Free Essays on Women In Prison

Ladies in the California State Penitentiary System In the mid 1980’s obligatory condemning laws produced results, subsequently quickly expanding the female populace in California detainment facilities. The imprisonment rate for ladies despite everything could not hope to compare to the male jail populace, however the rates for ladies are consistently expanding. As per the Criminal Justice Consortium of the California Department of Corrections, in 1996 77.6 percent of ladies in California Prisons were imprisoned for peaceful offenses. Most wrongdoings are medicate related or property related misdemeanors, for example, check fabrication and unlawful Mastercard use. Of those accused of brutal wrongdoings, most of ladies were either safeguarding themselves or their kids. In California there are more than 600 ladies detained for murdering in self-preservation. The normal sentence for slaughtering a spouse is twice as long than for murdering a wife. Broadly, ladies detainees are normally minorities, with African-American creation up 46 percent of the female jail populace, while they just make up 13 percent of California’s females. Hispanic females make up around 14 percent and Caucasian ladies around 36 percent of females imprisoned across the country. Prejudice is likewise significant in the legal framework with regards to condemning ladies. African-American ladies are twice as prone to be indicted for executing their significant other than a Caucasian lady. African American ladies are additionally bound to get stiffer fines and more prison time at that point white ladies. Female detainees are bound to be poor. Actually the greater part (53 percent) of ladies entering jail were jobless at the hour of their capture. Ladies go through around 17 hours every day in their cell and are permitted one hour of activity time while guys go through approximately 15 hours per day in their cells and are permitted one and a half hors of activity every day. California works four huge women’s offices. The California Institution for ladies in Frontera opened in 1952 and ... Free Essays on Women In Prison Free Essays on Women In Prison Ladies in the California State Penitentiary System In the mid 1980’s required condemning laws produced results, hence quickly expanding the female populace in California detainment facilities. The imprisonment rate for ladies despite everything fails to measure up to the male jail populace, however the rates for ladies are consistently expanding. As indicated by the Criminal Justice Consortium of the California Department of Corrections, in 1996 77.6 percent of ladies in California Prisons were detained for peaceful offenses. Most violations are sedate related or property related misdemeanors, for example, check imitation and illicit Visa use. Of those accused of rough violations, most of ladies were either safeguarding themselves or their kids. In California there are more than 600 ladies imprisoned for murdering in self-preservation. The normal sentence for executing a spouse is twice as long than for slaughtering a wife. Broadly, ladies detainees are generally minorities, with African-American creation up 46 percent of the female jail populace, while they just make up 13 percent of California’s females. Hispanic females make up around 14 percent and Caucasian ladies around 36 percent of females imprisoned across the nation. Bigotry is additionally significant in the legal framework with regards to condemning ladies. African-American ladies are twice as prone to be sentenced for executing their better half than a Caucasian lady. African American ladies are likewise bound to get stiffer fines and more prison time at that point white ladies. Female detainees are bound to be poor. Actually the greater part (53 percent) of ladies entering jail were jobless at the hour of their capture. Ladies go through around 17 hours every day in their cell and are permitted one hour of activity time though guys go through about 15 hours per day in their cells and are permitted one and a half hors of activity every day. California works four enormous women’s offices. The California Institution for ladies in Frontera opened in 1952 and ...

Greenhouse gasses Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Nursery gasses - Assignment Example The nineteenth century alone observed increment of 10 percent in carbon dioxide focus in the earth’s environment because of the consuming of non-renewable energy sources. It is being said that the Industrial transformation has contributed 40 percent to carbon dioxide and it is being assessed that if the exercises proceed at such pace the worldwide temperature would ascend by amazing 2 degree centigrade by 2050. The primary constituents of green house gases are carbon dioxide itself, nitrous oxide, methane, sulfur dioxide, other than these gases, deforestation is a genuine danger and each tree slice offers ascend to outflow of more carbon dioxide into the environment. Deforestation brings about ascent in number of floods and dry seasons in light of the fact that the trees stop the progression of floods. This environmental change will hit various pieces of the world in various way and it is being accepted that dry locales would get further drier and temperatures would take off in those pieces of the existence where as cold and wet districts would get further wet and temperatures will stay low all through the span of year. The general environmental change will influence the accessible normal water, with ascend in ocean levels, the salt water would join the positions of new water assets, and this can likewise bring about expanding level of silt. Presence of †Dead Zone† with low grouping of oxygen would be on an increasingly visit show .The Overall Scenario will have direct ramifications on human life in type of asthmas and other respiratory ailments related with heat waves and diverse ecological conditions. Environment establishes the investigation of in general common framework that encloses plants, creatures, woodlots, lakes, and individuals themselves. Solid relationship exists between individuals and their environmental factors. The humankind greatly affects how the environmental factors are today and how they will be 50 to 100 years down the path. The Ecosystem in itself is at an extraordinary danger from

5 Alternatives to an Expensive Overdraft Fee

5 Alternatives to an Expensive Overdraft Fee 5 Alternatives to an Expensive Overdraft Fee 5 Alternatives to an Expensive Overdraft FeeThe relative APRs for overdraft fees can average as much as 17,000 percent! Here are five options that will cost you less.Overspend on your debit card, you’ll get hit with an overdraft fee. And while that might seem pretty annoying, it can actually be more much worse than that. With an average overdraft fee of $30 applied to every over-the-limit transactionâ€"no matter how smallâ€"research from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) found that they carry an average APR of 17,000 percent!While many overdraft fees get incurred without the user realizing it, others might see these fees as an acceptable price to pay when they need to cover an unforeseen expense or surprise bill. Either way, there are better ways to handle your finances, ones that don’t involve APRs in the thousands.Here are five alternatives to help you avoid expensive overdraft fees.1. Link a savings account.Technically, this is a kind of overdraft protection, but it’s one that comes with much more reasonable costs.Most banking institutions will let you link a savings account to your checking account to serve as the first line of overdraft defense. When you overspend, money is taken from your savings account to cover it with only a small transfer fee on top.Of course, this plan only works if you have money in the savings account, to begin with, and that means making a plan to start strategically socking your money away. If you don’t have an emergency fund, this savings account would be a great place to keep oneâ€"so long as you don’t make overdrawing your account a regular habit, as that will drain your rainy day funds away.In order to start building your emergency savings, you’re first going to need a budget. If you don’t have one, here’s a handy guideâ€"complete with a free downloadable budget spreadsheetâ€"to get you started. Try following the principle of “paying yourself first” to ensure that saving money doesn’t take a back seat to everything else.2. Use your credit card.Many banking institutions will also let you link a related credit card to your checking account as a form of overdraft protection. While a savings account is a much better option than a credit cardâ€"as it doesn’t involve borrowing any money at allâ€"a credit card can make a good second line of defense. And it’s still better than an overdraft fee.If you find your bank account balance dropping dangerously low during those last couple days before payday, you might want to consider using a credit card to make some purchases instead of your debit card. That way, you’ll be sure to avoid overdraft fees altogether. (If you don’t notice when your bank account balance dips close to zero, sign up for account alerts.)The one danger with using a credit card is that you’ll wrack up excessive debt, so make sure you pay those purchases off as soon as you can. Do so within 30 days and you’ll be able to avoid paying any interest at a ll! So long as this card is only being used in rare emergenciesâ€"and it’s getting paid off ASAPâ€"this shouldn’t prove to be a problem.3. Ask friends and family for money.No one likes asking a friend or family member for money, but it’s a better alternative than incurring an overdraft fee. Like many of the options on this list, this is something you won’t want to make a habit of, but it can work pretty nicely as a one-off solution to the problem. Otherwise, you could put some of your close personal relationships in jeopardy.The key to asking a friend or family member for moneyâ€"even if it’s for a really small amountâ€"is to make sure that both parties are perfectly clear on the terms of the agreement. If your friend thinks that you’re paying them back next Friday, whereas you planned to pay them back gradually over the next three Fridays, that’s a recipe for disaster.To make sure that everybody is on the same page, it helps if you have an actual page! In this case, t hat means a written loan agreement. (That might sound like overkill, but it’s always better to be safe than sorry.) Here’s the good news: You don’t have to create your own! Just print out this free loan agreement template we created, fill in the relevant info, and you’ll be good to go!4. Consider a personal loan.If the shortfall you’re facing is on the larger side, you might want to consider taking out a personal loan to cover the expenses. Although this will mean incurring interestâ€"which is something you always want to avoid whenever possibleâ€"the APRs that you’ll end up facing could be smaller with the right personal loan than you would encounter with an overdraft fee.For folks with bad credit, however, their borrowing options will be a little more limited. They’ll have to choose between various bad credit loans and no credit check loans. And while short-term payday loans, title loans, and cash advances might seem like the better option, their quick turnaround and lump sum payments could end up trapping you in a cycle of debt.Instead, you should consider a bad credit installment loan. These online loans not only let you borrow more money, but they come with smaller, regularly scheduled payments. Some bad credit installment loansâ€"like the ones offered by OppLoansâ€"even report payment information to the credit bureaus. This means that on-time payments could help improve your credit score!5. Don’t use overdraft protection at all.The point of overdraft protection is that it prevents your debit card or checks from being declined. But if you find yourself regularly overdrawing your account, then you should probably turn your overdraft protection off. While this might be a little more hazardous if you’re writing a lot of checksâ€"as bouncing a check means incurring NSF feesâ€"debit card users should strongly consider it.Without overdraft protection, your debit card will simply be declined at the point of sale. While this can be embarrassing, it most likely won’t be the end of the world. In the meantime, you will be forced to start building better financial habits (like budgeting) that will help you spend within your limits and avoid overdrawing your account at all.Most of the alternatives we have suggested in this article don’t address the root of the problem, which is spending more money than you actually have in your checking account. The sooner you get that under control, the better off you’ll be. To learn more about how you can instill better financial practices, check out  these other posts and articles from OppLoans:Save More Money with These 40 Expert TipsHow to Raise Your Credit Score by 100 PointsFinancial Basics: Expert Tips for Smarter Spending10 Good Money Habits to Make Your Friends JealousDo you have a personal finance question youd like us to answer? Let us know! You can find us  on  Facebook  and  Twitter.  |Instagram

Literary Devices In Antonys Speech - 714 Words

â€Å"When the poor cried, Caesar wept† (3.2.189). Similarly to this phrase, Marc Antony uses several literary techniques to paint Julius Caesar in a positive light during his speech. In the play Julius Caesar several conspirators devise a successful plan to murder and overthrow the ruler of Rome. The death of Caesar could easily be seen as the cusp of his impact on the story; however, despite after death, Caesar plays a huge role in further development of the plot. Following his beloved friend’s assassination, Marc Antony delivers a stirring speech that could easily be seen as a critical turning point. Antony cleverly persuades the commoners to join his cause for vengeance. Throughout his empowering speech to the plebeians, William†¦show more content†¦And being men, bearing the will of Caesar, It will inflame you, it will make you mad† (3.2.140-143). Antony’s sermon is a significant point of the story because he gains support from the commoners, declares himself as ruler (along with Octavius), and forces the conspirators into retreat. Convincing the commoners to mutiny was crucial to Antony’s plan, and with his effective use of literary devices he manages to do exactly that. Moreover, gaining the trust of the plebeians allowed Antony a higher position especially because the former ruler, Caesar, was dead. In addition to improving his position, Antony was able to scare the conspirators out of Rome as shown when Octaviuss servant says, â€Å"I heard Octavius say, Brutus and Cassius are rid like madmen through the gates of Rome† (3.2.225-226). As Antony delivers his provoking speech, many impressions of major characters are depicted.The scene illustrates the craftiness of Antony, how gullible the plebeians are, and the nobility of Brutus. After Brutus’s oration the crowd is in heavy support of the crime and believe that Brutus indeed is a noble Roman. A plebeian even exclaims in support of Brutus, â€Å"B ring him with triumph home unto his house!† (3.2.46). However, moments later through literary techniques and devices, Antony is able to sway the commoners to love Caesar and doubt Brutus’s honor. In contrast after Antony’s speech, that sameShow MoreRelatedJulius Caesar Power Of Language919 Words   |  4 Pagesfind myself so apt to die;/ No place will please me so, no mean of death† (3.1.171-175). Antony is being overly dramatic with his words after Caesar’s death and even insists that the conspirators kill him aswell which leads Brutus to sympathize him. Antony’s reaction and word choice set the way for what was going to come next. After that antony then shakes all the conspirators hands and explains,†To see thy Antony making his peace,/Shaking the bloody fingers of thy foes,/Most noble! In the presence ofRead MoreRhetoric and Betrayal in Julius Caeser Play1486 Words   |  6 Pagesplay Julius Caesar utilizes the literary element of r hetoric multiple times throughout to show the true power that words can hold. The rhetoric in Caesar accompanies the play’s themes of betrayal, deception, and exaggeration. Brutus uses rhetoric to persuade the crowd of plebeians that the murdering of Caesar was positive and beneficial to all of Rome, winning their support and causing them to join his cause. Soon after, Mark Antony gives a terrifically-persuasive speech that he claims to be a funeralRead MoreWas Brutus Really That Honorable?1266 Words   |  6 Pagesthough he is proud of his reputation for nobleness and honor, he is also often naà ¯ve and hypocritical about his actions. When Brutus was killed by Strato in V.v., Antony mentions how Brutus â€Å"was a man† and the noblest out of all the Romans. However, Antony’s statement is disagreeable because in some ways, because Brutus (at times) is not noble at all. Antony doesn’t say he was an honorable man, he just calls him a regular man. If Anton y just calls him just a man, then that could mean he was referringRead More Julius Caesar Essay: Marc Antony’s Power of Persuasion1385 Words   |  6 PagesMarc Antonys Power of Persuasion in Julius Caesar      Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   In William Shakespeares Julius Caesar, although Marc Antony is allowed to make a speech at Caesars funeral, he must not speak ill of either the conspirators or Caesar.   Antony was infuriated with Caesars assassination, and wants to seek revenge on his killers as well as gain power for himself in Romes government.   He must persuade the crowd that has gathered that Caesars murder was unjust, and turn them against Brutus and CassiusRead MoreJulius Caesar Essay1011 Words   |  5 Pagesas various literary and cinematic devices to express the theme of conflicting perspectives and influence the audience’s reception. During the initial scenes of his play, Shakespeare clearly outlines the distinct conflict of perspectives held by his main protagonists; Antony and Cassius regarding Caesar. Shakespeare’s representation of Antony incorporates that of a humble, loyal and devoted disciple of Caesar; embodied in his vow â€Å"When Caesar says, ‘Do this’, it is performed.† Antony’s obedientRead MoreStudy Guide Literary Terms7657 Words   |  31 Pages AP Literary and Rhetorical Terms 1. 2. alliteration- Used for poetic effect, a repetition of the initial sounds of several words in a group. The following line from Robert Frosts poem Acquainted with the Night provides us with an example of alliteration,: I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet. The repetition of the s sound creates a sense of quiet, reinforcing the meaning of the line 3. allegory – Where every aspect of a story is representative, usually symbolicRead MoreJulius Caesar2287 Words   |  10 PagesRomans are best described how? 2) When we first see Brutus, he appears to be ________________________. 3) Which line from Act I foreshadows what will happen to Caesar? 4) â€Å"Truly, sir†¦ I am but, as you would say, a cobbler† is an example of what literary device? 5) Cassius states, â€Å"Men at some time are masters of their fates: / The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, / But in ourselves, that we are underlings.† Based on this, what can you infer about Cassius? 6) The crowd shouts three times for

Career Research Assignment Nursing - 1245 Words

Career Research Assignment Nursing, RN, BSN â€Å"What is the reason for your visit today?† This is one of the many questions a nurse will ask his or her patient upon admission to hospital, clinic, or even home setting. What is nursing practice? Nursing is the protection, promotion, and optimization of health and abilities, prevention of illness and injury, facilitation of healing, alleviation of suffering through the diagnosis and treatment of human response, and advocacy in the care of individuals, families, groups, communities, and populations† (What is Nursing?). Nursing practice is an important one on one interpersonal relationship that involves many different aspects of holistic and physiological care and great attention to detail. Nursing is a profession I have been interested in since the beginning of my high school career and one I will continue to advance in. Topics to be covered in this paper include but are not limited to: the history and background of nursing, requirements to obtain a nursing career, pros and cons of this career, and advancement opportunities. The nursing profession can be traced as far back as 300 A.D. during the rule of the Roman Empire. â€Å"Hospitals functioned in a myriad of ways, housing lepers and refugees among the typical sick and injured patients. It was due to this that a nurse’s role within the hospital involved a wider range of duties than may be seen today. The mid 1000’s also saw a rise in what are known as charitable houses, as theyShow MoreRelatedMy Personality Traits Of A Nurse1725 Words   |  7 Pageswas often asked what type of nurse I would want to be. This was a question that I had never had a definite answer for, as I had always just known that I wanted to be a nurse. In completing this career research report I have been able to explore multiple careers that I may be interested in in the nursing field. I have learned the importance of looking into what personality traits would be required for a job tha t I would be interested in and comparing those personality traits to traits that I alreadyRead MoreMy Life Of Becoming A Nurse1533 Words   |  7 Pagescollege. One problem stood in my way though. I had no idea what career I wanted to pursue. I was planning on attending York College, because of the central location, but with no direction as to what major in. On this day, I finally realized that I wanted to be a nurse. Throughout my college career, I have faced countless challenges, that helped shape me as an individual. I believe that both my negative and positive experience as a Pre- Nursing Student at York College, has molded and developed my outlookRead MoreThe Synergy Model For Patient Care1380 Words   |  6 Pagespanel of nurses from the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN) during the early 1990s (Hardin, 2013). The synergy model for patient care is a nursing model that is widely used in evidence-based research and nursing practice. This model is predominantl y used in the critical care setting and was created as a framework for certified nursing practice (McEwen, 2014). Theory Classification It is categorized as a middle range theory, but according to McEwen (2014), it is considered a high middleRead MoreThe United States National Institute Of Nursing Research1333 Words   |  6 PagesNursing research can be defined as the knowledge that is developed and built on the foundation of scientific inquiries of clinical practices (Grove and Burns, 2013). As part of the United States National Institute of Health (NIH), the National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR) was established to promote wellness and to prevent diseases, to improve the overall quality of life across populations, to eliminate disparities, and finally to set the directions for end-of-life, palliative research. Read MoreDevelopment Of Professional Nursing For Registered Nurses1626 Words   |  7 PagesJourney to Professional Development in Nursing Beth Lewis South University Online December 15, 2015 â€Æ' Transition into Professional Nursing for Registered Nurses is a five week course dedicated to the research, examination and supposition of our journey in obtaining a Baccalaureate in Nursing; â€Å"Baccalaureate programs emphasize evidence-based clinical practice and leadership through coursework that includes research, statistics, population-based care, nursing management, and the humanities† (HaverkampRead MoreStudy And Career Preparation Of Emergency Nursing Essay1346 Words   |  6 PagesFaculty of Health Assignment Cover Sheet Please complete this sheet and attach to your assignment, ensuring that you print clearly. Student ID: 21600401 Student Name: Samantha Cameron Programme Name: Foundation Health Science Paper Name: Study and Career Preparation Assignment Name: â€Å"Becoming a†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦..† Tutor Name: Tiffany Stenger Date Submitted: 10/04/2016 By submitting this assignment I certify that theRead MoreEvaluation Of An Initial Self Assessment1545 Words   |  7 Pagesmanagement and leadership roles that I have worked in over the course of my nursing career. Descriptions of the characteristics indicated from the Jung typology test by Humanmetrics, Inc. will be included in the analysis. Education My academic nursing education includes receiving my registered nursing diploma from Southside Regional Medical Center, School of Professional Nursing in May of 1998. I attained Bachelors of Science in Nursing from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2004. The only management orRead MoreWomen s Experiences Towards Becoming A Nurse Clinician Essay842 Words   |  4 Pagesgreat deal of research that examines women’s experiences in non-traditional occupations, but there is limited research on men’s experiences in non-traditional (i.e., female-dominated) fields. Nursing has become female-dominated, and we are interested in examining the male experience in a female-dominated occupation by exploring how gender identity influences a man’s work as a nurse, and how the experience of being male frames his career trajectory toward becoming a nurse clinician. Nursing is a professionRead MoreThe Philosophy Of Azure College A Nursing Institution1159 Words   |  5 PagesPractice Model Nursing career is one of the most respectful professions not only in the United States but also around the world. The remarkable aspect that makes nursing in such position is the evolution of the nursing theorists, the nursing theories, and the nursing philosophy. Among of these three, the nursing philosophy is the one that really identifies the nursing mission, and the fundamental evidence-based practice of nursing. In this case, many health organizations include nursing schools designRead MoreLiterature Search Assignment : Bsn Rn Vs. Adn Degree1180 Words   |  5 Pages Literature Search Assignment BSN-RN vs. ADN-RN Degree Diana Dobos Kira Yamada Nevada State College Literature Search Assignment BSN-RN vs. ADN-RN Degree For many years, there have been discussions within the nursing community regarding differences in the career success, performance and patient outcome between nurses who received an AND-RN degree versus a BSN-RN degree. Looking at the articles below data shows that BSN-RN nurses have more advanced leadership skills and improved

Employment and Unemployment in the 1930s Free Essays

string(32) " unemployment on wage rigidity\." The Great Depression is to economics what the Big Bang is to physics. As an event, the Depression is largely synonymous with the birth of modern macroeconomics, and it continues to haunt successive generations of economists. With respect to labor and labor markets, these facts evidently include wage rigidity, persistently high unemployment rates, and long-term joblessness. We will write a custom essay sample on Employment and Unemployment in the 1930s or any similar topic only for you Order Now Traditionally, aggregate time series have provided the econometric grist for distinguishing explanations of the Great Depression. Recent research on labor markets in the 1930s, however, has shifted attention from aggregate to disaggregate time series and towards microeconomic evidence. This shift in focus is motivated by two factors. First, disaggregated data provide many more degrees of freedom than the decade or so of annual observations associated with the depression, and thus may prove helpful in distinguishing macroeconomic explanations. Second, disaggregation has revealed aspects of economic behavior hidden in the time series but which may be essential to their proper interpretation and, in any case, are worthy of study in their own right. Although the substantive findings of recent research are too new to judge their permanent significance, I believe that the shift towards disaggregated analysis is an important contribution. The paper begins by reviewing the conventional statistics of the United States labor market during the Great Depression and the paradigms to explain them. It then turns to recent studies of employment and unemployment using disaggregated data of various types. The paper concludes with discussions of research on other aspects of labor markets in the 1930s and on a promising source of microdata for future work. My analysis is confined to research on the United States; those interested in an international perspective on labor markets might begin with Eichengreen and Hatton’s chapter in their edited volume, Interwar Unemployment in International Perspective, and the various country studies in that volume. I begin by reviewing two standard series of unemployment rates, Stanley Lebergott’s and Michael Darby’s, and an index of real hourly earnings in manufacturing compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The difference between Lebergott’s and Darby’s series, which is examined later in the paper, concerns the treatment of persons with so-called â€Å"work relief† jobs. For Lebergott, persons on work relief are unemployed, while Darby counts them as employed. Between 1929 and 1933 the unemployment rate increased by over 20 percentage points, according to the Lebergott series, or by 17 percentage points, according to Darby’s series. For the remainder of the decade, the unemployment rate stayed in, or hovered around, double digits. On the eve of America’s entry into World War Two, between 9. and 14. 6 percent of the labor force was out of work, depending on how unemployment is measured. In addition to high levels of unemployment, the 1930s witnessed the emergence of widespread and persistent long-term unemployment (unemployment durations longer than one year) as a serious policy problem. According to a Massachusetts state census taken in 1934, fully 63 percent of unemployed persons had been unemployed for a year or more. Similar amounts of long-term unemployment were observed in Philadelphia in 1936 and 1937. Given these patterns of unemployment, the behavior of real wages has proven most puzzling. Between 1929 and 1940 annual changes in real wages and unemployment were positively correlated. Real wages rose by 16 percent between 1929 and 1932, while the unemployment rate ballooned from 3 to 23 percent. Real wages remained high throughout the rest of the decade, although unemployment never dipped below 9 percent, no matter how it is measured. From this information, the central questions appear to be: Why did unemployment remain persistently high throughout the decade? How can unemployment rates in excess of 10 to 20 percent be reconciled with the behavior of real wages, which were stable or increasing? One way of answering these questions is to devise aggregative models consistent with the time series, and I briefly review these attempts later in the paper. Before doing so, however, it is important to stress that the aggregate statistics are far from perfect. No government agency in the 1930s routinely collected labor force information analogous to that provided by today’s Current Population Survey. The unemployment rates just discussed are constructs, the differences between intercensal estimates of labor force participation rates and employment-to-population ratios. Because unemployment is measured as a residual, relatively small changes in the labor force or employment counts can markedly affect the estimated unemployment rate. The dispute between Darby and his critics over the labor force classification of persons on work relief is a manifestation of this problem. Although some progress has been made on measurement issues, there is little doubt that further refinements to the aggregate unemployment eries would be beneficial. Stanley Lebergott has critically examined the reliability of BLS wage series from the 1930s. The BLS series drew upon a fixed group of manufacturing establishments reporting for at least two successive months. Lebergott notes several biases arising from this sampling method. Workers who were laid off, he claims, were less productive and had lower wages t han average. Firms that went out of business were smaller, on average, than firms that survived, and tended to have lower average wages. In addition, the BLS oversampled large firms, and Lebergott suspects that large firms were more adept at selectively laying off lower- productivity labor; more willing to deskill, that is, reassign able employees to less-skilled jobs; and more likely to give able employees longer work periods. A rough calculation suggests that accounting for these biases would produce an aggregate decline in nominal wages between 1929 and 1932 as much as 48 percent larger than that measured by the BLS series. Although the details of Lebergott’s calculation are open to scrutiny, the research discussed elsewhere in the paper suggests that he is correct about the existence of biases in the BLS wage series. For much of the period since World War Two, most economists blamed persistent unemployment on wage rigidity. You read "Employment and Unemployment in the 1930s" in category "Papers" The demand for labor was a downward sloping function of the real wage but since nominal wages were insufficiently flexible downward, the labor market in the 1930s was persistently in disequilibrium. Labor supply exceeded labor demand, with mass unemployment the unfortunate consequence. Had wages been more flexible, this viewpoint holds, employment would have been restored and Depression averted. The frontal attack on the conventional wisdom was Robert E. Lucas and Leonard Rapping. The original Lucas-Rapping set-up continued to view current labor demand as a negative function of the current real wage. Current labor supply was a positive function of the real wage and the expected real interest rate, but a negative function of the expected future wage. If workers expect higher real wages in the future or a lower real interest rate, current labor supply would be depressed, employment would fall, unemployment rise, and real wages increase. Lucas and Rapping offer an unemployment equation, relating the unemployment rate to actual versus anticipated nominal wages, and actual versus anticipated price levels. Al Rees argued that the Lucas-Rapping model was unable to account for the persistence of high unemployment coincident with stable or rising real wages. Lucas and Rapping conceded defeat for the period 1933 to 1941, but claimed victory for 1929 to 1933. As Ben Bernanke pointed out, however, their victory rests largely on the belief that expected real interest rates fell between 1929 and 1933, while â€Å"ex post, real interest rates in 1930-33 were the highest of the century†. Because nominal interest rates fell sharply between 1929 and 1933, whether expected real rates fell hinges on whether deflation — which turned out to be considerable — was unanticipated. Recent research by Steven Cecchetti suggests that the deflation was, at least in part, anticipated, which appears to undercut Lucas and Rapping’s reply. In a controversial paper aimed at rehabilitating the Lucas-Rapping model, Michael Darby redefined the unemployment rate to exclude persons who held work relief jobs with the Works Progress and Work Projects Administrations (the WPA) or other federal and state agencies. The convention of the era, followed by Lebergott, was to count persons on work relief as unemployed. According to Darby, however, persons with work relief jobs were â€Å"employed† by the government: â€Å"From the Keynesian viewpoint, labor voluntarily employed on contracyclical †¦ government projects should certainly be counted as employed. On the search approach to unemployment, a person who accepts a job and withdraws voluntarily from the activity of search is clearly employed. † The exclusion of persons on work relief drastically lowers the aggregate unemployment rate after 1935. In addition to modifying the definition of unemployment, Darby also redefined the real wage to be the average annual earnings of full-time employees in all industries. With these changes, the fit of the Lucas-Rapping unemployment equation is improved, even for 1934 to 1941. However, Jonathan Kesselman and N. E. Savin later showed that the improved fit was largely the consequence of Darby’s modified real wage series, not the revised unemployment rate. Thus, for the purpose of empirically testing the Lucas-Rapping model, the classification of WPA workers as employed or unemployed is not crucial. Returning to the questions posed above, New Deal legislation has frequently been blamed for the persistence of high unemployment and the perverse behavior of real wages. In this regard, perhaps the most important piece of legislation was the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) of 1933. The National Recovery Administration (NRA), created by the NIRA, established guidelines that raised nominal wages and prices, and encouraged higher levels of employment through reductions in the length of the workweek (worksharing). An influential study by Michael Weinstein econometrically analyzed the impact of the NIRA on wages. Using aggregate monthly data on hourly earnings in manufacturing, Weinstein showed that the NIRA raised nominal wages directly through its wage codes and indirectly by raising prices. The total impact was such that â€Å"[i]n the absence of the NIRA, average hourly earnings in manufacturing would have been less than thirty-five cents by May 1935 instead of its actual level of almost sixty cents (assuming unemployment to have been unaltered)†. It is questionable, however, whether the NIRA really this large an impact on wages. Weinstein measured the direct effect of the codes by comparing monthly wage changes during the NIRA period (1933-35) with wage changes during the recovery phase (1921-23) of the post-World War One recession (1920-21), holding constant the level of unemployment and changes in wholesale prices. Data from the intervening years (1924-1932) or after the NIRA period were excluded from his regression analysis (p. 52). In addition, Weinstein’s regression specification precludes the possibility that reductions in weekly hours (worksharing), some of which occurred independently of the NIRA, had a positive effect on hourly earnings. A recent paper using data from the full sample period and allowing for the effect of worksharing found a positive but much smaller impact of the NIRA on wages (see the discussion of Bernanke’s work later in the paper). Various developments in neo-Keynesian macroeconomics have recently filtered into the discussion. Martin Baily emphasizes the role of implicit contracts in the context of various legal and institutional changes during the 1930s. Firms did not aggressively cut wages when unemployment was high early in the 1930s because such a policy would hurt worker morale and the firm’s reputation, incentives that were later reinforced by New Deal legislation. Efficiency wages have been invoked in a provocative article by Richard Jensen. Beginning sometime after the turn of the century large firms slowly began to adopt bureaucratic methods of labor relations. Policies were â€Å"designed to identify and keep the more efficient workers, and to encourage other workers to emulate them. † Efficiency wages were one such device, which presumably contributed to stickiness in wages. The trend towards bureaucratic methods accelerated in the 1930s. According to Jensen, firms surviving the initial downturn used the opportunity to lay off their least productive workers but a portion of the initial decline in employment occurred among firms that went out of business. Thus, when expansion occurred, firms had their pick of workers who had been laid off. Personnel departments used past wage histories as a signal, and higher-wage workers were a better risk. Those with few occupational skills, the elderly (who were expensive to retrain) and the poorly educated faced enormous difficulties in finding work. After 1935 the â€Å"reserve army† of long-term unemployed did not exert much downward pressure on nominal wages because employers simply did not view the long-term unemployed as substitutes for the employed at virtually any wage. A novel feature of Jensen’s argument is its integration of microeconomic evidence on the characteristics of the unemployed with macroeconomic evidence on wage rigidity. Other circumstantial evidence is in its favor, too. Productivity growth was surprisingly strong after 1932, despite severe weakness in capital investment and a slowdown in innovative activity. The rhetoric of the era, that â€Å"higher wages and better treatment of labor would improve labor productivity†, may be the correct explanation. If the reserve army hypothesis were true, the wages of unskilled workers, who were disproportionately unemployed, should have fallen relative to the wages of skilled and educated workers, but there is no indication that wage differentials were wider overall in the 1930s than in the 1920s. It remains an open question, however, whether the use of efficiency wages was as widespread as Jensen alleges, and whether efficiency wages can account empirically for the evolution of productivity growth in the 1930s. In brief, the macro studies have not settled the debate over the proper interpretation of the aggregate statistics. This state of affairs has much to do with the (supreme) difficulty of building a consensus macro model of the depression economy. But it is also a consequence of the level of aggregation at which empirical work has been conducted. The problem is partly one of sample size, and partly a reflection of the inadequacies of discussing these issues using the paradigm of a representative agent. This being, the case I turn next to disaggregated studies of employment and unemployment. In a conventional short-run aggregate production function, the labor input is defined to be total person-hours. For the postwar period, temporal variation in person-hours is overwhelmingly due to fluctuations in employment. However, for the interwar period, variations in the length of the workweek account for nearly half of the monthly variance in the labor input. Declines in weekly hours were deep, prolonged, and widespread in the 1930s. The behavior of real hourly earnings, however, may have not have been independent of changes in weekly hours. This insight motivates Ben Bernanke’s analysis of employment, hours, and earnings in eight pre-World War Two manufacturing industries. The (industry- specific) supply of labor is described by an earnings function, which gives the minimum weekly earnings required for a worker to supply a given number of hours per week. In Bernanke’s formulation, the earnings function is convex in hours and also discontinuous at zero hours (the discontinuity reflects fixed costs of working or switching industries). Production depends separately on the number of workers and weekly hours, and on nonlabor inputs. Firms are not indifferent â€Å"between receiving one hour of work from eight different workers and receiving eight hours from one worker. A reduction in product demand causes the firm to cut back employment and hours per week. The reduction in hours means more leisure for workers, but less pay per week. Eventually, as weekly hours are reduced beyond a certain point, hourly earnings rise. Further reductions in hours cannot be matched one for one by reductions in weekly earnings. But, when hourly earnings increase, the re al wage then appears to be countercyclical. To test the model, Bernanke uses monthly, industry-level data compiled by the National Industrial Conference Board covering the period 1923 to 1939. The specification of the earnings function (describing the supply of labor) incorporates a partial adjustment of wages to prices, while the labor demand equation incorporates partial adjustment of current demand to desired demand. Except in one industry (leather), the industry demand for workers falls as real product wages rise; industry demands for weekly hours fall as the marginal cost to the firm of varying weekly hours rises; and industry labor supply is a positive function of weekly earnings and weekly hours. The model is used to argue that the NIRA lowered weekly hours and raised weekly earnings and employment, although the effects were modest. In six of the industries (the exceptions were shoes and lumber), increased union influence after 1935 (measured with a proxy variable of days idled by strikes) raised weekly earnings by 10 percent or more. Simulations revealed that allowing for full adjustment of nominal wages to prices resulted in a poor description of the behavior of real wages, but no deterioration in the model’s ability to explain employment and hours variation. Whatever the importance of sticky nominal wages in explaining real wage behavior, the phenomenon â€Å"may not have had great allocative significance† for employment. In a related paper, Bernanke and Martin Parkinson use an expanded version of the NICB data set to explore the possibility that â€Å"short-run increasing returns to labor† or procyclical labor productivity, characterized co-movements in output and employment in the 1930s. Using their expanded data set, Bernanke and Parkinson estimate regressions of the change in output on the change in labor input, now defined to be total person-hours. The coefficient of the change in the labor input is the key parameter; if it exceeds unity, then short-run increasing returns to labor are present. Bernanke and Parkinson find that short-run increasing returns to labor characterized all but two of the industries under study (petroleum and leather). The estimates of the labor coefficient are essentially unchanged if the sample is restricted to just the 1930s. Further, a high degree of correlation (r = 0. 9) appears between interwar and postwar estimates of short-run increasing returns to labor for a matched sample of industries. Thus, the procyclical nature of labor productivity appears to be an accepted fact for both the interwar and postwar periods. One explanation of procyclical productivity, favored by real business cycle theorists, emphasizes technology shocks. Booms are periods in which technological change is unusually brisk, and labor supply increases to take advantage of the higher wages induced by temporary gains in productivity (caused by the outward shift in production functions). In Bernanke and Parkinson’s view, however, the high correlation between the pre- and post-war estimates of short-run increasing returns to labor poses a serious problem for the technological shocks explanation. The high correlation implies that the â€Å"real shocks hitting individual industrial production functions in the interwar period accounted for about the same percentage of employment variation in each industry as genuine technological shocks hitting industrial production functions in the post-war period†. However, technological change per se during the Depression was concentrated in a few industries and was modest overall. Further, while real shocks (for example, bank failures, the New Deal, international political instability) occurred, their effects on employment were felt through shifts in aggregate demand, not through shifts in industry production functions. Other leading explanations of procyclical productivity are true increasing returns or, popular among Keynesians, the theory of labor hoarding during economic downturns. Having ruled out technology shocks, Bernanke and Parkinson attempt to distinguish between true increasing returns and labor hoarding. They devise two tests, both of which involve restrictions on excluding proxies for labor utilization from their regressions of industry output. If true increasing returns were present, the observed labor input captures all the relevant information about variations in output over the cycle. But if labor hoarding were occurring, the rate of labor utilization, holding employment constant, should account for output variation. Their results are mixed, but are mildly in favor of labor hoarding. Although Bernanke’s modeling effort is of independent interest, the substantive value of his and Parkinson’s research is enhanced considerably by disaggregation to the industry level. It is obvious from their work that industries in the 1930s did not respond identically to decreases in output demand. However, further disaggregation to the firm level can produce additional insights. Bernanke and Parkinson assume that movements in industry aggregates reflect the behavior of a representative firm. But, according to Lebergott (1989), much of the initial decline in output and employment occurred among firms that exited. Firms that left, and new entrants, however, were not identical to firms that survived. These points are well-illustrated in Timothy Bresnahan and Daniel Raff’s study of the American motor vehicle industry. Their database consists of manuscript census returns of motor vehicle plants in 1929, 1931, 1933, and 1935. By linking the manuscript returns from year to year, Bresnahan and Raff have created a panel dataset, capable of identifying plants the exited, surviving plants, and new plants. Plants that exited between 1929 and 1933 had lower wages and lower labor productivity than plants that survived. Between 1933 and 1935 average wages at exiting plants and new plants were slightly higher than at surviving plants. Output per worker was still relatively greater at surviving plants than new entrants, but the gap was smaller than between 1929 and 1933. Roughly a third of the decline in the industry’s employment between 1929 and the trough in 1933 occurred in plant closures. The vast majority of these plant closures were permanent. The shakeout of inefficient firms after 1929 ameliorated the decline in average labor productivity in the industry. Although industry productivity did decline, productivity in 1933 would have been still lower if all plants had continued to operate. During the initial recovery phase (1933-35) about 40 percent of the increase in employment occurred in new plants. Surviving plants were more likely to use mass-production techniques; the same was true of new entrants. Mass production plants differed sharply from their predecessors (custom production plants) in the skill mix of their workforces and in labor relations. In the motor vehicle industry, the early years of the Depression were an â€Å"evolutionary event†, permanently altering the technology of the representative firm. While the representative firm paradigm apparently fails for motor vehicles, it may not for other industries. Some preliminary work by Amy Bertin, Bresnahan, and Raff, on another industry, blast furnaces, is revealing on this point. Blast furnaces were subject to increasing returns and the market for the product (molten iron) was highly localized. For this industry, reductions in output during a cyclical trough are reasonably described by a representative firm, since â€Å"localized competition prevented efficient reallocation of output across plants† and therefore the compositional effects occurring in the auto industry did not happen. These analyses of firm-level data have two important implications for studies of employment in the 1930s. First, aggregate demand shocks could very well have changed average technological practice through the process of exit and entry at the firm level. Thus Bernanke and Parkinson’s rejection of the technological shocks explanation of short-run increasing returns, which is based in part on their belief that aggregate demand shocks did not alter industry production functions, may be premature. Second, the empirical adequacy of the representative firm paradigm is apparently industry-specific, depending on industry structure, the nature of product demand, and initial (that is, pre-Depression) heterogeneity in firm sizes and costs. Such â€Å"phenomena are invisible in industry data,† and can only be recovered from firm-level records, such as the census manuscripts. Analyses of industry and firm-level data are one way to explore heterogeneity in labor utilization. Geography is another. A focus on national or even industry aggregates obscures the substantial spatial variation in bust and recovery that characterized the 1930s. Two recent studies show how spatial variation suggests new puzzles about the persistence of the Depression as well as provide additional degrees of freedom for discriminating between macroeconomic models. State-level variation in employment is the subject of an important article by John Wallis. Using data collected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Wallis has constructed annual indices of manufacturing and nonmanufacturing employment for states from 1930 to 1940. Wallis’ indices reveal that declines in employment between 1930 and 1933 were steepest in the East North Central and Mountain states; employment actually rose in the South Atlantic states, however, once an adjustment is made for industry mix. The South also did comparatively well during the recovery phase of the Depression (1933-1940). Wallis tests whether the southern advantage during the recovery phase might reflect lower levels of unionization and a lower proportion of employment affected by the passage of the Social Security Act (1935), but controlling for percent unionized and percent in covered employment in a regression of employment growth does not eliminate the regional gap. What comes through clearly,† according to Wallis â€Å"is that the [employment] effects of the Depression varied considerably throughout the nation† and that a convincing explanation of the South-nonSouth difference remains an open question. Curtis Simon and Clark Nardinelli exploit variation across cities to put forth a particular interpretation of economic downturn in the early 1930s. Specifically, they study the empirical relationship between â€Å"industrial diversity† and city- level unemployment rates before and afte r World War Two. Industrial diversity is measured by a city-specific Herfindahl index of industry employment shares. The higher the value of the index, the greater is the concentration of employment in a small number of industries. Using data from the 1930 federal census and the 1931 Special Census of Unemployment, Simon and Nardinelli show that unemployment rates and the industrial diversity index were positively correlated across cities at the beginning of the Depression. Analysis of similar census data for the post-World War Two, period, reveals a negative correlation between city unemployment rates and industrial diversity. Simon and Nardinelli explain this finding as the outcome of two competing effects. In normal economic circumstances, a city with a more diverse range of industries should have a lower unemployment rate (the â€Å"portfolio† effect), because industry-specific demand shocks will not be perfectly correlated across industries and some laid-off workers will find ready employment in expanding industries. The portfolio effect may fail, however, during a large aggregate demand shock (the early 1930s) if firms and workers are poorly informed, misperceiving the shock to be industry-specific, rather than a general reduction in demand. Firms in industrially diverse cities announce selective layoffs rather than reduce wages, because they believe that across-the-board wage cuts would cause too many workers to quit (workers in industrial diverse cities think they can easily find a job in another industry elsewhere in the same city), thus hurting production. Firms in industrially specialized cities, however, are more likely to cut wages than employment because they believe lower wages â€Å"would induce relatively fewer quits† than in industrially diverse cities. Thus, Simon and Nardinelli conclude, wages in the early 1930s were more rigid in industrially-diverse cities, producing the positive correlation between industrial diversity and unemployment. Improvements in the quantity, quality, and timeliness of economic information, they conjecture, have caused the portfolio effect to dominate after World War Two, producing the postwar negative correlation. Although one can question the historical relevance of Simon and Nardinelli’s model, and the specifics of their empirical analysis, their paper is successful in demonstrating the potential value of spatial data in unraveling the sources of economic downturn early in the Depression. Postwar macroeconomics has tended to proceed as aggregate unemployment rates applied to a representative worker, with a certain percentage of that worker’s time not being used. As a result, disaggregated evidence on unemployment has been slighted. Such evidence, however, can provide a richer picture of who was unemployed in the 1930s, a better understanding of the relationship between unemployment and work relief, and further insights into macroeconomic explanations of unemployment. To date, the source that has received the most attention is the public use tape of the 1940 census, a large, random sample of the population in 1940. The 1940 census is a remarkable historical document. It was the first American census to inquire about educational attainment, wage and salary income and weeks worked in the previous year; nd the first to use the â€Å"labor force week† concept in soliciting information about labor force status. Eight labor force categories are reported, including whether persons held work relief jobs during the census week (March 24-30, 1940). For persons who were unemployed or who held a work relief job at the time of the census, the number of weeks of unemployment since the person last held a private or none mergency government job of one month or longer was recorded. The questions on weeks worked and earnings in 1939 did not treat work relief jobs differently from other jobs. That is, earnings from, and time spent on, work relief are included in the totals. I have used the 1940 census sample to study the characteristics of unemployed workers and of persons on work relief, and the relationship between work relief and various aspects of unemployment. It is clear from the census tape that unemployed persons who were not on work relief were far from a random sample of the labor force. For example, the unemployed were typically younger, or older, than the average employed worker (unemployment followed a U-shape pattern with respect to age); the unemployed were more often nonwhite; and they were less educated and had fewer skills than employed persons, as measured by occupation. Such differences tended to be starkest for the long-term unemployed (those with unemployment durations longer than year); thus, for example, the long-term unemployed had even less schooling that the average unemployed worker. Although the WPA drew its workers from the ranks of the unemployed, the characteristics of WPA workers did not merely replicate those of other unemployed persons. For example, single men, the foreign-born, high school graduates, urban residents, and persons living in the Northeast were underrepresented among WPA workers, compared with the rest of the unemployed. Perhaps the most salient difference, however, concerns the duration of unemployment. Among those on work relief in 1940, roughly twice as many had been without a non-relief job for a year or longer as had unemployed persons not on work relief. The fact that the long-term unemployed were concentrated disproportionately on work relief raises an obvious question. Did the long-term unemployed find work relief jobs after being unemployed for a long time, or did they remain with the WPA for a long time? The answer appears to be mostly the latter. Among nonfarm males ages 14 to 64 on work relief in March 1940 and reporting 65 weeks of unemployment (that is, the first quarter of 1940 and all of 1939), close to half worked 39 weeks or more in 1939. Given the census conventions, they had to have been working more or less full time, for the WPA. For reasons that are not fully clear, the incentives were such that a significant fraction of persons who got on work relief, stayed on. One possible explanation is that some persons on work relief preferred the WPA, given prevailing wages, perhaps because their relief jobs were more stable than the non-relief jobs (if any) available to them. Or, as one WPA worker put it: â€Å"Why do we want to hold onto these [relief] jobs? †¦ [W]e know all the time about persons †¦ just managing to scrape along †¦ My advice, Buddy, is better not take too much of a chance. Know a good thing when you got it. Alternatively, working for the WPA may have stigmatized individuals, making them less desirable to non-relief employers the longer they stayed on work relief. Whatever the explanation, the continuous nature of WPA employment makes it difficult to believe that the WPA did not reduce, in the aggregate, the amount of job search by the unemployed in the late 1930s. In addition to the duration of unemployment experienced by individuals, the availability of work relief may have dampened the increase in labor supply of secondary workers in households in which the household head was unemployed, the so- called â€Å"added worker† effect. Specifically, wives of unemployed men not on work relief were much more likely to participate in the labor force than wives of men who were employed at non-relief jobs. But wives of men who worked for the WPA were far less likely to participate in the labor force than wives of otherwise employed men. The relative impacts were such that, in the aggregate, no added worker effect can be observed as long as persons on work relief are counted among the unemployed. Although my primary goal in analyzing the 1940 census sample was to illuminate features of unemployment obscured by the aggregate time series, the results bear on several macroeconomic issues. First, the heterogenous nature of unemployment implies that a representative agent view of aggregate unemployment cannot be maintained for the late 1930s. Whether the view can be maintained for the earlier part of the Depression is not certain, but the evidence presented in Jensen and myself suggests that it cannot. Because the evolution of the characteristics of the unemployed over the 1930s bears on the plausibility of various macroeconomic explanations of unemployment (Jensen’s use of efficiency wage theory, for example), further research is clearly desirable. Second, the heterogenous nature of unemployment is consistent with Lebergott’s claim that aggregate BLS wage series for the 1930s are contaminated by selection bias, because the characteristics that affected the likelihood of being employed (for example, education) also affected a person’s wage. Again, a clearer understanding of the magnitude and direction of bias requires further work on how the characteristics of the employed and unemployed changed as the Depression progressed. Third, macroeconomic analyses of the persistence of high unemployment should not ignore the effects of the WPA — and, more generally, those of other federal relief policies — on the economic behavior of the unemployed. In particular, if work relief was preferred to job search by some unemployed workers, the WPA may have displaced some growth in private sector employment that would have occurred in its absence. An estimate of the size of this displacement effect can be inferred from a recent paper by John Wallis and Daniel Benjamin. Wallis and Benjamin estimate a model of labor supply, labor demand, and per capita relief budgets using panel data for states from 1933 to 1939. Their coefficients imply that elimination of the WPA starting in 1937 would have increased private sector employment by 2. 9 percent by 1940, which corresponds to about 49 percent of persons on work relief in that year. Displacement was not one-for-one, but may not have been negligible. My discussion thus far has emphasized the value of disaggregated evidence in understanding certain key features of labor markets in the 1930s — the behavior of wages, employment and unemployment — because these are of greatest general interest to economists today. I would be remiss, however, if I did not mention other aspects of labor markets examined in recent work. What follows is a brief, personal selection from a much larger literature. The Great Depression left its mark on racial and gender differences. From 1890 to 1930 the incomes of black men increased slightly relative to the incomes of white men, but the trend in relative incomes reversed direction in the 1930s. Migration to the North, a major avenue of economic advancement for Southern blacks, slowed appreciably. There is little doubt that, if the Depression had not happened, the relative economic status of blacks would have been higher on the eve of World War Two. Labor force participation by married women was hampered by â€Å"marriage bars†, implicit or explicit regulations which allowed firms to dismiss single women upon arriage or which prohibited the hiring of married women. Although marriage bars existed before the 1930s, their use spread during the Depression, possibly because social norms dictated that married men were more deserving of scarce jobs than married women. Although they have not received as much attention from economists, some of the more interesting effects of the Depression were demographic or lif e-cycle in nature. Marriage rates fell sharply in the early 1930s, and fertility rates remained low throughout the decade. An influential study by the sociologist Glen Elder, Jr. traced the subsequent work and life histories of a sample of individuals growing up in Oakland, California in the 1930s. Children from working class households whose parents suffered from prolonged unemployment during the Depression had lower educational attainment and less occupational mobility than their peers who were not so deprived. Similar findings were reported by Stephan Thernstrom in his study of occupational mobility of Boston men. The Great Depression was the premier macroeconomic event of the twentieth century, and I am not suggesting we abandon macroeconomic analysis of it. I am suggesting, however, that an exclusive focus on aggregate labor statistics runs two risks: the facts derived may be artifacts, and much of what may be interesting about labor market behavior in the 1930s is rendered invisible. The people and firms whose experiences make up the aggregates deserve to be studied in their diversity, not as representative agents. I have mentioned census microdata, such as the public use sample of the 1940 census or the manufacturing census manuscripts collected by Bresnahan and Raff, in this survey. In closing, I would like highlight another source that could be examined in future work. The source is the â€Å"Study of Consumer Purchases in the United States† conducted by the BLS in 1935-36. Approximately 300,000 households, chosen from a larger random sample of 700,000, supplied basic survey data on income and housing, with 20 percent furnishing additional information. The detail is staggering: labor supply and income of all family members, from all sources (on a quarterly basis); personal characteristics (for example, occupation, age, race); family composition; housing characteristics; and a long list of durable and non-durable consumption expenditures (the 20 percent sample). Because the purpose of the study was to provide budget weights to update the CPI, only families in â€Å"normal† economic circumstances were included (this is the basis for the reduction in sample size from 700,000 to 300,000). Thus, for example, persons whose wages were very low or who experienced persistent unemployment are unlikely to be included in 1935-36 study. A pilot sample, drawn from the original survey forms (stored at the National Archives) and containing the responses of 6,000 urban households, is available in machine-readable format from the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research at the University of Michigan (ICPSR Study 8908). Robert A. Margo Vanderbilt University How to cite Employment and Unemployment in the 1930s, Papers

Ufos (551 words) Essay Example For Students

Ufos (551 words) Essay UfosIs there life beyond Earth?: Discovering aliens and UFOsFor a while now there have been many UFO sightings around the world and many people have become amazed and astonished by this. Many scientists who study extraterrestrial life have come up with a lot of information that points toward the fact that aliens and UFOs are real. In China poor farmers in Beijings barren hills saw an object covered in colored lights arcing heavenward that some say must have been a UFO. In addition to the farmers 12 other Chinese cities reported possible UFO sightings last month, at the beginning of the millenium . China is astir with sightings of otherworldly visitors. Some of these sightings are real, some are fake, and with others its unclear, said Shen Shituan; a real rocketscientist, president of Beijing Aerospace University and honorary director of the China UFO Research Association. All these phenomena are worth researching. We will write a custom essay on Ufos (551 words) specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now On July 13,1997 Special Air Service soldiers waiting to ambush IRA gunmen were stunned when aliens walked in front of the gun sights. The undercover troops, hiding near an arms cache on a hillside in South Armagh, say they saw up to four, small, gray figures. The aliens and soldiers stared at each other for a minute. Then the spacemen disappeared , and seconds later the SAS troops saw a flash in the sky. Belfast-based expert Hugh O Brian said, we have learned that on that morning the soldiers were convinced they saw three, perhaps four, small, gray figures, in human form. The expert also said about the soldiers:The alien forms made no move towards them, but judging from what the troops told their regimental priest and commanding officer, the aliens knew the soldiers were there. It was like a stand off, within a few minutes probably a lot less time than that , the aliens disappeared. All the men can recall is that in a very quick space of time, they saw a brief flash in the sky. On June 24, 1947, buisnessman Kenneth Arnold was flying his private plane near Washington states Cascade Mountains when he spotted nine, crecent-shaped flying objects. He reported they moved like saucers skipping across water. For a time, UFO reports seemed to spur a wave of sightings around the world from 1947 to 1969, the air force investigated thousands of reports. It concealed hundreds of incidents that couldnt be explained, while concluding there was no threat to national security. But belief in UFOs dies hard. Stories of crop circles, alien abductions, and a supposed flying saucer crash near Roswell, New Mexico, draw passionate believers and skeptics. The idea still remains that there is life beyond that of earth and my facts have acknowledged the fact that there have been many sightings around the world since 1947 when the first UFO was sighted. There has been a sighting that highly trained military soldiers claimed while on a stakeout. Chinese farmers in Beijing sighted a UFO. There must really be other forms of life beyond earth because, why would a group of scientists spend thousands of dollars on research material to study alien life if they didnt have any hard evidence that aliens do in fact exist?The evidence I collected helps to make my point clear, that aliens and UFOs are real.