This thesis explores the link between human capital accumulation and the functioning of marriage markets. The first chapter studies the effect of marriage market conditions on pre-marital investment. After showing how a change in the sex ratio can alter incentives for investments, I test this prediction using exogenous variation in the marriage market sex ratio, brought about by immigration, exploiting the preference of second generation Americans for endogamous matches. I find that a worsening of marriage market conditions spurs higher pre-marital investments, measured by years of education, literacy and occupational choice. Overall, the results suggest that there are substantial returns to education in the marriage market, and that both men and women take these returns into account when making education decisions. The second chapter studies the role played by caste and other attributes in arranged marriages among middle class Indians. Using interview data from a sample of parents who placed matrimonial ads in a popular Bengali newspaper, we estimate preferences for each attribute. We then compute a set of stable matches and find it quite similar to the actual matches observed in the data, suggesting a relatively frictionless marriage market. There is a very strong preference for in-caste marriage but, because this preference is horizontal rather than vertical and because the groups are fairly balanced, in equilibrium, the cost of insisting on marrying within one's caste is small which allows castes to remain a persistent feature of this marriage market. Finally, the third chapter estimates the effect of marriage delay on fertility by exploiting state laws that restricted age of marriage in the first half of the 20th century.

The State Childrens Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) was established to providehealth insurance coverage to children whose families cannot afford private coverage andwhose incomes are too high to qualify for Medicaid. Currently, a majority of states limitSCHIP eligibility to children with family incomes at or below 200% of the federalpoverty level (FPL), while four states have set the eligibility threshold at 250% of FPL.Our paper employs a difference-in-difference model that exploits these differences ineligibility thresholds to determine if higher eligibility thresholds have a positive impacton insurance coverage. We find no evidence that extending eligibility for SCHIP tofamilies above 200% of FPL has contributed to increased insurance coverage for childrenin this higher eligibility range. These results suggest that future efforts to increaseinsurance coverage for low-income children should focus on increasing enrollmentamong children already eligible for Medicaid and SCHIP and not on extending eligibilityfor public insurance to higher-income groups.

By combining difference estimators that capture racial and regional variation with intergenerational linkages in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we calculate the effects of Brown v. Board of Education on earnings across two generations of men. The longer a black man was exposed to post-Brown primary and secondary schools, the higher his earnings. Brown especially affected black men living in states that showed greater openness to later desegregation efforts. We speculate that these positive earnings effects reflect a hope for future change, both in schools and the workplace, which provided greater incentive to acquire human capital. We find weak evidence that Brown also increased earnings for a second generation of black men. This may indicate relaxed credit constraints due to larger earnings for the first generation. Although workplace-reform legislation such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 certainly affected black earnings, particularly in the South, the evidence presented here suggests that Brown itself mattered as well.

This paper explains a stylized fact about the correlation between rising wage inequalityand declining marriage rates. A two-sided matching model is developed toexplore how this interaction occurs. The model features a steady state equilibrium inwhich the whole marriage market is divided into distinct groups and only people inthe same group will marry each other. Using IPUMS data 1 from 1970 to 2000, ourestimates show that in past decades the U.S. marriage market experienced a structuralchange. The higher matching efficiency and declining elasticity of matching suggestthat the marriage market today provides more chance to meet and better gender equity,though higher arrival rates also raise the outside option of getting married. Additionally,the results obtained reveal that wage inequality accounts for over 38% of thedecline in marriage rate, which is underestimated in [Gould and Paserman(2003)].

This paper contributes to the emerging body of literature examining the interregionalincome migration in the United States and offers explanations for why certain areas emerge asmagnets for nonearnings income flows while other areas are losing this increasingly important sourceof personal income. By synthesizing ideas from contemporary understandings of life-course influenceson migration and earlier work on income migration, the paper builds a theoretical model of factorsshaping income migration across space and tests the model with evidence from Census 2000 by usingboth ordinary least squares and geographically weighted regression techniques. The analysis high-lights the importance of life-course understandings of migration in shaping nonearnings income flowsacross space. Demographic factors such as concentrations of married couples with no childrencombine with quality-of-life and economic variables to explain nonearnings income migration. Otherfactors such as housing-market costs and immigration rates shape nonearnings income flows morepowerfully in certain regions than in others. The results have important policy implications. With thebaby boomers on the cusp of retirement, an understanding of the geographies of nonearnings incomewill be important for future regional economic planning and forecasting, as these income sources willbecome increasingly large components of total personal income.

In this thesis we study the interdependency of individual decisions on work and family, particularly the dynamic interaction of the marriage market and the labor market. My basic idea is that marital status affects individual labor supply decisions, and in turn, labor market condition influences marriage formation and dissolution. While these interactions are evident, the overwhelming majority of research on labor or family economics usually simplifies the individual decision-making by assuming that one of two markets outcomes is given while studying the other one. In the empirical study, endogeneity issues are troublesome, especially under the dynamic setting. My work takes a different approach...

There are 30.1 million Hispanic adults in the United States and 14.4 million of themor 48%are women, according to recent U.S. Census Bureau estimates.1 This fact sheet describes the demographic, employment and income characteristics of Hispanic women in the U.S. using data from the 2007 Current Population Survey. It focuses on differences between Hispanic and non-Hispanic women, between native-born and foreign-born Hispanic women, and among immigrant Hispanic women from different countries of origin.

The number of Hispanic students in the nations public schools nearly doubled from 1990 to 2006, accounting for 60% of the total growth in public school enrollments over that period. There are now approximately 10 million Hispanic students in the nations public kindergartens and its elementary and high schools; they make up about one-in-five public school students in the United States. In 1990, just one-in-eight public school students were Hispanic.Strong growth in Hispanic enrollment is expected to continue for decades, according to a recently released U.S. Census Bureau population projection. The bureau projects that the Hispanic school-age population will increase by 166% by 2050 (to 28 million from 11 million in 2006), while the non-Hispanic school-age population will grow by just 4% (to 45 million from 43 million) over this same period.1 In 2050, there will be more school-age Hispanic children than school-age non-Hispanic white children.While Hispanics account for 20% of public school students nationally, their share of enrollment is greater in several states. In 2006 Hispanics were about half of all public school students in California, up from 36% in 1990. They were more than 40% of enrollments in three additional states (Arizona, New Mexico and Texas) and between 20% and 40% of all public school students in five states (Nevada, Colorado, Illinois, Florida and New York). Overall, Hispanics are the largest minority group in the public schools in 22 states. Pew Hispanic Center August 26, 2008Using data from the 2006 American Community Survey (ACS), this report presents information on the demographic characteristics of Hispanic students in public schools. It compares Hispanic public school students with their non-Hispanic counterparts. The large sample sizes available in the ACS also enable detailed comparison of Hispanic students across generational groups.

This paper examines the effects of education on intermarriage, and specifically whether the mechanisms through which education affects intermarriage differ by immigrant generation, age at arrival, and race. We consider three main paths through which education affects marriage choice. First, educated people may be better able to adapt to different cultures making them more likely to marry outside of their ethnicity (cultural adaptability effect). Second, because the educated are less likely to reside in ethnic enclaves, meeting potential spouses of the same ethnicity may be difficult (enclave effect). Lastly, if spouse-searchers value similarities in education as well as similarities in ethnicity, then the effect of education will depend on the availability of same-ethnicity potential spouses with a similar level of education (assortative matching effect). Using data from the 2000 U.S. Census, we find that controlling for the enclave effect, there is empirical evidence for both the cultural adaptability and assortative matching effects. Our estimates also suggest that assortative matching is relatively more important for the native born rather than the foreign born, for the foreign born that arrived young rather than old, and for Asians rather than Hispanics. We provide additional evidence suggestive of our hypotheses and discuss policy implications.

This study analyzes the occupations of black Americans who have been nationally recognized for their business achievements. Data from renowned encyclopedic sources of biographical information show that occupational niches that arose because of racial segregation and limited opportunities for blacks to participate in the economic mainstream, such as personal services and undertaking, are no longer important routes into the black business elite. Yet, these data also suggest that, during the 20th century, entertainment, beauty products, and advertising became major pathways into this elite because of an opportunity structure that promoted blacks participation in these occupational niches yet restricted it in others, notably, in construction and manufacturing.

The subject of this thesis study is a specific class of rental housing, commonly referred to as "expiring use" housing. Unlike traditional public housing, expiring use properties are owned by private for-profit and nonprofit firms while being publicly funded to make them affordable to tenants. Agreements that have tied operating subsidies to affordable rent restrictions have been expiring and at risk of non-renewal since the mid 1980s, with the largest mass of expirations set to occur within the next decade. Modeling on recent national studies, this thesis questions whether there are ways to early-identify properties in Massachusetts whose owners are likely to renew the subsidy agreements that have guaranteed below market rate rents in contrast to those who are likely to exit and convert to marker rate operations. Its main question is whether current data supports the common belief that owners' decisions to exit or renew subsidy agreements are affected by certain property characteristics and changes in local market conditions. The goal in answering this question is to find ways to differentiate properties whose owners are likely to renew from those who are likely to exit. That in turn is meant to inform efforts to target preservation resources efficiently...

n this paper we document a strong positive correlation of immigration flows with changes in average wages and average house rents for native residents across U.S. states. Instrumental variables estimates reveal that the correlations are compatible with a causal interpretation from immigration to wages and rents of natives. Separating the effects of immigrants on natives of different schooling levels we find positive effects on the wages and rents of highly educated and small effects on the wages (negative) and rents (positive) of less educated. We propose a model where natives and immigrants of three different education levels interact in production in a central district and live in the surrounding region. In equilibrium the inflow of immigrants has a positive productive effect on natives due to complementarieties in production as well as a positive competition effect on rents. The model calibrated and simulated with U.S.-states data matches most of the estimated effects of immigrants on wages and rents of natives in the period 1990-2005. This validation suggests the proposed model as a useful tool to evaluate the impacts of alternative immigration scenarios on U.S. wages and rents.

This analysis examines how differences in state income tax rates, as well as other state and local taxes and public service expenditures, influence the choice of state of residence for households (federal tax filers) moving into multistate metropolitan statistical areas (MSA) using data from the one in twenty sample of the 2000 Census of Population and Housing microdata. MSAs that are on state borders provide a spatial discontinuity discrete differences in tax rates within a single labor market. These MSAs allow residents to live in one state and work in another state. After controlling for other factors believed to affect household location, differences in state income tax rates have a statistically significant impact on the probability a household locates in the low tax state within an MSA. Complicating the analysis of location choice is the presence of state reciprocity agreements. These bilateral agreements between state governments allow taxpayers to pay income tax based on place of residence rather than their place of work. The theoretical roles of these agreements are discussed and the impacts of these laws are tested. The results suggest that reciprocity agreements alter the role that taxes play in location.

This paper tests whether marriage to a native affects the probability that an immigrant is employed. We provide a theoretical background which explains how marriage to a native may positively or negatively affect an immigrants employment probability. Utilizing the 2000 U.S. Census, we first look at the effect of cross-nativity marriages on employment using a linear probability model. Then, we estimate a two stage least squares model instrumenting for cross-nativity marriages using local marriage market conditions. Results from a linear probability model controlling for the usual measures of human capital and immigrant assimilation suggest that marriage to a native increases the employment probability of an immigrant byapproximately 5 percentage points. When controlling for the endogeneity of the intermarriage decision, marriage to a native increases the employment probability byabout 11 percentage points. We provide alternative explanations and suggest policy implications.

We illustrate that combining ecological data with subsample data in situations in which a linear model is appropriate provides two main benefits. First, by including the individual level subsample data, the biases that are associated with linear ecological inference can be eliminated. Second, available ecological data can be used to design optimal subsampling schemes that maximize information about parameters. We present an application of this methodology to the classic problem of estimating the effect of a college degree on wages, showing that small, optimally chosen subsamples can be combined with ecological data to generate precise estimates relative to a simple random subsample.

We examine how differences in state income tax rates, as well as other state and local taxes and public service expenditures, influence the choice of state of residence for households (federal tax filers) moving into multistate metropolitan areas (MSAs) using data from the IRS on the migration of taxpayers. MSAs that are on borders provide a spatial discontinuitydiscrete differences in state tax rates within a single labor market. These MSAs allow residents to live in one state and work in another state. We find that differences in state income tax rates have a significant impact on the relative rate of migration to the states within an MSA. However, contrary to what would be expected, this impact is only significant in MSAs in which the filing state is based on employment (states without reciprocity) and not for those states in which the filing state is the state of residence (states with reciprocity). In MSAs where states do not have reciprocity agreements, a difference of ten percent in tax rates leads to a 4.1 percent difference in the relative rate of incoming taxpayers. Analogously, we find that a ten percent difference in state tax rates in these MSAs results in a 3.3 percent difference in the rate of tax base inflow (AGI). Our results suggest that one reason that differences in state income taxes appear to have more impact in multistate MSAs without reciprocity is that only relatively large differences in state income tax rates have any impact on migration and these differences are much more pronounced in MSAs without reciprocity.