Leonard A. Carlson

THE EARNINGS OF WOMEN AND ETHNIC MINORITIES, 1959-1979

Using 1980 Census data, the authors present estimates of annual earnings equations for twelve ethnic and racial groups, by gender, for 1979, and compare their results with an earlier studys estimates for 1959 and 1969. All minority men and women except Asian Indian and Japanese men earned less than white men in the years for which data were available. The earnings gap for most groups of men and women, however, declined over those years, and the portion of that gap that might be assignable to discrimination (the unexplained “residual”) also declined. A notable exception was white women, whose mean earnings relative to white mens changed little between 1969 and 1979, even when corrected for differences in productive characteristics.

A theory of residential location decisions of two-worker households

Abstract This paper presents a model of the residential location of a household with two members working in separate urban employment centers. A three-dimensional bid-rent surface is developed and compared with the bid-rent surfaces for three other types of land users. The resulting bid-rent surfaces are used to describe the location and shape of the regions where these various types of households will choose to reside in an urban community.

Labor Supply, the Acquisition of Skills, and the Location of Southern Textile Mills, 1880-1900

This paper offers the hypothesis that the development of the textile industry in the South was shaped by the fact that by 1870 most experienced workers lived in the Piedmont. Thus, a firm which wished to hire experienced workers would have been led to choose the Piedmont; similarly, mills producing more difficult finer count cloth would have chosen the Piedmont in order to hire experienced workers. Finally, the persistence of a virtually all white workforce may be explained by the fact that most experienced workers were white and would have resisted working in integrated mills. FOLLOWING the Civil War the South emerged as the dominant textile manufacturing region in the United States. As the number of mills grew and production expanded, large numbers of southerners were drawn out of agriculture to work in factories for the first time. The role of recruiting workers to operate these mills and the legacy of the antebellum history of the industry are used below to explain three puzzling aspects of the industry in the South: 1) the building of mills largely in the Piedmont

Voting with one's feet: A brief note on the case of public welfare and the American Indian

ConclusionThis brief Note has found that the location decisions of the American Indian are influenced by geographic AFDC differentials. In particular, the American Indian population is apparently strongly attracted to high welfare areas. This finding may be interpreted as yet further support for the Tiebout hypothesis of ‘voting with ones feet,’ with the Indian consumer-voter in this case ‘balloting’ in terms of welfare services. In addition, like the studies by Cebula (1978), Chao and Renas (1975), Glantz (1974), Greenwood and Anderson (1974), Pack (1973), and Sommers and Suits (1973), this set of results provides additional evidence that the current welfare system distorts spatial resource allocation; presumably, such distortions are avoidable under a standardized welfare system.

Land Allotment and the Decline of American Indian Farming

The Dawes Act of 1887 empowered the President of the United States to institute a massive land reform designed, in part, to induce American Indians to become farmers by giving each family title to a 160-acre parcel of land.’ The reformers who fervently worked for the passage of the Dawes Act believed that the property right created by the allotment of existing reservations would provide the incentives and the environment needed to make Indians into farmers. By all accounts this program was a dismal failure: Indians did not become farmers and the years which followed the passage of the Dawes Act saw a steady decline in the land base owned by Indians and available for future development. The origins of this failure, however, have not been examined by economic historians. Did Indians simply refuse to become farmers, despite inducements to do so, or were they in fact responding to economic incentives? The conclusion reached in this paper is that the allotment system itself dis- couraged Indian farmers; given the appropriate incentives some Indians did make progress as farmers. The sections which follow begin with a brief historical sketch of the origins of the allotment policy and a discussion of the nature of Indian property rights before and after allotment. This characterization of Indian property rights is then used to develop a model of the impact of allotment on Indian farmers. The concluding sections consider whether this model

The Anthropometric History of Native Americans, c. 1820-1890

The trend of the height of Indian scouts in the U.S. Army born between ca. 1825 and 1875 is analyzed. Their average height of ca. 170 cm (67 in.) confirms that natives were tall compared to Europeans but were nearly the shortest among the rural populations in the New World. The trend in their height describes a slightly inverted U-shape with an increase between those born 1820-34 and 1835-39 of ca. 1.8 cm (0.7 in.) (p=0.000) and a subsequent slight decline after the Civil War. This implies that they were able to maintain and perhaps even improve their nutritional status through the Civil War, though harder times followed for those born thereafter. We also recalculate the heights of Native Americans in the Boas sample and find that the Plains Indians were shorter than most rural Americans. The trend in the height of Indians in the Boas sample is similar to that of the Scouts.

Toward the Anthropometric History of Native Americans c. 1820-1890

We analyze the height of Indian scouts hired by the US army after the Civil War. Their average height of 170 cm (67 in.) confirms that American natives were very tall compared to Europeans but were among the shortest segments of the rural populations in the New World. Their height was closer to that of the urban populations who experienced a much heavier disease load than rural populations living in a low population density environment. The trend in their height describes an inverted and elongated “U” shape with some increase in the late antebellum period and a subsequent decline after the Civil War. This implies that in spite of their considerable tribulations the Native American population was able to maintain and to some extent even improve their nutritional status through the Civil War, though harder times followed for those born thereafter.