Thomas N. Maloney

Latino Residential Isolation and the Risk of Obesity in Utah: The Role of Neighborhood Socioeconomic, Built-Environmental, and Subcultural Context

The prevalence rate of obesity in the United States has been persistently high in recent decades, and disparities in obesity risks are routinely observed. Both individual and contextual factors should be considered when addressing health disparities. This study examines how Latino-white spatial segregation is associated with the risk of obesity for Latinos and whites, whether neighborhood socioeconomic resources, the built environment, and subcultural orientation serve as the underlying mechanisms, and whether neighborhood context helps explain obesity disparities across ethnic and immigrant groups. The study was based on an extensive database containing self-reported BMI measures obtained from driver license records in Utah merged with census data and several GIS-based data. Multilevel analyses were performed to examine the research questions. For both men and women, Latino residential isolation is significantly and positively linked to the risk of obesity; after controlling for immigrant concentration, this effect gets amplified. Moreover, for men and women, the segregation effect is partly attributable to neighborhood SES and the built environment; and only for women is it partly attributable to obesity prevalence in the neighborhood. Place matters for individual risk of obesity for both men and women and there are multifarious pathways linking residence to obesity. Among the demographic, socioeconomic, physical, and cultural aspects of neighborhood context examined in this study, perhaps the most modifiable environment features that could prevent weight gain and its associated problems would be the built environmental factors such as greenness, park access, and mixed land use.

Wage Compression and Wage Inequality Between Black and White Males in the United States, 1940–1960

The gap between the mean wages of black men and white men in the United States narrowed substantially between 1940 and 1950. There was, however, almost no change in this wage gap between 1950 and 1960. Some of this discontinuity in the path of black progress can be explained by general changes in the wage structure—wage compression in the 1940s and slight expansion in the 1950s. However, most of the gains of the 1940s were driven by race-specific factors, including increasing relative wages controlling for worker characteristics. These race-specific gains ceased in the 1950s.

Making the Effort: The Contours of Racial Discrimination in Detroit’s Labor Markets, 1920–1940

In 1940 the Ford Motor Company employed half of the black men in Detroit but only 14 percent of the whites. We find that black Detroiters were concentrated at Ford because they were excluded from working elsewhere. Those most affected were young married black men. A Ford job was virtually the only opportunity they had to earn a family wage; but to keep it, they had to put out the extra effort that Ford required. White married men in Detroit had better employment opportunities elsewhere, so they tended to avoid Ford or leave very quickly.

Living Standards in Black and White: Evidence from the Heights of Ohio Prison Inmates, 1829 – 1913

The use of height data to measure living standards is now a well-established method in the economic history literature. Moreover, a number of core findings are widely agreed upon. There are still some populations, places, and times, however, for which anthropometric evidence remains limited. One such example is 19th century African-Americans in the Northern US. Here, we use new data from the Ohio state prison to track heights of Black and White men incarcerated between 1829 and 1913. We corroborate the well-known mid-century height decline among White men. We find that Black men were shorter than White men, throughout the century controlling for a number of characteristics. We also find a pattern of height decline among Black men in mid-century similar to that found for White men.

Degrees of Inequality: The Advance of Black Male Workers in the Northern Meat Packing and Steel Industries before World War II

Recent major works on long-term racial inequality in the labor market revolve around competing hypotheses concerning the importance of human capital factors (Smith and Welch 1989) and government policy (Donohue and Heckman 1991) in promoting black advance. There is, however, another line of thinking which emphasizes the importance of experimentation and “demand-side learning”: employers’ gaining access to accurate information about the abilities of black workers and adjusting their beliefs in accordance with this information.

Neighborhood socioeconomic status and BMI differences by immigrant and legal status: evidence from Utah.

We build on recent work examining the BMI patterns of immigrants in the US by distinguishing between legal and undocumented immigrants. We find that undocumented women have relative odds of obesity that are about 10 percentage points higher than for legal immigrant women, and their relative odds of being overweight are about 40 percentage points higher. We also find that the odds of obesity and overweight status vary less across neighborhoods for undocumented women than for legal immigrant women. These patterns are not found among immigrant men: undocumented men have lower rates of obesity (by about 6 percentage points in terms of relative odds) and overweight (by about 12 percentage points) than do legal immigrant men, and there is little variation in the impact of neighborhood context across groups of men. We interpret these findings in terms of processes of acculturation among immigrant men and women.

Socio-economic status and fertility decline: Insights from historical transitions in Europe and North America

The timings of historical fertility transitions in different regions are well understood by demographers, but much less is known regarding their specific features and causes. In the study reported in this paper, we used longitudinal micro-level data for five local populations in Europe and North America to analyse the relationship between socio-economic status and fertility during the fertility transition. Using comparable analytical models and class schemes for each population, we examined the changing socio-economic differences in marital fertility and related these to common theories on fertility behaviour. Our results do not provide support for the hypothesis of universally high fertility among the upper classes in pre-transitional society, but do support the idea that the upper classes acted as forerunners by reducing their fertility before other groups. Farmers and unskilled workers were the latest to start limiting their fertility. Apart from these similarities, patterns of class differences in fertility varied significantly between populations.

Occupation and fertility on the frontier: Evidence from the state of Utah

BACKGROUND Most of what we know about fertility decline in the United States comes from aggregate (often state or county level) data sources. It is difficult to identify variation in fertility change across socio-economic classes in such data, although understanding such variation would provide deeper insight into the history of the fertility transition. OBJECTIVE We use rich micro-level data to examine differences across occupational classes in fertility levels and in the timing and pace of change in fertility in the US state of Utah in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. METHODS Our evidence comes from the Utah Population Database, which contains several generations of linked family histories, including information on residents of Utah from the mid-1800s to the present. We use standard linear regression models to identify variation in fertility across birth cohorts and occupational classes as well as cohort-occupation interaction effects (to identify differences across classes in the pace of change over time) RESULTS Families of white collar workers led changes in many fertility-related behaviors, particularly those tied to the start of family life (marriage age and first birth interval). Farm families had high fertility levels and added children into late ages, although they also experienced declining fertility. CONCLUSIONS Examination of detailed micro-level data on fertility change identifies important differences in the patterns of change which may be tied to variation in relevant economic circumstances – for instance, the length of education and training required for particular occupations, or the need for family-based labor on the farm.

Migration in the 21st century : rights, outcomes, and policy

Human beings, even nomads, have always lived in communities – extremely few humans can thrive in isolation. When a group of people moves from one territory to another, that is called migration, the new arrivals are immigrants, and they are also aliens in that land until they achieve citizenship either by permission or by conquest. Over the centuries, the law relating to the rights of aliens has proven to be one of the most significant and controversial topics of international law. The body of law relates to at least two broad issues: What are the rights of aliens to enter a foreign territory? What are the rights of aliens once they have entered a foreign territory, either legally or illegally? The first task of this chapter is to set out the basic legal parameters under which migration has occurred and will likely occur in the near future. By what law is migration governed? By what rules does it even make sense to speak of “illegal immigrants?” Then we will take a look at some of the historical approaches to the law and policy of migration.

Ghettos and Jobs in History: Neighborhood Effects on African American Occupational Status and Mobility in World War I-Era Cincinnati

This article examines how residence in racially segregated neighborhoods affected the job prospects of African American men in the late 1910s. The analysis focuses on one northern city—Cincinnati, Ohio. The evidence comes from a new longitudinal dataset containing information on individuals linked from the 1920 census to World War I selective service registration records. The results indicate that black male residents of Cincinnatis west end ghetto held occupations similar to those of black men in other Cincinnati neighborhoods and experienced similar rates of upward occupational mobility. Surprisingly, black men in the west end experienced lower rates of downward occupational mobility than did black men in other parts of the city.