This paper characterizes household spending in education using microdata from income and expenditure surveys for twelve Latin American and Caribbean countries and the United States. Bahamas, Chile, and Mexico have the highest household spending in education and Bolivia, Brazil, and Paraguay have the lowest. Tertiary education is the most important…

Several recent reports have highlighted the earnings gap between high school graduates and dropouts; however, earnings tell only part of the story. Families rely on income from salary for regular expenses, but real economic security requires accumulated wealth. Education can be the key to higher earnings, but it is even more importantly linked to…

This article presents the results of a study that investigated the level of assets and debts that female-headed households have in comparison to those of married-couple households and other types of households. The empirical results revealed that the amounts of net worth of married-couple households and male-headed households were significantly…

America's high schools are hemorrhaging talent at the rate of seven thousand students every school day--a steady drip that grows into a tidal wave of more than 1.2 million dropouts each year, a number equal to the entire population of Dallas or San Diego. Jobs that require relatively little education are increasingly done by machines or shipped…

This article provides an empirical test of the widely accepted assumption that migration contributes to union instability. The data come from the Mexican Migration Project (MMP) data base MMP93. We use multilevel discrete time event history analysis to specify the odds of union dissolution for male household heads by individual- and…

An analysis of recently published census data suggests that gender, race, and ethnicity strongly affect poverty rates. However, parenthood interacts with gender in such a way as to affect only women and to affect white women more than blacks and Hispanics. Competing arguments regarding public policy to alleviate such problems are considered.…

Noting that the preceding two decades have seen a dramatic growth in the proportion of families that are headed by women, this book explores the causes and implications of this development. The book bring together information on the past and present prevalence of mother-headed families in different countries. It then considers the various…

The report presents data on selected social, economic, and demographic characteristics of women of Spanish origin in the United States. Derived from the population reports of the U.S. Census Bureau and the March 1973 Manpower Report of the President, the statistical data pertain to age, residence, marital status, heads of families and households,…