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Journal Article
How much do expansions reduce the black-white employment gap?
Working Paper
Levels and trends in the income mobility of U.S. families, 1977−2012
Much of America?s promise is predicated on economic mobility?the possibility that people can move up and down the economic ladder during their lifetimes. Mobility is of particular consequence when economic disparities are increasing. Using panel data and mobility concepts and measures adapted from the literature, this paper examines 10-year income mobility levels and trends for U.S. working-age families during the time span 1977?2012. According to many measures, mobility, already limited in the 1978?1988 decade, declined over ensuing decades: families? later-year incomes increasingly depended ...
Working Paper
The Roles of State Aid and Local Conditions in Elementary School Test-Score Gaps
Equal educational opportunity is a core American value. Yet many children of low-income or minority racial or ethnic status attend public schools that are lower quality compared with those that white children or high-income children attend. And data indicate that, on average, low-income or minority children score lower on states’ elementary-school accountability tests compared with higher-income children or white children. Such test-score gaps serve as evidence of unequal educational opportunity. This study uses information from metropolitan areas and from school districts to understand ...
Journal Article
Growing inequality of family incomes: changing families and changing wages
It is widely known that the incomes of U.S. families became more unequal during the 1980s. The reasons for this rise, however, are not at all clear. Numerous factors have been implicated including slow growth, rising demand for highly educated workers, and shifts in family structure and family members' work patterns.> This article describes the 1973-94 increase in inequality of family incomes and related shifts in wage inequality, work trends, and family patterns. The author also examines patterns of inequality among the nine Census regions in the United States and differences in their ...
Journal Article
Women's rise: a work in progress
Recent data show declines in labor force participation for highly educated women, but the causes of these changes are not easy to identify.
Journal Article
Issues in economics: are lifetime incomes growing more unequal?: looking at new evidence on family income mobility
Since most people judge their well-being by comparison with others, widening inequality of lifetime incomes may threaten our standing as a "land of opportunity."
Briefing
Regional differences in the impact of energy price increases
This Public Policy Brief presents estimates of the impact of price increases projected by the U.S. Department of Energy for the winter of 2004-5 on consumers in the nine Census divisions and selected metropolitan areas. It is based on materials presented in a briefing to the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston in December 2004.
Journal Article
Can local governments give citizens what they want? Referendum outcomes in Massachusetts
Economists and political scientists have long debated the nature of the process that determines government taxation and service levels in a democracy. During the 1980s, the role of referenda in determining city and town property taxes, and hence local spending, increased dramatically in Massachusetts. This article uses recent Massachusetts experience to examine the degree to which citizens "get what they want" from the local public sector and what it is they seem to want. ; The passage of Proposition 21/2 in November 1980 signalled both a shift in statewide voter sentiment against local ...
Report
Racial and Socioeconomic Test-Score Gaps in New England Metropolitan Areas: State School Aid and Poverty Segregation
Test-score data show that both low-income and racial-minority children score lower, on average, on states’ elementary-school accountability tests compared with higher-income children or white children. While different levels of scholastic achievement depend on a host of influences, such test-score gaps point toward unequal educational opportunity as a potentially important contributor. This report explores the relationship between racial and socioeconomic test-score gaps in New England metropolitan areas and two factors associated with unequal opportunity in education: state equalizing ...
Journal Article
New England: the regional recovery