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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

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Economics

Smith College

Series

Inequality

Publication Year

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Data Literacy In Economic Development, Simon Halliday Jan 2019

Data Literacy In Economic Development, Simon Halliday

Economics: Faculty Publications

In economic development and other economics electives, students regularly encounter economic measures of absolute and relative deprivation, from poverty measures like the Foster-Greer-Thorbecke index to measures of distribution like the Gini index. By “doing economics,” students practice applying economic measurement to real-world data and develop more general data literacy. The author proposes a series of exercises starting with stylized 10-household economies, proceeding to nationally representative cross-sectional surveys using MS Excel or Google Spreadsheets, and culminating in students applying their acquired data literacy to a team project. The data sources are easily tailored to alternative household surveys in low- and middle-income …


Racial Differences In The Effect Of Marriageable Males On Female Family Headship, Terry Ann Craigie, Samuel L. Myers, William A. Darity Sep 2018

Racial Differences In The Effect Of Marriageable Males On Female Family Headship, Terry Ann Craigie, Samuel L. Myers, William A. Darity

Economics: Faculty Publications

Female family headship has strong implications for endemic poverty in the United States. Consequently, it is imperative to explore the chief factors that contribute to this problem. Departing from prior literature that places significant weight on welfare-incentive effects, our study highlights the role of male marriageability in explaining the prevalence of never-married female family headship for blacks and whites. Specifically, we examine racial differences in the effect of male marriageability on never-married female headship from 1980 to 2010. By exploiting data from IPUMS-USA (N = 4,958,722) and exogenous variation from state-level sentencing reforms, the study finds that the decline in …