In recent years, the responsibility for the desegregation of American public schools has transitioned from federal court mandates to school board programs and policies. There is widespread belief that this has resulted in the resegregation of schools across the country. One popular policy that is purported to provide the opportunity for voluntary integration, along with accountability for academic quality, is school choice. The purpose of this study was to consider the implications of such a policy in one large school district. There is an extensive body of research exploring who participates in school choice, how they make their choices, and why they choose the schools their children attend. In contrast, this study was designed to investigate the actual choices made by parents and the impact of those choices on the elementary schools in the district. This quantitative descriptive study examined the racial and socioeconomic composition of students in one district’s elementary schools during the 2009-2010 school year, and explored the extent to which the student populations in these schools would differ if all students had attended their attendance area schools, rather than participating in the district’s voluntary choice plan. The actual 2009-2010 demographics were compared to “counterfactual” demographics for each school. The researcher generated the counterfactual data by removing the students who chose to attend the school and adding back the students who chose to exit the school. These actual and counterfactual demographics for each school were used to compare dissimilarity indices calculated for the district’s elementary schools as they actually were, and as they theoretically would have been without the school choice program. Additionally, the quality of the schools parents chose was investigated. The results showed that, in this district, the school choice plan did not impact the level of integration in the elementary schools. The schools were moderately segregated with the school choice plan in place, but were also moderately segregated based on the counterfactual demographics that represented the district without school choice. Most parents (60%) chose high quality schools, as identified by the state’s accountability plan. However, parents who chose low achieving schools were disproportionately black and poor. Further research is warranted to determine if the mechanics of the school choice plan could be manipulated to improve the level of integration in the district, and to better understand the decisions made by some parents to send their children to low performing schools.

The city of Richmond has practiced mixed land-use policies to encourage non-private-vehicle commuting for decades based on the successful examples or the empirical evidence of other cities. However, the idea violates one of common logical fallacy—“all things are equal.” Using the indices of land-use diversity, this study explores the correlation between land-use mixture and home-based trip for the city of Richmond. This paper calculates two common indices of land-use mixture—entropy, and dissimilarity. The results indicate that although Richmond’s land-use mixture and home-based trip do have a correlation, the correlation is weak. One possible reason is that socioeconomic actors have a stronger influence on transportation than land-use mixture. However, this assumption still needs further analysis in order to be verified.

Immigration to Sweden has increased since Second World War. The immigra-tion pattern has also shifted from labor immigration to refugee immigration. The relative labor market performance of immigrants began to worsen at the end of 1970s. The employment rate among foreign born persons is considera-bly lower than it is among Swedish born persons.Integration of foreign born persons in the areas of education, income and em-ployment varies among FA-regions in Sweden. FA-region means functional analysis region, where you can live and work without having time-wasting trips.The purpose of this thesis is to analyze the relationship between labor market participation of immigrants and segregation on the regional level.Three indices (Dissimilarity, Isolation and Gini) of segregation are used in or-der to investigate the relationship between segregation and employment level among immigrants. The results show that there exists a negative relationship between these variables. In FA-regions of metropolitan regions in spite of high segregation rate the relationship between segregation and employment rate is slightly weaker, than it is among FA-regions of large city regions. The main conclusion of this study is the regional perspective, the necessity of making this kind of analysis on regional level, not country level.

Esta dissertação é formada dois ensaios com temas vinculados à educação. O primeiro ensaio investiga a evolução das desigualdades de oportunidades educacionais no Brasil sob o prisma das etnias e dos gêneros, com base na concepção de John Roemer (1998) de Igualdade de Oportunidades. Para quantificar a desigualdade são utilizados os índices de dissimilaridade de Yalonetzky (2010) aplicados aos microdados da PNAD de 2011. Para a amostra estudada, os resultados apontaram para a redução da desigualdade de oportunidades educacionais na dimensão étnica e para seu aumento, no âmbito dos gêneros, ao longo dos anos. O segundo ensaio busca avaliar o impacto da universidade pública sobre o seu egresso, medido principalmente sob a forma de rendimentos do trabalho. Através de modelos baseados na Equação de Mincer (1974), buscou-se verificar os principais determinantes da renda do egresso, utilizando-se, para tanto, uma amostra de dados de egressos da UFRGS. A análise apontou para conclusões que levam a crer que o diploma da universidade pública não é suficiente para, em termos de rendimento, compensar discriminações existentes no mercado de trabalho analisado. Outra contribuição do ensaio foi apontar, para algumas áreas do conhecimento, a remuneração média, a incidência de desemprego, a relevância atribuída pelo egresso à formação recebida e seu vínculo à atividade profissional exercida. / This dissertation is composed by two essays whose subjects are linked with education. The first one investigates evolution of the inequalities of opportunities of education in Brazil, through ethnical and genre prism, using the Opportunities Equality framework proposed by Roemer (1998). To quantify inequality, the dissimilarities indexes are used on PNAD 2011 data. The results pointed to a reduction of opportunity inequality in ethnical types, while it detected an increase in inequality for the gender types. The second essay aims to assess the impact of the public university in Brazil on its graduated, understood mainly as his wage. Using econometric specifications based on Mincer (1974), the study tried to find out the main determinants of graduated earnings, using a sample of graduated from UFRGS. The analysis suggested that the public university's diploma is not enough to compensate the discrimination existing in the studied labor market. Another contribution of this essay was to point, for some knowledge areas, the mean earnings, the unemployment rates, the relevance attributed by the graduated to the received education and its links with his professional career.

Esta dissertação é formada dois ensaios com temas vinculados à educação. O primeiro ensaio investiga a evolução das desigualdades de oportunidades educacionais no Brasil sob o prisma das etnias e dos gêneros, com base na concepção de John Roemer (1998) de Igualdade de Oportunidades. Para quantificar a desigualdade são utilizados os índices de dissimilaridade de Yalonetzky (2010) aplicados aos microdados da PNAD de 2011. Para a amostra estudada, os resultados apontaram para a redução da desigualdade de oportunidades educacionais na dimensão étnica e para seu aumento, no âmbito dos gêneros, ao longo dos anos. O segundo ensaio busca avaliar o impacto da universidade pública sobre o seu egresso, medido principalmente sob a forma de rendimentos do trabalho. Através de modelos baseados na Equação de Mincer (1974), buscou-se verificar os principais determinantes da renda do egresso, utilizando-se, para tanto, uma amostra de dados de egressos da UFRGS. A análise apontou para conclusões que levam a crer que o diploma da universidade pública não é suficiente para, em termos de rendimento, compensar discriminações existentes no mercado de trabalho analisado. Outra contribuição do ensaio foi apontar, para algumas áreas do conhecimento, a remuneração média, a incidência de desemprego, a relevância atribuída pelo egresso à formação recebida e seu vínculo à atividade profissional exercida. / This dissertation is composed by two essays whose subjects are linked with education. The first one investigates evolution of the inequalities of opportunities of education in Brazil, through ethnical and genre prism, using the Opportunities Equality framework proposed by Roemer (1998). To quantify inequality, the dissimilarities indexes are used on PNAD 2011 data. The results pointed to a reduction of opportunity inequality in ethnical types, while it detected an increase in inequality for the gender types. The second essay aims to assess the impact of the public university in Brazil on its graduated, understood mainly as his wage. Using econometric specifications based on Mincer (1974), the study tried to find out the main determinants of graduated earnings, using a sample of graduated from UFRGS. The analysis suggested that the public university's diploma is not enough to compensate the discrimination existing in the studied labor market. Another contribution of this essay was to point, for some knowledge areas, the mean earnings, the unemployment rates, the relevance attributed by the graduated to the received education and its links with his professional career.

Esta dissertação é formada dois ensaios com temas vinculados à educação. O primeiro ensaio investiga a evolução das desigualdades de oportunidades educacionais no Brasil sob o prisma das etnias e dos gêneros, com base na concepção de John Roemer (1998) de Igualdade de Oportunidades. Para quantificar a desigualdade são utilizados os índices de dissimilaridade de Yalonetzky (2010) aplicados aos microdados da PNAD de 2011. Para a amostra estudada, os resultados apontaram para a redução da desigualdade de oportunidades educacionais na dimensão étnica e para seu aumento, no âmbito dos gêneros, ao longo dos anos. O segundo ensaio busca avaliar o impacto da universidade pública sobre o seu egresso, medido principalmente sob a forma de rendimentos do trabalho. Através de modelos baseados na Equação de Mincer (1974), buscou-se verificar os principais determinantes da renda do egresso, utilizando-se, para tanto, uma amostra de dados de egressos da UFRGS. A análise apontou para conclusões que levam a crer que o diploma da universidade pública não é suficiente para, em termos de rendimento, compensar discriminações existentes no mercado de trabalho analisado. Outra contribuição do ensaio foi apontar, para algumas áreas do conhecimento, a remuneração média, a incidência de desemprego, a relevância atribuída pelo egresso à formação recebida e seu vínculo à atividade profissional exercida. / This dissertation is composed by two essays whose subjects are linked with education. The first one investigates evolution of the inequalities of opportunities of education in Brazil, through ethnical and genre prism, using the Opportunities Equality framework proposed by Roemer (1998). To quantify inequality, the dissimilarities indexes are used on PNAD 2011 data. The results pointed to a reduction of opportunity inequality in ethnical types, while it detected an increase in inequality for the gender types. The second essay aims to assess the impact of the public university in Brazil on its graduated, understood mainly as his wage. Using econometric specifications based on Mincer (1974), the study tried to find out the main determinants of graduated earnings, using a sample of graduated from UFRGS. The analysis suggested that the public university's diploma is not enough to compensate the discrimination existing in the studied labor market. Another contribution of this essay was to point, for some knowledge areas, the mean earnings, the unemployment rates, the relevance attributed by the graduated to the received education and its links with his professional career.