Previous work on social interactions analyzed the effects of nuclear family, peer, school, and neighborhood characteristics. This is the first paper showing that, independent of unobserved parent's characteristics, higher years of grandparents' schooling increase college attendance rates for...

Analysts disagree about whether the Civil Rights/Black Power eras lessened the influence of skin tone on education. The paper finds that, holding family background constant, the educational disadvantages of dark and very dark blacks persisted between younger and older age cohorts. On the other...

This paper contends that there is an alternative explanation of the positive relationship between using informal contacts and job tenure for some young men. Lower wages, wage growth, and expected job tenure may characterize those using contacts with little clout in the market. In such cases, the...

Despite the considerable research work, there are still conflicting views about the efficacy of the estimated relationship between religiosity and deviance. Some analysts contend that the relationship is spurious and is the by-product of left-out variables that alter both religiosity and...

There is considerable disagreement about the effects of informal contacts on earnings. Some researchers report higher earnings for those who found their jobs through such contacts, some report lower earnings, and some report no effects. This paper uses data from the National Longitudinal Survey...

This paper shows that communities with larger fractions of Catholics and Conservative Protestants have lower rates of teen childbearing ceteris paribus. The pattern of results does not appear to result from spurious correlation with unobservables but rather can be explained by a modified version...