Mesa Verde National Park, in Southwestern Colorado, preserves and interprets an archaeological region of much importance and beauty. Its famous cliff dwellings are ancestral homes to many contemporary Pueblo Indians, and the park is a significant positive factor for many contemporary American...

This research uses data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) to describe and model developmental trajectories across middle childhood. Our sample consists of approximately 1,000 children of NLSY women who were age 6-7 in either 1986 or 1988. Assessments of PIAT math and reading...

The impact on success of motivation, risk aversion, social capital, and a host of other "noncognitive" characteristics is assessed using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). Our intragenerational analysis uses a sample of men first observed in their 20s, and relates these traits...

The basic idea of program evaluation is both simple and appealing. Program outcomes are measured and compared to some minimum performance standard or threshold. In practice, however, evaluation is quite difficult. Two fundamental problems of outcome measurement must be addressed. The first,...

In many industries, such as higher education, hospitals, and museums, nonprofit organizations control great wealth. Public and private donations, tax subsidies, and volunteered services have typically made that wealth accumulation possible. In return for the various forms of assistance,...

The purpose of this study is to identify, describe, and explain extended family caregiving networks that African-American families use to provide care to elderly family members. The extended network was conceptualized to include four dimensions: different kinds of kin and non-kin, different...

This paper adapts the heterogeneous agent dynamic general equilibrium model of labor earnings developed by Heckman, Lochner, and Taber (1998a) to estimate the effect of tax reform on human capital accumulation. The model allows for both schooling and on-the-job training. I estimate it on micro...

Few of the current major efforts to improve urban schools adequately appreciate the extent to which the problematic social climate of urban schools can undermine the implementation of even very good ideas. Thus, program after program comes and goes with little lasting impact. This paper uses...

This paper uses longitudinal data to estimate cohort changes in earnings trajectories. Among male workers turning 21 before 1980, we find that more than six in ten (60%) of all male workers and seven in ten (71%) of college-educated male workers attained earnings levels by age 30 that were at...

A randomized experiment of Comer's School Development Program was conducted in 23 middle schools in Prince George's County, Maryland. It showed that Comer schools implemented some of the program's central elements better than control schools, but not all or even most of them. This shortfall in...