We offer a unified explanation and empirical analysis of the polarization of U.S. employment and wages between 1980 and 2005, and the concurrent growth of low skill service occupations. We attribute polarization to the interaction between consumer preferences, which favor variety over specialization, and the falling cost of automating routine, codifiable job tasks. Applying a spatial equilibrium model, we derive, test, and confirm four implications of this hypothesis. Local labor markets that were specialized in routine activities differentially adopted information technology, reallocated low skill labor into service occupations (employment polarization), experienced earnings growth at the tails of the distribution (wage polarization), and received inflows of skilled labor.

There has been much discussion, but little research about why African American males do not attend and or complete a college education. We examine the alternatives that might reduce or compete with the decision to complete a college education. We analyze the number of men incarcerated, trends in labor force participation, and occupation and wages by educational attainment. We find that even when the number of 18–24-year-old African American males incarcerated increased, the number of 18–24-year-old African American males enrolled in college had a larger increase suggesting that incarceration is not a plausible explanation for the growth rate in degree attainment for African American males. We find that the decrease in the overall percentage and in the percentage of 18–24-year-old African American males reporting employed as their labor force status and the increase in the percentage for these groups reporting not in the labor force and unemployed may have an impact on the college degree completion. Additionally, an increasing percentage of African American males have an associate's or bachelor's degree, but there was a larger percentage change in the percent of African American males with some college. African American males with some college earn significantly less than those with an associate's or bachelor's degree, but earn significantly more than African American women with some college or an associate's degree. This supports Dunn's (1988) finding that African American males do not invest in college because they desire “quick money.” The earnings differential between African American males and females may also explain the degree attainment gap, as it is the African American females with a bachelor's degree that earn significantly more than African American males with some college.

This study investigates how much the racial composition of communities influences the private schoolenrollment rates of members of different racial groups. Some scholars argue that private schoolenrollment contributes to racial segregation in public schools because White families attempt toenhance the social status of their children by leaving public schools serving communities with higherpercentages of childrenwho areBlack.Asecond group of scholars argue that private school enrollmentis primarily based on nonracial factors. A third, related perspective argues that race is of diminishingimportance in driving behaviors such as school choice. This study explores these perspectives using1990 and 2000 Public UseMicro Data Samples to estimate private school enrollment rates by studentrace and community racial composition. Findings indicate that private school enrollment rates amongAsian, Black, and Hispanic students do not fluctuate much with community racial composition. Bycontrast, private school enrollment rates among White families are strongly and positively correlatedwith the percentage of children in their communities who are Blackeven after holding constanta series of individual and community-level factors that may account for this trend. Moreover, theassociation between race and choice has changed little between 1990 and 2000.

A limited amount of research has been done on the body mass index values of 19th century Americans. This paper uses Texas prison records to demonstrate that, in contrast to today's distributions, most BMI values were in the normal range. Only 21.5% and 1.2% of the population was overweight or obese, while today comparable figures are 36% and 23%. There was also little change in BMI values between 1876 and 1919. Farmers were consistently heavier than non-farmers, while Southwestern men had lower BMI values than their counterparts from other regions of the US. BMI values indicate that 19th century African-Americans, and whites populations were well fed in spite of large expenditures on energy.

Objectives. Prior research has repeatedly shown that parenthood affects employment outcomes; mothers have, on average, lower wages and are less likely to be hired than childless women. Some research indicates that this effect of parenthood on employment outcomes is dependent on sexual orientation. In particular, lesbian mothers might be treated more like childless women by those making employment decisions. This article examines the degree to which the lesbian wage advantage can be explained by lesbians avoiding the motherhood wage penalty experienced by heterosexual women.Methods. Drawing on 2000 U.S. Census data, this issue is first explored via ordinary least squares regression equations that estimate the effect of having a child present in the household on income. The Blinder-Oaxaca method is then employed to decompose the earnings differential between heterosexual and gay individuals.Results. Results indicate that lesbians appear to experience a motherhood advantage that increases their wages by approximately 20 percent. Further, results support the notion that lesbians receive different returns to the presence of children in the household than do heterosexual women. Approximately 35 percent of the wage differential between lesbians and heterosexual women is attributable to differences in returns to child rearing.Conclusion. These findings have relevance for state and federal anti-discrimination laws and work/family policies, as they provide further insight into the role that gender, and gender-based assumptions, play in determining employment outcomes.Over the past decade, there has been a growing body of literature examining the effect of sexual orientation on wages. Certainly, this issue has been at the forefront of policy agendas, given that federal law currently does not protect employees against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Prior studies that have quantified earnings differences have yielded varying, and often conflicting, results. Most, however, have shown that gay men earn significantly less than heterosexual males, and that lesbians' earnings are more than, or approximately equal to, those of heterosexual females (Baumle, Compton, and Poston, 2009; Carpenter, 2004; Black et al., 2003b; Berg and Lien, 2002; Allegretto and Arthur, 2001; Klawitter and Flatt, 1998; Badgett, 1995).A number of explanations have been offered in response to the seemingly opposite manner in which sexual orientation affects income for men and women (Badgett, 1995, 2001; Berg and Lien, 2002). Although a wage penalty for gay men is, perhaps, attributable to discrimination, a wage advantage for lesbians is more difficult to explain. Some have suggested that lesbians experience a wage advantage over heterosexual women due to a relatively lower propensity to leave the workforce to raise children (Peplau and Fingerhut, 2004; Berg and Lien, 2002). On the other hand, the wage advantage could result if employers rely on group stereotypes suggesting that lesbians' work trajectories are

Conventional wisdom suggests that increased life expectancy had a key role in causing a rise in investment in human capital. I incorporate the retirement decision into a version of Ben-Porath's (1967) model and find that a necessary condition for this causal relationship to hold is that increased life expectancy will also increase lifetime labor supply. I then show that this condition does not hold for American men born between 1840 and 1970 and for the American population born between 1890 and 1970. The data suggest similar patterns in Western Europe. I end by discussing the implications of my findings for the debate on the fundamental causes of long-run growth.

The significance of race for socioeconomic attainment in the United States is a classic issue in stratification research that continues to be debated. The ascension of Barack Obama to the highest office in the United States, however, has intensified that debate, as Americans mull over the question of whether or not U.S. society has finally reached racial parity. On the heels of the election of Barack Obama as the first African American president of the United States, this paper examines the socioeconomic standing of Black America today. Analyses of the paper reveal significant variations by race and ethnicity, with Asians, Multiracials and Whites indicating substantially higher measures of socioeconomic status than Blacks and Native Americans and Hispanics indicating lower measures. Multivariate analysis of variations in hourly earnings show similar results, with one exception: Net of other controls, the difference in hourly earnings between Native Americans and Blacks is not statistically significant. These findings are discussed in the context of the enduring debate on the significance of race for socioeconomic attainment in contemporary America.

Multidimensional databases play a relevant role in statisti- cal and scientific applications, as well as in business intelligence systems. Their users express complex OLAP queries, often returning huge volumes of facts, sometimes providing little or no information. Thus, expressing preferences could be highly valuable in this domain. The OLAP domain is representative of an unexplored class of preference queries, characterized by three peculiarities: preferences can be expressed on both numerical and categorical domains; they can also be expressed on the aggregation level of facts; the space on which preferences are expressed includes both elemental and aggregated facts. In this paper we propose a preference algebra for OLAP, that takes into account the three peculiarities above.

A good deal of research in recent years has revisited the relationship between immigration and violent crime. Various scholars have suggested that, contrary to the claims of the classic Chicago School, large immigrant populations might be associated with lower rather than higher rates of criminal violence. A limitation of the research in this area is that it has been based largely on cross-sectional analyses for a restricted range of geographic areas. Using time-series techniques and annual data for metropolitan areas over the 1994-2004 period, we assess the impact of changes in immigration on changes in violent crime rates. The findings of multivariate analyses indicate that violent crime rates tended to decrease as metropolitan areas experienced gains in their concentration of immigrants. This inverse relationship is especially robust for the offense of robbery. Overall, our results support the hypothesis that the broad reductions in violent crime during recent years are partially attributable to increases in immigration.

This article uses United States census data from the 1990 and 2000 5 per cent Integrated Public Use Microdata Samples (IPUMS) to examine the earnings attainment for Black immigrant women (African and English-, French- and Spanish-speaking Caribbean) and native-born Black women (African Americans). Data for both samples reveal sizeable earnings differences between the five groups. African, English and French Caribbean immigrant women exhibit noticeably higher average earnings than African Americans. However, with controls for earnings-related measures, the African immigrant advantage is eliminated in the 1990 sample, but not the English and French Caribbean immigrant advantage, nor the Spanish Caribbean immigrant disadvantage. No significant earnings difference was found between African Americans, English and Spanish Caribbean immigrants in the 2000 sample. Conversely, African and French Caribbean immigrant women, with a college degree or not, had a sizeable earnings advantage overall. The earnings for African and French Caribbean college-degree holders were significantly lower than those for English Caribbean college-degree holders. The theoretical implications of our findings are also discussed.

This article examines the impact of state corporate taxes on wages. The 1st section of the article discusses the evolution of the state corporate tax. The 2nd section explores who bears the burden of the tax. The 3rd section uses empirical analysis to show that corporate taxes reduce wages and that the magnitude of the negative relationship between the taxes and wages has increased over the past 30 years. The analysis also finds that state corporate taxes have a larger negative effect on more highly educated workers.

Az alábbi, inkább riportszerû írás egy általam szerkesztett kötet kálváriájáról számol be. Egyszerû és nehéz is egy ilyen intel-lektuális kihívás teljesítése: egyszerû, hiszen a történet egyik szereplõ-jeként meglehetõsen részletesen ismerem az eseményeket. Ugyanakkor nehéz is, mert éppen érintettként – érthetõ okokból – talán nem is tudok teljes mértékben objektív maradni. És azért is nehéz, mert noha úgy érzem, a történetet jól ismerem, valami azt sugallja, vannak olyan részle-tek, amelyeket nem ismerek, nem ismerhetek,2 illetve a rendelkezésemre . . .