This paper analyzes the effect of neighborhood composition on the probability of homeownership for individuals living in Texas. Since Texas has a relatively large Hispanic population compared to other U.S. states and the Hispanic population has been highly concentrated in many urban areas, residential advantages based on ethnic clustering could positively affect homeownership for Hispanic individuals in predominantly Hispanic areas. However, Hispanics simultaneously struggle with low socio-economic status and possibly face discrimination in the mortgage lending market.The study uses data from the Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) of the 2000 U.S. Census to examine the determinants of homeownership for a sample of Texas residents. The study found that (1) social and economic characteristics are important determinants of homeownership even after controlling other demographic, immigration, race, and location factors; (2) residential clustering of Hispanic population in Texas leads to an offsetting effect across all Hispanic immigrant groups; (3) however, the offsetting effect can vary by geographic area types and immigration status; and (4) immigration factors have a very strong independent influence on minority homeownership rate.Keywords: Demographics, Homeownership, Immigration, Neighborhood

Among the concerns about the assimilability of new immigrant groups from Asia and Latin American countries, one unchallenged, unstated assumption is that these groups bring the strong family values and family ties into American society. Whether new Asian immigrant groups assimilate into American divorce culture the longer they stay in the U.S. is not well studied, nor is it clear how marital dissolution patterns change across immigrant generations. My research goal is to examine the current trends and patterns of marital dissolution (divorce or separation) among Chinese and assess whether Chinese immigrants to the U.S. have more stable marriages than the Chinese in China. The specific analyses conducted are designed to test hypotheses based on the assimilation, selection and abruption effect frameworks (Singley and Landale 1998). Several data sets, including the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) and the China 1990 and 2000 Censuses, were used to examine the complexity of marriage and divorce in China. For the Chinese immigrants in the US, the 1990 and 2000 Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) and the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) were used. Unique to my study were that the hypotheses I tested differentiated the selection, abruption and assimilation effects by mode-of-entry of Chinese immigrants.Overall, despite much speculation about rising divorce rates in China, the rates remain relatively low. In general, my findings show that Chinese immigrants, especially the newly-arrived female immigrants from China, are more likely to divorce/separate. Unlike women in China, Chinese female immigrants overtake their male counterparts in terms of marital dissolution rates for almost every generational status. This suggests that U.S. society has given women more leverage and room to choose their spouse and to be less tolerant of bad marriages. There was also some evidence of an abruption effect among the less-educated Chinese male immigrants as they displayed even lower divorce rates compared to their male counterparts in the immigrant-sending regions in China. Also, there is some weak evidence for the assimilation hypothesis among the Chinese men over the generations, but the pattern does not hold for Chinese women. Moreover, there is no evidence for the segmented assimilation hypothesis, as the divorce rates among the highly educated Chinese are not similar to the upper middle class Americans, and the divorce rates among the less-educated Chinese do not resemble the divorce patterns of working class Americans either. Furthermore, mixed marriages involving Asians in general are less stable than Asian endogamous marriages. For Chinese, however, the most unstable marriage is between foreign-born and American-born Chinese or Chinese with American citizenship. This suggests that there are Chinese who are trying to take advantage of the American immigration system and use marriage as a tool to achieve their goal of immigrating to the U.S.

What are the fiscal consequences of high-skilled emigration for source countries? This paper develops methodologies for inferring these consequences and applies them to the recent sizable emigration of high-skilled workers from India to the U.S. This wave of emigration from India to the U.S. is shown to be unusually concentrated amongst the prime-age work force, the highly educated and high earners. In order to calculate the fiscal losses associated with these emigrants, estimates of their counterfactual earnings distributions are generated using two distinct methods and integrated with a model of the Indian fiscal system to calculate fiscal consequences. Conservative estimates indicate that the annual net fiscal impact to India of high-skilled emigration to the U.S.is one-half of one percent of gross national income (or 2.5 percent of total fiscal revenues). The sensitivity of these results to the method of predicting counterfactual incomes and the implications of these estimates for other developing countries is discussed in detail.

The authors work to develop capabilities for getting data into the data analysis software Fathom is described. Heuristics of detecting data on a web page allow drag and drop of a URL into a document. A collaboration with the Minnesota Population Center makes possible sampling from census microdata from 1850 through 2000. With direct support for Vernier sensors, students can build a model during the process of realtime data collection. Finally, a survey capability makes it easy for teachers and students to create simple data entry forms hosted on a web site such that the collated data is instantly downloadable for data analysis in Fathom. By taking some of the drudgery out of gathering data, these capabilities carry implications for teaching and curriculum development; namely that students should have experience throughout their learning with data that they individually have chosen to explore. It is argued that the skills they gain by engaging in exploratory data analysis with self-chosen and self-generated data are critically important in our data-driven society and not yet adequately supported in K14 learning.

In this article we present two sets of empirical analyses that consider the extent to which socioeconomic gradients in self-assessed health and child mortality changed since the beginning of the twentieth century in the United States. This empirical issue has important and wide-ranging research and policy implications. In particular our results speak to the value of considering the role of broader social, economic, and political inequalities in generating and maintaining socioeconomic disparities in morbidity and mortality. Despite dramatic declines in morbidity and mortality rates in the United States across the twentieth century, we find that socioeconomic-status gradients in morbidity and mortality declined only modestly (if at all) during that period.

Until recently, few credible estimates existed of the causal effects of sex ratio imbalances. Fluctuations in birth rates over time, in conjunction with the observation that women generally marry slightly older men, provide a plausibly exogenous source of variation. Using this, I investigate the effects of sex ratio fluctuations on basic marriage market outcomes in the U.S. over recent decades. Although I find little evidence that this variation affects the likelihood or timing of marriage, I find that it is related to the attributes of the spouse to whom one is currently married.

In this paper, we describe a method for estimating hedonic models of consumer demand using a methods described in Bajari and Benkard (2005) and Bajari and Kahn (2005). We apply our methods to understanding suburbanization and the associated urban sprawl using a unique data set form Los Angeles in 2000-2003. Urban sprawl has both costs and benefits. One cost of sprawl is that commute times are increased since homes and places of work are more dispersed. A benefit is that sprawl allows consumers to purchase larger homes and lots. This paper uses a new data set on housing transactions in Los Angeles County to compare some costs (increased commuting) and benefits (larger homes) of sprawl. We use new methods in demand estimation to recover how heterogeneous home buyers tradeoff commuting versus larger homes at the margin. Finally, we evaluate the partial equilibrium welfare effects of two anti-sprawl policies.

The article describes the field of quantitative history and treats the technical, logistical, theoretical and methodological issues involved with such work. Attention is given to the development of large scale data systems, particularly the IPUMS projects.

Cette thse dveloppe et utilise une nouvelle base de donnes en panel compilant les stocks et taux d'migration vers les 6 principaux pays receveurs de l'OCDE, par niveau d'ducation pour 172 pays d'origine, entre 1975 et 2000. A l'aide de cette nouvelle base de donnes, nous montrons que les migrations qualifies ont certes augment ces 30 dernires annes mais que ce phnomne s'inscrit dans un contexte de hausse globale de la mobilit et d'augmentation gnrale des niveaux de qualification. Cette base nous permet galement de constater que, contrairement ce que souligne la littrature traditionnelle, d'importantes ingalits dans les pays d'origine des migrants engendrent une hausse de l'migration qualifie relativement l'migration non qualifie. En outre, cette base nous permet de dmontrer qu'un gain l'migration est possible dans les pays d'origine les plus pauvres, sous rserve que les taux d'migration qualifie ne soient pas trop levs. De ce point de vue, les projections de taux de fuite des cerveaux l'horizon 2050 nous montrent qu'une accentuation des politiques d'immigration choisie dans les principaux pays receveurs europens pourrait s'avrer extrmement nfaste pour les pays de dpart des migrants.

We argue that one major cause of the U.S. postwar baby boom was the increased demand for female labor during World War II. We develop a quantitative dynamic general equilibrium model with endogenous fertility and female labor-force participation decisions. We use the model to assess the long-term implications of a one-time demand shock for female labor, such as the one experienced by American women during wartime mobilization. For the war generation, the shock leads to a persistent increase in female labor supply due to the accumulation of work experience. In contrast, younger women who turn adult after the war face increased labor-market competition, which impels them to exit the labor market and start having children earlier. In our calibrated model, this general-equilibrium effect generates a substantial baby boom followed by a baby bust, as well as patterns for age-specific laborforce participation and fertility rates that are consistent with U.S. data.

Much of the empirical analysis done by health economists seeks to estimate the impact of specific health policies and the greatest challenge for successful applied work is to find appropriate sources of variation to identify the treatment effects of interest. Estimation can be prone to selection bias, when the assignment to treatments is associated with the potential outcomes of the treatment. Overcoming this bias requires variation in the assignment of treatments that is independent of the outcomes. One source of independent variation comes from randomised controlled experiments. But, in practice, most economic studies have to draw on non-experimental data. Many studies seek to use variation across time and events that takes the form of a quasi-experimental design, or natural experiment, that mimics the features of a genuine experiment. This chapter reviews the data and methods that are used in applied health economics with a particular emphasis on the use of panel data. The focus is on nonlinear models and methods that can accommodate unobserved heterogeneity. These include conditional estimators, maximum simulated likelihood, Bayesian MCMC, finite mixtures and copulas.

This report is the product of a study performed by the National Center for Neighborhood and Brownfields Redevelopment at Rutgers University for the Woodbridge Township Redevelopment Agency during the summer of2007. The purpose of the study was to begin to explore the concept of developing an arts village in Woodbridge. The components of this phase of study consist of research that examines typical modes, key issues and success factors in arts village development and a summary and analysis ofdata collected directly from and about artists to better understand the arts community in Woodbridge in terms of who they are, what their needs are, and the artists opinions about the village concept and arts promotiongenerally. The arts village proposal is thus part of a larger initiative to promote greater awareness of and participation in arts and culture by residents of the township. Arts and culture are commonly accepted asintegral activities in community life and help to build local pride and economic strength. Woodbridge, located in Central-Eastern New Jersey, is a township of more than 100,000 residents (5th largest municipality in New Jersey).Woodbridge has a working class heritage, with many industrial facilities nearby and its accessibility to the New Jersey Turnpike, Garden State Parkway, Routes 1 and 9, and the public transit lines making it an ideallocation for commuters. According to the 2000 census, the population is 70 percent white, 14 percent Asian and 9 percent African American. About 9 percent report a Hispanic ethnicity. Poverty (3.2) and unemployment rates(3.1) are low and the median household income of over $60,000 is above the state median. Woodbridge is a well-situated, economically healthy and stable community.The rest of the report is divided into four sections. First, we present research on success factors and key issues in the development of arts villages based on the current state-of-the-art in urban/suburban America. After that, we summarize the characteristics and needs of the arts community in Woodbridge and the working inventory that was created. Thenext section is a summary of artists opinions on the arts village and arts promotion. The report concludes with summary findings and recommendations that will suggest a path toward successful arts village development and toward expanded opportunities for artistic expression andparticipation in the township.

Workers in the US lacking English-language fluency earn less on average than their English-proficient counterparts, although this limited-English-proficient (LEP) earnings "penalty" has not remained stable over time. Using Integrated Public Use Microdata Series data from the 1980, 1990, and 2000 decennial US censuses as well as the 2005 American Community Survey, we show that this average penalty seemingly fell between 1980 and 2005 for Hispanic men in the US. We interpret this decline as evidence that an increase in the relative demand for LEP Hispanics could have offset the increase in their relative labor supply, particularly during the 1980s. However, when comparing workers who completed high school with those who did not, this penalty increased among high school graduates during this time. This policy-relevant finding is consistent with the increasing returns to skill observed in the US during the past couple of decades.

The research question we address is whether state laws that require health insurance policies to provide coverage for specified benefits have affected the size of the population without any private sector health insurance coverage. The laws are often alleged to increase the cost of insurance premiums and thus reduce incentives for smaller employers to offer and for individuals to purchase health insurance. Using data from the United States Census Current Population Survey (CPS) from 1996 to 2002, we measure the effects of 2 sets of high cost benefit mandates on the probability for workers to have health insurance through their employer. We use both individual and state level analyses. Generally we find weak and statistically insignificant effects associated with benefit mandates, though we see evidence that this relationship grows stronger over time.

We analyze all but a few of the 47 charter schools operating in New York City in 2005-06. The schools tend locate in disadvantaged neighborhoods and serve students who are substantially poorer than the average public school student in New York City. The schools also attract black applicants to an unusual degree, not only relative to New York city but also relative to the traditional public schools from which they draw. The vast majority of the lotteries are balanced. By balanced, we mean that we cannot reject the hypothesis that there are no differences in the observable characteristics of lotteried-in and lotteried-out students. Using the lotteries to form an intention-to-treat variable, we instrument for actual enrollment and compute the charter schools' average treatment in math and 0.04 standard deviations per year in reading. We estimate associations (not causal relationships) between charter schools' policies and their effects on achievement. The policy with the most notable and robust association is a long school year--as long as 220 days in the charter schools.

This comprehensive guide, edited and written by an interdisciplinary group of prominent scholars, provides an authoritative account of the most recent surge of immigrants in twenty thematic essays and comprehensive articles on immigration from the thirty most significant nations or regions of origin.