Gistrand, C. has studied “Explore young people's problematic backgrounds and their views on the opportunities and obstacles in order to improve their health”, University of Gävle in the course theory and method of application and thesis work. The object of the study was to give young people space to make their voices heard. Further on to make unemployed youths perceptions of perceived opportunities and obstacles in their way to get a job, internship or study, visible. The object of the study was also to show youths’ views of health and what they thought about the contributions to society. The method was qualitative, with three semi-structured interviews with men between 20-24 years old (and problematic childhoods, for instance alcohol and drug use) was conducted.. The result shows that unemployment increases the risk of illness and unhealthy habits. Addicts, criminal behaviors, economy and social exclusion also impacts health and they interact with each other, so it’s very complex for the society to know which effort they should prioritize. The selection group thought that the society should develop a number of alternative activites for young people to engage in on their spare time. The conclusion is that unemployed youth tend to suffer from social exclusion, poor economy and that leads to bad health and can develop an addict or a criminal behavior. It’s important for the public health that the society support every individual.

Syftet med studien är att undersöka hur ungdomar (18-25-åringar) som är inskrivna på arbetsförmedlingen i en mindre ort upplever sin livssituation som arbetslös, vilka framtidsvisioner de har samt om det föreligger skillnader i dessa avseenden beroende på familjebakgrund. Studien baseras på sex kvalitativa intervjuer med ungdomar inskrivna på en arbetsförmedling i en mindre ort i Mellansverige som sedan transkriberats, meningskoncentrerats och slutligen analyserats främst med utgångspunkt i begreppen habitus, livsstil samt transaktionella behov. Resultaten i studien visar att respondenterna antingen vill flytta eller att förutsättningarna i orten gör att de känner sig tvingade till att göra det. Två olika mönster kan urskiljas i resultaten då respondenterna antingen tenderar att se flytten som ett medel för att få jobb eller tillgodogöra sig en utbildning, eller att de ser jobb eller utbildning som ett medel för att kunna flytta från orten. I analysen kopplar jag dessa två kategorier till begreppen habitus respektive livsstil och konstaterar att vissa ungdomar är mer habitusbetingade i sina handlingsmönster medan andra mer livsstilsbetingade. Jag konstaterar också att de transaktionella behoven i allmänhet kan uppfyllas med hjälp av en anställning. I diskussionen tas möjliga förklaringar till resultaten upp. En förklaring till de skilda handlingsmönstren som respondenterna visar på skulle kunna vara samhälleliga strukturer som hindrar respondenterna att göra vad man traditionellt har gjort. En annan förklaring skulle kunna vara ett motstånd mot reproducering av könsroller hos vissa respondenter. I diskussionsdelen vägs även resultaten i denna studie mot resultaten i tidigare forskning. / The purpose of this study is to investigate how young unemployed people (18-25 years old) in a small district experience their life as unemployed, what visions of the future they have and if there is any difference in these references depending on their social background. This study is based on six qualitative interviews with young people who are registered at the employment office in a small county in the middle of Sweden. The interviews were then transcribed and finally analyzed, mainly based on the concepts of habitus and lifestyle and the theory of transactional needs. The results in this study shows that the respondents either wants or feel themselves compelled to move from their district. I could see two different patterns in the results of the interviews; the respondents either tended to see the moving as a way to get a job or an education or they tended to see the job or the education as a way to move from their district. In the analyze I linked these two cathegories to the concepts of habitus and lifestyle and noted that some of the respondents were more prone to the concepts of habitus and some were more prone to the concepts of lifestyle. I also noted that the transactional needs in general can be met by an employment. The study concludes with a discussion in which possible explanations to the results are given. An explanation to the different patterns of acting could be social structures that prevent the interviewees to do what the traditionally would have done. Another explanation would be a resistance against reproduction of gender roles by some of the interviewees. The results are also compared with the results of earlier research.

This dissertation is divided into three main components that each relate to the socioeconomic wellbeing of Aboriginal peoples in the Canadian labour market. Specifically, using data from the master file of the Canadian census for the years 1996, 2001 and 2006, the first section examines the wage differential for various Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal groups, including a comparison of those living on-and-off-reserves. The study finds that, while a sizeable wage gap between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal persons still exists, this disparity has narrowed over the three census periods for those living off-reserve. The Aboriginal-non-Aboriginal wage differential is largest among the on-reserve population and this gap has remained relatively constant over the three census periods considered in the study. The second study in the dissertation uses data from the master file of the Canadian Labour Force Survey for 2008 and 2009 to estimate the probability that an individual is a labour force participant, and, conditional on labour force participation, the probability that a respondent is unemployed, comparing several Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal groups. The results reveal that Aboriginal men and women have lower rates of labour force participation and higher rates or unemployment in both periods as compared to their non-Aboriginal counterparts. Aboriginal peoples were also disproportionately burdened by a slowdown in economic activity as measured by a change in the probability of unemployment moving from 2008 to 2009, as compared to non-Aboriginal people, who experienced a smaller increase in the probability of unemployment moving from a period of positive to negative economic growth. Finally, the third study examines the probability of high school dropout comparing Aboriginal peoples living on-and-off-reserve using data from the master file of the Aboriginal Peoples Survey for 2001. The findings reveal dramatically higher rates of dropout among Aboriginal people living on-reserve as compared to those living off-reserve. Limitations of all three studies as well as some possible directions of future research related to similar issues concerning Canada’s Aboriginal population are discussed in the concluding chapter of the dissertation.

Syftet med föreliggande undersökning är att få kunskap om hur några arbetslösa ungdomar upplever sin situation som arbetslös, vilket studeras med fokus på framtidstro, sin egen förmåga/kompetens till att påverka möjligheterna att få jobb samt vilka faktorer de upplever är viktiga när det gäller att få ett jobb inom en snar framtid. Detta studeras utifrån teorierna om locus of control och self-efficacy. Två tjejer och fem killar i åldrarna 16-24 år, samtliga arbetslösa och inskrivna på Ungdomskraft, deltog i semistrukturerade intervjuer. Resultatet visade att majoriteten av ungdomarna har en hög tilltro till sina egna resurser och upplever att de själva har kontroll över sin situation som arbetslös. Vidare visade resultaten på ett mönster mellan intern locus of control och hög self-efficacy i samband med en positiv framtidstro med avseende på att få ett jobb. / The purpose of this study is to gain knowledge intohow some unemployed young people perceive their situation as unemployed,which is studied with a focus on their faith in the future, their ownability/competence to affect thechances of getting a job, and whichfactors they feel is importantwhen it comes to getting a jobin the near future. This is studied from theories of locus of control and self-efficacy. Two girls and five boys in the age between 16-24, all unemployed and enrolled in Ungdomskraft, participated in semi structured interviews. Theresults showed that the majority of young people have a high confidence in their own resources and feel that they have control overtheir situation as unemployed. Furthermore,the result showed patterns between internal locus of control and high self-efficacy in relation to a positive faith of the future when it comes to getting a job.

The first essay studies the long term trend of internal migration in the United States. Over the last forty years, there has only been a modest change in the overall interstate migration rate in the United States. However, different demographic groups have seen very different patterns of changes. The migration rate for families with two college graduate spouses dropped from 5.66% in 1965-1970 to 2.82% in 2000-2005. As for the families with college-graduate husband, it dropped from 4.05% to 2.15% during the same time frame. Interstate migration rates for other types of families or singles have seen little change. This paper extends Mincer’s family migration model into a search framework and directly estimates the effects of female labor force participation, spousal earnings ratio, correlation of earnings from job offers, and home ownership on the migration propensity by using the Current Population Survey (CPS) data in the period of 1982-2005. Endogeniety issues of these variables are appropriately addressed. According to the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition analysis, we find that the increasing female labor force participation rate and earnings ratio of wife to husband are the primary determinants for the decline in the interstate migration rate of families with two college-graduate spouses and families with a college-graduate husband in the 1980s-1990s. The rising home ownership accounts for a large portion of the decrease in the migration rate of highly educated families, in the 1990s-2000s. The second essay studies the impact of changing youth cohort size on the unemployment rate. Although an increase in youth cohort size is often found to exert an upward pressure on the aggregate unemployment rate, it has been provided some empirical evidences and a theoretical model to the contrary. We find that the estimated elasticity of unemployment rate is quite sensitive in a fixed effect model, with the inclusion of year dummies, when there is a strong temporal correlation between the youth cohort size and the unemployment rate. Both the sign and magnitude of the estimates vary significantly when using data from different time periods. We propose an alternative way to control for the fixed effects and obtain consistent estimates across the time periods in the United States. Our results support the conventional wisdom of positive correlation between youth cohort size and aggregate unemployment rate. This positive effect of the youth cohort size is strongest for the youngest workers and gradually diminishes for older workers, which implies that the young and the prime age workers are not perfect substitutes to the employers.

Immigration, the subject of repeated policy debates throughout the last two decades, has once again assumed a central position on the policy agenda. This debate has become more intense in recent years in Canada; the fear is over the potential job displacement and unemployment of Canadian-born workers, and the consequence to the Canadian economy. The recent immigrant incomes have been falling compared to their older counterparts helped to trigger the current policy debate. This thesis attempts to address this debate by providing an objective assessment of the displacement of Canadian-born workers due to immigration and the unemployment-immigration dynamics over the past 40 years of immigration to Canada. The thesis consists of two objectives:<p>Objective-I: Job Displacement Effects of Immigration on Canadian-born <p>First I address the job displacement effects on Canadian-born due to exogenous shifts in immigration flows. It is, therefore, necessary to consider the substitutability or complementarity between Canadian-born and immigrant workers. This is examined by estimating the set of wage earnings equation from the Generalized Leontief Production Function. The model specification abstracts from the role of capital, by assuming that labor and capital are separable in production. I then derive the iterated Zellner-efficient estimator (IZEF) (which is numerically equivalent to the maximum likelihood estimator) from the set of wage earnings equations. Then the degree of substitutability or complementarity is calculated using Hicks (as opposed to Allens) elasticity of complementarity. The estimated Hicksian elasticities suggest, in the aggregate, there is no displacement of Canadian-born workers by immigration, although there is some displacement by industry.<p>Objective-II: Unemployment and Immigration Dynamics<p>Next, I consider immigrant not only as an additions to the existing labor force but also job creation effects through their effects for goods and services. Here immigrants are considered as endogenous and I model the dynamics of unemployment and immigration. As a first step, statistical causality is investigated between immigration and unemployment. But causality methods can suffer from omitted variable problem. So, I construct a theoretical labor market and use the cointegration analysis to determine the long run relationship among unemployment rate, immigration level, real wage, and real GDP. Then, I estimate the short-run dynamics with a specification in difference form where the parameters of the cointegrating vectors from the first-step are fixed and entered as an error correction mechanism. The causality test finds no evidence of a significant effect of Canadian unemployment on immigration. The estimation of the long-run and short-run parameter indicates that no statistically significant relationship exists between unemployment and immigration.

Immigration, the subject of repeated policy debates throughout the last two decades, has once again assumed a central position on the policy agenda. This debate has become more intense in recent years in Canada; the fear is over the potential job displacement and unemployment of Canadian-born workers, and the consequence to the Canadian economy. The recent immigrant incomes have been falling compared to their older counterparts helped to trigger the current policy debate. This thesis attempts to address this debate by providing an objective assessment of the displacement of Canadian-born workers due to immigration and the unemployment-immigration dynamics over the past 40 years of immigration to Canada. The thesis consists of two objectives:<p>Objective-I: Job Displacement Effects of Immigration on Canadian-born <p>First I address the job displacement effects on Canadian-born due to exogenous shifts in immigration flows. It is, therefore, necessary to consider the substitutability or complementarity between Canadian-born and immigrant workers. This is examined by estimating the set of wage earnings equation from the Generalized Leontief Production Function. The model specification abstracts from the role of capital, by assuming that labor and capital are separable in production. I then derive the iterated Zellner-efficient estimator (IZEF) (which is numerically equivalent to the maximum likelihood estimator) from the set of wage earnings equations. Then the degree of substitutability or complementarity is calculated using Hicks (as opposed to Allens) elasticity of complementarity. The estimated Hicksian elasticities suggest, in the aggregate, there is no displacement of Canadian-born workers by immigration, although there is some displacement by industry.<p>Objective-II: Unemployment and Immigration Dynamics<p>Next, I consider immigrant not only as an additions to the existing labor force but also job creation effects through their effects for goods and services. Here immigrants are considered as endogenous and I model the dynamics of unemployment and immigration. As a first step, statistical causality is investigated between immigration and unemployment. But causality methods can suffer from omitted variable problem. So, I construct a theoretical labor market and use the cointegration analysis to determine the long run relationship among unemployment rate, immigration level, real wage, and real GDP. Then, I estimate the short-run dynamics with a specification in difference form where the parameters of the cointegrating vectors from the first-step are fixed and entered as an error correction mechanism. The causality test finds no evidence of a significant effect of Canadian unemployment on immigration. The estimation of the long-run and short-run parameter indicates that no statistically significant relationship exists between unemployment and immigration.

This dissertation is divided into three main components that each relate to the socioeconomic wellbeing of Aboriginal peoples in the Canadian labour market. Specifically, using data from the master file of the Canadian census for the years 1996, 2001 and 2006, the first section examines the wage differential for various Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal groups, including a comparison of those living on-and-off-reserves. The study finds that, while a sizeable wage gap between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal persons still exists, this disparity has narrowed over the three census periods for those living off-reserve. The Aboriginal-non-Aboriginal wage differential is largest among the on-reserve population and this gap has remained relatively constant over the three census periods considered in the study. The second study in the dissertation uses data from the master file of the Canadian Labour Force Survey for 2008 and 2009 to estimate the probability that an individual is a labour force participant, and, conditional on labour force participation, the probability that a respondent is unemployed, comparing several Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal groups. The results reveal that Aboriginal men and women have lower rates of labour force participation and higher rates or unemployment in both periods as compared to their non-Aboriginal counterparts. Aboriginal peoples were also disproportionately burdened by a slowdown in economic activity as measured by a change in the probability of unemployment moving from 2008 to 2009, as compared to non-Aboriginal people, who experienced a smaller increase in the probability of unemployment moving from a period of positive to negative economic growth. Finally, the third study examines the probability of high school dropout comparing Aboriginal peoples living on-and-off-reserve using data from the master file of the Aboriginal Peoples Survey for 2001. The findings reveal dramatically higher rates of dropout among Aboriginal people living on-reserve as compared to those living off-reserve. Limitations of all three studies as well as some possible directions of future research related to similar issues concerning Canada’s Aboriginal population are discussed in the concluding chapter of the dissertation.

The Inland Empire -Riverside and San Bernardino Counties - was one of the hardest hit areas in all of the United States during the Great Recession. Home prices have declined over 50%, significantly more than the 25% decline in the surrounding Los Angeles County, and housing starts have declined to over 90% from 2005. The Inland Empire has one of the highest unemployment rates in the US at 14.8%. This paper attempts to forecast the recovery for the Inland Empire. Employing univariate forecasts along with VAR(12) forecasts, focusing on housing starts and unemployment rates as the underlying variables, we find that there is little hope for a recovery over the next 3 years. The model predicts unemployment to either rise even more or, at best, remain stagnant. Housing starts are predicted to remain constant over the next three years.

This thesis seeks to predict the results of the presidential election in the United States, with a specific interest in swing states. I construct a methodology to predict the difference between the state and national two-party vote share for all 50 states plus D.C. using economic variables such as the change in the unemployment rate, the growth of real per capita Gross Domestic Product, Gallup poll ratings, and the ideology of the candidate. The methodology presented also allows the number of swing states to adjust between election years by giving each state its own coefficient on the difference between the state and national change in the unemployment rate. The resulting State-National Gap Model is then used to predict the two-party vote share for the Democrats using regression analysis with panel data for the elections from 1992-2008. My model is tested against the 2012 election and successfully predicts 49 out of 50 states as well as D.C.