The socioeconomic performance of today's workers depends not only on parental skills, but also on the average skills of the ethnic group in the parent's generation (or ethnic capital). This paper investigates the link between the ethnic externality and ethnic neighborhoods. The evidence...

The rapid growth in the number of foreign students enrolled in American universities has transformed the higher education system, particularly at the graduate level. Many of these newly minted doctorates remain in the United States after receiving their doctoral degrees, so that the foreign...

This paper uses the 1970, 1980, and 1990 Public Use Samples of the U.S. Census to trace the evolution of immigrant participation in welfare programs during the past two decades. The data indicate that immigrant participation in welfare programs is on the rise, and that the dollar costs...

More able parents tend to have more able children. While few would question the validity of this statement, there is little large-scale evidence on the intergenerational transmission of IQ scores. Using a larger and more comprehensive dataset than previous work, we are able to estimate the...

This paper applies direct tests for adverse selection and moral hazard in the market for child care. A unique data set containing quality measures of various characteristics of child care provided by 746 rooms in 400 centers, as well as the evaluation of the same attributes by 3,490 affiliated...

We use data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) to examine trends in child support payments over the past thirty years and to assess five different explanations for these trends: inflation, the shift to unilateral divorce, changes in marital status composition, changes in men's and...

In recent years, the renewed strength of immigration to the United States has sparked a debate about the economic effects of immigration. A central issue in this debate has been the fiscal impact of immigrants. Most research in this area has adopted a static, cross-section approach in assessing...

This paper examines the impact of Prohibition on alcohol consumption. Since data on both the price and quantity of alcohol are unavailable during the Prohibition period, it is not possible to estimate Prohibition's impact on either the supply or demand for alcohol. Assuming the existence of a...

This paper uses the 1970, 1980, and 1990 Public Use Samples of the U.S. Census to document what happened to immigrant earnings in the 1980s, and to determine if pre-1980 immigrant flows reached earnings parity with natives. The relative entry wage of successive immigrant cohorts declined by 9...

The 1960s ushered in a new era in U.S. demographic history characterized by significantly lower fertility rates and smaller family sizes. What catalyzed these changes remains a matter of considerable debate. This paper exploits idiosyncratic variation in the language of "Comstock" statutes,...