Immigrant Earnings Distributions and Earnings Mobility in Canada: Evidence for the 1982 Landing Cohort from IMDB Micro Data

This paper provides preliminary results from the IMDB panel database on the earnings distribution and earnings mobility of Canadian immigrants over their first post-landing decade in Canada. In this study we examine only the 1982 landing cohort of immigrants and follow them through to 1992. We examine earnings outcomes by four immigrant admission categories (independent economic immigrants, family class immigrants, and refugees) and separately for men and women. We find that there was indeed a substantial increase in the real earnings of 1982 immigrants over their first ten post-landing years in Canada. Annual earnings were initially highest for independent economic immigrants (all of whom are principal applicants) and lowest for refugees. But the growth rate of earnings was highest among refugees, so that by the tenth post-landing year refugees had the second-highest annual earnings levels after independent economic immigrants. Earnings inequality among immigrants in the 1982 landing cohort changed over the ensuing decade in a manner consistent with onward migration beyond Canada from the top end of the immigrant earnings distribution. In fact, sample attrition in the IMDB database was greatest among independent economic immigrants, followed by refugees. Earnings mobility was substantially greater for immigrants than for earners as a whole in the Canadian labour market, and declined with years since landing for both male and female immigrants. Earnings mobility was also greater among immigrant women than among immigrant men. The results indicate that the point system is effective in admitting higher-earning immigrants who succeed in moving ahead in the Canadian labour market, but suggest that onward (or through) migration among the most skilled immigrant workers may be a policy concern.Immigrant Earnings, Earnings Mobility of Immigrants, Canadian Immigrant Earnings

Immigrant Earnings Differences Across Admission Categories and Landing Cohorts in Canada

This study uses longitudinal IMDB micro data to document the annual earnings outcomes of Canadian immigrants in four major admission categories (skill-assessed independent economic principal applicants, accompanying economic immigrants, family class immigrants, and refugees) and three annual landing cohorts (those for the years 1982, 1988, and 1994) over the first ten years following their landing in Canada as permanent residents. The findings provide a ten-year earnings signature for the four broad immigrant admission categories in Canada. The study’s first major finding is that skill-assessed economic immigrants had consistently and substantially the highest annual earnings levels among the four admission categories for both male and female immigrants in all three landing cohorts. Family class immigrants or refugees generally had the lowest earnings levels. An important related finding is that refugees exhibited substantially the highest earnings growth rates for both male and female immigrants in all three landing cohorts, while independent economic or family class immigrants generally had the lowest earnings growth rates over their first post-landing decade in Canada. The study’s second major finding is that economic recessions appear to have had clearly discernible negative effects on immigrants’ earnings levels and growth rates; moreover, these adverse effects were much more pronounced for male immigrants than for female immigrants.Immigrant earnings, admission categories, Canadian immigrants

Can switching fuels save water? A life cycle quantification of freshwater consumption for Texas coal-and natural gas-fired electricity

Thermal electricity generation is a major consumer of freshwater for cooling, fuel extraction and air emissions controls, but the life cycle water impacts of different fossil fuel cycles are not well understood. Much of the existing literature relies on decades-old estimates for water intensity, particularly regarding water consumed for fuel extraction. This work uses contemporary data from specific resource basins and power plants in Texas to evaluate water intensity at three major stages of coal and natural gas fuel cycles: fuel extraction, power plant cooling and power plant emissions controls. In particular, the water intensity of fuel extraction is quantified for Texas lignite, conventional natural gas and 11 unconventional natural gas basins in Texas, including major second-order impacts associated with multi-stage hydraulic fracturing. Despite the rise of this water-intensive natural gas extraction method, natural gas extraction appears to consume less freshwater than coal per unit of energy extracted in Texas because of the high water intensity of Texas lignite extraction. This work uses new resource basin and power plant level water intensity data to estimate the potential effects of coal to natural gas fuel switching in Texas’ power sector, a shift under consideration due to potential environmental benefits and very low natural gas prices. Replacing Texas’ coal-fired power plants with natural gas combined cycle plants (NGCCs) would reduce annual freshwater consumption in the state by an estimated 53 billion gallons per year, or 60% of Texas coal power’s water footprint, largely due to the higher efficiency of NGCCs.Mechanical Engineerin

An Analysis of Construction Cost and Schedule Performance

Cost and schedule performance are widely accepted in the literature and in industry as effective measures of the success of the project management effort expended. Earned Value Analysis (EVA) offers many metrics to objectively measure cost and schedule performance of many different types of projects. The author utilized EVA to objectively measure the cost and schedule performance of completed United States Air Force (AF) Military Construction (MILCON projects from 1990 to 2005. The impact of Major Command (MAJCOM), Construction Agent (CA), and facility type (CATCODE) and the combination of these variables on the EVA metrics of Cost Performance Index (CPI), Time Performance Index (TPI), and CPI*TPI were evaluated. The CPI results indicate that AF MILCON projects are typically executed either on or below their respective budgets. Conversely, the TPI results indicate that AF MILCON projects typically take more time than expected for construction. The CPI*TPI results indicate that the AF MILCON projects in this study typically exchange higher cost performance for lower time performance. However, when CPI and TPI are given equal weight, the sacrifice made in time performance is greater than the benefit gained in cost performance

Stories We Don’t Tell: Research’s Limited Accounting of Rural Schools

To help build capacity among PK-12 school leaders and policymakers whose decisions can impact rural settings, often without full understanding of the nuances most salient to rural places, this study asked (1) To what extent do education researchers account for geographic locale in their reporting? (2) Do highly ranked journals account for geographic locale in their reporting more readily than education research in general? Hybridizing three systematic approaches to literature review—rapid, mapping, and scoping—the study examined a population-level dataset of nearly 109,000 school-focused, peer-reviewed articles in ERIC during a 10-year period and dove deeper into 4,001 articles from highly ranked journals. Overall, we found that more than 85% of the literature base ignores geographic locale entirely. Next, we revealed stunning overrepresentation of city/urban schools, proportionality in towns, and underrepresentation for suburbs, but especially clear neglect for rurality and remoteness. Furthermore, more than 90% of the few studies that invoked “rural” never defined the term. Ultimately, our findings support recommendations for school leaders and policymakers to only employ research that clarifies the ‘who’ and ‘where’ of studies, aiding their determinations of whether research can be adapted for—or should be entirely discounted from—local use. We also advocate that researchers embrace geographic locale as an essential, measurable school characteristic; standardize use of National Center for Education Statistics’ Urban-Centric codes as a definitional framework; and avoid imaginary urban-rural dichotomies

The Impact of Pork Advertising on US Meat Demand in the Presence of Competing Beef Advertising and Food Safety Events

We examine the effects of domestic advertising and promotion expenditures on meat demand, extending previous efforts in several areas, including the use of more recent data, employing a complete demand system and simultaneously measuring the impacts of generic pork and beef advertising and food safety information on the demand for beef, pork, and poultry. Using the Generalized Almost Ideal Demand System (GAIDS), own- and cross- beef and pork advertising and own- and cross- beef, pork, and poultry food safety effects are measured jointly and consistently. To allow for a more complex dynamic response of advertising and food safety effects, the flexible distributed lag technique of Mitchell and Speaker (1986) is employed. The coefficients on pork advertising in the pork and poultry equations are highly significant. The coefficients on beef advertising are only statistically significantly different from zero in the poultry equation indicating the primary impact from these efforts is a cross-commodity effect. To investigate the economic significance of these effects, elasticities for price, expenditure, food safety and advertising are calculated and compared. Consistent with previous work we find the impacts of advertising and food safety effects to be economically small compared with price and expenditure effects.food safety, Generalized Almost Ideal Demand System, generic advertising, meat demand, polynomial inverse lag, Demand and Price Analysis, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

INTERACTION EFFECTS OF PROMOTION, RESEARCH, AND PRICE SUPPORT PROGRAMS FOR U.S. COTTON

Many agricultural commodities have industry-funded generic promotion and/or research ("checkoff") programs designed to improve the economic performance of producers. To determine the effectiveness of these programs, the net benefits to producers attributable to activities funded by the checkoff must be separated from those due to other factors influencing commodity markets. One such factor that is very important in many agricultural commodity markets is the effect of government programs. However, studies evaluating the returns to checkoff programs often do not explicitly discuss the impact of pre-existing distortions caused by federal farm programs. Because the distortions caused by farm programs can be quite large, this omission can lead to seriously biased estimates of the returns to the checkoff programs. In this study, we develop a model that captures the influence of two Federal programs (loan deficiency payments to farmers and subsidies to consuming mills) on the estimated returns to the Cotton Research and Promotion Program. Using an econometrically estimated model of the U.S. cotton market, we find that the program interaction effects have a large impact on checkoff program returns.Agricultural and Food Policy, Crop Production/Industries,