When will the United States grow out of its foreign debt?

In a 1989 article in this Review, John K. Hill argued that the mere aging of the baby boom generation would cause the United States to become a major capital exporter by the end of the century. To reach that conclusion, he assumed that rising U.S. capital outflows could be absorbed by the rest of the world without a decline in real interest rates. In this article, he considers the reasonableness of that assumption and reevaluates the accuracy of his earlier projections. ; Hill first examines the demographics of other major countries to see if they could support a rapid turnaround in the U.S. capital account. The results are decidedly negative. An analysis of capital flows based on demographic conditions in the United States, Japan, Germany, and the United Kingdom suggests that the United States could remain a net capital importer throughout this decade and into the early part of the next century. Despite these findings, Hill continues to support his earlier projections. He argues that new capital demands of former Communist and developing countries will help prevent a slide in interest rates and raise the international investment positions of all industrialized countries, including the United States.Debts, External ; Investments, Foreign - United States

Demographics and the foreign indebtedness of the United States

Population ; Debt ; Investments, Foreign - United States

Lower oil prices and state employment

Employment (Economic theory) ; Power resources ; Petroleum industry and trade

The incidence of sanctions against U. S. employers of illegal aliens

Emigration and immigration ; Labor market

The incidence of sanctions against U.S. employers of illegal aliens

Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 ; Wages

Demographics and the long-term outlook for housing investment

John Hill and D'Ann Petersen measure the importance of projected shifts in the size and age distribution of the U.S. population for domestic housing investment. Their analysis runs through the year 2010 and provides separate estimates for single-family and multifamily investment. ; Hill and Petersen find that the contractionary effects of the population slowdown are already being felt in the housing industry and probably have been since the latter part of the 1980s. In Hill and Petersen's simulations, demographic shifts lower net housing investment by 17 percent from the late 1980s through the first half of the 1990s. Population factors then reduce net investment an additional 22 percent through the year 2005 before turning favorable. ; Hill and Petersen discuss the implications of their findings for construction jobs and housing prices. They suggest that the population slowdown need not produce an absolute contraction in housing employment. It will, however, reduce housing's share of national employment by as much as one-third. According to the authors, the changing demographics do not provide a compelling reason for average home prices to suffer a deep decline. They do suggest, however, that significant relative price adjustments may need to take place between different types of homes.Demography ; Housing

Spacelab 3 Mission Science Review

Papers and abstracts of the presentations made at the symposium are given as the scientific report for the Spacelab 3 mission. Spacelab 3, the second flight of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) orbital laboratory, signified a new era of research in space. The primary objective of the mission was to conduct applications, science, and technology experiments requiring the low-gravity environment of Earth orbit and stable vehicle attitude over an extended period (e.g., 6 days) with emphasis on materials processing. The mission was launched on April 29, 1985, aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger which landed a week later on May 6. The multidisciplinary payload included 15 investigations in five scientific fields: material science, fluid dynamics, life sciences, astrophysics, and atmospheric science

‘Walking ... just walking’: how children and young people’s everyday pedestrian practices matter

In this paper we consider the importance of ‘walking… just walking’ for many children and young people’s everyday lives. We will show how, in our research with 175 9-16-year-olds living in new urban developments in south-east England, some particular (daily, taken-for-granted, ostensibly aimless) forms of walking were central to the lives, experiences and friendships of most children and young people. The main body of the paper highlights key characteristics of these walking practices, and their constitutive role in these children and young people’s social and cultural geography. Over the course of the paper we will argue that ‘everyday pedestrian practices’ (after Middleton 2010, 2011) like these require us to think critically about two bodies of geographical and social scientific research. On one hand, we will argue that the large body of research on children’s spatial range and independent mobility could be conceptually enlivened and extended to acknowledge bodily, social, sociotechnical and habitual practices. On the other hand, we will suggest that the empirical details of such practices should prompt critical reflection upon the wonderfully rich, multidisciplinary vein of conceptualisation latterly termed ‘new walking studies’ (Lorimer 2011). Indeed, in conclusion we shall argue that the theoretical vivacity of walking studies, and the concerns of more applied empirical approaches such as work on children’s independent mobility, could productively be interrelated. In so doing we open out a wider challenge to social and cultural geographers, to expedite this kind of interrelation in other research contexts