Immigrant Labor, Child-Care Services, and the Work-Fertility Trade-Off in the United States

The negative correlation between female employment and fertility in industrialized nations has weakened since the 1960s, particularly in the United States. We suggest that the continuing influx of low-skilled immigrants has led to a substantial reduction in the trade-off between work and childrearing facing American women. The evidence we present indicates that low-skilled immigration has driven down wages in the US child-care sector. More affordable child-care has, in turn, increased the fertility of college graduate native females. Although childbearing is generally associated with temporary exit from the labor force, immigrant-led declines in the price of child-care has reduced the extent of role incompatibility between fertility and work.fertility, labor supply, immigration

The Dynamics of the Age Structure, Dependency, and Consumption

We examine the dynamic interaction of the population age structure, economic dependency, and fertility, paying particular attention to the role of intergenerational transfers. In the short run, a reduction in fertility produces a %u201Cdemographic dividend%u201D that allows for higher consumption. In the long run, however, higher old-age dependency can more than offset this effect. To analyze these dynamics we develop a highly tractable continuous-time overlapping generations model in which population is divided into three groups (young, working age, and old) and transitions between groups take place in a probabilistic fashion. We show that most highly developed countries have fertility below the rate that maximizes steady state consumption. Further, the dependency-minimizing response to increased longevity is to raise fertility. In the face of the high taxes required to support transfers to a growing aged population, we demonstrate that the actual response of fertility will likely be exactly the opposite, leading to increased population aging.

Access to Effective Teaching for Disadvantaged Students

Recent federal initiatives in education, such as Race to the Top, the Teacher Incentive Fund, and the flexibility policy for the Elementary and Secondary Education Act are designed in part to ensure that disadvantaged students have equal access to effective teaching. The initiatives respond to the concern that disadvantaged students may be taught by less effective teachers and that this could contribute to the achievement gap between disadvantaged students and other students. To address the need for evidence on this issue, the Institute of Education Sciences at the U.S. Department of Education initiated a study to examine access to effective teaching for disadvantaged students in 29 diverse school districts. Mathematica Policy Research and its partner, the American Institutes for Research, conducted the study, which focused on English/ language arts (ELA) and math teachers in grades 4 through 8 from the 2008 -- 2009 to the 2010 -- 2011 school year

Verbale Definitheit und der vedische Injunktiv

Der Artikel knüpft an Karl Hoffmanns Ergebnisse zur Funktionsbestimmung des vedischen Injunktivs an und versucht anhand ausgewählter Stellen des Rigveda zu zeigen, dass der Injunktiv nicht nur ,bekannte‘ Sachverhalte bezeichnet, sondern überhaupt die ,definite‘ Weise ist, auf Sachverhalte bezugzunehmen. Mit dieser speziellen Funktion deckt der Injunktiv eine Teilmenge der Funktionen des Indikativs ab. Da der Injunktiv morphologisch aber einfacher ist als der Indikativ, sind vorhistorische Funktionsverschiebungen anzunehmen