Demographic Publications Research

• Almgren, G., (Forthcoming), Demographics: An Overview, Encyclopedia of social work.
  
  The abstract for this publication is not available.
  
  
• Hirschman, C.; Massey, D. S., (Forthcoming), Peoples and Places: The New American Mosaic, New faces in new places : the changing geography of American immigration, Massey, D. S., Russell Sage Foundation, New York.
  
  The abstract for this publication is not available.
  
  
• Western, B.; Pettit, B., (Forthcoming), Mass Imprisonment, Punishment and Inequality in America, Western, B., Russell Sage Foundation, New York.
  
  The abstract for this publication is not available.
  
  
• Abe-Kim, J.; Takeuchi, D. T.; Hong, S.; Zane, N.; Sue, S.; Spencer, M. S.; Appel, H.; Nicdao, E.; Alegria, M., (2007), Use of Mental Health-Related Services Among Immigrant and US-Born Asian Americans: Results From the National Latino and Asian American Study, American journal of public health, 97(1): 91.
  
  Objectives. We examined rates of mental health–related service use (i.e., any, general medical, and specialty mental health services) as well as subjective satisfaction with and perceived helpfulness of care in a national sample of Asian Americans, with a particular focus on immigration-related factors. Methods. Data were derived from the National Latino and Asian American Study (2002–2003). Results. About 8.6% of the total sample (n=2095) sought any mental health–related services; 34.1% of individuals who had a probable diagnosis sought any services. Rates of mental health–related service use, subjective satisfaction, and perceived helpfulness varied by birthplace and by generation. US-born Asian Americans demonstrated higher rates of service use than did their immigrant counterparts. Third-generation or later individuals who had a probable diagnosis had high (62.6%) rates of service use in the previous 12 months. Conclusions. Asian Americans demonstrated lower rates of any type of mental health–related service use than did the general population, although there are important exceptions to this pattern according to nativity status and generation status. Our results underscore the importance of immigration-related factors in understanding service use among Asian Americans.
  
  
• Bell, J. F.; Zimmerman, F. J.; Mayer, J. D.; Almgren, G. R.; Huebner, C. E., (2007), Associations between residential segregation and smoking during pregnancy among urban African-American women, Journal of Urban Health :Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine, 84: 3, 372.
  
  Approximately 10% of African-American women smoke during pregnancy compared to 16% of White women. While relatively low, the prevalence of smoking during pregnancy among African-American women exceeds the Healthy People 2010 goal of 1%. In the current study, we address gaps in extant research by focusing on associations between racial/ethnic residential segregation and smoking during pregnancy among urban African-American women. We linked measures of segregation to birth certificates and data from the 2000 census in a sample of US-born African-American women (n?=?403,842) living in 216 large US Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs). Logistic regression models with standard errors adjusted for multiple individual observations within MSAs were used to examine associations between segregation and smoking during pregnancy and to control for important socio-demographic confounders. In all models, a u-shaped relationship was observed. Both low segregation and high segregation were associated with higher odds of smoking during pregnancy when compared to moderate segregation. We speculate that low segregation reflects a contagion process, whereby salutary minority group norms are weakened by exposure to the more harmful behavioral norms of the majority population. High segregation may reflect structural attributes associated with smoking such as less stringent tobacco control policies, exposure to urban stressors, targeted marketing of tobacco products, or limited access to treatment for tobacco dependence. A better understanding of both deleterious and protective contextual influences on smoking during pregnancy could help to inform interventions designed to meet Healthy People 2010 target goals.
  
  
• Ellis, M., Holloway, S. R., Wright, R., and M. East. 2007. The Effects of Mixed-Race Households in Residential Segregation. Urban Geography 28(6): 554-577.
  
  This paper investigates how household-scale racial mixing affects measurements of neighborhood-scale racial segregation. This topic is increasingly important as mixed-race households are becoming more common across the United States. Specifically, our research asks two questions: What is the sensitivity of neighborhood racial segregation measures to levels of household-scale racial mixing? And what is the relationship between neighborhood racial diversity and the presence of mixed-race households? We answer these questions with an analysis that uses confidential long-form data from the 1990 U.S. census. These data provide information on household racial composition at the tract level. The results show that racial mixing within households has meaningful effects on measurements of neighborhood segregation, suggesting that patterns of mixed-race household formation and residential location condition understandings of neighborhood segregation dynamics. We demonstrate that mixed-race households are a disproportionate source of neighborhood diversity in the least racially plural neighborhoods. This article also reflects on the complications that mixed-race households pose for the interpretations of neighborhood-scale segregation and cautions against drawing conclusions about residential desegregation based on racial mixing in households.
  
  
• Ellis, M.; Wright, R.; Parks, V., (2007), Geography and the Immigrant Division of Labor, Economic Geography. 83(3): 255-282.
  
  Immigrants concentrate in particular lines of work. Most investigations of such employment niching have accented either the demand for labor in a limited set of mostly low-wage industries or the efficiency of immigrant networks in supplying that labor; space has taken a backseat or has been ignored. In contrast, this article's account of immigrant employment niching modulates insights built on social network theories with understandings derived from relative location. We do so by altering the thinking about employment niches as being metropolitan wide to considering them as local phenomena. Specifically, the analysis examines the intraurban variation in niching by Mexican, Salvadoran, Chinese, and Vietnamese men and women in four industries in Los Angeles. Niching is uneven; in some parts of the metropolitan area, these groups niche at high rates in these industries, whereas in others, there is no unusual concentration. We show how a group's propensity to niche in an industry is generally higher when the industry is located close to the group's residential neighborhoods and demonstrate the ways in which the proximity of competing groups dampens this geographic advantage. The study speaks to debates on immigrant niching and connects with research on minority access to employment and accounts of the agglomeration of firms. More generally, it links the geographies of home and work in a new way, relating patterns of immigrant residential segregation to those of immigrant employment niches.
  
  
• Hirschman, C., (2007), Immigration and an Aging America: Downward Spiral or Virtuous Circle?, Social structures : demographic changes and the well-being of older persons, Schaie, K. W.; Uhlenberg, P., Springer, New York.
  
  The abstract for this article is not available.
  
  
• Hirschman, C., (2007), The Impact of Immigration on American Society: Looking Backward to the Future, Transit - Europaische Revue, 32, 84-99.
  
  Even as most Americans celebrate their heritage and identity as a "nation of immigrants," there is deep ambivalence about future immigration. There is a strong base of support for continued immigration as a necessary ingredient for economic growth and as an essential element of a cosmopolitan society among many Americans. Almost 60 million people— more than one fifth of the total population of the United States—are immigrants or the children of immigrants. For most of this community, immigration policy is not an abstract ideology but a means of family reunification and an affirmation that they are part of the "American dream."
  
  On the other side, there is a substantial share, perhaps a majority, of Americans who are opposed to a continuation of large scale immigration. Many opponents of immigration are old stock Americans who have all but forgotten their immigrant ancestors. They often live in small towns or in suburban areas, and many have relatively little contact with immigrant families in their neighborhoods, churches, and friendship networks. Beyond the debate over the economic consequences of immigration, there is also an emotional dimension that shapes sentiments toward immigration. Many Americans, like people everywhere, are more comfortable with the familiar than with change. They fear that newcomers with different languages, religions, and cultures are reluctant to assimilate to American society and to learn English. Although many of the perceptions and fears of old stock Americans about new immigrants are rooted in ignorance and prejudice, the fears of many Americans about the future are not entirely irrational. With globalization and massive industrial restructuring dominating many traditional sources of employment (both blue collar and white collar), many native born citizens are fearful about their (and their children’s) future. The news media often cite examples of industries that seek out low cost immigrant workers to replace native born workers. Some sectors, such as harvesting vegetables and fruits in agriculture, have very few native born Americans seeking jobs in them, but immigrants are also disproportionately employed in many other sectors, including meatpacking, construction, hospitals, and even in many areas of advanced study in research universities. These examples are fodder for unscrupulous political leaders who seek to exploit popular fears for their own ends.
  
  While it is not possible to predict the role of immigration in America’s future, it is instructive to study the past. The current debates and hostility surrounding immigrants echo throughout American history. What is most surprising is that almost all popular fears about immigration and even the judgments of "experts" about the negative impact of immigrants have been proven false by history. Not only have almost all immigrants (or their descendants) assimilated over time, but they have broadened American society in many positive ways. In this review, I discuss the popular fears about immigrants by old stock Americans and the historical record of immigrant contributions to the evolution of the industrial economy, political reform, and even to the development of American culture.
  
  
• Plotnick, R. D.; Garfinkel, I.; McLanahan, S. S.; Ku, I., (2007), The Impact of Child Support Enforcement Policy on Nonmarital Childbearing, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 26: 1, 79-98.
  
  The interaction of welfare and child support regulations has created a situation in which child support policy's incentives that discourage unwed fatherhood tend to be stronger than its incentives that encourage unwed motherhood. This suggests that more stringent child support enforcement creates incentives that reduce the likelihood of nonmarital childbearing, particularly among women with a significant chance of needing public assistance in the event of a nonmarital birth and their male partners. We investigate this hypothesis with a sample of women from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, to which we add information on state child support enforcement. We examine childbearing behavior between the ages of 15 and 44 before marriage and during periods of non-marriage following divorce or widowhood. The estimates indicate that women living in states with more effective child support enforcement are less likely to bear children when unmarried, especially if they are young, never-married, or black. The findings suggest that improved child support enforcement may be a potent intervention for reducing nonmarital childbearing.
  
  
• Takeuchi, D. T.; Alegria, M.; Jackson, J. S.; Williams, D. R., (2007), Immigration and Mental Health: Diverse Findings in Asian, Black, and Latino Populations, American journal of public health, 97(1): 11.
  
  The abstract for this publication is not available.
  
  
• Bell, J, Zimmerman, F. and Almgren, G. (2006). Birth Outcomes among Urban African-American Women: A Multilevel Analysis of the Role of Racial Residential Segregation. Social Science & Medicine. 63(12): 3030.
  
  Residential segregation is a common aspect of the urban experiences of African-Americans in the United States (US), yet few studies have considered how segregation might influence perinatal health. Here, we develop a conceptual model of relationships between segregation and birth outcomes and test the implications of the model in a sample of 434,376 singleton births to African-American women living in 225 US Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs). Data from the National Center for Health Statistics 2002 birth files were linked to data from the 2000 US Census and two distinct measures of segregation: an index of isolation (the probability that an African-American resident will encounter another African-American resident in any random neighborhood encounter) and an index of clustering (the extent to which African-Americans live in contiguous neighborhoods). Using multilevel regression models, controlling for individual- and MSA-level socioeconomic status and other covariates, we found higher isolation was associated with lower birthweight, higher rates of prematurity and higher rates of fetal growth restriction. In contrast, higher clustering was associated with more optimal outcomes. We propose that isolation reflects factors associated with segregation that are deleterious to health including poor neighborhood quality, persistent discrimination and the intra-group diffusion of harmful health behaviors. Associations with clustering may reflect factors associated with segregation that are health-promoting such as African-American political power empowerment, social support and cohesion. Declines in isolation could represent positive steps toward improving birth outcomes among African-American infants while aspects of racial contiguity appear to be mitigating or indeed beneficial. Segregation is a complex multidimensional construct with both deleterious and protective influences on birth outcomes, depending on the dimensions under consideration. Further research to understand racial/ethnic and economic health disparities could benefit from a focus on the contributory role of neighborhood attributes associated with the dimensions segregation and other social geographies.
  
  
• Wright, R.; Ellis, M., (2006), Mapping others, Progress in Human Geography, 30: 3, 285-288.
  
  The abstract for this article is not available.
  
  
• Ellis, Mark. (2006). Unsettling Immigrant Geographies: US Immigration and the Politics of Scale. Tijdschrift Voor Economische En Sociale Geografie 97:49-58.
  
  Investigations of immigration politics usually focus on national scale debates and policy initiatives. Immigrant settlement, however, is often highly concentrated in select regions and cities and it is in these places that immigration politics is most contentious. This paper examines these subnational politics of immigration in the United States and explores their relation to national immigration politics. The concentrated geography of immigrants in the United States intersects with a federalised system for dispersing welfare and other social costs of immigration. This creates tension between a central government with the responsibility for controlling admission and state/local governments who pay the social costs of immigrant incorporation. This dynamic of conflict has been exacerbated in recent years by the neoliberal governance strategy of downloading. Geographic concentration has other consequences for the ways in which immigration politics develops, specifically the challenges that visible difference in the landscape poses to national identity. In regard to the latter, the paper echoes Vron Ware by suggesting that an important challenge for diverse immigrant societies is to reimagine all of the nation's territory as multiethnic/multicultural, not just the locations where immigrants cluster.
  
  
• Ellis, Markand Jamie Goodwin-White (2006). 1.5 Generation Internal Migration: Dispersion from States of Immigration? International Migration Review, 40(4): 899-927.
  
  The issue of immigrant spatial concentration and the possibilities for immigrant dispersion through migration features in at least three interrelated debates about immigration. First, the ethnic enclave literature centers on the question of whether spatial concentration improves or harms the economic well-being of immigrants. Second, spatial assimilation theory links immigrant relocation away from residential enclaves to socioeconomic gains. Although framed at an intra-urban scale, we suggest that similar assimilation logics infuse thinking and expectations about immigrant settlement and spatial mobility at other scales. And third, immigrant clustering links to anxieties about the threats posed by non-European origin newcomers to the traditional cultural fabric of the nation. In the current wave of immigration, research on questions of settlement geography and spatial mobility has so far been restricted to the first generation. But as the current wave of immigration matures there is a growing population of adults who are the children of immigrants. This paper investigates the migration behavior of these adult children, specifically the 1.5 generation, seeking to answer the question of whether they will remain in the states in which their parent’s generation settled or move on. It also assesses whether the out-migration response of the 1.5 generation in states of immigrant concentration is similar to that of their parent’s generation or the US-born population.
  
  
• Ellis, Mark, Wright, Richard, and Virginia Parks (2006). The Immigrant Household and Spatial Assimilation: Partnership, Nativity, and Neighborhood Location. Urban Geography, 27(1): 1-19.
  
  Spatial assimilation theory asserts that immigrants disperse from ethnic neighborhoods as they translate socioeconomic gains into more housing space and better residential environs. Models of this process typically relate the characteristics of individual immigrants to a locational outcome. The research described in this paper also considers immigrants in neighborhood context, but asks to what extent partnership and household composition shapes neighborhood location. This move "scales down" spatial assimilation research from the neighborhood and "scales up" more general assimilation scholarship from the individual to consider the household as a key decision- making unit. A sizeable proportion of immigrants have partners of a different nativity and this paper builds on this observation. Immigrants who are not partnered with a member of the same national origin group are much less likely to live in ethnic neighborhoods. The results have implications for future work on immigrant assimilation, conceptualizations of immigrant households, and residential segregation.
  
  
• Charles Hirschman. (2005). Immigration and the American Century. Demography, 42 (November): 595-620.
  
  The full impact of immigration on American society is obscured in policy and academic analyses that focus on the short-term problems of immigrant adjustment. With a longer-term perspective, which includes the socioeconomic roles of the children of immigrants, immigration appears as one of the defining characteristics of twentieth-century America. Major waves of immigration create population diversity with new languages and cultures, but over time, while immigrants and their descendants become more "American," the character of American society and culture is transformed. In the early decades of the twentieth century, immigrants and their children were the majority of the workforce in many of the largest industrial cities; in recent decades, the arrival of immigrants and their families has slowed the demographic and economic decline of some American cities. The presence of immigrants probably creates as many jobs for native-born workers as are lost through displacement. Immigrants and their children played an important role in twentieth-century American politics and were influential in the development of American popular culture during the middle decades of the twentieth century. Intermarriage between the descendants of immigrants and old-stock Americans fosters a national identity based on civic participation rather than ancestry.
  
  
• Hirschman, C.; Alba, R.; Farley, R., (2006), Race and Ethnicity: Definitions and Measurement, Historical statistics of the United States : earliest times to the present, Carter, S. B.; Sutch, R., Cambridge University Press, New York.
  
  The abstract for this publication is not available.
  
  
• Charles Hirschman and Stewart E. Tolnay. 2005. "Social Demography." In Dudley L. Poston and Michael Micklin, eds. Handbook of Population, pp. 419-449. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers.
  
  The abstract for this article is not available.
  
  
• Charles Hirschman. 2005. "Population and Society: Historical Trends and Future Prospects." In Craig Calhoun, Chris Rojek, and Bryan S. Turner, eds. The Sage Handbook of Sociology, pp. 381-402. London: Sage Publications.
  
  The abstract for this article is not available.
  
  
• Ellis, Mark and Richard Wright. (2005). "Assimilation and Differences between the Settlement Patterns of Individual Immigrants and Immigrant Households" Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 102(43), 15325-15330.
  
  Analyses of immigrant settlement patterns typically rely on counts of foreign- born individuals by neighborhood, metropolitan area, state, or region. As an alternative, this study classifies immigrants and their descendents into household types to shift attention from individuals to relationships between individuals. The study uses pooled current population survey data to identify seven household types, six of which have various degrees of immigrant or second-generation presence. The research compares distributions of first- and second-generation immigrants with different types of households that include first- and second-generation immigrants. Our analysis shows that the geography of immigration based on households differs considerably from geographies based on individuals. The spatial distribution and concentration of the foreign-stock population provides one picture of immigrant geographies, whereas the patterns of concentration by several different household types opens up the chance to tell other stories. More pointedly, we emphasize that the unit of analysis shapes assimilation research results and implies that this analytical choice cannot be thought of as independent from the politics of immigration.
  
  
• Holloway, Steven R. Mark Ellis, Richard Wright, and Margaret Hudson. (2005). Partnering 'Out' and Fitting In: Residential Segregation and the Neighborhood Contexts of Mixed Race Households. Population, Space and Place. 11: 299-324.
  
  This analysis considers how racial segregation affects the residential geographies of households headed by mixed-race couples. We also become interested in assessing whether diverse households live in diverse places. To measure neighbourhood diversity, we develop a new index of diversity based on the exposure index. The analysis of 12 large US metropolitan areas finds that race (in tandem with status markers like income) and nativity provide some of the best understandings of the neighbourhood geographies of mixed-race households. The study also reveals that instead of fitting into and thus reinforcing the existing racialised urban spatial structure, some households formed by partnering out live in spaces characterised by their racial diversity. We focus on the mixed-race household because such a collective constitutes a scale at which mixed-race contact takes place and a site for identity construction of individuals, partners, and the surrounding neighbourhood.
  
  
• Houston, Serin, Richard Wright, Mark Ellis, Steven Holloway, and Margaret Hudson. (2005). Places of possibility: where mixed-race partners meet. Progress in Human Geography 29:700-717.
  
  Although mixed-race partnering in the United States is on the rise, scholars have paid scant attention to where people of 'differently racialized parentage' (Ifekwunigwe, 2001: 46) actually meet. In an effort to help fill this gap, this paper (1) offers an overview of current scholarship on places of encounter and (2) aims to provide a blueprint for future research that will explicitly interrogate where mixed-race partners meet. We organize our survey around four contexts - residential neighborhoods, workplaces, educational settings, and cyberspace - to point out productive avenues for further inquiry. In contrast to much of the literature cited in this essay and in an effort to emphasize the intersections of race and space, we advocate for new scholarship that addresses the times and places where routine, prosaic, interactions between adults can erode long-standing stereotypes and lead to meaningful relationships. In studying everyday social and spatial processes, we highlight the potential insights gained from detailing the 'micro-geographies of habitual practice' (Nash, 2000: 656).
  
  
• Charles Hirschman. (2004). The Role of Religion in the Origins and Adaptation of Immigrant Groups in the United States. International Migration Review, 38: 1206-1233.
  
  The classical model of the role of religion in the lives of immigrants to the United States, formulated in the writings of Will Herberg and Oscar Handlin, emphasized cultural continuity and the psychological benefits of religious faith following the trauma of immigration. Although this perspective captures an important reason for the centrality of religion in most immigrant communities (but not for all immigrants), the classical model does not address the equally important socioeconomic role of churches, synagogues, temples, and mosques in American society. The creation of an immigrant church or temple of-ten provided ethnic communities with refuge from the hostility and discrimination from the broader society as well as opportunities for economic mobility and social recognition. In turn, the successive waves of mmigrants have probably shaped the character as well as the content of American religious institutions.
  
  
• Ellis, Mark, Richard Wright, and Virginia Parks. (2004). Work together, live apart? Geographies of Residential and Workplace Segregation in Los Angeles. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 94(3), 620-637.
  
  When scholars map the urban geography of racial and ethnic segregation, they privilege the time when people are at home. When workers commute, however, the tract of residence of one group often becomes the tract of employment of others. It follows that an exclusive focus on the residential geographies of racial groups erases the presence of others who work in those neighborhoods. Not only does this analytical orientation create a false impression of a city's racialized spaces as fixed, but it also misleadingly characterizes neighborhoods as the domain of those who live, rather than work, in them. In addressing this oversight, the study compares levels of residential and work tract segregation for native-born and immigrant groups in a large U.S. metropolitan area, Los Angeles. The analysis reveals that segregation by work tract is considerably lower than by residential tract, suggesting more intergroup interaction takes place during working hours than at home. The difference in segregation between residence and work is very large in the case of native-born whites and Mexican immigrants. These two groups maintain substantially different residential geographies but are quite likely to work in the same tracts. Such work tract complementarities are gender sensitive; they are much more likely between native-born white and Mexican men than between women of these groups. This gendered difference holds across all groups, with men more likely to work in tracts with men from other groups than women with women from other groups. The study offers new perspective on diurnal shifts in urban racial segregation. We conclude by speculating that reduced segregation at workplaces factors into recent increases in rates of interracial partnering, which may, in turn, ultimately leverage change in residential segregation.
  
  
• Pettit, Becky and Bruce Western. (2004). Mass Imprisonment and the Life Course: Race and Class Inequality in U.S. Incarceration. American Sociological Review, 69:151-169. Honorable Mention 2003-2005 Sociology of Law Article Prize.
  
  Although growth in the U.S. prison population over the past twenty-five years has been widely discussed, few studies examine changes in inequality in imprisonment. We study penal inequality by estimating lifetime risks of imprisonment for black and white men at different levels of education. Combining administrative, survey, and census data, we estimate that among men born between 1965 and 1969, 3 percent of whites and 20 percent of blacks had served time in prison by their early thirties. The risks of incarceration are highly stratified by education. Among black men born during this period, 30 percent of those without college education and nearly 60 percent of high school dropouts went to prison by 1999. The novel pervasiveness of imprisonment indicates the emergence of incarceration as a new stage in the life course of young low-skill black men.
  
  
• Plotnick, R. with Irwin Garfinkel, Sara McLanahan, and Inhoe Ku (2004). Better child support enforcement: Can it reduce teenage premarital childbearing?, Journal of Family Issues, 25:5, 634-57.
  
  Stricter child support enforcement may reduce unwed childbearing by raising the costs of fatherhood. The authors investigate this hypothesis using a sample of young women from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, to which they add information on state child support enforcement. Models of the probability of a teenage premarital birth and of teenage premarital pregnancy and pregnancy resolution provide tentative evidence that during the early 1980s, teens living in states with higher rates of paternity establishment were less likely to become unwed mothers. This relationship is stronger for non-Hispanic Whites than for non-Hispanic Blacks. The findings suggest that policies that shift more costs of premarital child-bearing to men may reduce this behavior, at least among non-Hispanic Whites.
  
  
• Charles Hirschman. (2003). "Fertility Transition, Socioeconomic Determinants of." In Paul Demeny and Geoffrey McNicoll (eds.) Encyclopedia of Population, 1: 425-431. New York: Macmillan Reference USA.
  
  The abstract for this article is not available.
  
  
• Ellis, Mark, Richard Wright. (2003) "Representations of Difference: Mapping Immigrant Bodies or Immigrant Households." (forthcoming book chapter in Immigration and Settlement in the US, Kavita Pandit and Steven Holloway.
  
  The abstract for this article is not available.
  
  
• Ellis, Mark, Richard Wright, Jamie Goodwin-White. (2003). "Shifts in the Ethnic Division of Labor under Conditions of Growth and Stagnation: Los Angeles in the 1980s and 1990s". (Forthcoming in the Immigrant Metropolis, Bean, Brown and Rumbaut eds).
  
  Throughout the 1970s and 1980s the Los Angeles CMSA enjoyed a remarkable period of economic growth fueled by a varied array of manufacturing and service industries. In the 1970s the employment base increased by 30%; job growth accelerated in the 1980s to 38%. This expansion stands in marked contrast to New York, which absorbed immigrants despite anemic job growth at best. New York’s ethnic division of labor was transformed by immigrants and non-white natives replacing native- born whites who either retired or left the city’s labor force for greener pastures. LA, on the other hand, saw its native born white labor force increase through the 1970s and 1980s even as immigration mushroomed. The 1990s saw a dramatic reversal of fortunes for the LA CMSA. The number of jobs held steady through the decade as the region absorbed crushing blows from post cold war defense industry restructuring and its knock on effects. LA’s aerospace and electronics industries crumbled leading to estimates that over half the manufacturing jobs lost in the early 90s recession was from LA and Orange Counties alone (LA Times). This collapse, coupled with the effects of the mass civil disturbances that followed the Rodney King trial in 1992 and the Northridge earthquake in early 1994, meant that the region’s economy remained tepid through the mid 1990s. Thus California’s prosperity in the 1990s came largely from the booming economy of the Bay Area at least until the end of the decade. In effect, the job market in LA came to resemble that of New York in terms of the way it absorbed newcomers: the process has become one of immigrant and native- born minority replacement for native-born whites than differential rates of job expansion enjoyed by all groups. Figure one charts the overall change in jobs between 1980 and 2000 alongside job increases and decreases for specific groups. Figure two charts employment change by sector. The only bright spots in the economy in the 1990s were in educational and business services and, to a lesser extent in entertainment services. All other sectors added few jobs or declined. With this economic transformation as the backdrop, we explore shifts in employment by major industrial sector for a variety of native-born and immigrant groups. We are especially interested in where native-born whites exited the labor force and which groups replaced them. Did these replacement job gains result in decent jobs for immigrants or native-born minorities? Or is the replacement labor process reinforcing the position of some of these groups on the bottom rungs of LA’s economy?
  
  
• Lorella Palazzo , Avery Guest, and Gunnar Almgren. (2003). Economic Distress and Cause of Death Patterns for Black and Non-black Men in Chicago, 1990: Reconsidering the Relevance of Classic Epidemiological Theory. Social Biology, 50(1), 102-125.
  
  The mortality disadvantage of African Americans is well documented, but previous studies have not considered its implications for population theory in the general case of industrialized nation states with high levels of income inequality. This paper examines the relevance of classic epidemiological theory to the extremes of income and mortality observed in Chicago, one of America's most racially divided cities. We analyze cause-specific death rates for black and non-black male populations residing in Chicago's community areas by using linked data from the 1990 Census and from 1989-1991 individual death certificates. The same cause-of-death patterns explain much of the mortality of black and non-black men. These two major structures include one, degenerative diseases, the other, "tough-living" causes (accidents, homicides, and liver disease). Community socioeconomic status is strongly related to tough-living deaths within each racial group, and to degenerative deaths for African Americans. Black men's tough-living mortality is much greater than non-blacks', but their younger age structure suppresses their degenerative death rates. Aggregate unemployment and social disorganization account for the most salient disparities in mortality across racial groups. This patterning of mortality along a socioeconomic continuum supports epidemiological theory and extends its applicability to highly unequal populations within industrialized countries.
  
  
• Plotnick R. (2003)."How will welfare reform affect family structure and childbearing decisions?" (with Elizabeth Peters and Se-Ook Jeong). Pp. 59-91 in R.A. Gordon & H. Walberg (Eds) Changing Welfare. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, 2003.
  
  The abstract for this article is not available.
  
  
• Takeuchi, D. and S. Gage. (2003). What to do with race? Changing notions of race in the social sciences. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry. 27: 435-45.
  
  The Supplement to the Surgeon General’s Report on Mental Health documents that race, ethnicity, and culture are linked to the use of mental health services and the receipt of quality mental health care. The Supplement provides an elaborate discussion on how culture affects mental health care without a corresponding level of discourse on race. How race is handled in the Supplement suggests that it is still a sensitive topic and one that is difficult to address in a public report. This sensitivity parallels the difficulties that the social sciences have had in investigating issues of race. In this paper, we highlight some perspectives that have influenced the way race has been studied in the past and how these views reflect the general political climates of the eras that produced them.
  
  
• Wright, Richard, Serin Houston, Mark Ellis, Steven Holloway, and Margaret Hudson. (2003). Crossing racial lines: geographies of mixed-race partnering and multiraciality in the United States. Progress in Human Geography, 27(4): 457-474.
  
  This review highlights geographical perspectives on mixed-race partnering and multiraciality in the United States, explicitly calling for increased analysis at the scale of the mixed-race household. We begin with a discussion of mixed-race rhetoric and then sketch contemporary trends in mixed-race partnering and multiraciality in the US. We also weave in considerations of the public and the private and the genealogical and social constructions of race. Our challenges to current thought add to the landscape of scholarship concerned with race and space. By presenting mixed race in fresh ways, we offer new sites for intervention in this evolving literature.
  
  
• Wright, Richard, Mark Ellis, and Virginia Parks. (2003). Re-placing Whiteness in Spatial Assimilation Research. City and Community, 4: 111-136.
  
  This paper works through some of the epistemological and methodological consequences of an unreflexive use of white suburbs as the expected residential destination in U.S. spatial assimilation research. Foregrounding immigrant suburbanization in spatial assimilation occludes alternative geographic trajectories; simply put, spatial diffusion need not be central city to suburban decentralization. More problematically, spatial assimilation research often translates residential movement to the suburbs into increasing proximity with whites. This results in the degree of segregation from whites becoming the standard by which immigrant assimilative progress is gauged. Building on critical whiteness studies and recent research on aspatial assimilation, we develop some new theoretical entry points into the process of spatial assimilation. We treat metropolitan areas as constellations of neighborhoods rather than a central city-suburban doughnut and become circumspect in our use of whites as a referent category. Our investigation of spaces of assimilation in greater Los Angeles reveals that established immigrants are more dispersed residentially than recent conational arrivals, although the effect varies by group. For many immigrant groups, these dispersions from concentrations of initial settlement do not reduce segregation from whites. Segregation lessens over time, however, between immigrants and other native-born Americans. For many groups, but by no means all, a dispersed residential pattern is associated with higher quality neighborhoods.
  
  
• Charles Hirschman. (2002). "The Meaning of Race and Ethnic Population Projections." In Nancy A. Denton Stewart E. Tolnay (eds.) American Diversity: A Demographic Challenge for the Twenty-First Century, pp. 51-72. Albany: State University of New York Press.
  
  The abstract for this article is not available.
  
  
• Charles Hirschman. (2001). "Immigration, Pubic Policy." In Neil J. Smelser and Paul B. Baltes (eds.) International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences Vol. 11:7221-7226. Oxford: Elsevier.
  
  The abstract for this article is not available.
  
  
• Charles Hirschman. (2001). "Fertility Transition in Southeast Asia." In Neil J. Smelser and Paul B. Baltes (eds.) International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences Vol. 8: 5597-5602. Oxford: Elsevier.
  
  The abstract for this article is not available.
  
  
• Conway, Dennis, Adrian Bailey, and Mark Ellis. (2001). "Transnationalism, Employment, and the Poverty of Puerto Rican Women in New York City" In Transnational Communities and the Political Economy of New York City in the 1990s. Cordero-Guzman, Grosfoguel and Smith (eds), Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
  
  Puerto Rican women living in New York City represent a segment of a transnational community with some of the highest rates of poverty on the US mainland. This community is characterized by high rates of repetitive (circulation) migration, and we discuss evidence that links circulation migration to the reduced labor force participation of Puerto Rican women. We utilize a pooled data set of micro-level, longitudinal event-histories, drawn from two complementary sets: the 1982 Puerto Rico Fertility and Family Planning Assessment and the 1985 Survey of Fertility, Employment and Migration Among Puerto Rican Women. We find that nativity plays a strong role in differentiating a group of women with work experience in New York from a group of women with no work experience in New York. The relationship between circulation migration and labor force participation is more nuanced. We interpret these findings in the light of our previous research on the gendering of circulation migration and the emerging discussion of racialized experiences of migrants in the U.S. We close by arguing for a re-conceptualization of poverty conditions in transnational communities that offers more insight into the material conditions, gender relations, racialized experiences, and household survival strategies.
  
  
• Ellis, Mark and John Odland. (2001). Intermetropolitan Variation in the Labor Force Participation of White and Black Men in the United States. Urban Studies, 38, 2327-2348.
  
  We decompose the variance in black and white male labour force participation rates across US metropolitan areas in 1990 into three effects: that due to variation in labour force participation within labour force categories across metropolitan areas (local labour market effects); that due to variation in the distribution of those categories across metropolitan areas (labour force structure effects); and that due to the covariation between these two effects. Variation in labour force participation rates within labour force categories (local labour market effects) accounts for 56 per cent of the variance in labour force participation rates across metropolitan areas for white men but over 75 per cent for black men. Variation in the frequency of membership in each labour force category is a relatively unimportant factor for both groups. The covariance between labour force effects and local effects is negligible for black men but accounts for 25 per cent of the intermetropolitan variance in white male participation rates. This covariance is a measure of how well adjusted the labour force characteristics of metropolitan areas are to local economic conditions; our results indicate that this adjustment is greater for white men than black men. We also use this decomposition to identify the causes of variation in the difference between black and white labour force participation rates. Black-white differences in response to local labour market effects conditions generate most of this variance. These different local labour market effects are greatest among young single men with less than a high school education.
  
  
• Ellis, Mark. (2000). Mark one or more: counting and projecting by race in Census 2000 and beyond. Social and Cultural Geography, 1 (2): 183-195
  
  In 1997, the US Government revised its standards for the collection of data on race. Previous US government practice dating back to the first US Census in 1790 forced people into mutually exclusive categories. The new policy allows people to identify themselves as being of more than one race. The 2000 Census is the first major national data collection exercise to use this new system and its results will reveal both the promise and the perils of the new system. On the positive side, the new scheme allows people who think of themselves as 'mixed' to be counted as such in official data. However, multiple race responses complicate efforts to count minority populations eligible for civil protection and voting rights laws. Furthermore, the new systems pose new opportunities and challenges for social scientists concerned with the measurement of ethnic and racial inequality. The paper ends with a discussion of the implications of the new rules for the imagination of America's ethno-racial future through population projections.
  
  
• Ellis, Mark. (2001). "Trends in Immigrant and Native-born Wages: A Tale of Five Cities?" In Strangers at the Gates., R Waldinger (ed.) University of California Press
  
  The abstract for this article is not available.
  
  
• Ellis, Mark. (2001). What Future for Whites? Population Projections and differences and similarities as compared to the experiences of immigrant Racial Imaginaries in the US. International Journal of Population Geography, 7, 213-229.
  
  Population projections forecast that the US will have a white minority by the middle of this century. This paper argues that changes in racial and ethnic categorization, most notably the creation of the Hispanic category in 1977, have accelerated the projection of this date. These uncertainties illustrate a larger problem of projections of the future size of the white population: how can we know who will be white in the future if the criteria for whiteness shift as they have done in the US’s past? It is possible, for example, that regions of immigration may see new forms of whiteness – or non-blackness – as whites, Asians, and Latinos hybridize into a new dominant group whose members will be advantaged relative to a black "other." In light of past modifications in racial constructions, and the potential for change in the future, why bother to project the populations of today’s racial categories? The paper attempts to answer this question by reviewing the history of the practice of racial population projection. What this reveals is that racial population projections can be thought of as "racial projects" – efforts to frame and thereby influence the racial future through the imposition of contemporary racial categories and meanings. Although this racial imagining has important consequences for contemporary political action, it is not politics alone that motivates projections by race. For this, we have to look to the mundane practices of categorization and counting by race – racial governmentality - that make racial population projections possible to begin with.
  
  
• Lundberg, S. (2001). "Nonmarital Fertility: Lessons for Family Economics," in Out of Wedlock: Causes and Consequences of Nonmarital Fertility, eds. Lawrence Wu and Barbara Wolfe, Russell Sage Foundation, 2001, pp. 383-389.
  
  The abstract for this article is not available.
  
  
• Wright, Richard and Mark Ellis. (2001). "New Immigrants in the New York Economy". In New Immigrants in New York 2nd edition. Ed. N Foner Columbia University Press.
  
  The abstract for this article is not available.
  
  
• Almgren G, Kemp S, and Eisinger A. (2000). The Legacy of Hull House and the Children's Bureau in the American Mortality Transition. Social Service Review, 74(1).
  
  The major advances in American life expectancy achieved during the twentieth century began with the remarkable decline in infant mortality between 1910 and 1930. Until the 1990s, explanations of this demographic event centered on improvements in nutrition, public health, and medical science. Recent causal reappraisals emphasize the importance of changes in household-level health behaviors in reducing infant deaths, changes that are consistent with the maternal education campaigns engineered by Progressive Era reformers at the U.S. Children's Bureau. Through qualitative and quantitative analyses of bureau reports and Public Use Micro Sample census data, we link the reformers' philosophy and science to new evidence and conclusions about early improvements in infant survival.
  
  
• Avery Guest and Gunnar Almgren. (2000). "Demographic Transition". The Encyclopedia of Sociology, Second Edition. Borgatta, Edgar and Rhonda Montgomery (eds.). New York: Macmillan.
  
  The abstract for this article is not available.
  
  
• Gunnar Almgren. (2000). "Community".The Encyclopedia of Sociology, Second Edition. Borgatta, Edgar and Rhonda Montgomery(eds.). New York:
  
  The abstract for this article is not available.
  
  
• Wright, Richard and Mark Ellis. (2000). The Ethnic and Gender Division of Labor Compared Among Immigrants to Los Angeles. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 24: 583-601.
  
  This study compares the occupational profiles of six immigrant groups in the Los Angeles economy to expose details of the relationship between gender, nativity, time of arrival and labor market segmentation. We investigate the occupational division of labor among the foreign-born from Mexico, El Salvador, the Philippines, Guatemala, Korea and China and find that gender plays a dominant role relative to ethnicity in the process of labor market segmentation. We also discover that newly arrived immigrant men are more likely to enter male-dominated occupations than newly arrived women are likely to concentrate in female-dominated occupations. This tendency, however, varies in strength by nativity. Nativity and time of arrival also affect the anatomy of occupational specialization, but, again, this effect is not consistent across groups. Our observation of variability in the relative strength of gender and ethnicity in the determination of occupational profiles across a broad sample of immigrant groups directs future researchers to consider how ethnic resources are gendered in different ways by nativity.
  
  
• Wright, Richard and Mark Ellis. (2000). Race, Region and the Territorial Politics of Immigration. International Journal of Population Geography, 6: 1.
  
  Zelinsky and Lee ([1998]) recently unveiled a model of the sociospatial process of immigrant settlement designed to augment and possibly supplant the well-known theories of assimilation and pluralism. Although in some ways new, their work continues a tradition in social science that treats the settlement geography of immigrants as a measure of their more general fit into American society. We question the prevailing assumption that immigrant settlement patterns represent a barometer of their adaptation, or lack thereof, to a host society. This critique of the concepts of assimilation, pluralism and Zelinsky and Lee's alternative heterolocal model of immigrant settlement pivots around the issues of spatial scale and race. We argue that the contestations over immigration and how well immigrants fit into society are increasingly constructed at the regional scale. We also assert that questions race infuse almost all aspects of these debates. The transformation of America's largest city-regions into places of non-white immigrants, and the shifting political balance of power to states like California through immigration-driven reapportionment, are touchstones for anti-immigration initiatives and associated local and national debate. Fear of racial regional changes underpins an increasingly powerful response to immigration. The reactions elicited by these settlement geographies fall under the heading we call the territorial politics of immigration.
  
  
• Charles Hirschman, Josh DeWind, and Philip Kasinitz (eds.). (1999). The Handbook of International Migration: The American Experience. (Author of "General Introduction" and "Part II Introduction.") New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
  
  The abstract for this article is not available.
  
  
• Ellis, Mark and Richard Wright. (1999). The Industrial Division of Labor among Immigrants and Internal Migrants to the Los Angeles Economy. International Migration Review, 33: 26-54.
  
  Between 1985-90, metropolitan Los Angeles received about 400,000 working immigrants and about 575,000 working native in-migrants. We subdivide these native-and foreign-born migrants by national origin and ethnicity to examine the process that channel recent arrivals into different industrial sectors. Our analysis extends previous research on migrant employment and the ethnic division of labor in two ways. We compare the employment of recent arrivals to residents for several groups across a large, diverse regional economy. We also consider the role educational qualifications play in the allocation of different migrant groups to jobs at this aggregate analytical scale. The results show that both native- and foreign- born groups channel into particular industrial sectors. The strength of group channeling, however, varies by national origin and ethic group. Native-born in-migration are more likely to channel into the industries where their co- ethnic residents work than immigrant newcomers. We also find some groups more likely to take jobs grant newcomers. We also find some groups more likely to take jobs based on their educational qualifications (whites, blacks, Filipinos and Chinese), whereas ethnic group effects dominate the choice of industry of others (Koreans). The analysis investigates the issue of interethnic labor market competition by comparing the employment profiles of newcomers with those of resident ethnic groups. It shows that immigrants experience more interethnic labor market competition from new-comers than do native whites and blacks.
  
  
• Almgren G, Guest A, Immerwahr G and Spittel M. (1998). Joblessness, Family Disruption, and Violent Death in Chicago 1970-1990. Social Forces, 76 (4).
  
  Violent deaths, defined as homicides, suicides, and accidents, are leading causes of death among working-age populations. While large-scale population studies and community case studies have established common linkages between race, sex, age, joblessness, and all three forms of violent death, they have tended to be cross-sectional and to be focused on one cause of violent death to the exclusion of others. Utilizing 1970 and 1990 census data and vital records for 75 Chicago community areas, this article examines the relationships between joblessness, family disruption, and all three forms of violent death across the black and nonblack community-area populations of Chicago at two distinct time points corresponding to William Julius Wilson's theory of the evolution of urban underclass communities. The findings suggest that both homicide rates and accidental death rates are similarly predicted by high rates of joblessness and family disruption, and that these relationships have strengthened in both black and nonblack communities over time. Variations in racial segregation among black community-area populations appeared to have no consistent direct effects on black rates of violent death. We also found that, contrary to historical patterns, suicide rates for young adult black males and young adult nonblack males appear similarly responsive to a secular decline in the economic opportunity structure. Finally, through the use of multiple- decrement life-table analysis techniques across racial communities, we observed a growth trend in the racial disparities between life expectancies of black and nonblack populations that is linked to relative levels of joblessness.
  
  
• Guest A, Almgren G, and Hussey J. (1998). The Ecology of Socio-economic Distress: Infant and Working Age Mortality in Chicago. Demography
  
  We examine the effects of education, unemployment, and racial segregation on age-, sex-, and race-specific mortality rates in racially defined Chicago community areas from 1989 to 1991. Community socioeconomic factors account for large observed areal variations in infant and working-age mortality, but especially working-age mortality for the black population. For black men, the mortality consequences of living in economically distressed communities are quite severe. Segregation effects on mortality are more modest and largely operate through neighborhood socioeconomic conditions, although some direct effects of segregation on mortality for blacks are apparent.
  
  
• Lundberg, S. with Robert Plotnick. (1995). Adolescent Premarital Childbearing: Do Economic Incentives Matter? Journal of Labor Economics, pp. 177-200.
  
  We develop an empirical model of adolescent premarital childbearing in which a woman's decisions affect a sequence of outcomes: premarital pregnancy, pregnancy resolution, and the occurrence of marriage before the birth. State welfare, abortion, and family planning policies alter the costs and benefits of these outcomes. For white adolescents welfare, abortion, and family planning policy variables have significant effects on these outcomes consistent with theoretical expectations. Black adolescents' behavior shows no association with the policy variables. The different racial results may reflect differences in sample size or important unmeasured racial differences in factors that influence fertility and marital behavior.
  
  
• Almgren G. (1992). Overpopulation in India and the Educational Imperative: A Theoretical Critique. Social Service Review, 66(2).
  
  The abstract for this article is not available.
  
  
• Plotnick R. (1992). The effects of attitudes on teenage premarital pregnancy and its resolution. American Sociological Review, 57:6, 800-811.
  
  Drawing on problem behavior theory and complementary models of behavior, I examine the influence of attitudes and related personality variables on the probability of teenage premarital pregnancy and, when a pregnancy occurs, whether it is resolved by abortion, having an out-of- wedlock birth, or marrying before the birth. A sample of non-Hispanic white adolescents is drawn from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and analyzed using the nested logit method. The estimates show that self- esteem, locus of control, attitudes toward women's family roles, attitudes toward school, educational aspirations, and religiosity are associated with premarital pregnancy and its resolution in directions predicted by theory. The effects of self-esteem, attitudes toward school, attitudes toward women's family roles, and educational expectations are substantively important. Attitudes and related personality variables are important paths through which family background characteristics influence adolescent sexual and marriage behavior.