GEM has a positive effect on the wages of both female and male immigrants, but it has a greater effect on women than men. The GDI has a positive effect on male immigrants but it has a small negative effect on female immigrants. In this sense, this study provides evidence of different effects of various cultural backgrounds on an individuals earning capability and different institutional effects between women and men.

En este trabajo se presentan antecedentes sobre la participacin e insercin laboral de los migrantes en las Amricas, provistos por los censos y encuestas de hogares y especficas. En primer lugar, se describe el contexto global de los flujos de trabajadores migrantes, identificando los principales destinos dentro de la regin. En un segundo apartado, se analiza el tipo de insercin laboral y los principales sectores de ocupacin que los migrantes latinoamericanos y caribeos adoptan dentro de las subregiones de Amrica Latina y el Caribe, Estados Unidos y Canad. La tercera seccin aborda el tema de la migracin de trabajadores calificados dentro de las Amricas y, en ltimo lugar, se profundiza en la participacin laboral de las mujeres migrantes en el campo del servicio domstico.

I examine the contested finding that men and women engage in gender performance throughhousework. Prior scholarship has found a curvilinear association between income share andhousework that has been interpreted as evidence of gender performance. I re-examine thesefindings by conducting the first such analysis to use high quality time diary data for a U.S. sample inthe contemporary period. Drawing on data on 11,856 married women and 10,756 married men inthe American Time Use Survey (2003-2007), I find no evidence that married men do genderthrough housework. However, I find strong evidence of gender performance among women asevidenced by a curvilinear association between income share and womens housework time.

In this paper we quantify the extent and magnitude of agglomeration spillovers from a formal institution whose sole mission is the creation and dissemination of knowledge-the research university. We use the fact that universities follow a fixed endowment spending policy based on the market value of their endowments to identify the causal effect of the density of university activity on labor income in the non-education sector in large urban counties. Our instrument for university expenditures is based on the interaction between each university's initial endowment level at the start of the study period and the variation in stock market shocks over the course of the study period. We find modest but statistically significant spillover effects of university activity. The estimates indicate that a 10% increase in higher education spending increases local non-education sector labor income by about 0.5%. As the implied elasticity is no larger than what previous work finds for agglomeration spillovers arising from local economic activity in general, university activity does not appear to make a place any more productive than other forms of economic activity. We do find, however, that the magnitude of the spillover is significantly larger for firms that are technologically closer to universities in terms of citing patents generated by universities in their own patents and sharing a labor market with higher education.

This paper documents the allocation of skills across cities and estimates the impact of agglomeration on the hedonic prices of worker skills. We find that large cities are more skilled than are small cities, but only to a modest degree. We also show that the increase in productivity associated with agglomeration, as measured by the urban wage premium, is larger for workers with stronger cognitive and people skills. In contrast, motor skills and physical strength are not rewarded to a greater degree in large cities. Urbanization thus enhances thinking and social interaction, rather than physical abilities. These results are robust to a variety of estimation strategies, including using NLSY variables that control for worker quality and a worker-MSA fixed effect specification.Keywords: Wages; Skill distribution; Agglomeration

Age data frequently display excess frequencies at attractive numbers, such as multiples of five. We use this "age heaping" to measure cognitive ability in quantitative reasoning, or "numeracy." We construct a database of age heaping estimates with exceptional geographic and temporal coverage, and demonstrate a robust correlation of literacy and numeracy, where both can be observed. Extending the temporal and geographic range of our knowledge of human capital, we show that Western Europe had already diverged from the east and reached high numeracy levels by 1600, long before the rise of mass schooling or the onset of industrialization.

This article takes a new approach to gender and housework by identifying a new measure of gender deviance--work in gender-atypical occupations--and by arguing that men who do "women's work" and women who do "men's work" in the labor market may seek to neutralize their gender deviance by doing male- and female-typed work at home. Analysis of data from the National Survey of Families and Households and the 2003-7 waves of the American Time Use Survey shows that men who do "women's work" in the market spend more time on male-typed housework relative to men in gender-balanced occupations and their wives spend more time on female-typed housework. Women in gender-atypical occupations also do more female-typed housework than women in gender-balanced occupations. The article provides clearer evidence about the important ways in which cultural conceptions of gender shape and are shaped by economic processes.

Exploiting a rich data set of passenger vehicle registrations in twenty U.S. metropolitan statistical areas from 1997 to 2005, we examine the effects ofgasoline prices on the automotive fleets composition. We find that high gasoline prices affect fleet fuel economy through two channels: (1) shifting new auto purchases towards more fuel-efficient vehicles, and (2) speeding the scrappage of older, less fuel-efficient used vehicles. Policy simulations based on our econometric estimates suggest that a 10 percent increase in gasoline prices from 2005 levels will generate a 0.22 percent increase in fleet fuel economy in the short run and a 2.04 percent increase in the long run.

We use here a new measure of household economic well-being called LIMEW. LIMEW is different in scope from the official U.S. Census Bureau measure of gross money income (MI) in that it includes taxes, noncash transfers, public consumption, income from wealth, and household production. We analyze trends in LIMEW from 1959 to 2004, and find that median LIMEW grew by 0.7 percent per year while median MI increased by 0.6 percent per year. LIMEW grew much slower than MI from 1959 to 1982, and much faster than MI from 1982 to 2004. In 2004, measured inequality was lower in LIMEW than MI (a difference of 5.5 Gini points); similarly, the increase in inequality between 1959 and 2004 was higher in MI than LIMEW (6.2 versus 5.1 Gini points). Much of the difference in these measures can be traced to the role of net government expenditures. According to both measures, the racial gap narrowed from 1959 to 1989; it then widened somewhat from 1989 to 2004 according to LIMEW but continued to narrow according to MI. The difference in time trends can be traced mainly to the rising income from wealth of white households relative to nonwhite households. The gap in well-being between single females and married couples widened from 1959 to 1989 and then narrowed slightly between 1989 and 2004 according to LIMEW but increased rather steadily from 1959 to 2004 according to MI. The fortunes of the elderly relative to the nonelderly showed considerable improvement from 1959 to 2004 according to LIMEW, almost reaching parity in 2004. In contrast, according to MI, the relative position of the elderly was about the same in 2004 as in 1959. In this instance, the difference in time . . .

This paper studies the impact of US Social Security and Medicare on health carespending in a modi ed version of the Grossman (1972) model in which both longevityand health care spending are endogenous. In the model, Social Security a ects healthcare spending primarily through two channels. First, Social Security annuities providepeople with an incentive to increase longevity through higher health care spending sincethey then bene t from more Social Security payments. Second, by lowering the capitalstock and thus increasing the market interest rate, Social Security causes people to al-locate more resources to the later stages of life. This reallocation increases health carespending as it increases people's expected future utility and thus the return from investingin health. Medicare subsidies lower the cost of health care for the elderly thus inducingthem to consume more health care. More interestingly, Social Security and Medicareinteract in the model. The incentive e ects of Social Security on health care spendingare ampli ed by Medicare subsidies because these subsidies reduce the cost of increas-ing longevity. In a calibrated version of the model, I show that these mechanisms arequantitatively important. I nd that in the model the expansion of Social Security andMedicare from 1950 to 2000 can generate a substantial rise in health care spending whichaccounts for about half of the rise in US health care spending as a share of GDP over thesame period. Over half of the rise comes from the expansion of Social Security and itsinteraction with Medicare. The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, it is the rststudy to assess the quantitative importance of the impact of Social Security on healthcare spending. Second, it provides a new explanation for the rise in health care spendingover the last half century: the expansion of Social Security and Medicare.

The Indian Gaming Regulation Act was passed in 1988, and in subsequent years, tribal gaming revenues increased dramatically. However, it has been unclear how tribal casinos impact different types of American Indian households well-being. I apply a difference-in-difference methodology to 1990 and 2000 data from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series to address this question. When casino effects are split by householders sex and education, they are primarily on female-headed households. Casinos significantly increase household per capita income of female-headed households without a high school degree by $891 to $1859. However, casinos reduce per capita assistance income of all female-headed households. Casinos also reduce deep poverty rates of female-headed households with at least a high school degree by seven to eight percentage points and near poverty rates of female-headed households with less than a high school degree by 11 to 14 percentage points.

This article takes a new approach to gender and housework by identifying a new measure of gender deviance--work in gender-atypical occupations--and by arguing that men who do "women's work" and women who do "men's work" in the labor market may seek to neutralize their gender deviance by doing male- and female-typed work at home. Analysis of data from the National Survey of Families and Households and the 2003-7 waves of the American Time Use Survey shows that men who do "women's work" in the market spend more time on male-typed housework relative to men in gender-balanced occupations and their wives spend more time on female-typed housework. Women in gender-atypical occupations also do more female-typed housework than women in gender-balanced occupations. The article provides clearer evidence about the important ways in which cultural conceptions of gender shape and are shaped by economic processes.

We examine the evolution of racial economic inequality using the Levy Institute Measure of Economic Well-Being (LIMEW), a comprehensive household income measure that incorporates amount of wealth, taxes and transfers, spending on public goods, and the value of household production. Analyzing shifts in racial inequality for the between benchmark LIMEW years 1959, 1972, 1982, 1989, 2000, 2004 and 2007, we show that reductions in overall racial inequality in the 1960s were sustained through the 1980s, but that in the 1990s there was a marked increase driven by an increase in the concentration of wealth among white households. While spending on education and progressive tax policies helped alleviate racial disparities, transfers have had little impact on racial inequality. We also show that much of the racial inequality is driven by within raceinequality as opposed to between race inequality.

For generations of scholars and observers, the "transportation revolution," especially the railroad, has loomed large as a dominant factor in the settlement and development of the United States in the nineteenth century. There has, however, been considerable debate as to whether transportation improvements led economic development or simply followed. Using a newly developed GIS transportation database we examine this issue in the context of the American Midwest, focusing on two indicators of broader economic change, population density and the fraction of population living in urban areas. Our difference in differences estimates (supported by IV robustness checks) strongly suggest that the coming of the railroad had little or no impact upon population densities just as Albert Fishlow concluded some 40 years ago. BUT, our results also imply that the railroad was the "cause" of midwestern urbanization, accounting for more than half of the increase in the fraction of population living in urban areas during the 1850s.

OBJECTIVES: To show the importance of patients' time as a cost of health and medical care and to explain how to include it in costing studies without greatly increasing the work required for such studies. BACKGROUND: Despite the decade-old recommendation of the Panel on Cost-Effectiveness in Health and Medicine, patients' time is rarely included in costing or cost-effectiveness analyses (CEAs). Studies of cancer care, smoking cessation, and diabetes self-management show that it can be a large part of an intervention's costs, sometimes larger than direct medical costs, and can potentially affect patients' willingness to undertake the intervention. MEASURING AND VALUING TIME: Good costing practice follows 2 principles: measure all important uses of a resource; and value it appropriately and in a way that is consistent with the valuation of other resources. Counts of formal medical services, already measured in most studies, can serve as the starting point for valuing patients' time, and would be a major step toward recognizing time costs, even when analysts cannot measure other uses of time. The concept of opportunity cost, often approximated by a market price, is the basis for valuing all resources. The reasons why the wage is a reasonable proxy for the value patients place on their own time are explained. Wage data are well measured and readily available. CONCLUSIONS: Ignoring patients' time underestimates disease burden and biases cost-effectiveness results toward interventions that use more time. The tools and data to include patients' time are available and will improve if they are routinely used.