Ethnic diversity is increasing in most advanced countries, driven mostly by sharp increases in immigration. In the long run immigration and diversity are likely to have important cultural, economic, fiscal, and developmental benefits. In the short run, however, immigration and ethnic diversity tend to reduce social solidarity and social capital. New evidence from the US suggests that in ethnically diverse neighbourhoods residents of all races tend to ‘hunker down’. Trust (even of one's own race) is lower, altruism and community cooperation rarer, friends fewer. In the long run, however, successful immigrant societies have overcome such fragmentation by creating new, cross-cutting forms of social solidarity and more encompassing identities. Illustrations of becoming comfortable with diversity are drawn from the US military, religious institutions, and earlier waves of American immigration.

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E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty‐first Century The 2006 Johan Skytte Prize Lecture

This literature review concerns the impact of immigration on the economy of the host country focusing on the experience of the United States. The emphasis is on the period from the 1970s to the 1990s. The author shows that research earlier in this period generally concluded that the economic effects of immigration were positive but that more recent research on later migrations have generally concluded that immigration may be having an adverse effect on the earnings of native unskilled workers and be placing an increased burden on welfare programs. The importance of such economic analysis for the formulation of appropriate migration policies is stressed.

http://www.kleykampintaiwan.com/files/GradEco/TheEconOfImmig.pdf

The Economics of Immigration

This project will deliver help to reduce the vulnerability of poor people in Haiti to the effects of climate change, while at the same time conserving threatened coastal and marine biodiversity. Investments in climateproofed and socially-sustainable BD conservation strategies, within the context of the National Protected Areas System (NPAS), will enable coastal and marine ecosystems to continue to generate Ecosystem-Based Adaptation (EBA) services; while additional investment of adaptation funds in the watersheds which drain into these ecosystems will serve to maximize BD benefits and ecosystem functions, as well as generating EBA benefits for the populations living in the watersheds themselves.

/pdf/the-united-nations-development-programme-3oj9udayrc.pdf

The United Nations Development Programme

Although significant attention has been paid to promoting the importance of physical activity in children, adolescents, and adults, we do not currently understand how to promote sustained physical activity levels throughout the lifespan. We contend that previous research has failed to consider the dynamic and synergistic role that motor skill competence plays in the initiation, maintenance, or decline of physical activity and how this role might change across developmental time. In this article, we present a conceptual model hypothesizing the relationships among physical activity, motor skill competence, perceived motor skill competence, health-related physical fitness, and obesity. We contend that the development of motor skill competence is a primary underlying mechanism that promotes engagement in physical activity.

A Developmental Perspective on the Role of Motor Skill Competence in Physical Activity: An Emergent Relationship

Between 1973 and 1978, the Indonesian Government constructed over 61,000 primary schools throughout the country. This is one of the largest school construction programs on record. I evaluate the effect of this program on education and wages by combining differences across regions in the number of schools constructed with differences across cohorts induced by the timing of the program. The estimates suggest that the construction of primary schools led to an increase in education and earnings. Children aged 2 to 6 in 1974 received 0.12 to 0.19 more years of education for each school constructed per 1,000 children in their region of birth. Using the variations in schooling generated by this policy as instrumental variables for the impact of education on wages generates estimates of economic returns to education ranging from 6.8 percent to 10.6 percent.

/pdf/schooling-and-labor-market-consequences-of-school-daqxegrq5m.pdf

Schooling and Labor Market Consequences of School Construction in Indonesia: Evidence from an Unusual Policy Experiment

Summary The increase in childhood obesity over the past several decades, together with the associated health problems and costs, is raising grave concern among health care professionals, policy experts, children’s advocates, and parents. Patricia Anderson and Kristin Butcher document trends in children’s obesity and examine the possible underlying causes of the obesity epidemic. They begin by reviewing research on energy intake, energy expenditure, and “energy balance,” noting that children who eat more “empty calories” and expend fewer calories through physical activity are more likely to be obese than other children. Next they ask what has changed in children’s environment over the past three decades to upset this energy balance equation. In particular, they examine changes in the food market, in the built environment, in schools and child care settings, and in the role of parents—paying attention to the timing of these changes. Among the changes that affect children’s energy intake are the increasing availability of energydense, high-calorie foods and drinks through schools. Changes in the family, particularly an increase in dual-career or single-parent working families, may also have increased demand for food away from home or pre-prepared foods. A host of factors have also contributed to reductions in energy expenditure. In particular, children today seem less likely to walk to school and to be traveling more in cars than they were during the early 1970s, perhaps because of changes in the built environment. Finally, children spend more time viewing television and using computers. Anderson and Butcher find no one factor that has led to increases in children’s obesity. Rather, many complementary changes have simultaneously increased children’s energy intake and decreased their energy expenditure. The challenge in formulating policies to address children’s obesity is to learn how best to change the environment that affects children’s energy balance.

/pdf/childhood-obesity-trends-and-potential-causes-4ds2gmq6wd.pdf

Childhood Obesity: Trends and Potential Causes

This paper documents the impact of siblings on the education of men and women born in the United States between 1920 and 1965. We examine the effect of the number and sex composition of a boy or girl's siblings on that child's educational attainment. We find that throughout the century women's educational choices have been systematically affected by the sex composition of her siblings, and that men's choices have not. Women raised only with brothers have received on average significantly more education than women raised with any sisters, controlling for household size. Since sibling sex composition affects women's educational attainment and plausibly may be unrelated to other determinants of earnings, it may provide a useful instrument for education in earnings functions for women. Our results suggest that standard estimates significantly underestimate the return to schooling for women.

/pdf/the-effect-of-sibling-sex-composition-on-women-s-education-14lt4c4q2l.pdf

The Effect of Sibling Sex Composition on Women's Education and Earnings

https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w8770/w8770.pdf

Maternal Employment and Overweight Children

Public concerns about the costs of immigration and crime are high, and sometimes overlapping. This article investigates the relationship between immigration into a metropolitan area and that area's crime rate during the 1980s. Using data from the Uniform Crime Reports and the Current Population Surveys, we find, in the cross section, that cities with high crime rates tend to have large numbers of immigrants. However, controlling for the demographic characteristics of the cities, recent immigrants appear to have no effect on crime rates. In explaining changes in a city's crime rate over time, the flow of immigrants again has no effect, whether or not we control for other city-level characteristics. In a secondary analysis of individual data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), we find that youth born abroad are statistically significantly less likely than native-born youth to be criminally active.

Cross‐city evidence on the relationship between immigration and crime

This paper presents new evidence on the effects of immigration based on changes in the distributions of wages in 24 major [U.S.] cities during the 1980s....We...concentrate on measuring the effects of immigration at the lower tail of the wage distribution. In particular we ask whether recent declines in the real earnings of the least-skilled workers in the U.S. economy are related to immigration. Our empirical analysis reveals large differences across cities in the relative growth rates of wages for low- and high-paid workers. Nevertheless these differences bear little or no relation to the size of immigrant inflows. (EXCERPT)

/pdf/immigration-and-wages-evidence-from-the-1980s-33vxwcwqo2.pdf

Kristin F. Butcher

Papers

Childhood Obesity: Trends and Potential Causes

The Effect of Sibling Sex Composition on Women's Education and Earnings

Maternal Employment and Overweight Children

Cross‐city evidence on the relationship between immigration and crime

Immigration and Wages: Evidence From the 1980s