STRUCTURAL ESTIMATION OF RESIDENTIAL MOBILITY AND HOUSING TENURE CHOICE*

ABSTRACT. This study is devoted to studying households'decisions to move and whether to rent or own after moving. It employs dynamic discrete choice models which condition households'decisions on their circumstances at every point in time during the length of the observation while accounting for individual heterogeneity. The results show that key dynamic elements, captured by means of lagged dependent variables, as well as household heterogeneity, are significant determinants of the tenure choice and mobility decisions. Moreover, homeowners are found to be responsive to housing market conditions when adjusting their housing stock. Housing-price appreciation is found to discourage renters from becoming homeowners. Finally, our results reject the proportional monetary transaction costs specification suggesting that monetary transaction costs might be fixed.     

LIFETIME MOBILITY: INTERRELATIONSHIPS OF LABOUR MOBILITY, RESIDENTIAL MOBILITY AND HOUSEHOLD CYCLE

The existence of interrelations between different mobility forms is generally recognized, but they are not often studied. This article attempts to disentangle the complicated ways in which mobility decisions regarding labour, the house, and home-work travelling are related to each other and to phases in the life cycle. An empirical analysis is carried out from the perspective of individual life histories of employees in the medical sector. Their mobility careers are followed while their biographies unfold through a succession of socio-economic and demographic stages. It is shown how motives and patterns of mobility create and change the composition of certain social life-stage groups and determines who belongs to them.
L'existence d'interrelations entre formes de mobilité différentes est, en général, acceptée mais elle n'est pas souvent investiguée. Cet article vise à décrire d'une manière plus simple les décisions par rapport à la mobilité de travail, au logement et aux dieAplacements logement-travail, ainsi que leurs associations et leurs relations avec les étapes dans le cycle de vie. Une analyse empirique est menée dans la perspective des histoires de vie individuelle des employés du secteur médical. L'his-toire de leur mobilité est tracée et les biographies dévoilées selon une succession d'étapes socio-écono-mique et démographique. II est démontré comment les motifs et modèles de mobilité sont créés et comment ils changent la composition et l'appartenance à certains groupes sociaux durant leur vie.     

RESIDENTIAL MOBILITY AND NEIGHBORHOOD QUALITY*

ABSTRACT. This paper presents evidence on the factors causing residential mobility within inner-city neighborhoods. A theoretical model is presented which posits that intraurban mobility is a response to housing consumption disequilibrium. Our data and methodology permitted more accurate measurement of disequilibrium than in previous studies, including the disequilibrium arising from neighborhood change. The major conclusion we draw from our results is that households' perceptions of the level of neighborhood quality and its change influence the mobility decisions of both renters and homeowners residing within central cities. Also, in comparison to other measured factors, neighborhood variables were found to be strong mobility predictors regardless of housing tenure. Our results imply that neighborhood improvement policies may succeed in stabilizing inner-city neighborhoods.     

STABLE ISOTOPIC RECONSTRUCTION OF DIET AND RESIDENTIAL MOBILITY IN A POSTBELLUM AFRICAN AMERICAN COMMUNITY IN RURAL GEORGIA

Abstract

Despite popular belief, the Great Migration following the Civil War was not a singular event but a long-term demographic phenomenon marked by freed African Americans returning to their natal communities or establishing new communities elsewhere and was presaged by smallerscale movements of African Americans between different regions of the Emancipation-era South. This study analyzes carbon and oxygen (δ¹³C, δ¹⁸O) stable isotope ratios in enamel carbonate from 34 individuals recovered from the Avondale Burial Place, an Emancipation-era cemetery, in Macon, Georgia, in order to reconstruct residential origin and early-life diet and examine whether these individuals immigrated to the site from elsewhere in the South. Carbon isotope results suggest mixed C₃/C₄ agro-pastoral subsistence rather than a reliance on C₄ products such as corn and corn-fed livestock as suggested by historical accounts. Oxygen isotope results suggest that the majority of individuals buried in the Avondale Burial Place were likely born in the area as well; in comparison with other isotopic studies from postbellum contexts, these results support the interpretation that the Great Migration was a gradual process with varying impacts in different areas. Interestingly, a sex-based divergence in both carbon and oxygen isotope values during childhood suggests differences in diet and water consumption possibly related to divergent gender roles. Overall, these results indicate that despite continued hardships, the members of this community consisted of local residents, and they do not indicate the presence of migrant individuals; this isotopic analysis, therefore, contributes to a growing body of bioarchaeological research reconstructing the lost and varied histories of postbellum African American communities.     

SELF-TAUGHT WRITERS,FAMILY CORRESPONDENCE,AND SOCIAL MOBILITY IN THE 19TH-CENTURY FINNISH ARCHIPELAGO

How can the private, everyday letters written by two literate members of a rural community be used as historical sources? How can they enhance understanding of the process of upward social mobility which took place in Finland in the latter part of the 19th century and produced a new, Finnish-speaking and nationally oriented university-educated gentry? A collection of nearly 150 letters written from 1858 to 1887 by country skipper Simon Jansson and his wife Wilhelmina document in great detail their daily life and thoughts as well as the news and the social life of their seafaring community. They attest to how non-elite families were able to grasp the opportunities that were opening up for them and to give their sons a university education. For a country skipper, the favourable economic conditions for peasant seafaring after the Crimean War were decisive. The process of social mobility and the rise of the new educated elite have been studied with the social status and occupation of the students’ fathers as a starting point. The Jansson letters show that the social and cultural capital brought into the family by the mother could be crucial.     

LAND AND HOUSING IN THE USSR DURING THE GORBACHEV YEARS

An American urban and regional scholar familiar with the Soviet scene surveys changes in USSR and republic legislation on housing and land (both urban and rural) and outlines “grey” areas falling in the gap between extant Soviet law and yet-to-be-enacted republican legislation. He identifies changes in the land use pattern which can be expected as land begins to be transformed into a form of property where use decisions predominantly are made by private actors. A final section focuses upon the potential significance of these changes, to the extent they materialize, for urban theory in general.     

CAPITALIZATION OF URBAN TRAVEL IMPROVEMENTS INTO RESIDENTIAL AND COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE: SIMULATIONS WITH A UNIFIED MODEL OF HOUSING,TRAVEL MODE AND SHOPPING CHOICES*

ABSTRACT. An equilibrium model of multimodal travel time improvements is developed and calibrated for the New York Metropolitan Area. The model employs a unified treatment of housing type, residential location and commuting mode choices with shopping (destination, frequency and mode) choices. Benefits of halving subway headways are reflected in consumer surplus and capitalized into producer surplus, with the latter divided between housing and commercial real estate. Sensitivity tests and simulations on other modes are also presented. Unlike the subway mode, across-the-board travel time improvements for bus, auto and commuter rail reduce central area housing rents, but auto improvements yield higher total benefits and increases in commercial rents.     

HEGEMONY,IMPERIALISM, AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION IN EAST AND SOUTHEAST ASIA1

Edward Said's concept of Orientalism portrays the high tide of nineteenth‐century imperialism as the defining moment in the establishment of a global discursive hegemony, in which European attitudes and concepts gained a universal validity. The idea of “religion” was central to the civilizing mission of imperialism, and was shaped by the interests of a number of colonial actors in a way that remains visibly relevant today. In East and Southeast Asia, however, many of the concerns that statecraft, law, scholarship, and conversion had for religion transcended the European impact. Both before and after the period of European imperialism, states used religion to engineer social ethics and legitimate rule, scholars elaborated and enforced state theologies, and the missionary faithful voiced the need for and nature of religious conversion. The real impact of this period was to integrate pre‐existing concerns into larger discourses, transforming them in the process. The ideals of national citizenship and of legal and scholarly impartiality recast the state and its institutions with a modernist sacrality, which had the effect of banishing the religious from the public space. At the same time, the missionary discourse of transformative conversion located it in the very personal realm of sincerity and belief. The evolution of colonial‐era discourses of religion and society in Asia since the departure of European imperial power demonstrates both their lasting power and the degree of agency that remains implicit in the idea of hegemony.