This report was written in support of an application to the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR) from The Southeast Disability and Business Technical Assistance Center (DBTAC) at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the Burton Blatt Institute (BBI) at Syracuse University. It examines the demographic and economic characteristics of the eight states in the southeastern region of the United States. Particular attention is given to the characteristics of the disabled population.

Business intelligence and bioinformatics applicationsincreasingly require the mining of datasets consisting of millions of data points, or crafting real-time enterprise-level decision support systems for large corporations and drug companies. In all cases, there needs to be an underlying data mining system, and this mining system must be highly scalable. To this end, we describe a new rule learner called DataSqueezer. The learner belongs to the family of inductive supervised rule extraction algorithms. DataSqueezer is a simple, greedy, rule builder that generates a set of production rules from labeled input data. In spite of its relative simplicity, DataSqueezer is a very effective learner. The rules generated by the algorithm are compact, comprehensible, and have accuracy comparable to rules generated by otherstate-of-the-art rule extraction algorithms. The main advantages of DataSqueezer are very high efficiency, and missing data resistance. DataSqueezer exhibits log-linear asymptotic complexity with the number of training examples, and it is faster than other state-of-the-art rule learners. The learner is also robust to large quantities of missing data, as verified by extensive experimental comparison with the other learners. DataSqueezer is thus well suited to modern data mining and business intelligence tasks, which commonly involve huge datasets with a large fraction of missing data.

James Joyce's Leopold Bloom-the Atheistic Everyman of Ulysses, son of Hungarian Jewish father and an Irish Protestant mother-may have turned the world's literary eyes on Dublin, but those who look to him for history should think again. He could hardly have been a product of the city's bona fide Jewish community, where intermarriage with outsiders was rare and piety was pronounced. In Jewish Ireland in the Age of Joyce, a leading economic historian tells the real story of how Jewish Ireland-and Dublin's Little Jerusalem in particular-made ends meet from the 1870s, when the first Lithuanian Jewish immigrants landed in Dublin, to the late 1940s, just before the community began its dramatic decline. In 1866-the year Bloom was born, Dublin's Jewish population hardly existed, and on the eve of World War I it numbered barely three thousand. But this small group of people quickly found an economic niche in an era of depression, and developed a surprisingly vibrant web of institutions. In a richly detailed, elegantly written blend of historical, economic, and demographic analysis, Cormac O. Grada examines the challenges this community faced. He asks how its patterns of child rearing, schooling and cultural and religious behavior influenced its marital, fertility, and infant-mortality rates. He argues that the community's small size shaped its occupational profile and influenced its acculturation; it also compromised its viability in the long run. Jewish Ireland in the Age of Joyce presents a fascinating portrait of a group of people in an unlikely location who, though small in number, comprised Ireland's most resilient immigrant community until the Celtic Tiger's immigration surge of the 1990s.

This dissertation explores the persistence of a racialized ethnic group over time by analyzing the changing contexts of common American signifiers of assimilation. I am particularly interested in how changes in the contexts of work, location, and family affect racial/ethnic continuities. The common expectation among social scientists is that Japanese Americans are moving toward complete assimilation in the United States. This expectation assumes that the distinctive features of Japanese American life have diminished over the generations. In this dissertation, I raise questions about this prospect in terms of the continuing distinctiveness of Japanese Americans at the end of the twentieth century. In particular, I examine three dimensions of social distinctiveness---occupations and industries, self-employment, and the identification of children in mixed Japanese-white families using the Integrated Public Use Microdata Samples (IPUMS), drawn from the 1980, 1990, and 2000 U.S. Censuses. For each I include an examination of any variations among subgroups of Japanese Americans using a variety of descriptive measures as well as applying multivariate analyses. My empirical results question the over-simplified conclusion of total assimilation and loss of community and redirect our attention toward an analysis of contexts where integration has occurred and contexts where Japanese American distinctiveness remains evident. I find that Japanese Americans show a continued distinctiveness for occupational concentration and mixed-race identification, but not for industrial concentration or self-employment. Additional contexts of nativity status, gender, education, and co-ethnic community contribute differentially to Japanese American continuities. My general conclusion is that while some features of Japanese American life have become similar to the pattern for white non-Latino Americans, there are particular features that continue to distinguish Japanese Americans from others. Those contextual features, when taken together, point to community continuity despite changes. By considering the changes in context across dimensions of distinctiveness, this study reveals the relative importance of diverse processes of integration for shaping ethnic continuities in the Japanese American community. Additionally, by situating Japanese Americans in the larger U.S. racial hierarchy, I address the changing meaning of race and racial boundaries, and how they may apply to non-white ethnic groups in the future.

A significant proportion of the earnings gap between men and women is attributable to occupational sex segregation and the concentration of women in relatively low-paying occupations, but we do not yet know why women continue to be employed disproportionately in lesser-paying occupations. I attempt to explain the sex gap in the relationship between average occupational earnings and occupational attainment by modeling occupational placement among a nationally representative sample of college-educated new labor force entrants. I test empirical predictions derived from supply- and demand-side theories of occupational sex segregation using a conditional logit model, strong controls for human capital investments, and a set of occupational characteristic measures that extends beyond those used in previous research. The results of this analysis show that sex differences in college major explain 1117% of the sex gap in the likelihood of employment in relatively high-paying occupations. However, even among recent labor force entrants who have very similar human capital investments, i.e., college graduates with the same majors, women and men enter different types of occupations. The sex differences in the distribution of workers across occupational characteristics, coupled with the differential remuneration of the influential characteristics explains an additional 41% of the sex gap in the attainment of relatively lucrative occupational placement.

The U.S. census is one of the most popular resources for genealogists. In particular, those taken 1880-1930 are the most useful for Jewish genealogists and provide extensive personal information. Knowing how to effectively analyze and use this information will contribute to successful researching.

Children who grow up in more highly educated families have better labormarket outcomes as adults than those who grow up in less educated families,but we do not know whether this is because education bestows parents withskills that make them better parents or because unobservable endowments thatcontribute to the parents' education levels are shared by their children. Thispaper attempts to improve our understanding of the causal processes thatcontribute to intergenerational mobility by exploiting variation in fathers'education induced by the WWII G.I. Bill. Identificatin rests on the timing of thewar: the GI Bill had different effects on different cohorts depending on theirlikelihood of military service and the probability that schooling had beencompleted before the war began. I find that a one year increase in a father'seducation reduces the probability that his child is retained in school by about2-3 percentage points. This implies that parental schooling levels have an affecton children's outcomes that is independent of their innate ability and suggeststhat public policies aimed at increasing educational attainment may haveimportant intergenerational effects.

Despite robust growth in real GDP per capita in the last three decades, U.S. poverty rates have changed very little. We summarize some basic facts about poverty in the United States, relying on a combination of previously published data from the Census Bureau and our own tabulations based on Current Population Survey data. We then discuss and evaluate four determinants of changes in the poverty rate that have been advanced in the literature: the impact of labor market opportunities; the role of changes in family structure; the role played by government antipoverty programs; and the role of immigration.

This paper examines the relationship between relative income and mortality. Our research is motivated by recent literature that posits that, holding individual income fixed, those whose income are low relative to the incomes of those in a reference group will have worse health. We develop an empirical model in which an individual's health is a function of his or her own income and the incomes of those who live in the same geographical area. We show how this individual-level model can be estimated using semi-aggregated data on the mortality rates of people categorized by age, race, gender, and place of residence. The model is estimated using mortality data from the 1980 and 1990 Compressed Mortality Files, merged with income data from the 1980 and 1990 5% Public Use samples of the US Census. We find no evidence that having relatively wealthy neighbors, holding own income fixed, is associated with higher mortality. Instead, we find evidence that among some demographic and age groupsin particular working-aged black maleshaving relatively wealthy neighbors is associated with lower mortality. For example, among younger (aged 2564) black men, an increase in the income of others is estimated to have a beneficial effect on mortality that is 40% as large as an equivalent increase in own income.

In this paper we identify social interactions in welfare participation. Since different social effects have different policy implications, we separately identify the contribution of stigma and information. Using US census data, we find that social interactions affect welfare participation decisions-in line with previous empirical studies-and that information is more important than stigma. This suggests that the large share of eligible nonparticipants may be due mainly to inferential problems in the process of social learning. We also find significant differences in these effects across races/ethnicities. White Americans appear to be stigmatized more by other White Americans than by other races. The opposite holds for the two minorities we consider, Black and Hispanic Americans. Our findings suggest that the presence of different "welfare cultures" is more likely due to information sharing and social learning than different attitudes toward work. We perform robustness tests to address problems of unobserved group effects, self-selection, and alternative identifying restrictions. Each broadly confirm this initial results.

This thesis uses ordinary least squares (OLS) as well as instrumental variable (IV) regressions to test whether the number of H-1B visa applicants has an effect on the wages or employment level of high-skill native workers. The paper examines (1) the effects of IT immigrants on laborers in fields that are complements to IT, (2) the role that native migration may play in obscuring results in regional immigration studies such as this one, (3) whether the effects of high-skilled immigrants in the architecture/engineering/surveying field and the education field differ significantly from the effects of high-skilled immigrants in the IT field. The paper concludes that the effects on laborers in jobs that should be complements to IT jobs are not significant, that the role of native migration is unclear, and that the architecture/engineering/surveying effects do significantly differ from the effects in IT. With regard to how IPUMS was used in this study: In-state and out-of-state migration data was used as part of this study to determine the effects of H-1B immigrants on native worker income and employment. The migration data was used to test whether native migration was blurring the results of the overall immigration study.

Migration now encompasses parts of the world that it did not previously, while there have been fewer migrants from the traditional countries of origin. No longer dominated by outflows from Europe to a handful of destinations, the number and variety of sending regions has increased, and there has been growth in movements from Africa, Asia, and Latin America. New cultures and ways of life are changing the structures of places throughout the US, making this migration an important topic of study. In contrast to other movements, African movements have not been considered in great detail. While there has also been an increasing trend toward movement, including secondary movement, to small and mid-sized cities, research on destinations has to a great extent neglected these locations. This is unfortunate, as the relative impact of migration on these cities as well as the impact of these cities on new arrivals, can be considerable, if not greater, than on larger cities. Further, while earlier movements consisted of economic migrants, new movements have also resulted from political upheaval and ethnic persecution throughout the world, leading to increased refugee movements. With these new movements, one type of immigrant intermediary has played an increasingly dominant role. Both state and voluntary resettlement agencies (VOLAGs) have impacted the settlement patterns of refugees across the US. Long-standing, widely supported migration models, though, have neglected the role of these intermediaries in the process of resettlement.Through the analysis of US Census data and Office of Refugee Resettlement data, and through the use of in depth interviews with African refugees from a variety of different countries and ethnic groups, community leaders, and agency representatives, this dissertation addresses these gaps in migration research. It considers the processes that underlie observed settlement and adjustment patterns with particular attention given to the role of the resettlement programs and voluntary resettlement agencies (VOLAGs) and their effectiveness. In summary, the overriding questions of this dissertation research are the following: What factors affect the choice of destination locations of refugees, and what factors influence the adjustment of refugees once they have arrived in the US? More specifically, this research seeks to understand to what degree VOLAGs play a role in determining the pathways and destinations of refugees, and in the adjustment of refugees.Analysis of secondary data provides evidence that refugee populations are being resettled to locations that have not historically received foreign-born e.g., North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Vermont, Kentucky, and Missouri. Analysis of more recent flows of African refugees to the US shows that they are being resettled, and moving on their own, as secondary migrants to states like Minnesota and Ohio; and not to the historically more common states, like California and Florida. Qualitative analysis of interviews with refugees and agency representatives demonstrates that VOLAGs clearly have an impact on the location patterns of refugees. With regard to adjustment, in the case of refugees, the role of VOLAGs and policy in the US must be considered within the process of adjustment. Refugees are a unique group, as contextual, controllable, forces may play a role in their adjustment. VOLAGs can counteract some of the barriers to adjustment that refugees face. Money and social services allocated to refugees, in addition to the locations where VOLAGs choose to place refugees impact in what way, and how fast adjustment occurs.

Megatrends are large social, economic, or political changes that are slow to formhowever, once in place, their influence can last decades. Demographics are a type of megatrend, and even though these trends are somewhat easy to spot, few, if any, investors focus enough on demographic trends as they make their investment decisions. During his investment career, Dr. Bob Froehlich has had the opportunity to travel the globe. He has witnessed firsthand the evolving demographic changes taking place around the world. These unique demographic trends can create investment opportunities, if you understand the link between demographics and investments. There are hundreds of demographic trends developing around the world, and Investment Megatrends explains the dramatic power and influence of these demographic trends on the world of investments. From identifying four prominent global shifts to presenting the number-crunching behind the reasons for their existence, this book provides you with a map of the pitfalls and opportunities of demographic data, what to look for, and where. Froehlich offers practical investment strategies and ideas you can implement to benefit from these major demographic shifts: * Global Shift #1: The Ponce de Leon Effect: Focusing on the American Baby Boomers * Global Shift #2: The Walls Keep on Tumbling Down: Focusing on Eastern European Workers * Global Shift #3: The Rising Sun Is Clearly Setting: Focusing on the Aging Japanese Population * Global Shift #4: Napoleon Was Right: Focusing on the Chinese Consumer GenerationInvestment Megatrends concludes with a detailed discussion of how you can develop an Investment Megatrend Portfolio over the next ten years. Filled with in-depth insight and expert advice, Investment Megatrends can help serious investors profittoday and tomorrowfrom some of the most important global demographic shifts of our lifetime.