Suchergebnisse

Immigrants to the United States tend to have characteristics in common with native-born populations that are disproportionately incarcerated. The perception that immigration adversely affects crime rates led to legislation in the 1990s that particularly increased punishment of criminal aliens. In fact, immigrants have much lower institutionalization (incarceration) rates than the native bornon the order of one-fifth the rate of natives. More recently arrived immigrants have the lowest relative incarceration rates, and this difference increased from 1980 to 2000. We present a model of immigrant self-selection that suggests why, despite poor labor market outcomes, immigrants may have better incarceration outcomes than the native born. We examine whether the improvement in immigrants' relative incarceration rates over the last three decades is linked to increased deportation, immigrant self-selection, or deterrence. Our evidence suggests that deportation is not driving the results. Rather, the process of migration selects individuals who are more responsive to deterrent effects than the average native. Immigrants who were already in the country reduced their relative institutionalization probability over the decades; and the newly arrived immigrants in the 1980s and 1990s seem to be particularly unlikely to be involved in criminal activity, consistent with increasingly positive selection along this dimension.

Investigates the impact of recent immigrants in NJ on the wages & employment of native-born individuals, drawing on 1980-1990 data from the Public Use Microdata Sample of the 1990 US Census. It is found that immigrants have little adverse impact on the wages & employment of native-born individuals, either in NJ or in the US generally. Native workers competing directly with immigrants for job, especially high school drop-outs, performed very well. This finding may be explained as a consequence of a complementarity of skills of native-born & immigrant workers or greater demand in low-skill industries that remain in NJ to take advantage of the large, low-skilled labor pool. However, several differences between the experience of NJ & the US are discerned. In particular, the wage distribution in NJ became more compressed over the 10 years of this study, while the US generally experienced greater income inequality. 5 Tables, 12 References. D. M. Smith

Abstract
During the 1990s economic expansion, the United States enjoyed both low inflation and low unemployment. Juhn, Murphy, and Topel (2002) point out that low unemployment for men in the 1990s was accompanied by historically high non-employment suggesting that the 1990s economy was not as strong as unemployment might indicate. We include women in the analysis and examine whether Phillips curve relationships between real compensation growth, changes in inflation, and labor market slackness are the same for men and women and whether measures of "non-employment" better capture underlying labor resource utilization. From 1965 to 2002 the increase in women's labor force participation more than offsets the decline for men, and low unemployment rates in the 1990s were accompanied by historically low overall non-employment rates. We find that women's measures of labor market slackness do as well as men's in explaining real compensation growth and changes in inflation after 1983.

The increase in childhood obesity over the past several decades, together with the associated health problems and costs, is raising grave concern among health care professionals, policy experts, children's advocates, and parents. Patricia Anderson and Kristin Butcher document trends in children's obesity and examine the possible underlying causes of the obesity epidemic. They begin by reviewing research on energy intake, energy expenditure, and "energy balance," noting that children who eat more "empty calories" and expend fewer calories through physical activity are more likely to be obese than other children. Next they ask what has changed in children's environment over the past three decades to upset this energy balance equation. In particular, they examine changes in the food market, in the built environment, in schools and child care settings, and in the role of parents—paying attention to the timing of these changes. Among the changes that affect children's energy intake are the increasing availability of energy-dense, high-calorie foods and drinks through schools. Changes in the family, particularly an increase in dual-career or single-parent working families, may also have increased demand for food away from home or pre-prepared foods. A host of factors have also contributed to reductions in energy expenditure. In particular, children today seem less likely to walk to school and to be traveling more in cars than they were during the early 1970s, perhaps because of changes in the built environment. Finally, children spend more time viewing television and using computers. Anderson and Butcher find no one factor that has led to increases in children's obesity. Rather, many complementary changes have simultaneously increased children's energy intake and decreased their energy expenditure. The challenge in formulating policies to address children's obesity is to learn how best to change the environment that affects children's energy balance.