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Author: Baumann, Robert William
Resulting in 2 citations.
1. Baumann, Robert William
Three Essays on the Appalachian Region
Ph.D. Dissertation, The Ohio State University, 2003. DAI-A 65/02, p. 636, Aug 2004
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: UMI - University Microfilms, Bell and Howell Information and Learning
Keyword(s): Discrimination, Racial/Ethnic; Economics of Discrimination; Economics, Regional; Human Capital; Migration; Poverty; Racial Differences; Wage Levels

The literature has largely ignored white poverty, perhaps because discrimination, particularly institutionalized discrimination, is not a factor driving the process. White poverty is also more easily ignored because it is rarely concentrated to the same extent as central city black poverty. The major exception to the diffusion of white poverty is Appalachia, a region that for decades has experienced the greatest concentration of white poverty in the U.S. My goal is to evaluate the role played by differences in human capital and economic opportunity on the outcomes of both Appalachian and non-Appalachian poor whites. I argue that a main determinant in the Appalachia's relative economic deprivation is lower levels of overall human capital and economic opportunity than the rest of the U.S. The above analysis will be divided into three essays. In the first essay, I estimate a three-stage wage equation model with two additional endogenous regressors, migration and employment, to determine how much of the Appalachian wage gap can be explained by the effects of human capital and local conditions and to estimate returns to migration using data from the National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth, 1979. I find differences in human capital and economic opportunity account for all of the differences in employment and most of the difference in wages. Migration offers small absolute returns for Appalachians, but does not raise wages to the level of poor white non-Appalachians. The second essay uses the same data and model but simultaneously estimates the parameters using Maximum Simulated Likelihood (MSL) to achieve higher efficiency than the multi-step method. Human capital differences again explain almost all of the wage and employment gaps. Migration offers no return using MSL in this setting. The final essay decomposes the wage gap between Appalachia and the rest of the country into quantities and prices of human capital and industry and occupation shares, Data are taken from the Integrated Micro Public Use (IPUMS) census data project. The large increases in the wage gap during the 1980s were largely caused by changes in income inequality and skill prices unfavorable to Appalachians.
Bibliography Citation
Baumann, Robert William. Three Essays on the Appalachian Region. Ph.D. Dissertation, The Ohio State University, 2003. DAI-A 65/02, p. 636, Aug 2004.
2. Baumann, Robert William
Cosslett, Stephan
Reagan, Patricia Benton
Measuring Returns to Migration Using the Method of Maximum Simulated Likelihood: An Application to Migration among Poor Whites
Presented: Atlanta, GA, Population Association of America Annual Meetings, May 2002
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: Population Association of America
Keyword(s): Disadvantaged, Economically; Employment; Endogeneity; Income; Migration; Migration Patterns; Wages

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

We estimate a three-equation model of wages, migration and employment using the method of maximum simulated likelihood for a sample of 1129 disadvantaged white males from the National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth 1979. We show that Appalachian natives experience higher returns to migration than comparably disadvantaged whites from the rest of the United States. Failure to treat migration as endogenous biases estimates of the returns to migration towards zero for both groups, with a larger bias for Appalachians. This suggests that individuals with lower earnings in their current location are more likely to migrate. Appalachian migrants experience an average increase in hourly wages of $2.29 per hour compared to an increase of $0.62 per hour (1990 dollars) for non-Appalachian poor white migrants. Although part of the large gain for Appalachian migrants reflects unmeasured differences in regional cost of living, there appears to be substantial returns to out-migration from Appalachia.
Bibliography Citation
Baumann, Robert William, Stephan Cosslett and Patricia Benton Reagan. "Measuring Returns to Migration Using the Method of Maximum Simulated Likelihood: An Application to Migration among Poor Whites." Presented: Atlanta, GA, Population Association of America Annual Meetings, May 2002.