The Great Migration–the massive migration of African Americans out of the rural South to largely urban locations in the North, Midwest, and West–was a landmark event in US history. Our paper shows that this migration increased mortality of African Americans born in the early twentieth...

We examine Becker's (1960) contention that children are “normal.” For the cross-section of non-Hispanic white married couples in the United States, we show that when we restrict comparisons to similarly educated women living in similarly expensive locations, completed fertility is positively...

We examine Becker's (1960) contention that children are "normal." For the cross section of non-Hispanic white married couples in the U.S., we show that when we restrict comparisons to similarly-educated women living in similarly-expensive locations, completed fertility is positively correlated...

How significant was the economic progress of African Americans in the United States between 1970 and 2000? In this paper the authors examine this issue for black men 25 to 55 years of age who live in 14 large U.S. metropolitan areas. They present the evidence that significant racial disparities...

This investigation of the effect of sexual orientation on earnings employs General Social Survey data from 1989–96. Depending largely on the definition of sexual orientation used, earnings are estimated as having been between 14% and 16% lower for gay men than for heterosexual men, and...

US labor markets have experienced rising inequality over the past 30 years—as evidenced by an increased gap in wages earned by high-skill workers (e.g., college graduates) and low-skill workers (e.g., high school graduates). Empirical evidence documenting this evolution of inequality comes...

A standard object of empirical analysis in labor economics is a modified Mincer wage function in which an individual's log wage is a function of education, experience, and race. We analyze this approach in a context where individuals live and work in different locations (thus facing different...

This paper documents a little-noticed feature of US labor markets—very large variation in the labor supply of married women across cities. We focus on cross-city differences in commuting times as a potential explanation for this variation. We start with a model in which commuting times...

In standard economic theory, labor supply decisions depend on the complete set of prices: wages and the prices of relevant consumption goods. Nonetheless, most theoretical and empirical work in labor supply studies ignore prices other than wages. We address the question of whether the common...

We examine Becker's (1960) contention that children are normal. For the cross section of non-Hispanic white married couples in the U.S., we show that when we restrict comparisons to similarly-educated women living in similarly-expensive locations, completed fertility is positively correlated...