How do high levels of immigration and a growing multiracial population challenge census racial and ethnic categories? We begin by discussing the relationship between race, ethnicity, and ancestry and their measurement in the census. We examine data from the 2000 Census 5 percent IPUMS to compare racial responses of native- and foreign-born Hispanics, Asians, and Middle Easterners, and native-born multiracial Hispanics, Asians, and Middle Easterners, by ancestry. For some groups, for example, Europeans and Africans, ancestry and race are expected to overlap well. However, we expect current census racial categories to be problematic for the growing numbers of people who reported Some Other Race (SOR) alone or in combination with another race, a diverse population that we found to include multiracial Hispanics, Middle Easterners, and Asians. We conclude with a discussion of possible changes to the census questions on race, Hispanic ethnicity, and ancestry in light of these challenges.

What determines whether an individual participates in Önancial markets? In particular, are those with more education, greater exposure to Önancial topics or higher cognitive ability more likely to invest in Önancial instruments? This is a di¢ cult question to answer, as each of these three factors is closely correlated with a host of other individual characteristics, such as parental income and ability, which may independently a§ect investment decisions. We use instrumental variables and panel regression techniques to overcome this identiÖcation challenge. To study the e§ect of general education, we make use of changes in compulsory education laws, which induce exogenous variation in schooling. To study Önancial literacy education in schools, we use cohort analysis and state laws mandating such education. Finally, we study cognitive ability by focusing on sibling pairs that grew up in the same household, therefore controlling for unobserved family characteristics. We Önd that greater cognitive ability and educational attainment lead to signiÖcant increases in Önancial market participation. However, and in contrast to previous Öndings, we Önd no evidence that high school Önancial literacy education a§ects savings or investment decisions.

In response to recent discussions regarding the ability of hospitals to achieve gains in productivity, we present two methodologies that attempt to measure multifactor productivity (MFP) in the hospital sector. We analyze each method and conclude that the inconsistencies in their outcomes make it difficult to estimate a precise level of MFP that hospitals have historically achieved. Our goal in developing two methodologies is to inform the debate surrounding the ability of hospitals to achieve gains in MFP, as well as to highlight some of the challenges that exist in measuring hospital MFP.

The Appalachian region is one of themost persistently poor areas of the UnitedStates. A focal explanation for the weakeconomic performance over the years isthe fact that Appalachia has long laggedbehind other regions in terms of the supplyof skilled workers, particularly thosewith higher levels of education attainment,and this lack of skill has perpetuatedpoverty in the region. In recent decades,however, residents of Appalachia havebegun to narrow the gap in education attainment.To what extent this relative skillupgrading in Appalachia has translatedinto higher wages and reduced wageinequality across regions of the countrydepends on changes in the relative returnsto skill. Knowledge of how regionaldifferences in skill levels and returns toskill translate into regional differentialsin economic inequality and developmentis crucial to a better understanding ofwidening inequality in general, as well asfor more targeted policy prescriptions forregional economic development. For example,if the returns to education are thesame in Appalachia as in the rest of thecountry, but education attainment is lowerin Appalachia, then reducing the wagedifferential across regions requires furtherincreases in educational attainment. Incontrast, if both the level of and return toeducation are lower, then policy shouldfocus on increasing the return to education(via the labor demand) as well as thesupply of an educated workforce.In this report we use data from the19802000 Integrated Public Use MicrodataSamples (IPUMS) of the DecennialCensus to decompose changes in thewage levels and distributions of men andwomen within and outside Appalachiaover the past two decades. We estimatestandard human-capital wage equationsfor workers that allow for region-specificdifferences in the returns to skill at boththe means of the region-specific wagedistributions as well as at numerouspercentile points across each distribution.Although our focal emphasis is onwage differences between residents ofAppalachia and those outside Appalachia,we also examine changes in the returnsto skill in urban and rural areas, for boththe country as a whole as well as withinthe Appalachia region; differences in thereturns to skill within and between Appalachiafor states in the Federal ReservesFourth District and within and betweenAppalachia by state, for states within theFourth District that have non-Appalachianregions: Kentucky, Ohio and Pennsylvania.With the wage equation estimates weconduct a variety of counterfactual wagedecompositions to assess whether thechanges in wages within and betweenAppalachia and other regions are due tochanges in the levels of skill attainmentor changes in the returns to skills. Thewage decompositions are based both onstandard methods used in the discriminationliterature for examining differencesin conditional means (Oaxaca 1973), aswell as more recent methods proposed byMachado and Mata (2005) to decomposechanges in wage distributions.We find evidence that the returns toschooling rose dramatically for men andwomen in the 1980s for both regions, butthen declined in the 1990s within AppaUnderstandingEarnings Inequalitylachia relative to the rest of the nation.We also find evidence of a dramatic dropin the returns to experience among menin Appalachia during the 1980s, but anincrease in experience returns amongAppalachian women. With the estimatedcoefficients we decompose changes inthe Appalachian-non-Appalachian wagedifferential into changes due to skill levelsand changes due to returns to skill. Wefind substantial evidence of skill upgradingamong men and women in Appalachiaover the past two decades such that themajority of the regional wage gap in 1980was due to skill level differences whereasby 2000 it was accounted for by differentialreturns to skill.While much of the difference in meanwages is confirmed by the distributiondecomposition, we find that the returnsgap is more important in explaining thepreponderance of low-wage male workersin Appalachia while the skills gap is importantfor explaining the lack of high wageworkers in Appalachia. For women, differencein skill levels and returns appear tobe equally important across the distribution.The gap in skill returns among lowwagemen in Appalachia is largely drivenby changes in the returns to experienceover the past two decades, which couldbe explained in part by regional changesin labor force participation.Our analysis of regional decompositionsbased on urban-rural designationsreaches the opposite conclusion from ouranalysis of Appalachian/Non-Appalachianwage gaps; namely, that the urban-ruralwage gap became increasingly influencedby skill differentials between urban andrural communities. Although the time patternof skill returns between urban and ruralareas is akin to that which we identifiedwith Appalachian/Non-Appalachia, gaps inskills between urban and rural areas rosefaster and accounts for the different results.Because Appalachia contains bothurban and rural communities, skill upgradingin the urban areas has propped up theregion as a whole.At the same time, however, for menwe find that skill shortages remain morepronounced at the high end of the wagedistribution (and in rural America in general),which is borne out in the fact thatcollege completion and advanced degreesin Appalachia are about one-half the rateof attainment in the rest of the country. Tobring Appalachia more in parity with therest of the nation more of her residentsneed to complete post-baccalaureate degreeprogramsa supply-side issuebutbecause skill returns differ policy mustalso focus on the demand-side issue ofdeveloping high skill jobs that encouragehigher-educated Appalachians toremain in the region rather that migrate tohigher returns in other areas of the UnitedStates.

This study offers a comparative analysis that uncovers shifts in the public sector among different racial/ethnic groups of women workers from 1970 through 2000. Using the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series, we find that workers who earned the least benefited the most from the public sector. Moreover, after controlling for individual characteristics, we find that the premium disappears for white women and is strongest for black women. We also uncover important variations in the public sector premium by level of government. Findings suggest that federal and state employment benefits all women. While local-level employment does benefit black women, we find that white and Latina women experience a wage penalty in local government jobs.

This paper examines the relationship between the Great Depression and the educational attainment of young adults who were growing up during the 1930s, taking advantage of the state-level variation in employment as individuals were turning a critical age. I find that there was negligible association between the Great Depressions severity and the average years of education. Statistically significant difference is found only for white females who could expect a larger premium on schooling during the 1930s. Regional differences in availability of appropriate schools, however, may mask the varying effects in different regions. Splitting the sample into different regions, I find numerically larger and statistically significant results in more populous regions and states in which there were more public junior colleges. A small substitution effect found at the mean does not necessarily indicate that the impact of the Great Depression was uniform across the distribution of educational attainment. At the top end of educational attainment, the income effect seems to outweigh the substitution effect. The results of quantile regressions suggest that a ten-point decrease in the employment index is related to 27 percent of a year longer schooling of white males at the 90-percentile of the distribution. In sum, the Great Depression may have increased the average educational attainment, but the net effects seem small. More importantly, it appears to have compressed the distribution of educational attainment among white males. My results also suggest that for the substitution effect to work, supply factors such as availability of appropriate institutions may be important.

Early work identified benefit of public sector employment for workers, particularly minority and female workers (Hout 1984, Pomer 1986), but the vast majority of these studies focused on male workers, or use public sector work to explain gender differences in pay (Gornick and Jacobs, 1998; Blank, 1985), leaving the intersections of these categories unexamined. The current study extends this work through a comparative study of the effect of public sector employment for different racial/ethnic groups of women to determine whether the role of the public sector in women's employment has shifted between 1970-2000, a period of substantial change in women's labor market experiences, and to what extent this public sector premium has remained constant over this same time period. We use a large and nationally representative sample of Census data drawn from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) to answer the following research questions: Does the public sector premium vary across race/ethnic groups, over time? Is the premium concentrated at a particular section of the occupation/pay scale? Do sectoral differences in worker characteristics and occupation composition explain public sector wage premium? We find that the public sector premium varies substantially for the different race/ethnic groups, that the premium has changed substantially for all groups over the period of study, and that once controlling for individual characteristics the premium disappears for white women and is strongest for black women.

This paper presents new evidence that increases in college enrollment lead to a decline in the quality of college graduates between 1960 and 2000, resulting in a decrease of 9 percentage points in the college premium. A standard demand and supply framework can qualitatively accountfor the trend in the college and age premia over this period, but the quantitative adjustments that need to be made are substantial. To illustrate the importance of these adjustments, we reanalyze the problem studied in Card and Lemieux (2001), who observe that the rise in the college premium in the 1980s occurred mainly for young workers, and attribute this to the differential behavior of the supply of skill between the young and the old. Our results showthat changes in quality are as important as changes in prices to explain the phenomenon they document.

Childhood lead exposure can lead to psychological deficits that are strongly associated with aggressive and criminal behavior. In the late 1970s in the United States, lead was removed from gasoline under the Clean Air Act. Using the sharp state-specific reductions in lead exposure resulting from this removal, this article finds that the reduction in childhood lead exposure in the late 1970s and early 1980s is responsible for significant declines in violent crime in the 1990s, and may cause further declines into the future. The elasticity of violent crime with respect to lead is estimated to be approximately 0.8.

Although most people do not realize it, it has been a long time now since agriculture dominated rural areas in the developed world. Most do know that farmers today constitute but a tiny proportion of the U.S. labor force—about 1.55 percent in 2005—yet few have bothered to ask just what rural folks are doing for a living.1 While the public at large appears to have missed the decoupling of "rural" from "agriculture," this development has shaken several academic disciplines to the core. Entire fields, rural sociology and rural geography, for example, were founded on the assumption that the relationship between rural and agriculture was nearly akin to a mathematical identity, remaining true regardless of the values either of these variables acquired. Even while fewer and fewer farmers were "out standing" in their fields, many so-called agricultural historians merely shifted their attention away from questions relating to agricultural production per se to other questions that had rural dimensions: gender relations, childhood, and rural leisure and consumption patterns, for example.

Research on changes in womens parenting has focused primarily on mothers increased likelihood of employment. A more complete understanding of the changing landscape of parenting, however, depends on the broader family context, including changes in the coresidential experiences of mothers of young children. Between 1880 and 2000, there were substantial declines in the presence and availability of other females ten and older in the households of mothers of young children (Short, Goldscheider, and Torr forthcoming 2006). Although all mothers experienced this decline, the patterns of change in coresidence differ substantially for black and white mothers, as well as for married and unmarried mothers. This paper examines these differential patterns of change in coresidence for mothers of young children.

Growing up in female-headed households has long been considered disadvantageous for children. We examine the relationship between family structure and occupational attainment in 1920, accounting for selection into the labor force. The results indicate that the attainment of daughters in mother-headed households was not significantly lower than that of their counterparts in male-headed households. Mothers' resources alleviate some of the disadvantage experienced by working daughters. Family size and ethnicity are strongly associated with daughters' occupational attainment, regardless of the household head's sex. The results suggest that prevailing gender norms restricted the jobs available to women in the early 20th century, regardless of their family type.

This article considers how divorce law alters the incentives for couples to invest in their marriage, focusing on the impact of unilateral divorce laws on investments in new marriages. Differences across states between 1970 and 1980 provide useful quasi-experimental variation with which to consider incentives to invest in several types of marriage-specific capital: spouse's education, children, household specialization, and home ownership. I find that adoption of unilateral divorceregardless of the prevailing property-division lawsreduces investment in all types of marriage-specific capital considered except home ownership. In contrast, results for home ownership depend on the underlying property division laws.

Divorce law changes made in the 1970s affected marital formation, dissolution, and bargaining within marriage. By altering the terms of the marital contract these legal changes impacted the incentives for women to enter and remain in the labor force. Whereas earlier work had suggested that the impact of unilateral divorce on female employment depended critically on laws governing property division, I show that these results are not robust to alternative specifications and controls. I find instead that unilateral divorce led to an increase in both married and unmarried female labor force participation, regardless of the underlying property laws.

Scholars in many social science disciplines have taken note of the reemerging interest in issues concerning social processes embedded within a spatial context. While some argue that this awakening is refreshing and new and, in fact, long overdue, I demonstrate that spatially focused demographic theories andresearch agendas clearly predate contemporary interest in these topics. I assert that recent methodological advancements have merely encouraged and brought refinement to the expanding body of spatially oriented population researchresearchstrongly rooted in demographic tradition and practice. Indeed, I make the claim that, until roughly the mid-20th century, virtually all demography in the United States (and elsewhere, but not specifically examined here) was spatial demography. Then, shortly after mid-century, a paradigm shift occurred, and the scientific study of population quickly came to be dominated by attention to the individual as the agent of demographic action. Traditional spatial demographymacro-demography gave way to micro-demography, and, I argue, most demographers simply abandoned the data and approach of spatial demography. In closing the paper I include a brief discussion of the recent awakening that has come to spatial demographers from developments in other disciplines, principally geography, regional science, and spatial econometrics.

Recent reports in the popular media raise concerns about a supposed boy crisis in the United States with regard to educational attainment. These reports cite evidence that females in the United States have caught up and surpassed males in most measures of schooling. Concern over the gender gap in schooling is misplaced, however, as racial differences in educational attainment are much more severe. This paper presents evidence on educational attainment by race and gender, nationally, within the state, and locally.