More cracks in the melting pot: Underemployment in the United States of America.

The major theoretical thrust of the dissertation is to construct a synthetical explanation of underemployment. Several sociological and economic theories of unemployment and wages are reviewed and extended for the case of underemployment. The theory that emerges considers individual as well as structural determinants. Subsequently, the relative importance of these dimensions is gauged for different ethnic and gender groups of workers: Mexicans, blacks, whites, women, and men. Several ordered and nominal polychotomous models are estimated to test a number of propositions resulting from the theories