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This paper analyses changes in segregation by race and ethnicity in the USA across 13 broad occupational groups over the period 1983-2002. It is found that overall segregation between Blacks and Non-Blacks modestly declined while overall segregation between Hispanics and Non-Hispancis significantly increased during this period. It is also found that Blacks and Hispanics remained underrepresented in higher-paying occupations and overrepresented in lower-paying occupations. However, Blacks tended to be less underrepresented in the former occupations and less overrepresented in the latter occupations than Hispanics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last five decades, immigration has profoundly transformed the population of metropolitan New York, long divided by race and class. The almost-forgotten 'underclass' debate established that New York was the nation's capital of concentrated poverty, which grew significantly worse during the 1970s and 1980s. Though more recent data show that New York has achieved a remarkable turnaround since 1990, most probably associated with immigration, it remains a city of economic extremes and stubbornly high poverty. Concern about where new immigrants—and their children—might fit into this matrix of urban inequality led several leading social scientists to hypothesise that some members of the second generation would be downwardly mobile. To investigate this possibility, in 1999 and 2000, the Immigrant Second Generation in Metropolitan New York (ISGMNY) surveyed 3,415 young people aged 18 to 32 years, from five immigrant and three native-born racial and ethnic backgrounds, about their life trajectories. This paper conducts an analysis of the contextual effects of the neighbourhoods in which respondents grew up on their later experiences in terms of educational attainment and labour market success. Using OLS and HLM modelling, we find small but consistent and theoretically interesting effects. In particular, growing up in a poor neighbourhood has a negative effect on later outcomes, while growing up in a black neighbourhood does not, once poverty is taken into account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The use of height data to measure living standards is now a well-established method in economics and the social sciences. However, there are still some populations, places, and times for which anthropometric evidence remains thin. One example is 19th century Mexicans born in Mexico and in the American West. This paper demonstrates that the statures of 19th century Mexicans born in Mexico remained approximately constant, while the statures of Mexicans born in the U.S. increased by nearly 4cm, indicating that although the two groups shared a common genetic background, their cumulative biological living conditions differed markedly. The BMIs of Mexicans born in Mexico remained constant, and the BMIs of Mexicans born in the U.S. were high initially but rapidly converged in the late 19th century. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In this paper unit-root tests for per capita output of 12 OECD countries are performed. Using traditional unit-root tests, it follows that the unit-root hypothesis cannot be rejected except for the US. However, following the approach of Perron (1989), which takes shifts in mean and/or trend into account, the null hypothesis of a unit-root can be rejected in most countries in our sample. In contrast to Perron, a method suggested by Christiano (1992) is used to determine the break date endogenously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Low-wage work is a defining feature in the lives of low-income families, who are challenged to achieve self-sufficiency through employment. This article offers a synthesis of theoretical concepts at the micro (individual), mezzo (group and community) and macro (social and political) levels to aid in understanding the human behavior and social environmental dimensions of low-wage work. The article concludes with a case vignette designed to illustrate the role that theory can play in informing social work practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the differences between the American and British International Political Economy (IPE). The author stated that IPE is about the complex linkages between economic and political activity at the level of international affairs. The dominant version of IPE is developed in the U.S., where most scholarship tends to hew close to the norms of conventional social science. In Great Britain, IPE is less wedded to scientific method and more ambitious in its agenda.

This article introduces the Review of Social Economy symposium on the basic income guarantee (BIG). It argues that there are several ways in which the BIG is consistent with social economics. First, the BIG is an attempt to meet the minimum material needs of US citizens and contribute to the common good. Second, important arguments for a BIG move beyond the positive-normative dichotomy. Finally, the BIG would help individuals function as social citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using an observed components decomposition to estimate permanent and temporary components of US real GNP, Campbell and Mankiw (1987) found that the estimated temporary component displays greater persistence than the estimated permanent component. This suggests that attempts to estimate separate permanent and temporary components in real GNP are unlikely to succeed. This finding is re-examined here using a longer real GNP series and a different decomposition, which guarantees that the estimated temporary component will be stationary. The resulting estimates of permanent and temporary output suggests that the temporary component displays no persistence and that the permanent component exhibits almost precisely the persistence of a random walk with drift. Cyclical real GNP is not more persistent than the trend. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]