Gender Dissimilarities in Human Capital Transferability of Cuban Immigrants in the US: A Clustering Quantile Regression Coefficients Approach with Consideration of Implications for Sustainability

Female participation in the labor market has been increasing over time. Despite the fact that the level of education among women has also increased considerably, the wage gap has not narrowed to the same extent. This dichotomy presents an important challenge that the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals with respect to gender inequities must address. Hispanics constitute the largest minority group in the US, totaling 60.6 million people (18.5% of the total US population in 2020). Cubans make up the third largest group of Hispanic immigrants in the US, representing 5% of workers. This paper analyzes the conditional income distribution of Cuban immigrants in the US using the clustering of effects curves (CEC) technique in a quantile regression coefficients modeling (QRCM) framework to compare the transferability of human capital between women and men. The method uses a flexible quantile regression approach and hierarchical clustering to model the effect of covariates (such as years of education, English proficiency, US citizenship status, and age at time of migration) on hourly earnings. The main conclusion drawn from the QRCM estimations was that being a woman had the strongest negative impact on earnings and was associated with lower wages in all quantiles of the distribution. CEC analysis suggested that educational attainment was included in different clusters for the two groups, which may have indicated that education did not play the same role for men and women in income distribution.

Quantile regression analysis of modifiable and non-modifiable drivers' of blood pressure among urban and rural women in Ghana

High blood pressure is an increasingly problematic public health concern in many developing countries due to the associated cardiovascular and renal complications. This study set out to investigate the drivers of blood pressure among urban and rural women using the 2014 Ghana Demographic and Health Survey data. Diastolic blood pressure (DBP) and systolic blood pressure (SBP) were the outcomes of interest. Our findings showed that body mass index (BMI) had a significant positive effect on DBP and SBP in both urban and rural settings, with the largest effect occurring among women in the 75^th quantile. Arm circumference also had a positive effect on DBP and SBP across all quantiles in both settings. Age had an increasing positive effect along the entire conditional DBP and SBP distribution in both settings. Women who were pregnant had lower DBP and SBP relative to those who were not pregnant in both settings. These results highlight the important drivers of DBP and SBP, and the differential effects of these drivers on blood pressure (BP) among women in urban and rural settings. To increase their effectiveness, interventions to address high BP should take into account these differential effects.