Hedonic equilibrium models allow researchers to recover willingness to pay for spatially delineated amenities by using the notion that individuals "vote with their feet." However, the hedonic literature and, more recently, the estimable Tiebout sorting model literature, have largely ignored both the costs associated with migration (financial and psychological), as well as the forward-looking behavior that individuals exercise in making location decisions. Each of these omissions could lead to biased estimates of willingness to pay. Building upon dynamic migration models from the labor literature, I estimate a fully dynamic model of individual migration at the national level that explicitly controls for moving costs and forward-looking behavior. By employing a two-step estimation routine, I avoid the computational burden associated with the full recursive solution and can then include a richly-specified, realistic state space. With this model,

This comment argues that although replication will and should gain ground in sociology, that process will be complicated by issues of ownership, mechanics, and security. Replicationism will also change the economy of peer review. Ironically, it could also reveal that sociologists have less agreement on methodological issues than we think.

The prolongation and diversification of the transition to adulthood is known to have occurred in all advanced industrialized countries, although to different extents and following different patterns. A number of comparative studies have explored single-events such as leaving the parental home or making the transition to a first birth, but few have examined the transitions to adulthood more holistically by examining multiple events. We do so in this article for Australia, Canada and the United States. We find that youth in the United States experience a more uniform and shorter transition to adulthood than their peers in Australia or Canada, even though his transition is increasingly prolonged in all three countries. The earlier transition in the United States is mostly due to the concentration of education in traditional school ages, an earlier entry into employment, and to a lesser extent, an earlier and more coordinated transition into marriage and household headship. We argue that the transition to adulthood differs quantitatively and qualitatively since entry into marriage reflects the more traditional values of the United States.

Interracial/interethnic marriage in America is a barometer of racial/ethnic relations and intergroup social distance. Using data from the 5-percent Public Use Microdata Sample of the 1990 and 2000 censuses, we interpret trends in intermarriage in light of new assimilation theory, recent changes in racial classification, and rapid demographic changes in American society. Our results indicate that changes in marital assimilation have taken on momentum of their own; that is, America's growing biracial population has fueled the growth of interracial marriages with whites. Analyses also shed new light on the effects of rapid immigration, rising cohabitation, and educational upgrading on intermarriage patterns, and yield both continuities and departures from the past. Historic patterns of racial/ethnic differences in intermarriage persistHispanics and American Indians are most likely to marry whites, followed closely by Asian Americans. African Americans are least likely to marry whites. Yet, the 1990s brought significant increases in intermarriage between blacks and whites; large increases in cohabitation did not offset the growth of racially-mixed marriages. The past decade also ushered in unprecedented declines in intermarriage with whites and large increases in marriage between native- and foreign-born co-ethnics among Hispanics and Asian Americans. The role of educational attainment in the out-marriage patterns of Hispanics and Asian Americans was also reinforced. Any evidence of differential growth in African American-white marriages among the highly educated African American population was weak. If intermarriage is our guide, any shifting, blurring, or crossing of racial/ethnic boundaries represent uncommonly weak mechanisms for breaking down existing racial barriers to black-white union formation.

Despite concern about the social, economic, and ecological viability of the agricultural Great Plains, a century-long examination reveals that threats to society, economy, and environment are counterbalanced by surprising stability and the potential for short- and medium-term sustainability. Populations in metropolitan counties have grown, whereas rural populations may now be stable; both metropolitan and rural populations are aging. Technological advances in the past five decades enhanced production in the Great Plains despite periodic adverse economic and environmental conditions, and increases in crop yields, animal feeding, and government payments have sustained agriculture and income. Nonmetropolitan counties with irrigated farming have been more successful than those without irrigation. However, overuse of groundwater and rising energy costs for irrigation affect economic margins and the ability to sustain environmental integrity. Long-term projections of agricultural productivity must balance recent stability with the risks posed by reduced irrigation, higher energy prices, disruptive demographic changes, and further loss of environmental integrity.

This paper asks: What is the effect of government policy on output and inequality in an environment with education and labor-supply decisions? The answer is given in a generalequilibrium model, consistent with the post 1960s facts on male wage inequality and labor supply in the U.S. In the model, education and labor-supply decisions depend on progressive income taxation, the education system, the social security system, and technology-driven wagedifferentials. Government policies affect output and inequality through two channels. First, a policy change leads to an asymmetric adjustment of working hours and savings of schooled and unschooled individuals. Second, there is a redistribution of the workforce between schooled and unschooled workers. Using a battery of proposed government policies, we demonstrate that skillredistribution dampens the response of wage inequality to a policy change and amplifies the response of output by an additional 1 to 2 percent.

This article uses nineteenth-century evidence to calculate the impact of early exposureto malaria-ridden environments on nutritional status and the immune systemin America. I estimate the risk of contracting malarial fevers in the 1850s byusing correlations between malaria and environmental factors such as climateand geographical features. The study demonstrates that Union Army recruitswho spent their early years in malaria-endemic counties were 1.1 inches shorterat enlistment due to malnutrition and were 13 percent more susceptible to infectionsduring the U.S. Civil War as a result of immune disorders than were thosefrom malaria-free regions.

I examine in this thesis the impact changes in Child Custody Law can have on children of differing family structures in terms of their educational attainment, and intergenerational educational mobility conditional on parental educational attainment and income. I then explore a possible theoretical explanation for these effects.Chapters 2 and 3 studies the empirical impact of the regime shift from maternal preference to joint custody in custody dispute adjudication in the United States during the 1980s using the one percent Integrated Public Use Microsample Series (IPUMS) of the decennial Census for the decades from 1970 to 1990. Focusing on children between the ages of 15 to 18 who were living with a single divorced and separated parent and of intact families, I found first using cross state and year variation in the timing of adoption of those laws that the children of single parent households living in states which adopted joint custody had a higher probability of high school graduation at age 18. However, children from intact families suffered a decrease in the same probability. This suggests that the law has important unintended negative effects that had thus far been neglected in the literature. The results were robust to the use of the IPUMS Current Population Survey Sample, and Stochastic Dominance Tests. Next using a new distributional overlap measure I found evidence of reduction in alienation between children of intact and single parent families, and particularly between divorced and separated parent families compared with children of widowed parents. This accords with intuition since widowed parent households would not have been affected by the changes in family law. In general, there seem to be a move towards greater intergenerational mobility as a result of joint custody law adoption.In Chapter 4, I model familial choices in labor supply and investments in the quality of children in the shadow of evolving child custody legislations, from the perspective of differential fecundity. The model is able to explain why child support payment rose with joint custody law adoption, and emphasizes the impact the law can have on equilibrium marriage, remarriage and divorce rates.

A number of papers have argued that, at the population level, parental Hepatitis Bcarrier status is associated with a higher offspring sex ratio (more boys) (Hesser,Economidou and Blumberg, 1975; Drew, London, Blumberg and Serjeanston, 1982;Drew, Blumberg and Robert-Lamblin, 1986; Chahnazarian, Blumberg and London,1988; Cazal, Lemiare and Robinet-Levy, 1976; Livadas et al, 1979; Oster, 2005). Thesepapers suggest that parents who are carriers of Hepatitis B have roughly 1.5 boys forevery girls. Recent large-scale, micro-level evidence from Taiwan (Lin and Luoh, 2006)presents evidence that hepatitis B carrier status among mothers is associated with onlya very tiny increase in the probability of a male birth. Both arguments could be correctif it was paternal, not maternal, hepatitis carrier status that drives higher offspring sexratios. We present three pieces of evidence that this may be the case. First, using two ofthe original datasets on this topic we find that fathers infection is more stronglycorrelated with sex ratio than mothers infection. Second, in population-level data fromTaiwan we find that paternal cohort infection rates are more important that maternalcohort infection rates. Finally, we show using the IPUMS dataset that children born inthe United States to men born in China are more likely to be boys, but this finding doesnot hold for children born to women from China.

Objective: The purpose of this study is to evaluate the validity of BMI based on self‐reported data by comparison with technician‐measured BMI and biomarkers of adiposity. Research Methods and Procedures: We analyzed data from 10,639 National Health and Nutrition Education Study III participants ≥20 years of age to compare BMI calculated from self‐reported weight and height with BMI from technician‐measured values and body fatness estimated from bioelectrical impedance analysis in relation to systolic blood pressure, fasting blood levels of glucose, high‐density lipoprotein‐cholesterol, triglycerides, C‐reactive protein, and leptin. Results: BMI based on self‐reported data (25.07 kg/m2) was lower than BMI based on technician measurements (25.52 kg/m2) because of underreporting weight (−0.56 kg; 95% confidence interval, −0.71, −0.41) and overreporting height (0.76 cm; 95% confidence interval, 0.64, 0.88). However, the correlations between self‐reported and measured BMI values were very high (0.95 for whites, 0.93 for blacks, and 0.90 for Mexican Americans). In terms of biomarkers, self‐reported and measured BMI values were equally correlated with fasting blood glucose (r = 0.43), high‐density lipoprotein‐cholesterol (r = −0.53), and systolic blood pressure (r = 0.54). Similar correlations were observed for both measures of BMI with plasma concentrations of triglycerides and leptin. These correlations did not differ appreciably by age, sex, ethnicity, or obesity status. Correlations for percentage body fat estimated through bioelectrical impedance analysis with these biomarkers were similar to those for BMI. Discussion: The accuracy of self‐reported BMI is sufficient for epidemiological studies using disease biomarkers, although inappropriate for precise measures of obesity prevalence.

The distinctive characteristics andexperiences of immigrant families havesignificant implications for child welfarepractice and the outcomes for familiesinvolved with child welfare authorities. Thisarticle presents the results of a study that usesa unique dataset, composed of child welfareadministrative data matched to birth recordsfrom Texas, to assess differences in the childwelfare outcomes for children of immigrantsand those for natives. The data include allchildren removed from their homes by theTexas Department of Family and ProtectiveServices (DFPS) and living in out-of-homecare on March 31, 2006, due to abuse orneglect.Study results show that first- and secondgenerationLatin American children ofimmigrants were underrepresented in the child welfare system in Texas, while nativebornHispanic children (i.e., the third orhigher generation) were overrepresented.First- and second-generation children weremore often removed for sexual abuse thanother children in care. First-generationchildren were less likely to be eligible forTitle IV-E reimbursement, the largest sourceof federal funding for state child welfareagencies (Scarcella, Bess, Zielewski, & Geen,2006). Both first- and second-generationchildren were less often placed with relativesor given permanency goals associated withthem. In addition, once removed from theirhomes, first- and second-generation childrenof immigrants had different child welfaresystem experiences from children of natives.

A significant body of work demonstrates the powerful role that race has played in the growth, scope, and character of the American welfare state. Yet this literature has focused almost exclusively on black-white relations, ignoring the role that immigration, especially Mexican immigration, has had on the formation and evolution of U.S. welfare policies. To help fill this gap, my dissertation compares the extension of social citizenship to Mexicans, European immigrants and blacks between 1900 and 1950. Drawing on government reports and archives, congressional hearings and debates, the U.S. census, conference proceedings, and the writings of contemporaries, I tease out the relative influence of race, formal citizenship and legal status for access to various welfare programs. By exploring the formal and informal practices mediating access to assistance, I demonstrate that even during a period of widespread nativism, formal citizenship was largely unimportant in the extension of social citizenship. With the exception of a brief period during the Depression, access to social welfare was predicated not on citizenship but rather on race, labor market position and residence. Furthermore, academias focus on black-white relations has obscured the role of race in the cooperation of local relief and immigration officials. Relief officials not only denied Mexicans and Mexican-Americans access to various welfare benefits, they expelled them from the nationpermanently. In the most extreme cases, the welfare office quite literally turned into an immigration bureau, or became an extra-legal arm of the INS, expelling those that immigration laws could not touch.