Living Standards in Black and White: Evidence from the Heights of Ohio Prison Inmates, 1829 – 1913

The use of height data to measure living standards is now a well-established method in the economic history literature. Moreover, a number of core findings in this literature are widely agreed upon. There are still some populations, places, and times, however, for which anthropometric evidence remains thin. One example is African-Americans in the Northern US in the 1800s. Here, we use new data from the state prison in Ohio to track heights of black and white men from 1829 to 1913. We corroborate the well-known mid-century height decline among white men in Ohio, found by Steckel and Haurin (1994) using National Guard data. We find that black men in Ohio were shorter than white men, throughout the century and controlling for a number of characteristics. We also find a pattern of height decline in mid-century similar to that found for white men.

Degrees of inequality: the advance of black male workers in the northern meat packing and steel industries before World War II

Journal ArticleRecent major works on long-term racial inequality in the labor market revolve around competing hypotheses concerning the importance of human capital factors (Smith and Welch 1989) and government policy (Donohue and Heckman 1991) in promoting black advance. There is however, another line or thinking which emphasizes the importance of experimentation and "demand-side learning": employers' gaining access to accurate information about the abilities of black workers and adjusting their beliefs in accordance with this informoition

Ghettos and jobs in history: neighborhood effects on African American occupational status and mobility in World War I-era Cincinnati, Ohio

Journal ArticleThis article examines how residence in racially segregated neighborhoods affected the job prospects of African American men in the late 1910s. The analysis focuses on one northern city-Cincinnati, Ohio.The evidence comes from a new longitudinal dataset containing information on individuals linked from the 1920 census to World War I selective service registration records. The results indicate that black male residents of Cincinnati's west end ghetto held occupations similar to those of black men in other Cincinnati neighborhoods and experienced similar rates of upward occupational mobility. Surprisingly, black men in the west end experienced lower rates of downward occupational mobility than did black men in other parts of the city

Wage compression and wage inequality between black and white males in the United States, 1940-1960

Journal ArticleThe gap between the mean wages of black men and white men in the United States narrowed substantially between 1940 and 1950. There was, however, almost no change in this wage gap between 1950 and 1960. Some of this discontinuity in the path of black progress can be explained by general changes in the wage structure--wage compression in the 1940s and slight expansion in the 1950s. However, most of the gains of the 1940s were driven by race-specific factors, including increasing relative wages controlling for worker characteristics. These race-specific gains ceased in the 1950s

Occupation and fertility on the frontier: Evidence from the state of Utah

pre-printBACKGROUND Most of what we know about fertility decline in the United States comes from aggregate (often state or county level) data sources. It is difficult to identify variation in fertility change across socio-economic classes in such data, although understanding such variation would provide deeper insight into the history of the fertility transition. OBJECTIVE We use rich micro-level data to examine differences across occupational classes in fertility levels and in the timing and pace of change in fertility in the US state of Utah in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. METHODS Our evidence comes from the Utah Population Database, which contains several generations of linked family histories, including information on residents of Utah from the mid-1800s to the present. We use standard linear regression models to identify variation in fertility across birth cohorts and occupational classes as well as cohort-occupation interaction effects (to identify differences across classes in the pace of change over time) RESULTS Families of white collar workers led changes in many fertility-related behaviors, particularly those tied to the start of family life (marriage age and first birth interval). Farm families had high fertility levels and added children into late ages, although they also experienced declining fertility

Neighborhood socioeconomic status and BMI differences by immigrant and legal status: Evidence from Utah

pre-printWe build on recent work examining the BMI patterns of immigrants in the US by distinguishing between legal and undocumented immigrants. We find that undocumented women have relative odds of obesity that are about 10 percentage points higher than for legal immigrant women, and their relative odds of being overweight are about 40 percentage points higher. We also find that the odds of obesity and overweight status vary less across neighborhoods for undocumented women than for legal immigrant women. These patterns are not found among immigrant men: undocumented men have lower rates of obesity (by about 6 percentage points in terms of relative odds) and overweight (by about 12 percentage points) than do legal immigrant men, and there is little variation in the impact of neighborhood context across groups of men. We interpret these findings in terms of processes of acculturation among immigrant men and women

Living standards in black and white: evidence from the heights of Ohio prison inmates, 1829-1913

Journal ArticleThe use of height data to measure living standards is now a well-established method in the economic history literature. Moreover, a number of core findings are widely agreed upon. There are still some populations, places, and times, however, for which anthropometric evidence remains limited. One such example is 19th century African-Americans in the Northern US. Here, we use new data from the Ohio state prison to track heights of black and white men incarcerated between 1829 and 1913. We corroborate the well-known mid-century height decline among white men. We find that black men were shorter than white men, throughout the century controlling for a number of characteristics. We also find a pattern of height decline among black men in midcentury similar to that found for white men

On handling urban informality in southern Africa

In this article I reconsider the handling of urban informality by urban planning and management systems in southern Africa. I argue that authorities have a fetish about formality and that this is fuelled by an obsession with urban modernity. I stress that the desired city, largely inspired by Western notions of modernity, has not been and cannot be realized. Using illustrative cases of top–down interventions, I highlight and interrogate three strategies that authorities have deployed to handle informality in an effort to create or defend the modern city. I suggest that the fetish is built upon a desire for an urban modernity based on a concept of formal order that the authorities believe cannot coexist with the “disorder” and spatial “unruliness” of informality. I question the authorities' conviction that informality is an abomination that needs to be “converted”, dislocated or annihilated. I conclude that the very configuration of urban governance and socio-economic systems in the region, like the rest of sub-Saharan Africa, renders informality inevitable and its eradication impossible

Canvass: a crowd-sourced, natural-product screening library for exploring biological space

NCATS thanks Dingyin Tao for assistance with compound characterization. This research was supported by the Intramural Research Program of the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, National Institutes of Health (NIH). R.B.A. acknowledges support from NSF (CHE-1665145) and NIH (GM126221). M.K.B. acknowledges support from NIH (5R01GM110131). N.Z.B. thanks support from NIGMS, NIH (R01GM114061). J.K.C. acknowledges support from NSF (CHE-1665331). J.C. acknowledges support from the Fogarty International Center, NIH (TW009872). P.A.C. acknowledges support from the National Cancer Institute (NCI), NIH (R01 CA158275), and the NIH/National Institute of Aging (P01 AG012411). N.K.G. acknowledges support from NSF (CHE-1464898). B.C.G. thanks the support of NSF (RUI: 213569), the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation, and the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation. C.C.H. thanks the start-up funds from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography for support. J.N.J. acknowledges support from NIH (GM 063557, GM 084333). A.D.K. thanks the support from NCI, NIH (P01CA125066). D.G.I.K. acknowledges support from the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (1 R01 AT008088) and the Fogarty International Center, NIH (U01 TW00313), and gratefully acknowledges courtesies extended by the Government of Madagascar (Ministere des Eaux et Forets). O.K. thanks NIH (R01GM071779) for financial support. T.J.M. acknowledges support from NIH (GM116952). S.M. acknowledges support from NIH (DA045884-01, DA046487-01, AA026949-01), the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs through the Peer Reviewed Medical Research Program (W81XWH-17-1-0256), and NCI, NIH, through a Cancer Center Support Grant (P30 CA008748). K.N.M. thanks the California Department of Food and Agriculture Pierce's Disease and Glassy Winged Sharpshooter Board for support. B.T.M. thanks Michael Mullowney for his contribution in the isolation, elucidation, and submission of the compounds in this work. P.N. acknowledges support from NIH (R01 GM111476). L.E.O. acknowledges support from NIH (R01-HL25854, R01-GM30859, R0-1-NS-12389). L.E.B., J.K.S., and J.A.P. thank the NIH (R35 GM-118173, R24 GM-111625) for research support. F.R. thanks the American Lebanese Syrian Associated Charities (ALSAC) for financial support. I.S. thanks the University of Oklahoma Startup funds for support. J.T.S. acknowledges support from ACS PRF (53767-ND1) and NSF (CHE-1414298), and thanks Drs. Kellan N. Lamb and Michael J. Di Maso for their synthetic contribution. B.S. acknowledges support from NIH (CA78747, CA106150, GM114353, GM115575). W.S. acknowledges support from NIGMS, NIH (R15GM116032, P30 GM103450), and thanks the University of Arkansas for startup funds and the Arkansas Biosciences Institute (ABI) for seed money. C.R.J.S. acknowledges support from NIH (R01GM121656). D.S.T. thanks the support of NIH (T32 CA062948-Gudas) and PhRMA Foundation to A.L.V., NIH (P41 GM076267) to D.S.T., and CCSG NIH (P30 CA008748) to C.B. Thompson. R.E.T. acknowledges support from NIGMS, NIH (GM129465). R.J.T. thanks the American Cancer Society (RSG-12-253-01-CDD) and NSF (CHE1361173) for support. D.A.V. thanks the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation, the National Science Foundation (CHE-0353662, CHE-1005253, and CHE-1725142), the Beckman Foundation, the Sherman Fairchild Foundation, the John Stauffer Charitable Trust, and the Christian Scholars Foundation for support. J.W. acknowledges support from the American Cancer Society through the Research Scholar Grant (RSG-13-011-01-CDD). W.M.W.acknowledges support from NIGMS, NIH (GM119426), and NSF (CHE1755698). A.Z. acknowledges support from NSF (CHE-1463819). (Intramural Research Program of the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, National Institutes of Health (NIH); CHE-1665145 - NSF; CHE-1665331 - NSF; CHE-1464898 - NSF; RUI: 213569 - NSF; CHE-1414298 - NSF; CHE1361173 - NSF; CHE1755698 - NSF; CHE-1463819 - NSF; GM126221 - NIH; 5R01GM110131 - NIH; GM 063557 - NIH; GM 084333 - NIH; R01GM071779 - NIH; GM116952 - NIH; DA045884-01 - NIH; DA046487-01 - NIH; AA026949-01 - NIH; R01 GM111476 - NIH; R01-HL25854 - NIH; R01-GM30859 - NIH; R0-1-NS-12389 - NIH; R35 GM-118173 - NIH; R24 GM-111625 - NIH; CA78747 - NIH; CA106150 - NIH; GM114353 - NIH; GM115575 - NIH; R01GM121656 - NIH; T32 CA062948-Gudas - NIH; P41 GM076267 - NIH; R01GM114061 - NIGMS, NIH; R15GM116032 - NIGMS, NIH; P30 GM103450 - NIGMS, NIH; GM129465 - NIGMS, NIH; GM119426 - NIGMS, NIH; TW009872 - Fogarty International Center, NIH; U01 TW00313 - Fogarty International Center, NIH; R01 CA158275 - National Cancer Institute (NCI), NIH; P01 AG012411 - NIH/National Institute of Aging; Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation; Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation; Scripps Institution of Oceanography; P01CA125066 - NCI, NIH; 1 R01 AT008088 - National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health; W81XWH-17-1-0256 - Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs through the Peer Reviewed Medical Research Program; P30 CA008748 - NCI, NIH, through a Cancer Center Support Grant; California Department of Food and Agriculture Pierce's Disease and Glassy Winged Sharpshooter Board; American Lebanese Syrian Associated Charities (ALSAC); University of Oklahoma Startup funds; 53767-ND1 - ACS PRF; PhRMA Foundation; P30 CA008748 - CCSG NIH; RSG-12-253-01-CDD - American Cancer Society; RSG-13-011-01-CDD - American Cancer Society; CHE-0353662 - National Science Foundation; CHE-1005253 - National Science Foundation; CHE-1725142 - National Science Foundation; Beckman Foundation; Sherman Fairchild Foundation; John Stauffer Charitable Trust; Christian Scholars Foundation)Published versionSupporting documentatio

Strongly Correlated Quantum Fluids: Ultracold Quantum Gases, Quantum Chromodynamic Plasmas, and Holographic Duality

Strongly correlated quantum fluids are phases of matter that are intrinsically quantum mechanical, and that do not have a simple description in terms of weakly interacting quasi-particles. Two systems that have recently attracted a great deal of interest are the quark-gluon plasma, a plasma of strongly interacting quarks and gluons produced in relativistic heavy ion collisions, and ultracold atomic Fermi gases, very dilute clouds of atomic gases confined in optical or magnetic traps. These systems differ by more than 20 orders of magnitude in temperature, but they were shown to exhibit very similar hydrodynamic flow. In particular, both fluids exhibit a robustly low shear viscosity to entropy density ratio which is characteristic of quantum fluids described by holographic duality, a mapping from strongly correlated quantum field theories to weakly curved higher dimensional classical gravity. This review explores the connection between these fields, and it also serves as an introduction to the Focus Issue of New Journal of Physics on Strongly Correlated Quantum Fluids: from Ultracold Quantum Gases to QCD Plasmas. The presentation is made accessible to the general physics reader and includes discussions of the latest research developments in all three areas.Comment: 138 pages, 25 figures, review associated with New Journal of Physics special issue "Focus on Strongly Correlated Quantum Fluids: from Ultracold Quantum Gases to QCD Plasmas" (http://iopscience.iop.org/1367-2630/focus/Focus%20on%20Strongly%20Correlated%20Quantum%20Fluids%20-%20from%20Ultracold%20Quantum%20Gases%20to%20QCD%20Plasmas