2006 - 2007 Dissertation Fellows

"Laboring for the Day: Casual and Migrant Workers, Urban Politics, and the Shaping of the Pacific Coast in the Mid-Twentieth Century," Alex Morrow, Department of History, Faculty Supervisor Jim Gregory, Department of History.

This dissertation tracks the changing economic context and cultural meaning of casual and migrant workers along the Pacific Coast of the United States from the 1920s to the 1960s. Placed within a particular temporal and geographic frame, this project seeks to understand the changing political economy of a distinct sector of America’s working poor. An object of scrutiny by public officials, social scientists, and the public, the presence of these workers in urban areas became the touch point for debates about race, industrial relations, social policy, and urban decline. Throughout the twentieth century, the subject of transient workers has continually reflected and enabled powerful symbols of class, race, and citizenship. "Laboring for the Day" lends past perspective to contemporary discourse about urban poverty and the working class through social and cultural historical methods.

"The Effects of Affirmative Action Policies in University Admissions on Human Capital Development of Minority Children: A Test of the Expectations Hypothesis" Ronald C. Caldwell Jr., Department of Economics, Faculty Supervisor Shelley Lundberg, Department of Economics.

It has been well documented that minority children leave primary school with lower acquired skill levels than their white counterparts. The causes of this “skill gap”, however, are not entirely known. This paper attempts to analyze one possible cause: the impact of perceived labor market discrimination on human capital investment decisions by minority parents and children. Using the recent changes in affirmative action laws regarding university admissions in California and Texas and NLSY79 data, we employ a difference-in-difference–in-difference methodology to test for changes in achievement test scores among minority children between the ages of 7 and 14. The results show a large, highly significant drop in minority test scores among thirteen and fourteen year old African-Americans and Hispanics in the affected states. Younger age groups show negative, but insignificant effects. These results suggest that expectations do play a role in human capital investment of minority children and that further research in this area may be warranted.