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Despite the importance to both workers and employers of understanding the impact of mental distress on work patterns, there are no studies to date that have examined this from a rural perspective. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), a nationally representative survey of adults, this project addresses the issue of poor mental health among young to middle-career rural residents and how their employment may be affected. Specifically, we investigate how depressive symptoms affect employment patterns, and the extent to which such effects differ by rural and urban residence.

Findings. Our analysis follows a cohort sample from 1992 through 2004, although the specific findings presented in this paper are based on the 1992 survey data. The sixteen percent of our sample identified as rural differ from the urban sample in that they are more likely to be married, have less education, are less likely to be black or Hispanic, and less likely to have health insurance. For both urban and rural subjects, individuals with depressive symptoms work less than those who are not depressed as indicated by annual weeks worked (42.7 vs. 46.3, p<.001), annual hours worked (1781.6 vs. 1973.0, p<.001), and percent not working in the past year (19.6 vs. 10.5, p < .001). However, our multivariate analysis finds that depressed rural residents have no more difficulty maintaining employment than the urban depressed.

American workers have witnessed striking changes in their jobs and wages during the last three decades. It is no longer simply a matter of growing income inequality, but increasingly deeper changes that go to the root of what it means to have a job and to build a career. Young workers are pessimistic about their chances for upward mobility and education no longer seems a guarantee of success. Workplaces are being restructured, creating anxiety about being laid-off and downsized. The recovery of the 1990s did not prove the cure-all that other recoveries have in the past, and disadvantaged groups in particular are being left behind. There is a growing sense that Americans are working under new rules. The very character of the American employment relationship appears to be changing - in how the workplace is organized, in how workers are matched with jobs, and in how wages and the terms of employment are set. This paper reports on a subset of findings from a larger study of the changes in job and wage mobility over the past 30 years. In this study, we compare two cohorts of young white men, from the National Longitudinal Surveys. The original cohort entered the labor market in the late 1960s at the tail of the economic boom, and was followed through the 70s decade. The recent cohort entered the labor market in the early 1980s after the onset of economic restructuring, and was followed through the early 90s. We observe both cohorts for a full 16 years, at exactly the same ages - respondents are in their late teens and early 20s at the start of the survey, and are in their mid-30s by the end. We can therefore compare the progress of the two cohorts during the initial stages of their careers, but under different economic conditions. It is during this period that workers make the transition from school to work, and lay the groundwork for an eventual long-term relationship wi th an employer. The key finding reported in this paper is that the transition to the labor market has become longer and more volatile. Young workers who do not go on to college are more likely to be intermittently unemployed and to rely on part-time jobs for a greater number of years. This is especially marked among high school dropouts. Those who do go on to college are more likely to work while enrolled and to significantly draw out the period of enrollment. For both groups, it takes longer to find a full-year job than it has in the past. The recent cohort is also less likely to make a single, clean transition to the labor market. Instead, these young workers are more likely to move back and forth between work, unemployment, enrollment, and non-participation. Workers at all levels of education have experienced this greater volatility, but it has been most pronounced among those with less education. There is noticeably more shifting between industries in the recent cohort, at all ages. Some of this is driven by deindustrialization and the shift to service industries, but not all of it. The greater volatility on these dimensions has taken its toll on the work experience that young workers accumulate. Average work experience is similar across the two cohorts. But there is considerably more variability in the amount of work experience that the recent cohort has accumulated, and this holds true across all education groups. Findings from the larger study indicate that this contributes to greater inequality in wages and wage growth for this cohort, trends that are likely to persist over their life course.

Copyright of Research on Aging is the property of Sage Publications Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts)

Methods. I used ordinary least squares regression to analyze data from the 1979–1994 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth.

Results. Cross-sectional results suggested that current unemployment status and out-of-the-labor-force status were significantly associated with depressive symptoms at ages 29 through 37 years. The association between being out of the labor force and depressive symptoms was stronger for men. Longitudinal results revealed that past unemployment duration across 15 years of the transition to adulthood significantly predicted depressive symptoms, net of demographics, family background, current socioeconomic status, and prior depressive symptoms. However, duration out of the labor force did not predict depressive symptoms.

Conclusions. Longer durations of unemployment predict higher levels of depressive symptoms among young adults. Future research should measure duration longitudinally and distinguish unemployment from being out of the labor force to advance our understanding of socioeconomic mental health disparities.

Chapter 2 provides evidence of whether child spacing affects the likelihood of engaging in certain risky behaviors. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth-1979, I investigate the association between birth spacing and engaging in risky or deviant behaviors, such as smoking, unprotected intercourse, theft, and violence. I attempt to identify exogenous variation in in child spacing stemming from whether one has a twin and parents' age difference, and my estimates show significant declines in engaging in risky behaviors for all these four risky activities as birth spacing increases.

Looking at Lives includes studies from a range of disciplines, including psychology, sociology, and education, which together cover a span of more than fifty years. The contributors pay particular attention to the changing historical, cultural, and scientific context of their work, as well as the theoretical and methodological changes that have occurred in their fields over decades...[Copyright, Russell Sage Foundation, 2002]

A longitudinal study examines the sequencing of traditional markers of the transition to adulthood like leaving home, finishing school, entering employment, marrying, and having a child and considers the impact of orderly/disorderly sequences on adult outcomes. Life-history data for persons aged 22 to 35 were taken from the 1979-98 waves of the annual National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. The focus was on how many different pathways to adulthood there are, whether the transition has become less structured over time, and how different pathways affect adult outcomes. Monothetic divisive algorithm was used to divide the data into six pathways that explained 41.6% (males) and 41.8% (females) of the variance in life-course transitions. Although these pathways to adulthood definitely correlate with adult outcomes, the effect was substantially smaller than might be expected, and largely dependent on the time of each transition. It is noted that the pathway to adulthood has little impact on poverty, income, happiness, and depression. The policy implications are discussed.

Methods: Data on heavy drinking (6+ drinks/occasion) are from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (N = 9,468), collected between 1982 and 2012. Sex-stratified, generalized estimating equations (GEE) were used to model heavy drinking frequency trajectories as a function of age with a cubic curve, and interactions of race with age terms were tested to assess racial/ethnic differences. Models adjusted for time-varying socioeconomic status and marital and parenting status; predictors of trajectories were examined in race- and sex-specific models.

Results: White men and women had similarly steep declines in heavy drinking frequency throughout the 20s, contrasting with slower declines (and lower peaks) in Black and Hispanic men and women. During the 30s there was a Hispanic-White crossover in men's heavy drinking curves, and a Black-White female crossover among lifetime heavy drinkers; by age 51, racial/ethnic group trajectories converged in both sexes. Greater education was protective for all groups.

Design, Setting, Participants: Data are from 1,299 Black Americans in the US National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, followed from 1979 (ages 15-19) through 2012. Given gender differences in factors related to education and alcohol outcomes, gender-stratified path models were analyzed.

Measurements: Youth socioeconomic indicators included parental education (approximating childhood SEP) and adolescent poverty duration. Education-related measures included high-poverty school, perceived school safety, academic problems, suspension from school, educational expectations, and educational attainment. Adulthood measures included repeated unemployment, poverty duration, and mean frequency of heavy drinking (6+ drinks/day) in young adulthood and midlife. Covariates included age, dual-parent household, marital status, early drinking onset, and family history of alcohol problems.

Findings: For both genders, two main pathways originating from low childhood SEP flowed to educational attainment through (1) educational expectations and (2) suspension, and from educational attainment to midlife heavy drinking (total indirect effect = 0.131 (95% confidence interval [CI]: .072-.197) for women, and 0.080 (.035-.139) for men). For both genders, adolescent poverty (standardized βs >.135), academic problems (βs >.220), and school suspension (βs >.165) were significantly (ps <.05) related to lower educational expectations. In adulthood, educational attainment was indirectly protective against midlife heavy drinking through its significant effects (ps <.05) on young adult heavy drinking for both genders (βs < -.200) and economic hardships for women (βs < -.290).

Conclusions: Low childhood socio-economic position among black Americans appears to be associated with subsequent, adverse socio-economic and school experiences that lead to lower educational attainment and, ultimately, greater heavy drinking at mid-life. Interventions that mitigate these earlier, adverse experiences might have indirect effects on mid-life heavy drinking.

We use for our analysis the 978 women in the NLSY who reported a pregnancy before their 18th birthday. Of those pregnancies, 723 resulted in births, 185 terminated in abortions and 70 ended in miscarriages. After adjusting for population weights, these numbers imply that 73 percent of non-miscarried pregnancies are brought to term in our sample....We use the following assessments of children: birth weight, the Peabody Individual Achievement Tests (PIATs), the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT), the behavioral problem indices (BPI), and measures of the child's home environment. The first four of these categories are child outcomes, while the last, home environment, provides indices of inputs into the child. All outcomes except birth weight are measured in percentile scores, normalized such that a higher score is better and, where appropriate, scores have been adjusted for cohort and age at the time of measurement.

The optimal tax treatment of families with children is first considered from the point of view of economic efficiency and then redistribution. The efficiency implications of child tax benefits are derived from a representative agent model. The key finding is that child tax benefits are not optimal if children and leisure (time not spent doing market work) are complements or weak substitutes. Estimation of the demand for children using data on female labor supply and birth histories in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth implies that children and leisure are complements. Thus, the addition of other distortions (such as externalities) to the model is needed to reverse the finding that a child tax is optimal. Numerical examples of models with multiple agents show that the time cost of raising children is important in determining the distribution of the tax treatment of children. Time series methods are used on US tax and fertility data from 1913 to 2005 to estimate the fertility response to child tax benefits. Findings suggest that fertility responds with a two-year lag and that the increase in the US fertility rate over the past 10 years is partially due to increases in the value of child tax benefits.

Data are from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth are used to test their model. They find that the interaction term in their equations are negative, that the result supports the time preference alternative, and that the result is robust across several model specifications and controls. Thus, they conclude that research on the sources of individual discount rates would be a fruitful direction for wage research to follow.

In the second chapter, motivated by the finding that partnered men and women are more likely to become business owners than are their single counterparts, I ask whether the observed marriage and cohabitation effects are a result of partner income. Using data from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, I first show that when partner income is included as a control, the marriage and cohabitation effects decrease substantially for women, while the effects persist for men. Second, I show that the marriage and cohabitation effects vary with partner income for women but not men. For example, a woman whose husband's income is in the fifth quintile is 1.9 times more likely to transition to business ownership than a woman whose husband’s income is in the second quintile for men. On the other hand, a married man with a high-income wife is no more or less likely to transition to business ownership than a married man with a low-income wife.

In the third chapter, re-examine Lazear's (2005) jack-of-all-trades theory. Using data from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, I ask, what are the wage gains associated with a self-employed worker's prior occupational experience? Overall, I find results consistent with Lazear's theory, which suggests that the returns to occupational specialization are substantially larger for wage workers than the self-employed. I predict that self-employed workers with ten years of prior occupational experience earn a wage that is only 3.2% greater than do self-employed workers with two years of prior occupational experience. However, for wage workers I predict that the wage gains associated with a ten year increase in prior occupational experience (zero to ten years) is 2.1 times larger than the wage gains associated with a two year increase (zero to two years) in prior occupational experience.

This study will use the NLSY 79, to study the effect of delayed childbearing on the motherhood wage penalty. This will allow for the study to include both a panel data approach and a cross sectional approach. There will be five general models used. The first two, OLS and fixed effects model, have been used in the majority of the wage penalty papers. The third model type, a selection model, has recently begun to be used more in wage penalty papers. This model will allow for the inclusion of women who are currently not employed into the model instead of dropping them from the sample. The fourth model, an instrumental variable model, instruments for age at first birth with naturally occurring birthing shocks. The last model, the double selection model, takes into account the selection into motherhood and employment simultaneously.

The Effects of State Characteristic College Enrollment
I examine how state policies on tuition, grant aid and appropriations influence high school graduates' two-year versus four-year college attendance decisions. Using data from 1994-99 October Supplements of the Current Population Survey, I estimate a multinomial logit model of college choice. My estimates show that higher four-year college tuition motivates prospective students to attend two-year colleges. I also find positive effects of two-year college appropriations on two-year college attendance. These results illustrate the on-going interaction of state policies and individual decisions. In recent years, increased earnings of college educated individuals have resulted in large increases in college enrollments. States have adjusted to the enrollment pressure by raising four-year college tuition. In response, students have switched to two-year colleges, requiring states to allocate larger amounts to such colleges.

Reconciling Estimates of Labor Market Returns to College Quality
Rapid increases in the cost of attending higher quality colleges have contributed to a growing literature on the relationship between college quality and student earnings. In a group of nine such studies, analysts find positive earnings effects of college quality but fail to agree on its magnitude. Because these studies differ with respect to a variety of methodological and data related issues, it is not possible to ascertain how each of these differences influences the estimates. I consider a large set of factor that distinguish the studies and examine the sensitivity of the estimates to each of the factors, using two large micro data sets, the First Follow-up Survey of the Baccalaureate and Beyond Study and the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. My estimates show that college quality effects differ between blacks and whites, college graduates and dropouts and also between young and older students. I also find that correcting for the endogeneity of college quality variables increases estimates of college quality effects, implying that costs of attendance constrain individuals' college quality choices.

Methods. Using occupational data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 and O*NET work variables, we used growth mixture modeling (GMM) to construct longitudinal trajectories of work SC from the ages of 18 to 34 years. The association between work trajectories and birth weight of infants born to study participants was modeled using generalized estimating equations, adjusting for education, income, and relevant covariates.

Results. GMM yielded a 5-class solution for work trajectories in women. Higher work trajectories were associated with higher term birth weight and were robust to the inclusion of both education and income. A work trajectory that showed a sharp rise after age 24 years was associated with marked improvement in birth weight.

Conclusions. Longitudinal modeling of work characteristics might improve capacity to integrate occupation into a life-course model that examines antecedents and consequences for maternal and child health.

Methods: This paper gives a brief overview of new methods that integrate variable- and person-centered analyses. Methods discussed include latent class analysis, latent transition analysis, latent class growth analysis, growth mixture modeling, and general growth mixture modeling. These methods are presented in a general latent variable modeling framework that expands traditional latent variable modeling by including not only continuous latent variables but also categorical latent variables.

Results: Four examples that use the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) data are presented to illustrate latent class analysis, latent class growth analysis, growth mixture modeling, and general growth mixture modeling. Latent class analysis of antisocial behavior found four classes. Four heavy drinking trajectory classes were found. The relationship between the latent classes and background variables and consequences was studied.

The underlying theoretical premise is that strong, stable two-parent families are related to the state of the marriage market. When there are large numbers of marriageable men relative to unmarried women, fewer female-headed families will form. But imprisonment reduces the supply of marriageable men, according to this theory. Thus, the central hypothesis is that when there is a change in sentencing policies that increases imprisonment there will be a corresponding reduction in the supply of marriageable men and an increase in the incidence of female-headed families.

To test our hypothesis we designed three research models to examine the relationship between family structure and incarceration, but using different measures and datasets. The goals was to see if testing for the same impacts using different data would confirm our theory that changing sentencing policies has adversely affected families. The first model (Module A) merged the National Longitudinal Survey on Youth (NLSY) for 1985 and 1994 with the Urban Institute's 1980 and 1990 Underclass Database (UDB) and the 1984 and 1993 National Correctional Report Program (NCRP) data set for counties. It measured the impact of inmate admissions and releases on female-headed families, female family headship, and out of wedlock births. Module B merged data from the Current Population Survey for 1985 and 1995 with state level data to measure the Darity-Myers sex ratio and expected welfare income and to measure their relationship to family structure, sentencing guidelines, and minimum sent e nces for drug related crimes. Finally, Module C used data collected from inmates entering the Minnesota prison system in 1997 and 1998, information from the Minnesota Crime Survey, and the 1990 Census to assess any connections between incarceration and family structure.

While the results of the project support parts of the underlying theory, the conclusion that imprisonment increases female-headed families is not strongly supported. Using the NLSY data set, we find few statistically significant impacts of prison admissions on different measures of family structure. And in the model specifications where we do find statistically significant impacts of admissions on family structure, e.g., in fixed effects models for 1994, the results emerge for states without sentencing guidelines but not for states with guidelines. The lack of strong and robust support for unintended impacts of sentencing guidelines on family structure may be a result of how we have measured the intervening influences of imprisonment. We looked at admissions rates and release rates and the ratio of admissions rates to release rates. It is possible that an examination of the number of admissions or releases will change these conclusions. But the main finding using the NLSY data set is that there are no strong or robust indicators of the adverse impacts of sentencing reforms on family structures.

When we looked at the replication of the Darity-Myers model of sex-ratios and family structures we again find little support for the adverse impacts of sentencing reforms on family structures. We find unequivocal support for the underlying model that links sex-ratios to family structure. But we find ironically that sex-ratios in recent years are slightly higher tor blacks in sentencing guidelines states than there are in non-sentencing guidelines states. In states with mandatory minimum sentences for drug-related crimes the sex-ratios are not much different from those of states without manda to r y minimums. As a result, we do not find consistent evidence that sentencing guidelines or mandatory minimum sentences adversely affect family structure, despite very strong and consistent evidence that lower supplies of marriageable men are associated with higher incidences of female-headed families. There are some minor differences in the responsiveness of family structures to sex-ratios in states with different sentencing policies and there is a small impact of drug enforcement policies on black (but not white) family structures. These impacts should be explored further in future research.

We hoped to examine in greater detail one state with a long history of sentencing reforms and the impacts of local community factors on inmate family structure. We wanted to know whether the aspects of locations that lose marriageable males due to incarceration were more important in explaining the family structures left behind by prisoners than the characteristics of the prisoners themselves. If sentencing reforms adversely affect local neighborhoods then one would expect these effects to translate into differences in family structures faced by inmates who come from these communities. We find, however, that the local impacts are small. Far more of the variance in inmate family structures is explained by individual inmate demographics than location characteristics.

In summary, then, we have looked at three different data sets at different points in time and using different notions of family structure and we find little consistent support for the theoretically plausible hypothesis that there are strong unintended impacts of imprisonment policies on family structures.

The second essay entitled "Transient and Chronic Poverty in the US: The Role of the Food Stamp Program" examines the unique and common determinants of short-term intra-annual transient poverty and chronic poverty, as well as the differential response of each state of poverty to Food Stamp Program (FSP) use. The study employs dynamic expenditure-based poverty measures using quarterly data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey (2001-2004). The major finding is that FSP use reduces transient poverty, but the study finds no significant impact of FSP use on chronic poverty. The common causes of both states of poverty are low human capital, minority status and involuntary unemployment of the household head. Changes in family composition during the year is only associated with higher transient poverty.

The third essay entitled "Food Insecurity and the Food Stamp Program" examines the determinants of food insecurity in the US, as well as its response to Food Stamp Program use with data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (1995-1999). The study finds that FSP use reduces household food insecurity, and that the program impact is greater for households that experience more severe insecurity. In addition the study finds that higher risk tolerance as well as a preference for smoking cigarettes increase household food insecurity.

The main data for this dissertation come from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth 1979 (NLSY79). The basic sample includes 4,824 parents-children pairs. I aggregate the state-level data from several different resources such as the IRS's Statistics of Income, U.S. Census of Governments, and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The state-level sample includes 220 state-year observations.

Overall, the intergenerational elasticity (IGE) of income is about 0.43, and the analysis indicates that the US in reality is highly immobile, especially when looking at the extreme income groups of the bottom and the top. This study finds that rising income inequality acts to strengthen the importance of parental family income to child's income. Particularly, the evidence that higher income inequality decreases intergenerational income mobility is clearer when migration problems are addressed.

Differences in educational and labor market outcomes across groups completing high school at different ages and by different means (e.g., graduation, GED) may result from a variety of factors, including those that influence a person to leave school early. For a high school dropout, an estimate of the value of completing high school is the difference between outcomes of those who have graduated either by passing the GED examination or by returning to school and those who have not completed high school. By 1990, young adults with a GED were more likely to have attended either a third or fourth year of high school than other dropouts. For both males and females, those who did not attain a high school diploma before age 20 did not do as well as a group in the labor market as those who did. Females who took advantage of a second chance to complete high school usually had higher annual earnings than those who did not, and those who received a diploma or GED before age 20 were more likely to be employed.

These Guidelines for Weight Control and Obesity Management in Children and Adolescents are the result of a comprehensive assessment of the current scientific evidence and provide detailed evidence-based guidance for assessing and managing overweight and obesity in Australia. They have been published separately from the Guidelines for Weight Control and Obesity Management in Adults because the health and psychosocial factors pertaining to the treatment of overweight and obesity in children and adolescents are very different. Treatment of these conditions in this age group is expected to become increasingly common as greater numbers of children and adolescents fall into the categories of overweight and obese, and the publication of guidelines specifically for children and adolescents emphasises the importance of appropriate clinical practice in this area. The guidelines themselves highlight important health concerns associated with overweight and obesity in childhood and adolescence, as well as the associated future health risks.

In it in this context that the Committee on National Statistics and the Board on Children and Families of the National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine convened a workshop to examine the adequacy of federal statistics on children and families. Through a series of background papers, discussants' remarks, and participant discussions, the workshop provided a forum for a preliminary assessment of the strengths and shortcomings of existing and proposed federal statistical data sources, particularly with respect to their capacity to fill the most pressing information needs of those who formulate, implement, and analyze policies for children."

The second chapter studies the effect of occupational human capital on the workers' wages. Unlike previous studies that apply occupational tenure as a proxy for occupational human capital, this chapter applies the concept of Shaw's (1984) occupational human capital to capture the transferability of occupational skills and estimates a new measure of occupational human capital, so-called occupational investment . Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) from 1979 to 2000, the key findings of this chapter suggest that occupational skills from previous jobs can also affect workers' wages at the current job and that occupational investment is one of the important sources of wages supporting Shaw's original work on wage determination. Specifically, five years of (3-digit) occupational investment relative to the current occupational tenure could lead to a wage increase of 7 to 16 percent. I also find that the general labor market experience accounts for a large share of workers' wages.

The third chapter investigates the role of occupational human capital in explaining variations in earnings losses following job displacement. Unlike previous studies on job displacement, this chapter uses a continuous measure of occupational skills transferability, developed in Chapter 1, to measure the similarity between the pre- and post-displacement occupations of reemployed displaced workers. Using the 2004, 2006, 2008, and 2010 Displaced Worker Survey (DWS), the main finding is that post-displacement earnings losses are highly correlated with the degree of similarity between pre- and post-displacement occupations. Displaced workers who find jobs in occupations similar to their previous jobs suffer smaller earnings losses than those who find less similar occupations. This relationship is non-linear in that higher skills transferability reduces the earnings losses at a decreasing rate.

Overall, this dissertation examines the measurement and outcomes of occupational human capital to support the idea that occupational skills are transferable across occupations and that skills transferability can help to explain workers' wages over the lifecycle and earnings losses associated with job displacement.

The second essay focuses on identifying and quantifying the predictors of child/adolescent obesity. We expand on the work of Classen and Hokayem (2005) and Stifel and Averett (2009). We use the NLSY together with the Child and Young Adults dataset (a separate survey which follows the children of the mothers in the NLSY). First, a probit is estimated, using adolescent overweight and obesity indicators as the dependent variables. The explanatory variables include respondent, mother, household, and geographical controls. Several specifications are estimated, either using current (adolescent) or childhood covariates. We find that the main predictors of child obesity are the mother's obesity status, gender, race, birth-weight, signs of psychological depression, family income, and maternal education. We then estimate OLS and quantile regressions using child/adolescent BMI z-scores as the dependent variable. We find that for many of the variables the estimated coefficients vary substantially depending on the location of the child in the BMI distribution. For instance in our regressions 1 unit increase in the mother's BMI is associated with an increase in BMI of 0.036 (0.215) units if the child is in the 5th (95th) percentile of the BMI distribution.

The first essay addresses the estimation of wage discrimination. It considers the linkage of these estimates, using the "decompositions" introduced by Oaxaca (1973), to theoretical models of discriminatory behavior. A model of employer discrimination is used to derive conditions under which these widely used estimates are valid measures of discrimination. That this approach is more generally useful is demonstrated by showing that different assumptions about the nature of employers' discriminatory behavior lead to alternative estimates of wage discrimination.

The second essay studies the role of the family in determining earnings and various dimensions of human capital, focusing in particular on gender differences. The essay asks whether the finding of Bound, Griliches and Hall (1986), of "symmetric" treatment by the family of male and female offspring in determining ability and schooling, carries over when extended to the accumulation of labor force experience. Somewhat ambiguous findings emerge, due to the difficulty of identifying parameters capturing all of the possible channels of influence. In one version of the model, significant family effects on labor force experience for both men and women are found, and these effects are very dissimilar by gender. In a second version, the dissimilarity is attenuated.

The third essay studies the factor that is probably most responsible for male-female labor force differentials, the childbearing role of women. It focuses on the timing and spacing of fertility; the potential relationships between these variables and labor market outcomes are indicated in research by Bloom (1987). The broad issue it addresses is whether women choose birth intervals, or instead choose fertility control strategies entailing risks of a birth over time. The empirical results suggest that the first type of behavior is dominant. More strongly, the results show that much of the effects of demographic and other characteristics on the risk of a birth, found in "reduced form" hazard model estimates, are due to the relationship between these characteristics and expected duration.

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Purpose and Approach
Housing affordability is currently viewed as the most significant housing challenge. Over the last two decades the housing component of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) grew 35 percent faster than the general CPI. According to the 2008 State of the Nation’s Housing report, nearly one-quarter of renter households paid more than 50 percent of their incomes for rent in 2006. Housing affordability problems could have deleterious effects on children’s well-being by reducing the resources the family can invest in their children, or by increasing the stress on parents. On the other hand, places with higher-priced housing tend to have better schools and lower crime rates, which could benefit children.

In the earlier phase of this study, we tested models using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) database, along with its Child Development Supplements (CDS). In this second phase, we are extending our examination of the association between housing affordability and children’s outcomes by analyzing a second national longitudinal survey database, the National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth (NLSY).

Results
The PSID-CDS analysis suggests that children growing up in higher-priced housing markets fare no worse than those in lower-priced markets. There were no negative associations between housing prices and academic achievement, behavior or health. Nor was there any indication that parents living in higher-priced markets are more personally or emotionally stressed. Initial results from the NLSY analysis closely mirror those from the PSID-CDS. There is little indication that children growing up in high-priced housing markets suffer cognitive achievement deficits or have behavior problems.

(Author summary: This project will use the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth – Child and Young Adult data to begin to fill this void. These data include information from the females who were part of the original NLSY79 cohort as well as from their children. A measure of the mothers' self-control is developed using items such as their aspirations, their involvement in criminal activities, early and unsafe sexual activity, and alcohol and substance use. The children's self-control is measured by items such as being in an accident or having an injury in the last year, the children's scores from interviewer assessments on temperament, social development, and behavior problems scales, self-reported behavior problems at school, educational expectations, and a series of items assessing risk taking behaviors and attitudes.)

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Preliminary results from multiple regression, reveal that increasing religious attendance ranging from several times a year to once a week is associated with better physical health than those that never attended (p<0.05). Educated males (p=0.002) with large family size (p=0.079) and higher net family income (p=0.010) were also more likely to have better physical health. (overall model significance F= 10.275, p<0.000). Frequency of religious attendance greater than once a week was not associated with better physical health (p=0.207). More religious variables such as affiliation, spouse attendance, frequency couples argue about religion and father-child religious participation will be included in subsequent models as well as testing religiosity's effect on mental health. Longitudinal analysis will be performed to analyze the change in health status over time from exposure to religiosity. The mediating and modifying effects of social support and lifestyle behavior will be analyzed.

The second section investigates the relationship of religious participation to physical health, mental health and depression and the mediating behavioral pathway of cigarette and alcohol use. The study focuses on a sample of 2,102 individuals followed from 1979 to 2000, utilizing data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 79 (NLSY79). The main findings are the following. Cross-sectional analysis revealed a positive U-shaped relationship between religious attendance and physical health in the year 2000, controlling for sociodemographic variables of gender, race, marital status, education, number of children living in a household, work amount, and income. Attendance levels of once per week to infrequent were related to better physical health scores. Attendance among individuals of low socio-economic status (SES) was associated with better physical health compared with no attendance. African Americans reported better mental health and lower depression scores with higher attendance levels compared to no attendance; Caucasians showed the opposite trend. Examining the data longitudinally from 1982 to 2000, early attendance in young adulthood was found to be positively associated with better mental health and less depression in mid-adulthood, controlling for key sociodemographic variables. The behavior of cigarette smoking frequency was a mediator between the relationship of religious attendance and depression, controlling for key sociodemographic variables. Alcohol abuse/dependency and heavy drinking showed evidence of mild mediation. Attendance in young adulthood was protective against alcohol abuse/dependency, heavy drinking and smoking in mid-adulthood.

In addition, the dissertation includes the development of a framework for future qualitative analysis of exploratory interviews with professionals at international humanitarian organizations on how religious beliefs and practices of a targeted population are taken into account in health projects. Major themes explored are conceptualizations of religiousness, spirituality and health, theorized mediating pathways, field experiences and institutional policies.

Overall this research provides evidence to support the relationship between religious participation and mental health, depression and physical health.

Control variables used in logistic regression models included hours the mother worked during her child's adolescence, mother's body mass index (BMI), whether the mother was a teenager when the child was born, whether the mother was single in the child's early childhood, years of education the mother completed by the time her child became an adolescent, sex and race of the child, household income, and urban residence.