Objective To assess the fat-related dietary behaviors of adult Puerto Ricans with and without diagnosed diabetes, living in New York City. Design A random-digit-dialing telephone survey was conducted following Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System procedures. Dietary behavior was assessed using a brief Fat-Related Diet Habits Questionnaire, in which higher scores indicated higher fat intake. Subjects/setting A total of 1,304 adult Puerto Ricans living in New York City were interviewed. Diabetes status was assessed using standard Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System questions. Statistical analyses performed Weighted analyses using SUDAAN software for complex surveys were done, and t tests were used to assess differences in mean fat-related dietary score by sociodemographic and health characteristics. Age-adjusted least-squared means were used to compare scores between those with and without diabetes. Linear regression was used to model characteristics associated with fat-related dietary score. Results Fat-related dietary score was lower among those with diabetes and varied by population and health characteristics. Age-adjusted scores were significantly lower for those with diabetes who were younger, less educated, obese, or physically active. In the regression model, family history, weight, and exercise interacted with diabetes status. Those with diabetes were significantly more likely to modify meat consumption practices (eg, remove skin or trim fat) to reduce fat compared with those without diabetes. Conclusions New York City Puerto Ricans with diabetes are somewhat more likely to engage in behaviors to reduce fat compared with those without diabetes. Targeted, culturally sensitive nutrition education and counseling emphasizing lower-fat food choices and other fat-reducing behaviors can help reduce risk and control diabetes. Education messages should be tailored to the individuals diabetes status and other health and sociodemographic characteristics.

It is common for scholars interested in race and poverty to invoke a lack of access to job networks as one of the reasons that African Americans and Hispanics face difficulties in the labor market. Much research has found, however, that minorities do worse when they use personal networks in job finding. Research in this area has been hampered by the complicated and multi-step nature of the job finding process, and the lack of appropriate comparison data for demonstrating the various ways in which minorities can be isolated from good job opportunities. We seek to specify what it means to say that minorities are cut off from job networks. Building on the literature on social networks in the labor market, we delineate the various mechanisms by which minorities can be isolated from good job opportunities. We examine how these mechanisms operate using unique data on the chain of network contacts that funnel to an employer offering desirable jobs. We find that network factors operate at several stages of the recruitment process. However, we find scant evidence that these network factors serve to cut off minorities from employment in this setting. We conclude with a discussion of the theoretical and methodological implications of the case for the study of networks, race, and hiring.

This study examines how the returns to wages of early work and schooling experiences changed for young men and women in the United States over the latter half of the twentieth century. Our analysis focuses on the experiences of young men and women from two different birth cohortsone group that was of high school age during the second half of the 1960s and a second that grew to young adulthood in the late 1970s and early 1980s. We pay particular attention to how the differences across cohorts in human capital accumulation vary by gender and how these differences affected their subsequent wage attainment. We present an econometric framework to consistently estimate the returns to youths schooling and early work experiences. This framework attempts to deal with both the endogeneity of schooling and various types of work experiences and selection bias in our wage data. Using these estimates, we adapt the Juhn, Murphy, Pierce (1993) wage decomposition framework to assess separately the roles of across-cohort changes in the observed and unobserved skill distributions and of changes over time in the returns to these skills, towards explaining the convergence of the gender wage gap.

Finding interesting patterns from data is one of the most important problems in data mining and it has been studied actively for more than a decade. However, it is still largely open problem which patterns are interesting and which are not. The problem of detecting the interesting patterns (in a predefined class of patterns) has been attempted to solve by determining quality values for potentially interesting patterns and deciding a pattern to be interesting if its quality value (i.e., the interestingness of the pattern) is higher than a given threshold value. Again, it is very difficult to find a threshold value and a way to determine the quality values such that the collection of patterns with quality values greater than the threshold value would contain almost all truly interesting patterns and only few ininteresting ones. To enable more accurate characterization of interesting patterns, use of constraints to further prune the pattern collection has been proposed. However, most of the constrained pattern discovery research has been focused on structural constraints for the pattern collections and the patterns. We take a complementary approach and focus on constraining the quality values of the patterns. We propose quality value simplifications as a complementary approach to structural constraints on patterns. As a special case of the quality value simplifications, we consider discretizing the quality values. We analyze the worst case error of certain discretization functions and give efficient discretization algorithms minimizing several loss functions. In addition to that, we show that the discretizations of the quality values can be used to obtain small approximate condensed representations for collections of interesting patterns. We evaluate the proposed condensation approach experimentally using frequent itemsets.

Objective. Although studies suggest that the earnings of limited-English-proficient (LEP) Hispanic men have recently improved relative to the English fluent, it remains unclear as to whether specific Hispanic groups experienced similar improvements. Methods. Using 1990 and 2000 U.S. Census data, this study employs regression, wage decomposition, and quantile regression analyses to examine how gender and Hispanic ethnicity relate to the LEP-earnings penalty. Results. The LEP-earnings penalty fell significantly for Mexican-American men between 1990and 2000. However, additional results suggest that this penalty increased for Cuban-American men and women (and, to a lesser extent, for Mexican-American women). Conclusions. Expanding trade and ethnic networks as well as reduced statistical discrimination have not systematically benefited all LEP Hispanic populations. Therefore, policies designed to enhance English-language proficiency may yield heterogeneous socioeconomic outcomes along the ethnic, gender, and income class dimensions.Poor English-language proficiency has traditionally been associated with lower average labor market earnings in the United States. Explanations for this relationship suggest that: (1) the lack of fluency in a country's majority language dampens trade and production opportunities (McManus, Gould, and Welch, 1983); (2) workers with limited English skills have imperfect labor market information such that they accept employment that may not match their skills (Grenier, 1984); (3) individuals with poor English ability face occupational crowding (Tienda and Neidert, 1984); and (4) employers use English-language fluency as a signal to statistically discriminate against limited-English-proficient (LEP) workers (Phillips and Massey, 1999; Dvila, Bohara, and Senz, 1993; Perotti, 1992).Recent studies question the magnitude of this LEP-earnings penalty. For example, Mora and Dvila (2004) argue that increased trade opportunities in the Spanish language, the growth in Hispanic networks, and reduced statistical discrimination following an immigration-enforcement decline dampened the LEP penalty accrued by Hispanic men in recent years. Their study, however, only focuses on men, and it ignores differences between specific ethnic populations by combining all LEP Hispanics into a composite group.Socioeconomic and demographic changes that impact the earnings of LEP workers in the United States might not be neutral with respect to gender or Hispanic ethnicity. We employ 1990 and 2000 U.S. Census data to examine whether the LEP-wage penalty similarly changed between the three largest Hispanic groups (Mexican American, Cuban American, and Puerto Rican) during the 1990s, and whether these potential penalty changes differed with respect to gender. Our findings indicate that the average LEP-earnings penalty significantly declined for Mexican-American men during the 1990s when controlling for other characteristics, but did not for Mexican-American women nor for Cuban-American and Puerto Rican workers. Moreover, wage decomposition and quantile regression analyses indicate that LEP Cuban-American men and women (and, to a lesser extent, LEP Mexican-American women) lost significant ground vis--vis the English fluent with respect to earnings between 1990 and 2000.

This is a summary (as an Appendix) of the 2003/2004 Sediment Oxygen Demand Results of the Contoocook River, NH, which was prepared for the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services, Watershed Management Bureau, Total Maximum Daily Load Program.

Quantile regression (QR) fits a linear model for conditional quantiles just as ordinary least squares (OLS) fits a linear model for conditional means. An attractive feature of OLS is that it gives the minimum mean-squared error linear approximation to the conditional expectation function even when the linear model is misspecified. Empirical research using quantile regression with discrete covariates suggests that QR may have a similar property, but the exact nature of the linear approximation has remained elusive. In this paper, we show that QR minimizesa weighted mean-squared error loss function for specification error. The weighting function is an average density of the dependent variable near the true conditional quantile. The weighted least squares interpretation of QR is used to derive an omitted variables bias formula and a partial quantile regression concept, similar to the relationship between partial regression and OLS. We also present asymptotic theory for the QR process Linder misspecification of the conditional quantile function. The approximation properties of QR are illustrated using wage data from the U.S. census. These results point to major changes in inequality from 1990 to 2000.

There is widespread concern that the United States faces a problem in maintaining its position as the scientific and technological leader in the world and that loss of leadership threatens future economic well-being and national security. Business, science, and education groups have issued reports that highlight the value to the country of leadership in science and technology. Many call for new policies to increase the supply of scientific and engineering talent in the United States. While the reports differ in emphasis, the basic message is uniform: the United States should spend more on research and development (R&D) and increase the number of young Americans choosing scientific and technological careers. In his 2006 State of the Union address, President Bush announced the American Competitiveness Initiative that concurred with these assessments: "For the U.S. to maintain its global economic leadership, we must ensure a continuous supply of highly trained mathematicians, scientists, engineers, technicians, and scientific support staff." In 1957, faced with the analogous challenge of Sputnik, the United States responded with increased R&D spending and by awarding large numbers of National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research and National Defense Education Act fellowships, which together induced a large number of young Americans to invest in science and engineering careers. In the early 1960s, the country gave about one thousand NSF graduate research fellowships per year. Forty-five years later, despite a more-than-threefold increase in the number of college students graduating in science and engineering and a global challenge from the spread of technology and higher education to the rest of the world, the United States still gives the same number of NSF fellowships. With so many more college students, current U.S. NSF fellowship policy gives less of an incentive for students to enter science and engineering than did policies in the earlier period.

Despite its importance for the economic and demographic history of the nineteenth-century United States, there are few published estimates of the timing and incidence of marriage and no published studies of its correlates before 1890, when the Census Office first tabulated marital status by age, sex, and nativity. In this article, I rely on the 1860 IPUMS census sample to construct national and regional estimates of white nuptiality by nativity and sex and to test theories of marriage timing. I supplement this analysis with two new public use samples of Civil War soldiers. The Gould sample, collected by the United States Sanitary Commission between 1863 and 1865, allows me to test whether height and body mass influenced white mens propensity to marry. Finally, a sample of Union Army recruits linked to the 1860 census, created as part of the Early Indicators of Later Work Levels, Disease, and Death project, allows me to combine suspected economic, demographic, and anthropometric correlates of marriage into a multivariate model of never-married white mens entrance into first marriage. The results indicate that nuptiality was moderately higher in 1860 than it was in 1890. In contrast to previous studies, which emphasize the primary importance of land availability and farm prices, I find that single womens opportunity to participate in the paid labor force was the most important determinant of marriage timing. I also find modest support for the hypothesis that height affected mens propensity to marry, consistent with the theory that body size was a sign to potential marriage partners of future earnings capacity and health.

People flows refers to the movement of people across international borders in the form of immigration, international student flows, business travel, and tourism. Despite its peripheral status in debates over globalization, the movement of people from low income to high income countries is fundamental in global economic development, with consequences for factor endowments, trade patterns, and transfer of technology. In part because people flows are smaller than trade and capital flows, the dispersion of pay for similarly skilled workers around the world exceeds the dispersion of the prices of goods and cost of capital. This suggests that policies that give workers in developing countries greater access to advanced country labor markets could raise global economic well-being considerably. The economic problem is that immigrants rather than citizens of immigrant-receiving countries benefit most from immigration. The paper considers "radically economic policies" such as auctioning immigration visas or charging sizeable fees and spending the funds on current residents to increase the economic incentive for advanced countries to accept greater immigration.

This chapter develops a broad historical overview, subjecting race-based theories about the adoption and development of felon disenfranchisement laws to scrutiny. It develops a systematic quantitative analysis that uses detailed information on the social and political makeup of individual states over a long historical period to examine how various factors affect the adoption and extension of state disenfranchisement laws. Why is race a logical culprit in the search to explain the development of felon disenfranchisement laws? In recent years, there has been an explosion of scholarship by social scientists and historians fingering race, and racial politics, as principal sources of the peculiar development of American political and legal culture. This scholarship includes three distinct types of argument: firstly, arguments about the interaction between race and the development of U.S. political institutions; secondly, arguments focusing on the impact of racial attitudes and racism; and thirdly, arguments that stress the nexus between race (and class) in the political economy of the American South.

16. Abstract (Limit: 200 words) In this study, we examine population and housing change, changes in industrial activity and occupational changes, and characteristics of commuters and the journey to work for those working away from home in 26 regional centers and their commute sheds in Greater Minnesota. We also explore ways in which Public Use Microdata Samples (PUMS) and Public Use Microdata Areas (PUMAs) might be exploited to shed additional insight into the changing nature of the demographic, economic and commuting patterns that are now pervasive throughout Greater Minnesota. These data are evaluated to explore links between demographic and economic features of working-age populations, and relationships between worker and household characteristics and aspects of commuting activity on the other. The final chapter examines regional economic vitality and travel behavior across the Minnesota Countryside. When population change in sample regional centers in the 1990s is compared with change in the nearby counties that comprise the centers' commuting fields, four situations appear: those where centers and their commuting fields both had population increases; centers with declining populations, but increases in the commuting fields; centers with growing populations, but with declines in their commuting fields; and situations where both the center and the commute field lost population.

SHADAC (State Health Access Data Assistance Center) has become a recognized expert in the collection,analysis and use of health insurance coverage and accessdata and in providing the state perspective in health accessresearch and policy analysis.

The traditional estimates of the return to schooling are known to potentially suffer from ability bias. This paper attempts to eliminate ability bias and measure the true return to schooling. A fall in the cost of education raises the schooling choices of workers in a more recent cohort, but does not alter their average predetermined ability. Such changes would generate variation in the relative earnings of cohorts only if education is productivity enhancing. Based on this observation, education is instrumented with cohort dummies to capture the cost and benefit environment at the time a person makes his schooling decision. Identification requires that the average ability of a cohort does not systematically vary with the average education of that cohort. Using data from the CPS March Supplement for the years 1964-2003 and the Decennial Census Surveys 1960 - 2000, wage regressions are estimated instrumenting education with birth cohorts and state-birth cohorts. The results suggest that the true return is significantly lower than the OLS return.

There is a large literature that looks at skill biased technical change, both in developed anddeveloping countries. The emerging consensus is that returns to education were U-shaped over thetwentieth century in the United States. We construct a model which highlights the role that resourceendowments play in the returns to education and their interaction with skill biased technical change.Given the regional labor markets and different sectoral structures in different areas of the countrythere is reason to expect considerable geographic variation in returns to education in the early 20thcentury. We use a new data source, a report from the U.S. Commissioner of Education in 1909, toestimate the returns to education of high school teachers in the early twentieth century. Overall,we find significant regional variation in the returns to education, with large (within-occupation)returns for the Midwest (7%), but much lower returns in the South (3%) and West (0.5%). Wereject the hypothesis that the returns in the Midwest are equal to the returns in the South. Weprovide evidence that our results are generalizable to returns to education in the United States andthat returns to education for teachers tracked quite closely with the overall returns to educationfrom 1940 onward. These results suggest that we should expect variation in returns to educationwith skill biased technological change if there are significant differences in resource endowmentsbefore the technological change.

Recent modern life expectancy improvements rely heavily on medical intervention; however, before the mid-20th century, increased longevity was primarily the result of improvednutrition and less virulent disease environments. Moreover, 19th century health conditions varied by race, especially in the American South. The body mass index (BMI) reflects healthconditions, and male BMIs in Texas State Prison reflected diseases associated with low BMI diseases, i.e., respiratory and infectious diseases, and tuberculosis. When able to work,Southern African-Americans in the 19th century acquired heavier BMIs during prime working ages; however, when they were no longer productive and exited the labor force, theirBMIs declined, and older black males became more vulnerable to low BMI diseases.