An evaluation of the American Community Survey: results from the Oregon test site

The American Community Survey (ACS) is a Census Bureau product designed to provide accurate and timely demographic and economic indicators on an annual basis for both large and small geographic areas within the United States. Operational plans for Census 2010 call for ACS to replace the decennial census long form (Census LF), pending the results of evaluation studies. This plan represents a major change in that variables that traditionally have been collected on a “snapshot” basis once every 10 years would be collected on a “rolling” annual basis. Using a loss function analysis and other tools, this paper reports preliminary findings from a comparison of ACS and Census 2000 results in Multnomah County, Oregon, one of five national “local expert” test sites set up to compare ACS data collected at the time of Census 2000. The preliminary findings suggest that there are notable differences between some of the corresponding variables found in the ACS and Census LF that require more detailed examination. For example, the loss function analysis reveals notable differences for race and disability variables. In other comparisons of corresponding variables between ACS and Census 2000, differences are found within each of the four major areas of interest: (1) demographic characteristics, (2) social characteristics, (3) economic characteristics, and (4) housing characteristics, with housing characteristics showing the least similarity overall. These results also suggest that more detailed examinations are needed to understand differences between corresponding variables collected by ACS and the Census LF.     

欧盟国家就业率变化及相关政策对其的影响

就业率是反映经济增长水平的重要指标,欧盟就业率的变化的主要特点是:各国就业率水平不均衡,整体变化小;青年劳动力就业率相对较低;女性就业率有显著提高;老年劳动力就业趋势在各成员国中表现不同。影响就业的相关政策主要包括税收制度、救济金制度以及商业和劳动力法规。由于欧盟各国所实行的政策存在很大的差别,因此它们对劳动力市场的作用方式不同,对就业率的影响也相应地存在着很大的差距。     

Population Policies in Developed Countries: How do Australia’S Policies Compare?

This paper compares international population policies with respect to population growth, fertility and immigration, and discusses current attitudes to the demographic situation in developed countries. Only Canada, the United States and Australia have a policy of continuing high immigration, and Australia’s migrant intake per head of population is considerably higher than for the other two countries. An emerging philosophy in Britain and Europe is a focus on “child quality” and the well-being of a near stationary population, rather than continued population growth. There is also an awareness that immigration is not a solution to the ageing “problem” and that there are more efficient non-demographic means of coping with an older population.     

Development challenges and opportunities confronting economies in transition

“Economies in Transition” (hereafter EIT or EITs) are countries in the process of shifting from “command” to “more open”, liberalized, free market economic systems. In addition to achieving major structural adjustments to their economies, the transformational process requires the introduction of a high degree of transparency in both the economic and political spheres of society. The transfer of state assets to private ownership is one part of the process as well, as is the creation or opening of “political space” that permits the emergence of private enterprise, multiparty political systems, and the introduction of a broad range of non-governmental organizations that carry out missions and functions which people themselves prefer to perform. Thus, the process of economic transformation requires a major socio-political-economic paradigm shift...one that places people and their needs at the center of the transformational process. The process is extremely difficult to achieve and is fraught with many dangers for countries that enter into it without substantial guidance from more economically advanced countries. This paper reports on the social development successes and failures of 31 economies in transition over the 15-year period 1990–2005. Included in the analysis are EITs located in East and South East Asia (N = 5), Central and Eastern Europe (N = 10), all 12 members of the Commonwealth of Independent States including the Russian Federation (N = 12), Turkey (N = 1), and the three Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania (N = 3). Using the author’s extensively pre-tested Weighted Index of Social Progress (WISP), the paper reports data at three levels of analysis: (1) WISP performances for all 31 EITs-as-a-group; (2) sub-regional performances on the WISP and its component sub-indexes for each of the six EIT sub-regions included in the analysis; and (3) country-specific performances on the WISP for each of the 31 countries included in the analysis. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2006 International Symposium and Lecture Series on Social Policy sponsored by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and held on the campus of Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China, 24–27 August, 2006.     

Time preference, international migration, and social security

This paper analyzes both the formation of long-run migration incentives and the consequences of a regime change from “autarky” to “free migration” in an overlapping-generations framework with two countries. Under autarky the countries may differ with respect to their aggregate savings rate or with respect to their pension-wage ratio. It is shown that an individual prefers to live in a country where the capital-labor ratio is close to the Golden Rule level and where his characteristics are relatively scarce. Both the migration incentives and the consequences of free migration are determined by these two effects. Received: 2 March 1998/Accepted: 10 February 1999     

Feeding the Illusion of Growth and Happiness: A Reply to Hagerty and Veenhoven

In a rebuttal of Easterlin (1995), Hagerty and Veenhoven (2003) analyze data for 21 countries and conclude that “growing national income does go with greater happiness.” But the U.S. experience does not support this conclusion, which they obtain only by mixing together two sets of noncomparable surverys. Moreover, the result of studies of European countries and the U.S. by other scholars do not support their claim either. Furthermore, the experience of 6 out of 7 of their non-European countries fail to support their claim. Finally, if countries in their analysis with quite similar growth rates are grouped, one finds quite disparate trends in happiness, suggesting that factors other than growth in income are responsible for the differential trends in happiness. Instead of straining to feed the illusion that a focus on economic growth will create happiness, an approach is needed that explores the impact on national trends in life satisfaction, not just of material goods, but also of family life, health, work utility, and the like.     

Banking on fewer children: financial intermediation,fertility and economic development

This paper shows that financial intermediation can influence fertility and labor allocation decisions by raising market wages. The increase in wages induces some households to abandon “traditional” labor intensive methods of production managed at the household level and supply labor to “modern” sector firms. Since it is optimal for households in the modern sector to have fewer children, the labor allocation decision leads to lower national fertility. A panel VAR using financial intermediation, fertility and industrial employment share data in 87 countries is estimated. The empirical results show that the data are consistent with the theoretical predictions. Received: 20 October 1997/Accepted: 31 August 1998     

Residential expansion as a continental threat to U.S. coastal ecosystems

Spatially extensive analysis of satellite, climate, and census data reveals human-environment interactions of regional or continental concern in the United States. A grid-based principal components analysis of Bureau of Census variables revealed two independent demographic phenomena, α-settlement reflecting traditional human settlement patterns and β-settlement describing relative population growth correlated with recent construction in non-agricultural areas, notably in coastal, desert, and “recreational” counties and around expanding metropolitan areas. Regression tree analysis showed that β-settlement was differentially associated with five distinct combinations of seasonality, summer heat or cool, intensity of agriculture, and extent of “barren” land. Beta-settlement was greatest in coastal and desert areas, and coincided with national concentrations of threatened and endangered species.     

Housing Adjustment Among Immigrants in Israel: Application of Complementary Non-Metric and Metric Techniques

This study applies two different complementary statistical techniques to examine the structure and determinants of homeownership and consumption of household goods among immigrants in Israel. Findings from partial-order analysis (POSAC) reveal significant differences between immigrant groups by type, rather than level, of household characteristics. Suppliers of entertainment (television) and of information-communication (computer) are the items that most strongly distinguish between immigrants. The joint direction of the partially ordered space corresponds with home and car ownership. Immigrant groups are dispersed in different parts of the household typology; with increased duration of residence in Israel immigrants move, albeit in varied rhythms, toward improved housing conditions. A complementary logistic regression analysis, which controls for socio-demographic variation and detailed tenure in Israel, show a likelihood of convergence of immigrants from all origin countries with the core native-born group in owning a home. For other household goods, the findings largely coincide with the typology derived from POSAC. The findings are discussed in reference to three conceptual expectations of “cultural norms”, “adjustment”, and “structural-environmental considerations”.

Population,projections, and policy: A cautionary perspective

Population projections depend on censuses, vital statistics and sample surveys, all of which have deficiencies that are most marked in the less developed countries (LDCs). Long-range projections by international agencies have recently undergone major revisions, while forecasts of the U.S. population have changed drastically over the past four years. The United Nations typically prepares “high,” “medium” and “low” projections. Even the high projection contains optimistic assumptions about fertility decline, while assumptions of constant or increasing fertility receive no serious attention. The paper suggests that high and constant fertility projections should receive more attention from policy makers, with medium estimates treated more as targets achievable only through considerable programmatic effort. At the same time, economic and social plans should be laid for dealing with the population sizes implied by the “high” variants.     

Population planning and change in Singapore

Population planning in Singapore has always been linked to economic planning. Lacking natural resources on an island 536 sq. kms. in size, the physical carrying capacity was not large so that the government had to resort to careful economic planning to overcome this constraint. The “stop at 2” population policy of 1965–87 was designed to support the economic plans to improve the quality of life of the people. Restraint of population growth was promoted as a necessary move serving the common good of Singaporeans as the country struggled in her early years of independence to build a nation. By 1983, however, Singapore switched from being antinatal to being pronatal. The environmental determinism school that influenced population planning gave way to environmental possibilism in which man is the main agent determining his own actions in the population-environment relationship. Technology has allowed the leadership of Singapore to make use of the global economy as its hinterland. By concentrating on the high-end service sector, such as mercantile banking or currency markets, Singapore has used the new information age of computers to take advantage of the changing world market. The “quality” population required to do this job is missing, thus the “have 3 or more if you can afford it” policy.     

Social Stratification and Consumption Patterns in Turkey

In this article, by analyzing consumption practices of Turkish households, I attempted to identify whether there are distinctions between different social classes in Turkey. Stated another way, I assessed and explored the impact of socio-economic forces on consumption patterns, taste and lifestyle. In doing so, I tested emprically, two theoretical approaches, Bourdieu’s “reproduction theory” and Giddens “class Structuration thesis”. A total of eight dependent variables are analyzed in terms of the linkages between those selected consumption items and social structure. In general, the emprical findings indicated that the intersection and reinforcement of social class variables, such as income, education, occupation, sector, and neighborhood differentiation, determined consumption patterns and lifestyle differences in Turkey.     

An Evaluation of Persons per Household (PPH) Estimates Generated by the American Community Survey: A Demographic Perspective

The American Community Survey (ACS) is a U.S. Census Bureau product designed to provide accurate and timely demographic and economic indicators on an annual basis for both large and small geographic areas within the United States. Operational plans call for ACS to serve not only as a substitute for the decennial census long-form, but as a means of providing annual data at the national, state, county, and subcounty levels. In addition to being highly ambitious, this approach represents a major change in how data are collected and interpreted. Two of the major questions facing the ACS are its functionality and usability. This paper explores the latter of these two questions by examining “persons per household (PPH),” a variable of high interest to demographers and others preparing regular post-censal population estimates. The data used in this exploration are taken from 18 of the counties that formed the set of 1999 ACS test sites. The examination proceeds by first comparing 1-year ACS PPH estimates to Census 2010 PPH values along with extrapolated estimates generated using a geometric model based on PPH change between the 1990 and 2000 census counts. Both sets of estimates are then compared to annual 2001–2009 PPH interpolated estimates generated by a geometric model based on PPH from the 2000 census to the 2010 census. The ACS PPH estimates represent what could be called the “statistical perspective” because variations in the estimates of specific variables over time and space are viewed largely by statisticians with an eye toward sample error. The model-based PPH estimates represent a “demographic perspective” because PPH estimates are largely viewed by demographers as varying systematically and changing relatively slowly over time, an orientation stemming from theory and empirical evidence that PPH estimates respond to demographic and related determinants. The comparisons suggest that the ACS PPH estimates exhibit too much “noisy” variation for a given area over time to be usable by demographers and others preparing post-censal population estimates. These findings should be confirmed through further analysis and suggestions are provided for the directions this research could take. We conclude by noting that the statistical and demographic perspectives are not incompatible and that one of the aims of our paper is to encourage the U.S. Census Bureau to consider ways to improve the usability of the 1-year ACS PPH estimates.     

Poverty Diagnostics Using Poor Data: Strengthening the Evidence Base for Pro-Poor Policy Making in Lesotho

Increasingly national statistical agencies are being called upon to provide high quality data on a regular basis, to be used by governments for evidence-based policy development. Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) give impetus to this, and bring a prerequisite for comprehensive “poverty diagnosis”. Often the data that are required are not available, or are incomplete while the concepts that are to be used may be ambiguous or require adaptation to local conditions. The poverty analysis of Lesotho in this article represents a contribution towards the emerging culture of evidence-based policy-making in developing countries in that it explores changes in key poverty-related social indicators. Techniques for dealing with poor data are discussed and an approach to developing a poverty threshold adapted to the local conditions of Lesotho is described.     

The World Social Situation: Development Challenges at the Outset of a New Century

World social development has arrived at a critical turning point. Economically advanced nations have made significant progress toward meeting the basic needs of their populations; however, the majority of developing countries have not. Problems of rapid population growth, failing economies, famine, environmental devastation, majority-minority group conflicts, increasing militarization, among others, are pushing many developing nations toward the brink of social chaos. This paper focuses on worldwide development trends for the 40-year period 1970–2009. Particular attention is given to the disparities in development that exist between the world’s “rich” and “poor” countries as well as the global forces that sustain these disparities. The paper also discusses more recent positive trends occurring within the world’s “socially least developed countries” (SLDCs), especially those located in Africa and Asia, in reducing poverty and in promoting improved quality of life for increasing numbers of their populations.     

Immigration,ethnicity, and the loss of white students from California public schools, 1990–2000

This article investigates whether and the extent to which “white flight” from Hispanic and Limited English Proficient (LEP) students has been occurring in California’s public schools and further, examines the level (school or district) on which “white flight” may operate. Using school-level administrative data from the California Department of Education from 1990 to 2000, we estimate exponential growth rate models of white enrollment with school-level fixed effects. The results shed light on the implications of immigration for school segregation in the United States. The analysis indicates that white enrollment declined in response to increases in the number of Spanish-speaking LEP and Hispanic students, and that “white flight” from LEP or Hispanic students occurred more at the district than the school level in the case of primary schools, and at the school level for secondary schools. In addition, schools with higher percentages of Spanish LEP students in the school than the district, and with higher percentages in the district relative to the county, experienced greater losses in white enrollments than other schools, thus suggesting that higher levels of segregation in the wider metropolitan area accelerate white flight.     

Disentangling the Circularity in Sen’s Capability Approach: An Analysis of the Co-Evolution of Functioning Achievement and Resources

There is an ambiguity in Amartya Sen’s capability approach as to what constitutes an individual’s resources, conversion factors and valuable functionings. What we here call the “circularity problem” points to the fact that all three concepts seem to be mutually endogenous and interdependent. To econometrically account for this entanglement we suggest a panel vector autoregression approach. We analyze the intertemporal interplay of the above factors over a time horizon of 15 years using the BHPS data set for Great Britain, measuring individual well-being in functionings space with a set of basic functionings, comprising “being happy”, “being healthy”, “being nourished”, “moving about freely”, “being well-sheltered” and “having satisfying social relations”. We find that there are indeed functionings that are resources for many other functionings (viz. “being happy”) while other functionings (“being well-sheltered” and “having satisfying social relations”) are by and large independent, thus shedding light on a facet of the capability approach that has been neglected so far.     

A comparative perspective on intermarriage: Explaining differences among national-origin groups in the United States

Little is known about the validity of group-level theories of ethnic intermarriage despite the fact that such theories are often invoked in explaining why certain ethnic groups are “closed,” whereas others are relatively “open.” We develop a comparative perspective by analyzing the marriage choices of 94 national-origin groups in the United States, using pooled data from the Current Population Surveys, 1994–2006, and multilevel models in which individual and contextual determinants of intermarriage are included simultaneously. Our analyses show large differences in endogamy across groups. After taking compositional effects into account, we find that both structural and cultural group-level factors have significant effects on endogamy. Cultural explanations (which focus on the role of norms and preferences) play a more important role than structural explanations (which focus on meeting and mating opportunities). Our results reinforce the common but untested interpretation of endogamy in terms of group boundaries.     

“Healthy” Human Development Indices

In the Human Development Index (HDI), life expectancy is the only indicator used in modeling the dimension ‘a long and healthy life’. Whereas life expectancy is a direct measure of quantity of life, it is only an indirect measure of healthy years lived. In this paper we attempt to remedy this omission by introducing into the HDI the morbidity indicator, “expected lost healthy years” (LHE), used in the World Health Report Though LHE is only weakly correlated with life expectancy and displays considerable variation across countries, the ranking of nations using the adjusted HDI is very similar to that from the HDI. Nevertheless, there are some outlier countries (including large countries like China and the United States) that experience notable changes in rank. Given the considerable variation in the morbidity data across gender, we also adjust the Gender-related Development Index (GDI) in a similar fashion. The ranking using the adjusted GDI is very similar to that from the GDI, but it has a lower rank correlation with the HDI.