Since the late 1970s, an increasing number of states have required students to pass statewide high school exit examinations (HSEEs) in order to graduate. States have usually adopted HSEEs in response to the perception that a substantial number of graduates lack skills that are required for success in the modern economy. What do these educational reforms mean for students' postsecondary economic and labor market prospects? The central hypothesis of the study presented here was that state HSEE policies have the effect of widening gaps in labor force status and earnings between young people who have high school diplomas and those who do not. To test this hypothesis, the authors modeled the association between state HSEE policies and these labor market outcomes using data from the 1980-2000 U.S. censuses and the 1984-2002 Outgoing Rotation Groups of the Current Population Survey. The results revealed no evidence that state HSEEs positively affect labor force status or earnings or that the connections between state HSEE policies and these outcomes vary by students' race/ethnicity or the level of difficulty of state HSEEs.

The household relationship categories of roomers and boarders have appeared in all decennial census forms and published tabulations in various formats for over 100 years, but little has been written about this population. Currently comprising less than one percent of the total household population in 2000, people living as roomers or boarders made up about 2 percent (1 million people) of the household population in 1880, rising to 3 percent (3.8 million) in 1930 during the Great Depression. This paper uses data from the 1880, 1900-2000 Censuses and the 2005 American Community Survey, obtained from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series developed by the University of Minnesota Population Center, to highlight trends in this population between 1880 and 2005. We will present descriptive characteristics of both this population and the characteristics of householders who provide these living accommodations.

This paper considers the educational consequences of the increased ability of young women to delay childbearing as a result of the birth control pill. In order to identify the effects of the pill, I utilize quasi-experimental variation in U.S. state laws governing access to contraception among female adolescents during the 1960s and 1970s. Inference based on these laws indicates that unconstrained access to the pill increased female college enrollment rates by 2.5 percentage points and reduced the dropout rate by over 5 percentage points. Further, early pill access led to a rise in college completion of over 0.6 percentage points among women over the age of thirty. Finally, I analyze the outcomes of men in relation to the contraceptive laws, finding evidence that male educational opportunities may also have improved due to reductions in undesired early fertility among their female partners.

We develop a simple semiparametric framework for combining censored and uncensored samples so that the resulting estimators are consistent, asymptotically normal, and use all information optimally. No nonparametric smoothing is required to implement our estimators.To illustrate our results in an empirical setting, we show how to estimate the effect of changes in compulsory schooling laws on age at first marriage, a variable that is censored for younger individuals. We find positive effects of the laws on age at first marriage but the effects are much smaller than would be inferred if one ignored the censoring problem. Results from a small simulation experiment suggest that the estimator proposed in this paper can work very well in finite samples.Keywords: age at first marriage, censored data, compulsory schoolingJEL Classifications: C34, J12

The last few decades of the twentieth century witnessed fairly dramatic changes in the labor market outcomes and socioeconomic status of American workers at the bottom of the earnings distribution. Earnings of the least skilled adults either stagnated or fell. Moreover, labor force participation and employment have declined considerably, suggesting a reduction in demand for the labor of the least skilled and an accompanying withdrawal from the labor force on the part of many low-skilled workers unwilling to accept diminished wages. Certain economy-wide developments have affected the employment prospects of all low-skilled workers regardless of race or gender. For example, the well-documented changes in the earnings distribution beginning in the late 1970s have increased the relative returns to postsecondary schooling as well as the returns to experience (Katz and Autor 1999).1 Nonetheless, certain social and institutional developments are likely to have had disproportionate impacts on the labor market prospects of certain subgroups within the population of low-skilled adults. For example, the prison incarceration rate between the late 1970s and the present more than quadrupled. That has had a disproportionate impact on less-educated black men and has left in its wake . . .

The standard revealed-preference hedonic estimate of a citys quality of life is proportional to thatcitys cost-of-living relative to its wage-level. Adjusting the standard hedonic model to account forfederal taxes, non-housing costs, and non-labor income produces quality-of-life estimates differentfrom the existing literature. The adjusted model produces city rankings positively correlated with popular-literatureand stated-preference rankings, and predicts how housing costs rise with wage levels, controlling foramenities. Mild seasons, sunshine, and coastal location account for most quality-of-life differences;once these amenities are accounted for, quality of life does not depend on city size, contrary to previousfindings.

In recent decades, many states have implemented exit examinations and increased the number of specified courses needed to graduate from high school. Whereas previous studies focused on dropout rate as a proxy for analyxing the social effects of these standards, the author directly examined the correlation between these requirements and the crime rate among affected students. Using multiple regression models based on crime reports, incarceration rates, and self-reported crime, the author found that an increase in graduation requirements correlated with a decrease in youth crime. Specifically, 15 to 21 year olds had a significant decrease in the probability on incarceration, while those between 21 to 24 years old experiences an increase. Additionally, while both whites and blacks had a decline in arrest rates, blacks experiences a larger decrease than whites. Furthermore, the author noted that individuals who performed poorly on standardized measures benefited disproportionately from these stricter requirements. Based on her findings, the author supports continued implementation of exit examinations and increased course graduation requirements.

Affirmative action, or concern about diversity, looms large at most law schools. In considering how affirmative action is working and how it might be improved, it is surely important not just to have reasonably diverse student bodies, but to train minority lawyers who will be employable - and employed - for their professional careers. This short essay, in the style of a research note, explores the employment of African-American attorneys ages 31-65, as reported in U.S. Census data from 1960 through 2000.The conclusions from the data are mixed. In 1960, 2.0% of male lawyers and judges ages 36-45 were African Americans. After several decades of affirmative action, in 2000 the proportion in the same age group has grown only modestly to 2.8% of male lawyers. Since the 1980 Census (when most African-American lawyers ages 31-65 would have graduated from law school before the era of affirmative action in law school admissions), the changes for African-American men have been even less impressive in employment by private firms and companies: from 1.8% of males in 1980 to 2.1% in 2000.African-American women have fared better, but most of these gains have roughly tracked gains for other females. Besides judgeships - in which African-Americans are much better represented than in the past, but for which the numbers are necessarily small - and the general gains for women of all colors, the other big growth area for African-American lawyers has been in self-employment.The data are far from a ringing endorsement of affirmative action, especially for African-American men. What law schools have been doing since the 1970s has been only a moderate success in some areas, such as for African-American women. In other areas, such as for male African-Americans employed by private firms or companies, very little has been accomplished. The data do not themselves address the question of whether African-American students would benefit from having a larger "critical mass" of classmates of similar ethnicity or instead would benefit from a general national reduction in the scope of affirmative action for African-Americans and thus a corresponding reduction in the size of gap in entering qualifications compared with other classmates. Law schools should perhaps think more critically about their contributions to these seemingly intractable problems or their potential solutions.Keywords: Law Schools, Diversity, Affirmative Action, CareersJEL Classifications: K00, K10

This paper derives and estimates a unified and tractable model of comparative advantage due to differences in both factor abundance and relative productivity differences across industries. It derives conditions when ignoring one force for comparative advantage biases empirical tests of the other. I emphasize two empirical results. First, factor abundance-and relative productivity-based models each possess explanatory power. Second, productivity differences across industries are uncorrelated with the factor intensities of these industries. Therefore, the two models each offer valid partial descriptions of the data and ignoring one force for comparative advantage does not bias empirical tests of the other. JEL Codes: F10, F11, F12.

Various macroeconomic effects resulted from the changing economic and societal structure in the second half of the 20th century, which greatly impacted women's economic position in the United States. Using dynamic programming as the main modeling tool, and U.S. data for factual evidence, three papers are developed to test the validity of three related hypotheses focusing on female employment, education, marriage, and divorce trends.The first chapter estimates how much of the post-World War II evolution in employment and average wages by gender can be explained by a model where changing labor demand requirements are the driving force. I argue that a large fraction of the original female employment and wage gaps in mid-century, and the subsequent shrinking of both gaps, can be explained by labor reallocation from brawn-intensive to brain-intensive jobs favoring women's comparative advantage in brain over brawn. Thus, aggregate gender-specific employment and wage gap trends resulting from this labor reallocation are simulated in a general equilibrium model.The material in the second chapter is based on an ongoing joint project with Fatih Guvenen. We argue for a strong link between the rise in the proportion of educated women and the evolution of the divorce rate since mid-century. As women become increasingly educated their bargaining power within marriage rises and their economic situation in singlehood improves making marriage less attractive and divorce more attractive. Similarly, a change in the divorce regime (e.g., U.S. unilateral divorce laws in the 1970s), making marriages less stable, incentives women to seek education as insurance against the higher divorce risk. A framework that models the interdependence between education, marriage and divorce is developed, simulated, and contrasted against United States data evidence.The third chapter considers the implications of marital uncertainty on aggregate household savings behavior. To this end, an infinite horizon model with perpetual youth that features uncertainty over marriage quality is developed. Similarly to Cubeddu and Ros-Rull (1997), I test how much of the savings rate decline from the 1960s to the 1980s can be explained by the changing United States demographic composition, specifically the rise in divorce rates and the fall in marriage rates.

In the early 21st century, no other area in the United States appears to have been as profoundly transformed by recent immigration from Latin America than the Southwest. This region alongside the 2,000-mile stretch that separates the United States and Mexico, includes California, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Texas. According to the latest estimates from the U.S. Census, the Southwest is currently home to more than half of all Latinos (nearly 56%). Because of intensive and extensive Latino geographic clustering, some have even gone so far as to label the region "Mex-America" and/or "New Aztlan." This categorization, in turn, encourages the broadly accepted notion that this ethnic concentration is both recent . . .

The Knight Creative Communities Initiative (KCCI) was undertaken as part ofthe John S. and James L. Knight Foundations recent interest in the developmentof social entrepreneurs to promote community transformation basedon Richard Floridas creative class theory to stimulate economic development.The focus of KCCI was sponsorship of the Creative Community LeadershipSeminar in three regions in order to train Foundation sta andselected community leaders as creative community leaders.

There is a widespread popular conception that public housing and racial segregation are firmly linked, and there are few better places for exploring this idea than Chicago. From its start with the Housing Act of 1937, American housing policy has purportedly endeavored to improve living conditions for low income populations through the provision of federal funds to local housing authorities that were to provide "decent and safe housing" for those who could not afford it (USHA 1937). Yet in practice, the literature shows that due to prevailing ideologies of poverty and race as well as policy that was only partly focused on actually providing housing, subsidized housing has a history of ineffectiveness and has even "periodically renewed and strengthened" racial segregation patterns (Hirsch 1998:9). After a reasonably effective start in the 1930s, insufficient operational budgets, deficient maintenance, poor management, and an increasingly stigmatized tenancy brought on a steady decline to the public housing in Chicago through the rest of the 20th century (Bauman et al 2000; Bennet et al 2006; CHA 2000; Hackworth 2007; Hirsch 1998; Hunt 2009; Kotlowitz 1991; Venkatesh 2000). While race was never a focus or concern of public housing policy textually, "whether one liked it or not," race would be inextricably entwined with where public housing was built (Meyerson and Banfield 1955:34-35). However, the existing literature fails to look comprehensively at the intersections of the construction of family public housing by the Chicago Housing Authority—including preceding federal programs—and the racial makeup of Chicago. This paper will spatially demonstrate the correlation of patterns of race and public housing construction in Chicago from 1935 to 2009 through the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and statistical analysis.

Data show that, in Italy, young adults tend to postpone their transition to adulthood andlive with their parents until very late: for instance, by the age of 30, less than half of youngmales has moved out from the family of origin. Here, I study the home leaving choice inItaly with a dynamic discrete choice model in which agents simultaneously choose labor supply,residential arrangements and marital status conditional on the institutional framework and onother agents choices. The goal is to address the relative importance of several factors that areclaimed to play a role by the current literature on home leaving: economic conditions, parentalresources, and social norms. The model is structurally estimated with the Simulated Methodof Moments (SMM) using data from the Bank of Italy. Results suggest that Italians choose toremain with their parents due to low offered wage levels and limited labor demand for youngadults. Parental transfers also play a role because children rely on their parents in case ofunemployment. Finally, estimates indicate that individuals, especially women, tend to conformto each other. Nevertheless, economic factors seem to prevail in influencing the home exit choice.

Military service reduces civilian labor market experience but subsidizes higher education through the GI Bill. Both of these channels are likely to affect civilian earnings. New estimates of the effects of military service using Vietnam-era draft-lottery instruments show post-service earnings effects close to zero in 2000, in contrast with earlier results showing substantial earnings losses for white Vietnam veterans in the 1970s and 1980s. The recent estimates also point to a marked increase in post-secondary schooling that appears to be attributable to the Vietnam-era GI Bill. Seen through the lens of a Mincer wage equation, the wage effects observed in 2000 data can be explained by a flattening of the experience profile in middle age and a modest return to the additional schooling funded by the GI Bill. In particular, IV estimates of the returns to GI Bill-funded schooling are well below OLS estimates. Wage equations that allow for nonlinearities in the returns to schooling and a possible negative effect of military service on health, leave the main findings unchanged.

This article is devoted to an investigation of the forms of human capital that characterize cities at different levels of the US urban hierarchy. Basic data on human capital are drawn from the O*Net information system. A first analytical exercise shows that for the USA as a whole, occupations marked by broadly cognitive human capital assets gained in employment over the period from 2000 to 2006, whereas employment in occupations marked by broadly physical human capital assets declined. These same types of assets bear a distinctive relationship to the urban hierarchy, with the former being concentrated in large metropolitan areas, and the latter in small. Changes in these assets over the 20002006 period are then examined. Surprisingly, cognitive assets increased most strongly in small metropolitan areas and physical assets increased most strongly in large. Further analysis of these findings suggests that they are quite consistent with a wider view of the contemporary urban economy. In particular, in large metropolitan areas, expanding human capital assets focused on the physical abilities of workers has nothing to do with the old economy as such, but represents a major and hitherto much overlookedsegment of the labor force whose functions revolvearound the maintenance of the material and social fabric of life in those areas.

We propose and estimate a model in which changes in the demographic composition of the labor force may affect the returns to labor market experience. We consider workers as providing two distinct productive services - physical effort, or "labor," and services of the skill accumulated with labor market experience, or "experience." The key element in the model is the aggregate production function that allows for complementarity between the appropriately measured aggregate stocks of labor and experience. The parameters of the aggregate technology are identified by estimating individual earnings equations that consistently aggregate. Both time-series and cross-sectional data confirm strong experience-labor complementarity. We find that the observed demographic changes that drive the aggregate experience to labor ratio account nearly perfectly for the substantial changes in the experience premium over time.