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Recent Publications | Working Papers
2009
Riosmena, Fernando. “Socioeconomic Context and the Association between Marriage and Mexico-U.S. Migration.” Social Science Research 38, no. 2 (2009): 324-337.
Abstract: In this paper, I analyze how the association between Mexico–U.S. migration and marriage varies across socioeconomic settings in origins. Using Mexican Migration Project data and employing bilevel survival analysis with controls for socioeconomic, migrant network, and marriage market characteristics and family size, I find that single people are most likely to migrate relative to those married in areas of recent industrialization, where the Mexican patriarchal system is weaker and economic opportunities for both men and women make post-marital migration less attractive. Marital status is not significant in agriculture-dependent areas, where the bargaining power of husbands might be higher relative to other settings; their age-profiles of earnings flatter; and remunerated female work scarcer, making migration attractive later in the life course.
Mollborn, Stefanie and Bethany Everett. "Correlates and Consequences of Parent-Teen Incongruence in Reports of Teens' Sexual Experience." Journal of Sex Research 46, no. 6 (2009).
Abstract: Using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, factors associated with incongruence between parents' and adolescents' reports of teens' sexual experience were investigated, and the consequences of inaccurate parental knowledge for adolescents' subsequent sexual behaviors were explored. Most parents of virgins accurately reported teens' lack of experience, but most parents of teens who had had sex provided inaccurate reports. Binary logistic regression analyses showed that many adolescent-, parent-, and family-level factors predicted the accuracy of parents' reports. Parents' accurate knowledge of their teens' sexual experience was not found to be consistently beneficial for teens' subsequent sexual outcomes. Rather, parents' expectations about teens' sexual experience created a self-fulfilling prophecy, with teens' subsequent sexual outcomes conforming to parents' expectations. These findings suggest that research on parent-teen communication about sex needs to consider the expectations being expressed, as well as the information being exchanged.
Joanne Belknap, Heather C. Melton, Justin T. Denney, Ruth Fleury-Steiner, and Cris M. Sullivan. "The Levels and Roles of Social and Institutional Support Reported by Survivors of Intimate Partner Abuse." Feminist Criminology, 4, no. 4 (2009):377-402.
Abstract: This article explores the roles of social (informal) and institutional (formal) support in the lives of 158 women whose intimate partner abuse (IPA) cases reached the courts in three jurisdictions in the United States.Women were asked who knew about the IPA and their levels of supportiveness. Data analysis includes comparisons across the women in terms of social support and institutional support, and how these were related to the women's demographic characteristics, whether they were still in a relationship with their abusers, the severity of the violence, and the women's mental health.
Denney, Justin T., Richard G. Rogers, Patrick M. Krueger, Tim Wadsworth. "Adult Suicide Mortality in the United States: Marital Status, Family Size, Socioeconomic Status, and Differences by Sex." Social Science Quarterly 90, no. 5 (2009):1167-1185.
Abstract: Objective: This article addresses the relationship between suicide mortality and family structure and socioeconomic status for U.S. adult men and women. Methods. We use Cox proportional hazard models and individual-level, prospective data from the National Health Interview Survey Linked Mortality File (1986-2002) to examine adult suicide mortality. Results: Larger families and employment are associated with lower risks of suicide for both men and women. Low levels of education or being divorced or separated, widowed, or never married are associated with increased risks of suicide among men, but not among women. Conclusions: We find important sex differences in the relationship between suicide mortality and marital status and education. Future suicide research should use both aggregate and individual-level data and recognize important sex differences in the relationship between risk factors and suicide mortality—a central cause of preventable death in the United States.
White, Michael J. and Lori M. Hunter. “Public Perception of Environmental Issues in a Developing Setting: Environmental Concern in Coastal Ghana.” Social Science Quarterly, 90 No. 4 (2009):960-982.
Abstract: Objective. Balancing environmental quality with economic growth in less developed settings is clearly a challenge. Still, surprisingly little empirical evidence has been brought to bear on the relative priority given environmental and socioeconomic issues among the residents themselves of such settings. This research explores such perceptions. Methods. We undertake survey research with 2,500 residents of coastal Ghana on policy issues, focusing on environmental topics. Results. Our analyses reveal a significant amount of environmental awareness, with education and political engagement consistently predicting higher levels of concern. In addition, environmental issues are deemed important even when considered relative to other socioeconomic issues. Conclusion. In the end, we argue that our work sheds light on global environmentalism and the ways local populations in less developed settings prioritize social and environmental concerns. This work also has important policy implications since insight on local perceptions may help buttress policy responses designed to cope with global change.
Schatz, Enid. 2009. "Reframing vulnerability: Mozambican refugees’ access to state-funded pensions in rural South Africa". Journal of Cross-Cultural Gerontology 24, no. 3 (2009)241-258.
Abstract: Researchers at the South African Medical Research Council/University of the Witwatersrand Rural Public Health and Health Transitions Research Unit (Agincourt) fieldsite in rural South Africa consider Mozambican residents more vulnerable than others in the local population. These self-settled refugees, many of whom are still not South African citizens, primarily came to South Africa in the 1980s during the Mozambican Civil War. This perceived economic vulnerability is rooted in their difficulties in accessing social grants, until recently legally available only to those with South African citizenship documentation. This paper focuses on semi-structured interviews with 30 ‘older’ women of Mozambican-descent living in the Agincourt area. These interviews highlight three important aspects of vulnerability; the respondents: (1) perceive a risk of deportation despite their having lived in the country for 20 years, (2) are unable to easily access social grants, namely the state-funded old-age pension, and (3) struggle to make ends meet when faced with daily needs and crisis situations. All three of these vulnerabilities were mediated to some extent by these women’s resourcefulness. They generated ties to South Africa through obtaining identification-documents, used these documents to access pensions, and used the pensions to help them sustain their multigenerational households.
Madhavan, Sangeetha, Enid Schatz, and Benjamin Clark. "Effect of HIV/AIDS-related mortality on household dependency ratios in rural South Africa, 2000-2005". Population Studies 63, no. 1 (2009):37-51.
Abstract: With data from a surveillance system that uses verbal autopsies to identify cause of death in rural South Africa, we investigated whether mortality from HIV/AIDS differs from other causes of death in its effect on household dependency ratio, and to what extent the effect is mediated by the baseline dependency ratio. Findings: (i) the impact of death from HIV/AIDS on the dependency ratio in 2005 is marginally positive compared with other causes of death, but (ii) the impact is overpowered by the effect of death at working age, and (iii) the baseline dependency ratio mediates the effects on the 2005 ratio of cause of death and of the individual's sex and age at death. Migration into and out of the household—anticipating or responding to a death—seems to be a key source of change in the household dependency ratio.
Ogunmefun, Catherine and Enid Schatz. "Caregivers' sacrifices: the opportunity costs of adult morbidity and mortality for female pensioners in rural South Africa". Development Southern Africa 26, no. 1 (2009):95-109.
Abstract: This paper explores the financial and opportunity costs of adult morbidity and mortality for rural South African female pensioners in the era of HIV/AIDS. As mortality rates from HIV/AIDS and other causes escalate, older women are bearing the brunt of caregiving responsibilities for the sick and orphaned. They often use their state-funded non-contributory pensions to support kin during crises. Interviews conducted with 30 women aged 60-75 years in the Medical Research Council/University of the Witwatersrand Unit (Agincourt) study site in northeastern South Africa revealed that, to cover expenses incurred during crises, older women sometimes forgo spending money and time on their personal needs. They are thus negatively affected as individuals, while contributing positively to the household. Despite the additional household income from pensions, many of the study respondents still found it difficult to recover from the financial impact of these crises.
Reniers, Georges, Tekebash Araya, Yemane Berhane, Gail Davey and Eduard J Sanders. "Implications of the HIV testing protocol for refusal bias in seroprevalence surveys". BMC Public Health 2009, 9:163
Abstract: Background: HIV serosurveys have become important sources of HIV prevalence estimates, but these estimates may be biased because of refusals and other forms of non-response. We investigate the effect of the post-test counseling study protocol on bias due to the refusal to be tested. Methods: Data come from a nine-month prospective study of hospital admissions in Addis Ababa during which patients were approached for an HIV test. Patients had the choice between three consent levels: testing and post-test counseling (including the return of HIV test results), testing without post-test counseling, and total refusal. For all patients, information was collected on basic sociodemographic background characteristics as well as admission diagnosis. The three consent levels are used to mimic refusal bias in serosurveys with different post-test counseling study protocols. We first investigate the covariates of consent for testing. Second, we quantify refusal bias in HIV prevalence estimates using Heckman regression models that account for sample selection. Results: Refusal to be tested positively correlates with admission diagnosis (and thus HIV status), but the magnitude of refusal bias in HIV prevalence surveys depends on the study protocol. Bias is larger when post-test counseling and the return of HIV test results is a prerequisite of study participation (compared to a protocol where test results are not returned to study participants, or, where there is an explicit provision for respondents to forego post-test counseling). We also find that consent for testing increased following the introduction of antiretroviral therapy in Ethiopia. Other covariates of refusal are age (non-linear effect), gender (higher refusal rates in men), marital status (lowest refusal rates in singles), educational status (refusal rate increases with educational attainment), and counselor. Conclusion: The protocol for post-test counseling and the return of HIV test results to study participants is an important consideration in HIV prevalence surveys that wish to minimize refusal bias. The availability of ART is likely to reduce refusal rates.
Boileau, C., S. Clark, S. Bignami-Van Assche, M. Poulin, G. Reniers, S. C. Watkins, H. P. Kohler, and S. J. Heymann. "Sexual and marital trajectories and HIV infection among ever-married women in rural Malawi". Sexually Transmitted Infections 85(Suppl 1)(2009):i27-i33
Abstract: Objective: To explore how sexual and marital trajectories are associated with HIV infection among ever-married women in rural Malawi. Methods: Retrospective survey data and HIV biomarker data for 926 ever-married women interviewed in the Malawi Diffusion and Ideational Change Project were used. The associations between HIV infection and four key life course transitions considered individually (age at sexual debut, premarital sexual activity, entry into marriage and marital disruption by divorce or death) were examined. These transitions were then sequenced to construct trajectories that represent the variety of patterns in the data. The association between different trajectories and HIV prevalence was examined, controlling for potentially confounding factors such as age and region. Results: Although each life course transition taken in isolation may be associated with HIV infection, their combined effect appeared to be conditional on the sequence in which they occurred. Although early sexual debut, not marrying one’s first sexual partner and having a disrupted marriage each increased the likelihood of HIV infection, their risk was not additive. Women who both delayed sexual debut and did not marry their first partner are, once married, more likely to experience marital disruption and to be HIV-positive. Women who marry their first partner but who have sex at a young age, however, are also at considerable risk. Conclusions: These findings identify the potential of a life course perspective for understanding why some women become infected with HIV and others do not, as well as the differentials in HIV prevalence that originate from the sequence of sexual and marital transitions in one’s life. The analysis suggests, however, the need for further data collection to permit a better examination of the mechanisms that account for variations in life course trajectories and thus in lifetime probabilities of HIV infection.
Reniers, Georges and Jeffrey Eaton. "Refusal bias in HIV prevalence estimates from nationally representative seroprevalence surveys". AIDS 23, no. 5 (2009):621-629. NIHMSID: NIHMS103151
Abstract: Objectives: To assess the relationship between prior knowledge of one's HIV status and the likelihood to refuse HIV testing in populations-based surveys and explore its potential for producing bias in HIV prevalence estimates. Methods: Using longitudinal survey data from Malawi, we estimate the relationship between prior knowledge of HIV-positive status and subsequent refusal of an HIV test. We use that parameter to develop a heuristic model of refusal bias that is applied to six Demographic and Health Surveys, in which refusal by HIV status is not observed. The model only adjusts for refusal bias conditional on a completed interview. Results: Ecologically, HIV prevalence, prior testing rates and refusal for HIV testing are highly correlated. Malawian data further suggest that amongst individuals who know their status, HIV-positive individuals are 4.62 (95% confidence interval, 2.60-8.21) times more likely to refuse testing than HIV-negative ones. On the basis of that parameter and other inputs from the Demographic and Health Surveys, our model predicts downward bias in national HIV prevalence estimates ranging from 1.5% (95% confidence interval, 0.7-2.9) for Senegal to 13.3% (95% confidence interval, 7.2-19.6) for Malawi. In absolute terms, bias in HIV prevalence estimates is negligible for Senegal but 1.6 (95% confidence interval, 0.8-2.3) percentage points for Malawi. Downward bias is more severe in urban populations. Because refusal rates are higher in men, seroprevalence surveys also tend to overestimate the female-to-male ratio of infections. Conclusion: Prior knowledge of HIV status informs decisions to participate in seroprevalence surveys. Informed refusals may produce bias in estimates of HIV prevalence and the sex ratio of infections.
Reniers, Georges, Tekebash Araya, Gail Davey, Nico Nagelkerke, Yemane Berhane, Roel Coutinho, and Eduard J. Sanders. "Steep declines in population-level AIDS mortality following the introduction of antiretroviral therapy in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia". AIDS 23, no. 4 (2009):511-518. NIHMSID: NIHMS103149
Abstract: Objectives: Assessments of population-level effects of antiretroviral therapy (ART) programmes in Africa are rare. We use data from burial sites to estimate trends in adult AIDS mortality and the mitigating effects of ART in Addis Ababa. ART has been available since 2003, and for free since 2005. Methods: To substitute for deficient vital registration, we use surveillance of burials at all cemeteries. We present trends in all-cause mortality, and estimate AIDS mortality (ages 20-64 years) from lay reports of causes of death. These lay reports are first used as a diagnostic test for the true cause of death. As reference standard, we use the cause of death established via verbal autopsy interviews conducted in 2004. The positive predictive value and sensitivity are subsequently used as anchors to estimate the number of AIDS deaths for the period 2001-2007. Estimates are compared with Spectrum projections. Results: Between 2001 and 2005, the number of AIDS deaths declined by 21.9 and 9.3% for men and women, respectively. Between 2005 and 2007, the number of AIDS deaths declined by 38.2 for men and 42.9% for women. Compared with the expected number in the absence of ART, the reduction in AIDS deaths in 2007 is estimated to be between 56.8 and 63.3%, depending on the coverage of the burial surveillance. Conclusion: Five years into the ART programme, adult AIDS mortality has been reduced by more than half. Following the free provision of ART in 2005, the decline accelerated and became more sex balanced. Substantial AIDS mortality, however, persists.
2008
Downey, L. and B. Hawkins. “Race, Income, and Environmental Inequality in the United States.” Sociological Perspectives 51, no. 4(2008):759-81. NIHMSID: NIHMS100969
Abstract: This article asks whether the relationship between neighborhood and household income levels and neighborhood hazard levels varies according to neighborhood and household racial composition. Using a national, census tract-level data set, the authors find that black, white, and Hispanic households with similar incomes live in neighborhoods of dissimilar environmental quality, that the association between neighborhood and household income levels and neighborhood hazard levels varies according to neighborhood and household racial composition, and that increases in neighborhood and household income levels are more strongly associated with declining hazard levels in black neighborhoods and households than in white neighborhoods and households. These findings contradict Wilson's claim that the significance of race has declined in the modern industrial period and demonstrate that environmental racial inequality is not the product of racial income inequality. In addition, these findings suggest that the impact of higher incomes on black/white proximity to environmental hazards has less to do with increases in white geographic mobility (relative to black geographic mobility) than with the ability of higher income blacks to escape the highly polluted, disorganized, and deteriorated neighborhoods to which so many low-income blacks are confined.
Downey, L. “Single Mother Families and Air Pollution: A National Study.” Social Science Quarterly 89 (2008):523-36. NIHMSID: NIHMS100937
Abstract: Objective. This study uses tract-level demographic data and toxicity-weighted air pollutant concentration estimates for the continental United States to determine whether (1) single-mother families are overrepresented in environmentally hazardous Census tracts and (2) the percentage of single-mother families in a Census tract is a significant predictor of tract-level toxic concentration estimates. Methods. After calculating tract-level toxic concentration estimates for the average female-headed family, male-headed family, and married-couple family with and without children, we use fixed-effects regression models to determine whether the percentage of single-mother families in a tract is a significant predictor of tract-level toxic concentration estimates. Results. Single-mother families are overrepresented in environmentally hazardous Census tracts, and the percentage of single-mother families in a tract remains a significant predictor of estimated toxic concentration levels even after controlling for many of the most commonly used variables in the literature. Conclusion. Environmental inequality researchers need to broaden their focus beyond race and income to include groups such as single-mother families in their research.
Downey, L., S. DuBois, B. Hawkins, and S. Walker. “Environmental Inequality in Metropolitan America.” Organization & Environment 21, no. 3(2008):270-94. NIHMSID: NIHMS100938
Abstract: This study compares the environmental hazard burden experienced by Blacks, Hispanics, Pacific Islanders, Native Americans, Asian Americans, and Whites in each of the 329 metropolitan areas in the continental United States, using toxicity-weighted air pollutant concentration data drawn from the Environmental Protection Agency's Risk-Screening Environmental Indicators project to determine whether and to what degree environmental inequality exists in each of these metropolitan areas. After demonstrating that environmental inequality outcomes vary widely across metropolitan areas and that each group in the analysis experiences a high pollution disadvantage in multiple metropolitan areas and a medium pollution disadvantage in many metropolitan areas, the authors test three hypotheses that make predictions about the role that residential segregation and racial income inequality play in producing environmental inequality. Using logistic regression models to test these hypotheses, the authors find that residential segregation and racial income inequality are relatively poor predictors of environmental inequality outcomes, that residential segregation can increase and decrease racial/ethnic group proximity to environmental hazards, and that the roles income inequality and residential segregation play in producing environmental inequality vary from one racial/ethnic group to another.
Rogers, A. “Demographic Modeling of the Geography of Migration and Population: A Multiregional Perspective.” Geographical Analysis 40, no. 3(2008):276-96. NIHMSID: NIHMS106481
Abstract: This article focuses on the development and evolution of migration and population redistribution modeling within the spatial context of multiregional demography. It begins in 1965, when the state-of-the-art consisted largely of ideas and techniques imported from other disciplines (regression analysis, gravity models, Markov chains, and matrix cohort-survival population projection models) and then continues on to tell the story of multiregional demography, its evolution and emergence as a fully developed paradigm for studying the spatial dynamics of migration and population redistribution and, more recently, its approach for estimating the necessary migration input measures from inadequate data.
Rogers, A. and B. Jones. “Inferring Directional Migration Propensities from the Migration Propensities of Infants in the United States.” Mathematical Population Studies 15, no. 3(2008):182-211.
Abstract: Beginning with the 2010 decennial census, the U.S. Census Bureau plans to drop its long-form questionnaire and to replace it with the American Community Survey (ACS). The resulting absence of the larger sample provided by the census count will complicate the measurement and analysis of internal migration flows. In addition, the strategy of averaging accumulated samples over time will mix changing migration patterns. The migration question will refer to a one-year time interval instead of the five-year interval used in the censuses between 1960 and 2000, complicating historical comparisons and the production of multiregional projections based on five-year age groups. Consequently, students of territorial mobility increasingly will find it necessary to complement or augment possibly inadequate data collected on migration with estimates obtained by means of “indirect estimation.” A method is presented that allows one to infer age-specific directional migration propensities at the regional level from birthplace-specific infant population data, which approximates infant migration propensities, and from these infers the migration propensities of all other ages. The method is applied to at the nine-division spatial scale.
Jarron M. Saint Onge, Patrick M. Krueger, Richard G. Rogers. "Historical trends in height, weight, and body mass: Data from U.S. Major League Baseball players, 1869–1983". Economics and Human Biology 6 (2008) 482–488. NIHMSID: NIHMS100899
Abstract: We employ a unique dataset of Major League Baseball (MLB) players – a select, healthy population – to examine trends in height, weight, and body mass in birth cohorts from 1869 to 1983. Over that 115-year time period, U.S. born MLB players have gained, on average, approximately 3 in. (7.6 cm) in height and 27.0 lb (12.2 kg) in weight, which has contributed a 1.6-unit increase in the body mass index. Where comparable data are available, U.S. born MLB players are about 2.0 in. (5.1 cm) taller and 20.0 lb (9.1 kg) heavier but substantially less obese than males in the general U.S. population. But both groups exhibit similar height and weight trends; the majority of height and weight gains take place in cohorts that were born prior to World War II, followed by slower gains and occasional declines in height and weight for cohorts born in 1939 and later.
Boardman, J.D., L. Downey, J.S. Jackson, J.B. Merrill, J.M. Saint Onge, and D.R. Williams. “Proximate Industrial Activity and Psychological Distress.” Population & Environment 30, no. 1(2008): 3–25.
Abstract: This paper examines the role that gender, occupational status, and family status play in moderating the effect of industrial activity on the psychological well-being of nearby residents. Using a unique spatial assessment of industrial activity and an environmental risk/social stressor framework in conjunction with individual-level data from the Detroit Area Study (DAS) and demographic data from the U.S. census, we find that residents of neighborhoods in close proximity to industrial activity report elevated levels of psychological distress compared to residents of neighborhoods removed from this type of activity. These influences are more pronounced among women but gender differences are also contingent upon occupational and family statuses. We show that specific combinations of work and family statuses make persons particularly vulnerable to the influence of this environmental stressor and women are two and a half times more likely than men to have these vulnerable statuses. This study makes an important contribution to the environmental health literature because it reminds researchers of the fundamental influence of social roles when examining the link between environmental risks and mental health.
Boardman, J.D., J.M. Saint Onge, B.C. Haberstick, D.S. Timberlake, and J.K. Hewitt. “Do Schools Moderate the Genetic Determinants of Smoking?” Behavior Genetics 38, no. 3(2008):234-46.
Abstract: This paper uses data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to examine the extent to which school-level social and institutional factors moderate genetic tendencies to smoke cigarettes. Our analysis relies on a sub-sample of 1,198 sibling and twin pairs nested within 84 schools. We develop a multilevel modeling extension of regression-based quantitative genetic techniques to calculate school-specific heritability estimates. We show that smoking onset (h 2 = .51) and daily smoking (h 2 = .58) are both genetically influenced. Whereas the genetic influence on smoking onset is consistent across schools, we show that schools moderate the heritability of daily smoking. The heritability of daily smoking is the highest within schools in which the most popular students are also smokers and reduced within schools in which the majority of the students are non-Hispanic and white. These findings make important contributions to the literature on gene-environment interactions.
Pampel, Fred C. "Differences in the Influence of Family Background and Social Activities on Smoking of Minority and White High School Seniors, 1976–2004". Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health 10, no. 6(2008):507-515.
Abstract: This population-based study of high school seniors examines differences in the influence of several important determinants of smoking among white, African-American, Hispanic, and other teens. With national survey data for each year from 1976 to 2004, logistic regression is used to test for differences across race and ethnic groups (averaged over all years) in the effects on daily smoking of background factors such as living arrangements and parents’ education and social activities such as academic performance and religiosity. The results show similarity in effects across racial categories, but some determinants have weaker or reversed effects for African-American and Hispanic youth than for white youth. For example, high parents’ education increases smoking among Hispanic youth, has little influence among African Americans, and decreases smoking among whites. These results suggest that smoking patterns of minority teens differ in some ways from those of white teens.
McKinnish, Terra. "Spousal Mobility and Earnings." Demography 45, no. 4(2008):829-849.
Abstract: An important finding in the literature on migration has been that the earnings of married women typically decrease with a move, while the earnings of married men often increase with a move, suggesting that married women are more likely to act as the “trailing spouse.” This article considers a related but largely unexplored question: what is the effect of having an occupation that is associated with frequent migration on the migration decisions of a household and on the earnings of the spouse? Further, how do these effects differ between men and women? The Public Use Microdata Sample from the 2000 U.S. decennial census is used to calculate migration rates by occupation and education. The analysis estimates the effects of these occupational mobility measures on the migration of couples and the earnings of married individuals. I find that migration rates in both the husband’s and wife’s occupations affect the household migration decision, but mobility in the husband’s occupation matters considerably more. For couples in which the husband has a college degree (regardless of the wife’s educational level), a husband’s mobility has a large, significant negative effect on his wife’s earnings, whereas a wife’s mobility has no effect on her husband’s earnings. This negative effect does not exist for college-educated wives married to non-college-educated husbands.
Reniers, Georges and Tfaily R. "Polygyny and HIV in Malawi." Demographic Research 19, no. 53(2008): 1811-1830.
Abstract: We review the relationship between polygyny and HIV and identify a positive individual-level correlation, and a negative ecological correlation. We subsequently examine two mechanisms that contribute to the individual-level correlation. First, we find that men in polygynous marriages have more extramarital sex than men in monogamous unions (both in terms of self reports and in terms of spousal reports of the suspicion of adultery). Second, we find evidence of adverse selection of HIV positive women into polygynous unions via an investigation of the relationship between marriage order and polygyny status. We conclude with reflections about possible explanations for the distinct individual and ecological correlations.
Tekola F, Reniers G, Araya T, Damen HM, and Davey G. "The economic impact of AIDS morbidity and mortality on households in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia." AIDS Care 20, no. 8(2008): 995-1001.
Abstract: The present study investigates whether the household-level economic impact of an adult AIDS death is different from that of death from another cause. The data come from cross-sectional post-mortem interviews (verbal autopsies) with relatives or primary caregivers of deceased adults randomly selected from deaths recorded in an ongoing burial surveillance in Addis Ababa. Our analyses consist of three parts. First, we assess the sociodemographic risk factors for AIDS mortality. Subsequently, we reverse the causal order of this relationship and carry out an analysis of the effect of AIDS mortality on the subjective experience of change in the household's financial situation following the death of a household member. Finally, we quantify the direct and indirect costs of illness and death on the household. Results indicate that households experiencing an HIV/AIDS death are poorer than those experiencing a non-HIV/AIDS death. In addition, poorer households experience a greater decline in socioeconomic status following death of a household member. AIDS mortality has more detrimental effects on the household economic status than deaths due to other causes. While the difference between AIDS and non-AIDS mortality in terms of direct costs is minimal, the indirect cost of an AIDS death per household exceeds that of non-AIDS death by 58%. In conclusion, poor households are more likely to experience an AIDS death and in turn are more vulnerable to the socioeconomic impact of death. Therefore, it is justifiable to target HIV-impact mitigation programs on poorer households.
Hunter, Lori M. "Population, Health and Environment Through a ‘Gendered’ Lens." World Watch Magazine 21, no. 5 (2008):16-21.
Abstract: The water lapped at the side of our tiny outrigger boats as we struggled to get our sea legs up onto the dock. We had just arrived at Gilutongan, one of more than 7,000 islands that make up the Philippines nation. Coming from land-locked Colorado, the turquoise blue water signaled vacation in my mind-but we weren't on vacation. I was one of 50 visitors to Gilutongan as part of the second annual Population, Health, and Environment conference held in Cebu City, a bustling hub in the centralVisayas region. Among us were journalists, activists, researchers, and development practitioners, and our island excursion was meant as a window into the harsh reality that governs island life.We were also there to witness first-hand the components of an integrated development program that aims to reshape the islanders' harsh and remote reality. Filipino life and culture are permeated by the sea, which is the source of sustenance, income, and transportation and is never far away. Yet the nation's once-prolific fisheries are in dramatic decline. Filipino fishing households typically live far below the Philippines' official poverty threshold; on average, a household has six members, each earning 20 pesos (US$0.40) a day. Related to this wrenching poverty, malnourishment is common among fishing families. Although the fisheries crisis is driven by myriad forces, population growth is part of the problem.Unlike the rapid fertility declines (and thus smaller families) in other East Asian nations, such as Korea and Taiwan, Filipino families remain relatively large. Larger families require more fish, both for consumption and as a hopeful path out of poverty.
Hunter, Lori M., Roger-Mark deSouza, and Wayne Twine. "The environmental dimensions of the HIV/AIDS pandemic: a call for scholarship and evidence-based intervention." Population and Environment 29, no. 3-5 (2008):103-107.
Without Abstract:
Williams, Jill. “Spatial Transversals: Gender, Race, Class and Gay Tourism in Cape Town, South Africa.” Race, Gender and Class: An Interdisciplinary and Multicultural Journal 15, no. 1-2(2008):58-78.
Abstract: This paper examines the circulation of gay capital within gay and lesbian tourism in Cape Town, South Africa. Using participant observation of a gay shebeen tour as an example, the author describes new forms of gay and lesbian tourist-activism emerging in Cape Town and analyzes their impact on the racialized spatial economy of gay leisure space. Taking the complicity with capitalism inherent in tourism for granted, it is demonstrated that capitalist impulses mediated by activist motivations can create radical, even anti-colonial, social moments, and argued that in the context of South Africa it is particularly noteworthy that emerging forms of “queer capitalist tourism” are disrupting class and racial boundaries in ways not accomplished through the political activism that resulted in the inclusion of constitutional protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation. Amid increasingly visible and violent homophobia, queer capitalist tourism is facilitating transversal queer alliances and making important contributions to building a grassroots movement that can unite the previously fragmented gay and lesbian communities in South Africa.
Saint Onge, Jarron M., Richard G. Rogers, and Patrick M. Krueger. “Major League Baseball Players’ Life Expectancies.” Social Science Quarterly 89, no. 3(2008):817-30.
Abstract: We examine the importance of anthropometric and performance measures, and age, period, and cohort effects in explaining life expectancies among Major League Baseball (MLB) players over the past century. We use discrete time hazard models to calculate life tables with covariates with data from Total Baseball, a rich source of information on all players who played in the Major League. Compared to 20-year-old U.S. males, MLB players can expect almost five additional years of life. Height, weight, handedness, and player ratings are unassociated with the risk of death in this population of highly active and successful adults. Career length is inversely associated with the risk of death, likely because those who play longer gain additional incomes, physical fitness, and training. Our results indicate improvements in life expectancies with time for all age groups and indicate possible improvements in longevity in the general U.S. population.
Reniers, Georges. “Marital Strategies for Regulating Exposure to HIV.” Demography 45, no. 2 (2008): 417-438.
Abstract: In a setting where the transmission of HIV occurs primarily through heterosexual contact and where no cure or vaccine is available, behavioral change is imperative for containing the epidemic. Abstinence, faithfulness, and condom use most often receive attention in this regard. In contrast, this article treats marriage as a resource for HIV risk management via mechanisms of positive selection (partner choice) and negative selection (divorce of an adulterous spouse). Retrospective marriage histories and panel data provide the evidence for this study, and results indicate that men and women in Malawi increasingly turned to union-based risk-avoidance strategies during the period that the threat of HIV/AIDS materialized. Although both sexes strategize in a similar fashion, men are better equipped than women to deploy these strategies to their advantage. The article concludes with reflections on the long-term and population-level implications of these coping mechanisms.
Boardman, Jason D., Casey L. Blalock, and Tanya M. M. Button. "Sex Differences in the Heritability of Resilience." Twin Research and Human Genetics 11, no. 1 (2008):12–27. NIHMSID: NIHMS99628
Abstract: We examine the heritability of psychological resilience among US adults aged 25 to 74 years. Using monozygotic and same sex dizygotic twin pairs from the National Survey of Mid-Life Development in the United States (MIDUS) we show that positive affect is equally heritable among men (h2 = .60) and women (h2 = .59). We then estimate the heritability of positive affect after controlling for an exhaustive list of social and inter-personal stressors, and we operationalize the residual for positive affect as resilience. According to this specification, the heritability of resilience is higher among men (h2 = .52) compared to women (h2 = .38). We show that self-acceptance is one of the most important aspects of psychological functioning that accounts for the heritability of resilience among both men and women. However, compared to women, men appear to derive additional benefits from environmental mastery that may enable otherwise sex-neutral resilient tendencies to manifest.
deSherbinin, Alex, Leah VanWey, Kendra McSweeney, Rimjhim Aggarwal, Alisson Barbieri, Sabine Henry, Lori M. Hunter, Wayne Twine, Robert Walker. “Rural Household Micro-Demographics, Livelihoods and the Environment.” Global Environmental Change 18, no. 1 (2008): 38-53.
Abstract: This paper reviews and synthesizes findings from scholarly work on linkages among rural household demographics, livelihoods and the environment. Using the livelihood approach as an organizing framework, we examine evidence on the multiple pathways linking environmental variables and the following demographic variables: fertility, migration, morbidity and mortality, and lifecycles. Although the review draws on studies from the entire developing world, we find the majority of microlevel studies have been conducted in either marginal (mountainous or arid) or frontier environments, especially Amazonia. Though the linkages are mediated by many complex and often context-specific factors, there is strong evidence that dependence on natural resources intensifies when households lose human and social capital through adult morbidity and mortality, and qualified evidence for the influence of environmental factors on household decision-making regarding fertility and migration. Two decades of research on lifecycles and land cover change at the farm level have yielded a number of insights about how households make use of different land-use and natural resource management strategies at different stages. A thread running throughout the review is the importance of managing risk through livelihood diversification, ensuring future income security, and culture-specific norms regarding appropriate and desirable activities and demographic responses. Recommendations for future research are provided.
Boardman, Jason D., Casey L. Blalock, and Tanya M. M. Button. "Sex Differences in the Heritability of Resilience." Twin Research and Human Genetics 11, no. 1 (2008):12–27.
Abstract: We examine the heritability of psychological resilience among US adults aged 25 to 74 years. Using monozygotic and same sex dizygotic twin pairs from the National Survey of Mid-Life Development in the United States (MIDUS) we show that positive affect is equally heritable among men (h2 = .60) and women (h2 = .59). We then estimate the heritability of positive affect after controlling for an exhaustive list of social and inter-personal stressors, and we operationalize the residual for positive affect as resilience. According to this specification, the heritability of resilience is higher among men (h2 = .52) compared to women (h2 = .38). We show that self-acceptance is one of the most important aspects of psychological functioning that accounts for the heritability of resilience among both men and women. However, compared to women, men appear to derive additional benefits from environmental mastery that may enable otherwise sex-neutral resilient tendencies to manifest.
2007
Saint Onge, Jarron M., Lori Hunter, and Jason D. Boardman. “Population Growth in High Amenity Rural Areas: Does It Bring New Opportunity for Long-Term Residents.” Social Science Quarterly 88, no. 2(2007):366-381.
Abstract:
Objective. A widely noted concern with amenity-driven rural population growth is its potential to yield only low-wage service-sector employment for long-term residents, while raising local costs of living. This research examines change in socioeconomic status during the 1990s for long-term residents of high-amenity, high-growth rural counties in the United States.
Methods. Using longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, in combination with county-level information, we estimate growth-curve models to examine the extent to which the socioeconomic status of long-term residents is associated with amenity-related in-migration.
Results. We find that, on average, residents in high-growth, amenity-rich rural areas have higher income growth over time and higher levels of initial occupational prestige compared to those from other rural areas, but that socioeconomic gains are primarily for individuals with low baseline prestige.
Conclusions. The socioeconomic gains made by long-term residents of high-growth, amenity-rich rural areas associated with net in-migration may be limited to individuals with low initial prestige and growth may be due to low-skill service-sector jobs.
Conley, Amanda R. and Jason D. Boardman. “Weight Overestimation as an Indicator of Disordered Eating Behaviors among Young Women in the United States.” International Journal of Eating Disorders 40, no. 5(2007).
Abstract:
Objective:
This paper examines the association between weight overestimation and symptoms of disordered eating behaviors using a nationally representative sample of young women.
Method:
We use data from Wave III of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to compare self-reported weight (in pounds) to measure weight obtained by interviewers using a scale. Focusing on normal weight women between the ages of 18 and 24 (n = 2,805) we compare the discrepancy in self-reported and measured weight among women with and without any disordered eating behaviors.
Results:
Women who over report their weight by at least five percent are significantly more likely than those who either under report or accurately report their weights to exhibit disordered eating behaviors. These results persist despite controlling for distorted body image.
Conclusion:
Our findings support both motivational and perceptual bias explanations for overestimating weight among those who exhibit disordered eating behaviors. We argue that weight over-estimation, together with other important information regarding women's nutrition, exercise, mental health, and health-related behaviors, should be treated as a potential indicator for the diagnosis of an eating disorder among young normal weight women.
Madhavan, Sangeetha and Enid J. Schatz.. "Coping with change: Household structure and composition in rural South Africa, 1992 - 2003." Scandinavian Journal of Public Health 35, no. S69 (2007): 85–93.
Abstract: Aim: To describe household change over a 10-year period of tremendous social, political, economic and health transformation in South Africa using data from the Agincourt health and demographic surveillance system in the rural northeast of South Africa. Methods: Examination of household structure and composition at three points: 1992, 1997, and 2003. These three years loosely represent conditions immediately before the elections (1992), short term post-elections (1997), and longer term (2003), and span a period of notable increase in HIV prevalence. Results: Average household size decreased and the proportion headed by females increased. The within-household dependency ratios for children and elders both decreased, as did the proportion of households containing foster children. The proportion with at least one maternal orphan doubled, but was still relatively small at 5.5%. Conclusions: This analysis is a starting point for future investigations aimed at explaining how HIV/AIDS and other sociocultural changes post-apartheid have impacted on household organization. The analysis shows both consistency and change in measures of household structure and composition between 1992 and 2003. The changes do not include an increase in various types of "fragile families", such as child-headed or skipped-generation households that might be expected due to HIV/AIDS.
Enid J. Schatz. "Taking care of my own blood": Older women's relationships to their households in rural South Africa." Scandinavian Journal of Public Health 35, no. S69 (2007): 147 - 154.
Abstract: Aim: This paper examines financial, emotional, and physical responsibilities elderly women are being asked to take on due to the incapacity of their adult children to care for the next generation; such incapacity is likely to increase as the HIV/AIDS epidemic worsens. Methods: This paper combines quantitative and qualitative data. Census data from the Agincourt health and demographic surveillance system (AHDSS) describe the presence of the elderly (specifically women over the age of 60 and men over the age of 65) in households in the Agincourt study site. Semi-structured interviews with 30 female residents aged 60-75 complement the census data by exploring the roles that older women, in particular, are playing in their households. Results: An elderly man and/or woman lives in 27.6% of households; 86% of elders live with non-elders. Households with a woman over the age of 60 resident (as opposed to those without) are twice as likely to have a fostered child living in the household and three times as likely to have an orphaned child in the household. Elderly women face financial, physical, and emotional burdens related to the morbidity and mortality of their adult children, and to caring for grandchildren left behind due to adult children's mortality, migration, (re)marriage, and unemployment. Conclusions: Older women provide crucial financial, physical, and emotional support for ill adult children and fostered and orphaned grandchildren in their households. As more prime-aged adults suffer from HIV/AIDS-related morbidity and mortality, these obligations are likely to increase.
Schatz, Enid J. and Catherine Ogunmefun. "Caring and Contributing: The Role of Older Women in Rural South African Multi-generational Households in the HIV/AIDS Era." World Development 35, no. 8 (2007): 1390-1403.
Abstract: This paper explores households’ coping strategies in rural South Africa, where HIV/AIDS morbidity and mortality are having profound effects on household resources. Older women’s pensions play a potentially crucial role in multi-generational households during crises and for day-to-day subsistence. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 30 elderly women from the MRC/Wits Rural Public Health and Health Transitions Research Unit (Agincourt) fieldsite, who were eligible for the South African non-contributory pension. Although we stratified our sample by household mortality experience, the area’s high levels of migration, unemployment, and HIV/AIDS prevalence made our respondents’ pensions an important, regular, and reliable source of household-income regardless of their households’ mortality profile.
Raymer, James and Andrei Rogers. "Using Age and Spatial Flow Structures in the Indirect Estimation of Migration Streams." Demography 44, no. 2 (2007): 199-223.
Online Article | Article (pdf)
Abstract: This article outlines a formal model-based approach for inferring interregional age-specific migration streams in settings where such data are incomplete, inadequate, or unavailable. The estimation approach relies heavily on log-linear models, using them to impose some of the regularities exhibited by past age and spatial structures or to combine and borrow information drawn from other sources. The approach is illustrated using data from the 1990 and 2000 U.S. and Mexico censuses.
Little, Jani and Andrei Rogers. "What can the age composition of a population tell us about the age composition of its out-migrants?" Population, Space and Place 13, no. 1 (2007): 23-39. (Published online December 19, 2006.)
Abstract: Preliminary findings show that the age structure of a population can provide valuable information about the age composition of its out-migrants, and that this relationship can become a key ingredient in the proposed new method for estimating the age profile of out-migrants when accurate data are not available. The method relies on the Rogers-Castro model schedule to consistently and accurately represent age profiles of out-migration, and the results show that variation among these out-migration schedules can be captured by a typology based on a small set of clusters, or families of schedules. Membership of the clusters is then predicted from simple measures of population composition using discriminant function analysis. The investigation is based on data for US states, CMSAs, MSAs and non-metropolitan counties, and their outflows of migrants between 1995 and 2000. The measures of population age composition come from official 1995 intercensal age-specific population estimates for the same geographical units.
Witnauer, William D., Richard G. Rogers, and Jarron M. Saint Onge. “Major league baseball career length in the 20th century.” Population Research and Policy Review 26, no. 4(2007): 371-386.
Abstract: The sport of baseball has used statistics to enhance understanding for fans for over a century, yet there is limited data on player careers. This study fills that void by examining the careers of baseball players over the last century. Between 1902 and 1993, 5,989 position players started their careers and played 33,272 person years of major league baseball. A rookie position player can expect to play 5.6 years; one in five position players will have only a single-year career, and at every point of a player’s career, the chance of exiting is at least 11%. Position players who start younger and begin their careers in more recent decades all have longer and more stable careers; nevertheless, baseball careers are not compressed versions of normal careers, but are substantially skewed toward early exit.
2006
Clark, Samuel J. "Demographic impacts of the HIV epidemic and consequences of population-wide treatment of HIV for the elderly: Results from microsimulation." In Aging in Sub-Saharan Africa: Recommendations for Furthering Research, edited by Barney Cohen and Jane Menken, 92-116. Washington: National Academies Press, 2006.
Pampel, Fred C. Sociological Lives and Ideas: An Introduction to the Classical Theorists. Second Edition. New York: Worth, 2006.
Pampel, Fred C. "Socioeconomic Distinction, Cultural Tastes, and Cigarette Smoking." Social Science Quarterly 87, no. 1 (2006):19-35.
Abstract: Objectives. The inverse relationship between socioeconomic status (SES) and smoking is typically seen in terms of the greater economic and social resources of advantaged groups, but it may also relate to cultural resources. This study aims to test theories of symbolic distinction by examining relationships between smoking and ostensibly unrelated cultural preferences. Methods. Using the 1993 General Social Survey, ordinal logistic regression models, and a three-category dependent variable (never, former, and current smoker), the analysis estimates relationships of musical likes and dislikes with smoking while controlling for SES and social strain. Results. Preferences for classical music are associated with lower smoking, while preferences for bluegrass, jazz, and heavy metal music are associated with higher smoking. Conclusions. The results suggest that SES groups may use smoking, like other cultural tastes, to distinguish their lifestyles from those of others.
Pampel, Fred C. "Global Patterns and Determinants of Sex Differences in Smoking." International Journal of Comparative Sociology 47, no. 6 (2006):466-487.
Abstract: The worldwide spread of tobacco use in recent decades raises questions about the relative prevalence of smoking among men and women. Does the degree of gender equality in nations promote equality in cigarette use? Does rising use of cigarettes by women stem from the stage of cigarette diffusion and earlier increases among men? Or have changes in economic factors and smoking policy affected the sexes differently? This study uses aggregate data for 106 nations, measures of smoking prevalence circa 2000, and lagged measures of gender equality, cigarette diffusion, and tobacco access to address these questions and evaluate the underlying theories. With the logged ratio of female to male prevalence as the dependent variable, regression results reveal that gender equality has inconsistent effects on women's smoking relative to men, cigarette diffusion has more consistent and moderately strong effects, and economic factors have weak effects. Global patterns of adoption of cigarettes by women appear most closely associated with the early adoption by men and then movement through a regular pattern of cigarette diffusion.
Cohen, Barney and Jane Menken (eds.). Aging in Sub-Saharan Africa: Recommendations for Furthering Research. Washington: National Academies Press, 2006.
Menken, Jane and M. Omar Rahman. "Reproductive health". In International Public Health: Diseases, Programs, Systems, and Policies, 2nd ed, edited by Michael H. Merson, Robert E. Black and Anne J. Mills, 71-126. Sudbury MA: Jones and Bartlett Publishers, 2006. (First edition published 2001.)
Young, J. T., Jane Menken, Jill Williams, Nizam Khan and Randall S. Kuhn. "Who Receives Healthcare? Age and Sex Differentials in Adult Use of Healthcare Services in Rural Bangladesh." World Health and Population (2006).
Abstract: Use of healthcare services may vary according to the cultural, social, economic and demographic situation of the person who may need care. In certain contexts, it particularly varies with age and sex of the potential user. Bangladesh is a less developed, primarily rural and predominantly Muslim traditional society with a pluralistic healthcare system. This paper endeavours to delineate the age, sex and other factors associated with obtaining healthcare in this pluralistic system. Using the Matlab Health and Socio-economic Survey, the paper uses logistic regression to ask whether factors commonly related to Western healthcare utilization in a theoretical framework useful in the study of Western research on healthcare services are also useful in the study of healthcare utilization in the developing world. Elderly women, never-married women and Hindus were less likely to visit any practitioner, which may indicate less health empowerment for these groups. Obtaining care is inversely related to household size and positively related to age (for men), education, poor health status and impaired mobility. Controlling for these factors, household wealth and ever-married status showed no significant effect on obtaining care. The differential in use of healthcare services can partially be ameliorated by changes in policy related to the elderly and women.
Kuhn, Randall, Omar Rahman, and Jane Menken. "Survey Measures of Health: How well do self-reported and observed indicators measure health and predict mortality?" In Aging in Sub-Saharan Africa: Recommendations for Furthering Research, edited by Barney Cohen and Jane Menken, 314-341. Washington: National Academies Press, 2006.
Trapp, Erin and Jane Menken. "Differential treatment of children by sex." In Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology, 2006.
McNown, Robert F., Janice Boucher Breuer and Myles Wallace. "Misleading Inferences from Panel Unit Root Tests: a Reply." Review of International Economics 14, no. 3 (2006): 512-516.
Abstract: Ford et al. (this issue) point out that the SURADF panel unit root test may be sensitive to panel composition. This reply shows that they overstate the case since they focus on a short time series of 44 observations. Type II errors are much more likely in this environment so that inconsistent conclusions may arise for individual panel members across differently composed panels. We demonstrate that this problem becomes much less likely when the number of time-series observations increases.
Boardman, Jason D.. "Self-Rated Health Among U.S. Adolescents." Journal of Adolescent Health 38, no. 4 (2006): 401-408.
Abstract: Purpose: This article investigates the meaning of subjective health assessments for younger respondents by examining the temporal stability of self-rated health (SRH) among adolescents. Two competing understandings of SRH are tested: SRH as a spontaneous health assessment or as an enduring self-concept. Methods: Using data from two waves of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (n = 13,511), an intra-class correlation coefficient and a weighted Kappa estimate are calculated to assess the test-retest reliability for SRH. Self-rated health (T2) is then modeled as a function of SRH (T1), physical health (T1), and mental health (T1), and changes in physical and mental health (T2–T1). Results: SRH is found to be moderately stable over repeated observations (K = .40; ? = .55) among adolescents. Findings from multivariate analyses suggest that SRH (T2) is largely determined by SRH (T1) and less so by changes in physical or psychological health status (T2-T1). Conclusions: SRH among adolescents is in part a spontaneous health assessment but it is best understood as an enduring self-concept.
Downey, Liam. "Using Geographic Information Systems to Reconceptualize Spatial Relationships and Ecological Context." The American Journal of Sociology 112, no. 2 (2006): 567-612.
Abstract: In this article, the author demonstrates how geographic information system (GIS) software can be used to reconceptualize spatial relationships and ecological context and address the modifiable areal unit problem. In order to do this, the author uses GIS to (1) test an important category of spatial hypotheses (spatial proximity hypotheses), (2) overcome methodological problems that arise when data sets are not spatially comparable, and (3) measure ecological context. The author introduces a set of GIS variable construction techniques that are designed to accomplish these tasks, illustrates these techniques empirically by using them to test spatial proximity hypotheses drawn from the literature on environmental inequality, and demonstrates that results obtained using these techniques are methodologically superior to and substantively different from results obtained using traditional techniques. Finally, the author demonstrates that these techniques are the product of an alternative conceptualization of physical space that allows sociologists to develop new ways to think about and measure spatial relationships, ecological context, and place-based social inequality and that gives them the ability to reconceptualize spatially based methodological problems that have confronted them for years.
Downey, Liam. "Environmental Racial Inequality in Detroit." Social Forces 85, no. 2 (2006): 771-796.
Abstract: This study uses industrial pollution data from the Environmental Protection Agency's Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) and tract-level demographic data from the 2000 U.S. census to determine whether environmental racial inequality existed in the Detroit metropolitan area in the year 2000. This study differs from prior environmental inequality research in two important ways. First, it offers a positive rationale for using hazard proximity indicators. Second, it uses a distance decay modeling technique to estimate hazard proximity. This technique weights each hazard's estimated negative effect by distance such that the estimated negative effect declines continuously as distance from the hazard increases, thus providing more accurate estimates of proximity-based environmental risk than can be obtained using other variable construction techniques currently found in the literature. Using this technique, I find that Detroit's black neighborhoods were disproportionately burdened by TRI facility activity in 2000 and that neighborhood racial composition had a strong independent effect on neighborhood proximity to TRI activity.
Downey, Liam. “Environmental Inequality in 14 Major Metropolitan Areas in 2000.” Sociological Spectrum 26, no. 1 (2006):21-41.
Abstract: This article compares black and Hispanic environmental inequality levels across 14 of the largest metropolitan areas in the United States and asks how conclusions regarding the existence of environmental inequality differ when different definitions of environmental inequality are employed. Using census tracts as the unit of analysis, industrial pollution data from the Toxic Release Inventory, and demographic data from the U.S. census, tobit regression analysis is used to determine whether two types of environmental racial inequality—disparate social impacts inequality and relative distribution inequality—existed in each metropolitan area in 2000. Results show that black and Hispanic environmental inequality were fairly widespread throughout the 14 metropolitan areas, that Hispanic environmental inequality was more widespread than black environmental inequality, and that conclusions vary depending upon which definition of environmental inequality is employed. This latter findings suggests that the conclusions researchers draw are likely to be inaccurate if they do not properly specify the definitions of environmental inequality they are using and the types of environmental inequality they are studying.
Rachel Silvey. "Consuming the transnational family: Indonesian migrant domestic workers to Saudi Arabia." Global Networks 6, no. 1 (2006):23-40.
Abstract: There is heated debate in contemporary Indonesia about the rights and regulation of transnational women migrants, specifically about the costs to families' of women working overseas, but little attention has been given to women migrants' own views of family or women's own motivations for migration. In this article, which is based on field work in a migrant-sending community in West Java, I focuses on migrant women's narratives of transnational migration and employment as domestic workers in Saudi Arabia. I contribute to the literature on gender and transnational migration by exploring migrants' consumption desires and practices as reflective not only of commoditized exchange but also of affect and sentiment. In addition, I show in detail how religion and class inflect low-income women's narrations of morally appropriate mothering practices. In conclusion, I suggest that interpreting these debates from the ground up can contribute towards understanding the larger struggles animating the Indonesian state's contemporary relationships with women and Islam.
Rachel Silvey. "Geographies of Gender and Migration: Spatializing Social Difference." International Migration Review 40, no. 1 (2006):64.
Abstract: This article provides a review of the contributions that the discipline of geography is making to gender and migration research. In geographic analysis of migration, gender differences are examined most centrally in relation to specific spatialities of power. In social construction of scale, the politics of interlinkages between place and identity, and the socio-spatial production of borders. Supplementing recent reviews of the gender and migration literature in geography, this article examines the potential for continued cross-fertilization between feminist geography and migration research in other disciplines. The advances made by feminist geographers to migration studies are illustrated through analysis of the findings and debates tied to the subfield's central recent conceptual interventions.
2005
McKinnish, Terra. “Importing the Poor: Welfare Magnetism and Cross-Border Welfare Migration.” Journal of Human Resources 40, no. 1 (2005):57-76.
Black, Dan, Terra McKinnish, and Seth Sanders. "The Economic Impact Of The Coal Boom And Bust." Economic Journal, 115, no. 503 (April 2005):449.
Abstract: In this paper, we examine the impact of the coal boom in the 1970s and the subsequent coal bust in the 1980s on local labour markets in Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. We address two main questions in our analysis. How were non-mining sectors affected by the shocks to the mining sector? How did these effects differ between sectors producing local goods and those producing traded goods? We find evidence of modest employment spillovers into sectors with locally traded goods but not into sectors with nationally traded goods.
McKinnish, Terra. "Lagged dependent variables and specification bias." Economic Letters, 88 no. 1 (July 2005):55-59.
Abstract: Many panel data models include a lagged dependent variable as a regressor. Analytical results in this note show that common forms of misspecification induce negative bias in the coefficient estimate. An analysis of welfare caseloads illustrates these results.
Chen, Yongmin and Terra McKinnish. "Do Economics Departments Search Optimally in Faculty Recruiting?" Economic Inquiry, 43 no.3 (July 2005):676-688.
Abstract: We find that it is optimal for higher-quality departments to search broadly across many or even all fields in faculty recruiting, whereas it is optimal for lower-quality departments to conduct narrower searches. We develop a simple search model in which optimal search scope is shown to increase in department quality. Using data from Job Openings for Economists, we find that higher-ranked departments do conduct broader searches. We find that a 10-place increase in department ranking is associated with 3.5–4.8 more Journal of Economic Literature subfields listed in a position announcement.
Black, Dan A., Terra G. McKinnish, and Seth G. Sanders. "Tight Labor Markets and the Demand for Education: Evidence from the Coal Boom and Bust." Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 59 no. 1 (2005).
Abstract: Human capital theory predicts that individuals acquire less schooling when the returns to schooling are small. To test this theory, the authors study the effect of the Appalachian coal boom on high school enrollments. During the 1970s, a boom in the coal industry increased the earnings of high school dropouts relative to those of graduates. During the 1980s, the boom subsided and the earnings of dropouts declined relative to those of graduates. The authors find that high school enrollment rates in Kentucky and Pennsylvania declined considerably in the 1970s and increased in the 1980s in coal-producing counties relative to counties without coal. The estimates indicate that a longterm 10% increase in the earnings of low-skilled workers could decrease high school enrollment rates by as much as 5–7%—a finding with implications for policies aimed at improving low-skilled workers’ employment and earnings, such as wage subsidies and minimum wage increases.
Rogers, Andrei and Junwei Liu. "Estimating Directional Migration Flows from Age-Specific Net Migration Data." Review of Urban and Regional Development Studies 17, no. 3 (2005):177-270.
Abstract: This paper focuses on a method for indirectly inferring migration flows in the absence of migration data, using two successive counts of birthplace-specific population stocks. Such stocks have been used in the past to infer patterns of mortality and indeed of net migration. But a workable method for using such population stocks to indirectly estimate directional migration flows still eludes us. Widely observed regularities in the age patterns of outmigration indicate that age-specific propensities of migration are correlated, and this characteristic suggests an estimation method that directs attention to the age-specific relative propensities of two or more flows exhibited in the historically preceding time intervals, and then uses those past measures of relative propensities to disaggregate residually estimated net migration flows into the underlying contributions of inmigration and outmigration. A detailed demonstration of the method, applied to US data, is set out in this paper.
Rogers, Andrei and James Raymer. "Origin Dependence, Secondary Migration and the Indirect Estimation of Migration Flows from Population Stocks." Journal of Population Research 22, no. 1 (2005):1-19.
Abstract: US census data from 1940 to 2000 are used in this paper to illustrate the importance of origin dependence on migration streams and to examine the effects of such dependence on patterns of interregional migration. These findings are then used to make possible the indirect estimation of migration flows. A method is introduced that uses historical regularities found in the ratios of secondary to primary migration and two consecutive birthplace-specific counts of multiregional population stocks. The results demonstrate how patterns of primary and secondary migration act to shape population redistribution processes.
Rogers, Andrei, Luis J. Castro, and Megan Lea. "Model Migration Schedules: Three Alternative Linear Parameter Estimation Methods." Mathematical Population Studies 12, no. 1 (2005):17-38.
Abstract: Observed schedules of migration rates exhibit strong regularities in age patterns. These regularities may be captured and represented by a mathematical expression known as the multiexponential model migration schedule. Fitting this function to empirical data requires non-linear regression methods and often some experimentation with alternative initial estimates of the parameters. Simpler, linear methods of estimation are adequate for most applications. These may be carried out with hand calculators or simple spreadsheet-based calculations on the computer. Such methods are studied and appear to perform satisfactorily.
Pampel, Fred C. "Forecasting Sex Differences in Mortality in High Income Nations: The Contribution of Smoking." Demographic Research 13, no. 18 (2005):455-484.
Abstract: To address the question of whether the sex differential in mortality will in the future rise, fall, or stay the same, this study uses the relative smoking prevalence among males and females to forecast future changes in relative smoking-attributed mortality. Data on 21 high income nations from 1975 to 2000 and a lag between smoking prevalence and mortality allow forecasts up to 2020. Averaged across nations, the results reveal narrowing of measures of the sex differential in smoking mortality. However, continued widening of the differential in non-smoking mortality would counter narrowing due to smoking and lead to future increases in the female advantage overall, particularly in nations at late stages of the cigarette epidemic (such as the United States and the United Kingdom) where narrowing of the smoking differential has already begun to slow.
Boardman, Jason D., Jarron M. Saint Onge, Richard G. Rogers, and Justin T. Denney. "Race Differentials in Obesity: The Impact of Place." Journal of Health and Social Behavior 46, no. 3 (2005):229-243.
Abstract: This article reveals race differentials in obesity as both an individual- and neighborhood-level phenomena. Using neighborhood-level data from the 1990–1994 National Health Interview Survey, we find that neighborhoods characterized by high proportions of black residents have a greater prevalence of obesity than areas in which the majority of the residents are white. Using individual-level data, we also find that residents of neighborhoods in which at least one-quarter of the residents are black face a 13 percent increase in the odds of being obese compared to residents of other communities. The association between neighborhood racial composition and obesity is completely attenuated after including statistical controls for the poverty rate and obesity prevalence of respondents' neighborhoods. These findings support the underlying assumptions of both institutional and social models of neighborhood effects.
Silvey, Rachel M.. “Review of the Film Born into Brothels.” Children, Youth and Environments 15, no. 1 (2005): 362-363.
Silvey, Rachel M.. "Transnational Islam: Indonesian Migrant Domestic Workers in Saudi Arabia." In Geographies of Muslim Women: Gender, Religion, and Space, edited by Ghazi-Walid Falah and Caroline Nagel, 203. New York: The Guilford Press, 2005.
Silvey, Rachel M.. "Borders, Embodiment, and Mobility: Feminist Advances in Migration Studies." In Blackwell Companion to Feminist Geography, edited by Lise Nelson and Joni Seager. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005.
Ridao-Cano, Christobal and Robert McNown. "The effect of tax-benefit policies on fertility and female labor force participation in the United States." Journal of Policy Modeling 27, no. 9 (2005): 1083-1096.
Abstract: This paper presents an investigation of the effects of the tax exemption for dependents and the child care tax credit on age-specific fertility rates and female labor supply for the U.S. 1948–1997. These policies are incorporated in a model that is tested within a cointegration framework for women of two age groups: 20–24 and 25–34 year olds. Tests indicate the existence of two cointegrating relations for each of the two age groups, and these are identified as a fertility equation and a female labor force participation equation, with signs and statistical significance supportive of the economic model. The tax exemption elasticity in the fertility equation for younger women is moderately large, but this policy variable is dominated by effects from changes in women's wages. The 25–34 year olds are less responsive to all economic changes, including the tax exemption, reflecting reduced flexibility in their timing of fertility.
Downey, Liam. "Single Mother Families and Industrial Pollution in Metropolitan America." Sociological Spectrum 25, no. 6 (2005):651-675.
Abstract: Environmental inequality researchers have studied the distribution of social groups around a variety of environmental hazards. However, researchers have focused their attention primarily on race and class-based environmental inequality, largely ignoring the question of whether other subordinate groups—children, the elderly, women, welfare recipients, single mother families—are disproportionately burdened by environmental hazards. I address this gap in the literature by asking whether single mother families are overrepresented in environmentally hazardous neighborhoods, whether the percentage of single mother families in a neighborhood is a better predictor than a neighborhood's racial and income characteristics of environmental hazard presence levels, and whether the representation of single mother families in environmentally hazardous neighborhoods is similar to that of single father families and married parent families.
Benzler, Justus and Samuel J. Clark. "Toward a Unified Timestamp with explicit precision." Demographic Research 12, no. 6 (2005):107-140.
Abstract: Demographic and health surveillance (DS) systems monitor and document individual- and group-level processes in well-defined populations over long periods of time. The resulting data are complex and inherently temporal. Established methods of storing and manipulating temporal data are unable to adequately address the challenges posed by these data. Building on existing standards, a temporal framework and notation are presented that are able to faithfully record all of the time-related information (or partial lack thereof) produced by surveillance systems. The Unified Timestamp isolates all of the inherent complexity of temporal data into a single data type and provides the foundation on which a Unified Timestamp class can be built. The Unified Timestamp accommodates both point- and interval-based time measures with arbitrary precision, including temporal sets. Arbitrary granularities and calendars are supported, and the Unified Timestamp is hierarchically organized, allowing it to represent an unlimited array of temporal entities.
Kuhn, Randall. "A Longitudinal Analysis of Health and Mortality in a Migrant-Sending Region of Bangladesh." In Migration and Health in Asia, edited by Santosh Jatrana, Mika Toyota, and Brenda S.A. Yeoh. London: Routledge, 2005.
Abstract: Twelve specialist essays explore health aspects of the migration of workers which is now an established feature of Asia's socio-economy. The matters addressed include: implications for the spread of Aids in Indonesia; relocation of the Akha people in Northwest Laos; foreign labour migrants and SARS in Singapore; role of nativity in Singapore's elder-health; maternal anaemia in the Visayas, the Philippines; Filipinos in Sabah; migration differentials in healthcare in Japan; migration and health within China; migrant-sending area's health in Bangladesh; reproductive health of wives of out-migrants in Bihar. The final papers draw general conclusions very useful to policy planners and administrators as well as to those directly concerned with health matters. With bibliography and index.
Becker, Charles M. and Dina S. Urzhumova. "Mortality recovery and stabilization in Kazakhstan, 1995–2001". Economics & Human Biology 3, no. 1 (2005):97-122.
Abstract: This paper documents both the extraordinary rise in mortality that accompanied economic deterioration in the former Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan, as well as the far more tentative recovery. Kazakhstan's multi-ethnic population also makes it possible to identify a large mortality disadvantage for those—especially working-age males—who are not of Kazakh ethnicity. There are also stark regional differences—mortality decline is underway in many areas with substantial economic recovery, while elsewhere there has been no discernable improvement.
Pampel, Fred C. "Diffusion, Cohort Change, and Social Patterns of Smoking." Social Science Research 34 (2005):117-139.
Abstract: In noting that common explanations of smoking cannot account for both its current inverse relationship with SES and the shift over time toward greater concentration among low SES groups, this paper presents an explanation based on diffusion and status distinctions. The explanation predicts that, as cigarette diffusion proceeds and fashions change, the social determinants of smoking will shift across cohorts, such that initially positive relationships between pre-adult components of socioeconomic status and smoking in early cohorts become negative in later cohorts. Tests using historical, cohort-linked aggregate data on cigarette diffusion, and individual-level data from the General Social Surveys covering the years from 1978-1994 and cohorts from 1889-1976 largely support the predictions. In comparing older to newer cohorts, the results show correspondence between the stage of cigarette diffusion and the direction and strength of the relationships of education, parental status, urban residence and gender with cigarette smoking.
Hunter, Lori M., Jason D. Boardman, and Jarron M. Saint Onge. "The Association Between Natural Amenities, Rural Population Growth,and Long-Term Residents’ Economic Well-Being." Rural Sociology 70, no. 4 (2005): 452-469.
Abstract: Population growth in rural areas characterized by high levels of natural amenities has recently received substantial research attention. A noted concern with amenity-driven rural population growth is its potential to raise local costs-of-living while yielding only low-wage service sector employment for long-term residents. The work presented here empirically models long-term rural residents’ economic well-being, making use of longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. In general, the results suggest that long-term rural families residing in high-growth amenity and recreation areas tend to have higher annual incomes than do their counterparts in non-growth amenity/recreation areas, regardless of the sex, race, or age of the family head. However, higher costs-of-living in these areas supplant any relative gains in income. As such, these analyses provide empirical evidence of patterns inferred by earlier anecdotal evidence and case studies.
Boardman, Jason D., and Jarron M. Saint Onge. "Neighborhoods and Adolescent Development." Children, Youth, and Environments 15, no. 1(2005):138-164.
Abstract: Researchers are increasingly interested in identifying specific aspects of adolescents’ lives that are positively or adversely affected by their place of residence. This body of work suggests that it is important to consider neighborhoods when examining their 1) engagement in risk-related behaviors; 2) educational outcomes; 3) physical and mental health; and 4) their integration within social institutions. To date, however, no existing work has simultaneously considered the range of outcomes in which neighborhoods are believed to be important within and across these four domains. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we examine the extent to which neighborhoods influence adolescent outcomes across 34 characteristics nested within these four areas. The findings suggest that for adolescents, residential area is equally important in terms of risk behaviors, educational outcomes, and their integration within their families, schools, and churches. However, we find no evidence that neighborhoods are associated with adolescents’ physical health or emotional well-being.
Rogers, Richard G. and Jarron M. Saint Onge. "Race/Ethnic and Sex Differentials in Pulse Pressure among U.S. Adults." Ethnicity & Disease 15, no. 4 (2005): 601-606.
Abstract: The prevalence of high blood pressure in the U.S. is a pressing public health concern. The purpose of this study is to use the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (1988-1994) and linear regression to document variations in pulse pressure by race/ethnicity and sex in the United States. We find higher pulse pressures among racial and ethnic minorities than among non-Hispanic whites and among males than females. The results indicate that the effect of race on pulse pressure decreases with the inclusion of various controls; nevertheless, African Americans maintain higher pulse pressures than non-Hispanic white Americans, even net of controls. Compared to females, males exhibit higher pulse pressures. Moreover, this sex gap progressively increases with controls for socioeconomic status and physical activity. Given the known health consequences associated with high pulse pressure, these results highlight the importance of better understanding and addressing the risk of high pulse pressure among demographic subpopulations in the United States.
Downey, Liam and Marieke Van Willigen. "Assessing Environmental Inequality: How the Conclusions We Draw Vary According To the Definitions We Employ." Sociological Spectrum 25, no. 3 (2005): 349-369.
Abstract: This article demonstrates that the conclusions environmental inequality researchers draw vary according to the definitions of environmental inequality they employ and that researchers can use a single set of results to test for the existence of multiple forms of environmental inequality. In order to illustrate these points, I set forth five definitions of environmental inequality, list the kinds of evidence we must obtain in order to determine whether each form of environmental inequality exists, and show how conclusions drawn from several recent environmental inequality studies vary depending on the definition of environmental inequality we employ. My goal is not to show that any one definition is superior to the others; nor am I trying to generalize from the studies reported here to a broader set of research findings. Instead, my goal is to a) show that we can use a single set of results to address a variety of environmental justice concerns and b) demonstrate that our interpretations of environmental inequality research have been too narrowly focused on one set of environmental inequality outcomes.
Downey, Liam and Marieke Van Willigen. "Environmental Stressors: The Mental Health Impacts of Living Near Industrial Activity." Journal of Health and Social Behavior 46, no. 3 (2005): 289-305.
Abstract: A growing literature examines whether the poor, the working class, and people of color are disproportionately likely to live in environmentally hazardous neighborhoods. This literature assumes that environmental characteristics such as industrial pollution and hazardous waste are detrimental to human health, an assumption which has not been well tested. Drawing upon the sociology of mental health and environmental inequality studies, we ask whether industrial activity has an impact on psychological well-being. We link individual-level survey data with data from the U.S. Census and the Toxic Release Inventory and find that residential proximity to industrial activity has a negative impact on mental health. This impact is both direct and mediated by individuals' perceptions of neighborhood disorder and personal powerlessness, and is greater for minorities and the poor than it is for whites and wealthier individuals. These results suggest that public health officials need to take seriously the mental health impacts of living near industrial facilities.
McNown, Robert F., and Cristobal Ridao-Cano. "A Time Series Model of Fertility and Female Labour Supply in the Uk." Applied Economics 37, no. 5 (2005): 521 - 32.
Abstract: Multiple time series procedures suitable for estimation and testing with nonstationary data are applied to UK data on age-specific fertility rates, age-specific female labour force participation rates, and women's and men's wages. Cointegration tests establish the existence of two long-run equilibrium relations, identified as a fertility relation and a labour supply equation, for each age group. Maximum likelihood estimates of these equations are consistent with the new home economics model of fertility, and tests of Granger-causality show evidence of extensive feedback among the variables.
This research was funded by grant # SES-9910662 from the National Science Foundation. The authors appreciate the comments of three anonymous referees and those of James Alm, Editor of this special issue.
Rogers, Richard G., Robert A. Hummer, and Patrick M. Krueger. "Adult Mortality." In Handbook of Population, edited by Dudley Poston and Mike Micklin. NY: Springer Publishers, 2005.
Abstract: This handbook provides a comprehensive inventory of the current state of demography, and updates and expands The Study of Population, edited by Philip M. Hauser and Otis Dudley Duncan and published in 1959.
The chapter "Adult Mortality" underscores the significance of demographic research on adult mortality for understanding the health consequences of social inequality, human behavior, biological factors, and various other forces in human populations. The chapter outlines the general substantive concerns that guide demographers who conduct research on adult mortality, discusses the data and methods that are commonly used to conduct research in this area, summarizes findings of specific influences on adult mortality, and reveals variations in mortality across a number of demographic, social, and behavioral factors, and provides some ideas for ongoing research in this area.
The chapter authors are among the leading contributors to demographic scholarship over the past four decades. They represent a variety of disciplines and theoretical perspectives as well as interests in both basic and applied research.
The Handbook was showcased at the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP) meetings in France, July 2005. Reaction to the Handbook was so positive that some individuals are calling the book "The Harry Potter of Demography."
Rogers, Richard G., Robert A. Hummer, Patrick M. Krueger, and Fred C. Pampel. "Mortality Attributable to Cigarette Smoking in the United States." Population and Development Review 31, no. 2 (2005): 259-92.
Abstract: Cigarette smoking is an especially pernicious behavior because of its high prevalence and mortality risk. We use the powerful methodology of life tables with covariates and employ the National Health Interview Survey-Multiple Cause of Death file to illuminate the interrelationships of smoking with other risk factors and the combined influences of smoking prevalence and population size on mortality attributable to smoking. We find that the relationship between smoking and mortality is only modestly affected by controlling for other risk factors. Excess deaths attributable to smoking among adults in the United States in the year 2000 were as high as 340,000. Better knowledge of the prevalence and mortality risk associated with different cigarette smoking statuses can enhance the future health and longevity prospects of the population.
Pampel, Fred C. "Patterns of Tobacco Use in the Early Epidemic Stages: Malawi and Zambia, 2000-2002." American Journal of Public Health 95, no. 6 (2005): 1009-15.
Abstract: Objectives. I examined demographic and socioeconomic patterns of tobacco use in 2 African nations in the early stages of epidemic.
Methods. I used population-based data from the Demographic Health Surveys of men aged 15-59 years (N=5111) and women aged 15-49 years (N=20809) in Malawi (2000) and Zambia (2001/2002) and multinomial logistic regression models to examine tobacco use (nonsmoker, light cigarette smoker, heavy cigarette smoker, and user of other tobacco) as a function of age, residence, education, occupation, marital status, and religion.
Results. Male tobacco users tend to be less educated, urban, household service or manual workers, formerly married, and non-Christian and non-Muslim. Although tobacco use is less common among women, it relates inversely to their education and occupational status. Tobacco users more often reported drinking, getting drunk, and, among men, paying for sex.
Conclusions. Tobacco use patterns in 2 African nations at the early stages of epidemic suggest the need for public health officials to focus on disadvantaged groups to prevent the worldwide spread of tobacco.
Downey, Liam. "The Unintended Significance of Race: Environmental Racial Equality in Detroit." Social Forces 83, no. 3 (2005): 971-1007.
Abstract: This article addresses shortcomings in the environmental inequality literature by a) setting forth and testing four models of environmental inequality and b) explicitly linking environmental inequality research to the declining significance of race debate and spatial mismatch theory. The explanatory models ask whether the distribution of blacks and whites around environmental hazards is the result of black/white income inequality, racist siting practices, or residential segregation. They are tested using manufacturing facility and census data from the Detroit metropolitan area. It turns out that the distribution of blacks and whites around this region's polluting manufacturing facilities is largely the product of residential segregation which, paradoxically, has reduced black proximity to manufacturing facility pollution.
2004
Boardman, J. D. "Health Pessimism among Black and White Adults: The Role of Interpersonal and Institutional Maltreatment." Social Science & Medicine 59, no. 12 (2004): 2523-33.
Abstract: Using data from the 1995 Detroit Area Study (N = 1106) this paper finds that black adults report significantly worse self-rated health when compared to whites with similar levels of self-reported morbidity. This relationship, called health pessimism, persists despite statistical controls for age, gender, socioeconomic status, health care access, and health related behaviors. Interpersonal maltreatment is found to be positively associated with health pessimism and more importantly, when comparing adults who perceive similar levels of maltreatment, white and black adults do not differ with respect to health pessimism. This suggests that the increased risk of health pessimism among black adults is due in part to race differences in the perception of interpersonal maltreatment.
Boardman, J. D. "Stress and Physical Health: The Role of Neighborhoods as Mediating and Moderating Mechanisms." Social Science & Medicine 58, no. 12 (2004): 2473-83.
Abstract: Using data from the 1995 Detroit Area Study (N = 1106) in conjunction with tract-level data from the 1990 census, this paper evaluates the relationship between residential stability and physical health among black and white adults. Results suggest that neighborhood-level variation in health is primarily mediated by key sociodemographic characteristics of individuals (e.g., age, race, and socioeconomic status). However, a significant portion of health differentials across neighborhoods is due to disparate stress levels across neighborhoods. Further, high levels of neighborhood stability provide an important buffer to the otherwise deleterious effects of increased stress levels on adults' overall health.
McNown, Robert F., and Cristóbal Ridao-Cano. "The Effect of Child Benefit Policies on Fertility and Female Labor Force Participation in Canada." Review of Economics of the Household 2, no. 3 (2004): 237 - 54.
Abstract: This paper presents an analysis of the effects of Canadian child benefit policies on fertility and female labor supply. Canada has adopted a variety of child benefit policies since 1918 that are incorporated into an economic model of fertility. This model is estimated and tested with time series data on fertility, female labor force participation, female wages, male incomes, female education, and child benefits. Cointegration methods are employed to accommodate problems of nonstationarity and endogeneity that characterize time series models of fertility and female labor supply. Two cointegrating relations are found, and these are identified as a fertility relation and a female labor supply function. All economic variables, including child benefits, have statistically significant and appropriately signed coefficients. The estimates are used to evaluate the effects of policy and other economic changes on fertility.
This research was funded by grant # SES-9910662 from the National Science Foundation. The authors appreciate the comments of three anonymous referees and those of James Alm, Editor of this special issue.
Kuhn, Randall, and Steven Stillman. "Understanding Interhousehold Transfers in a Transition Economy: Evidence from Russia." Economic Development and Cultural Change 53, no. 1 (2004): 131-56.
Abstract: This paper uses data from the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS) to describe and model the determinants of interhousehold transfers. Russian households have experienced large reductions in income during the transition period, with a particularly severe decline occurring in the fall of 1998. Russia is experiencing a most unique pattern of aging. Sharply declining fertility, increasing mortality, and past demographic catastrophes (the two World Wars and the famine of the 1930’s) has left a population which is both young (few elderly) and old (one of the oldest working-age populations in the world). While Russia’s economic institutions and social safety net are underdeveloped, the typical household structure closely resembles that found in wealthier countries. Although it is typically assumed that the elderly in Russia are a highly vulnerable economic group, we actually find that transfers flow strongly from the elderly to their children, who are typically in the early part of the life-course and often have young children. This is especially true for the elderly in rural areas and those in extended families. While households with higher longer-term resources receive on net more transfers, we also find strong evidence that transfers respond to economic needs (i.e. transitory fluctuations in resources).
Frankenberg, Elizabeth, and Randall Kuhn. "The Role of Social Context in Shaping Intergenerational Relations in Indonesia and Bangladesh." In Intergenerational Relations across Time and Place: Annual Review of Gerontology and Geriatrics, edited by M. Silverstein. New York: Springer, 2004.
Krueger, P. M., R. G. Rogers, R. A. Hummer, and J. D. Boardman. "Body Mass, Smoking, and Overall and Cause-Specific Mortality among Older US Adults." Research on Aging 26, no. 1 (2004): 82-107.
Abstract: The authors examine the relationships between body mass, smoking, and overall and cause-specific mortality among U.S. adults aged 60 and older, using data from the National Health Interview Survey linked to the Multiple Cause of Death file and Cox proportional hazard models. The authors find that, compared to those who are normal weight, obese individuals have higher risks of overall, circulatory disease, and diabetes mortality. Furthermore, smoking status suppresses the relationships between obesity and overall, circulatory disease, and cancer mortality, and interacts with low body weight to increase mortality risks. Finally, underweight individuals initially face increased risks of death over the follow-up period, although over time their mortality risks diminish to those of normal-weight individuals, likely due to the presence of unobserved illness. Researchers and health practitioners must account for smoking status, body mass, and specific causes of death to understand and improve the health of our increasingly obese elderly population.
Denney, Justin T., Patrick M. Krueger, Richard G. Rogers, and Jason D. Boardman. "Race/Ethnic and Sex Differentials in Body Mass among US Adults." Ethnicity & Disease 14, no. 3 (2004): 389-98.
Abstract: Current research incompletely documents race/ethnic and sex disparities in body mass, especially at the national level. Data from the 2000 National Health Interview Survey, Sample Adult File, are used to examine overall and sex-specific disparities in body mass for non-Hispanic Whites, non-Hispanic Blacks, Native Americans, Asian Americans, Puerto Ricans, Mexican Americans, and Cuban Americans. Two complementary multivariate regression techniques, ordinary least squares and multinomial logistic, are employed to control for important confounding factors. We found significantly higher body masses for non-Hispanic Blacks, Native Americans, Puerto Ricans, and Mexican Americans, compared to non-Hispanic Whites. Among very obese individuals, these relationships were more pronounced for females. Given the known health consequences associated with overweight and obesity, and recent trends toward increasing body mass in the United States, these findings underscore the need for public health policies that target specific subpopulations, in order to close the wide disparities in body mass in the United States.
Silvey, Rachel. "A Wrench in the Global Works: Anti-Sweatshop Activism on Campus." Antipode 36, no. 2 (2004): 191-97.
Abstract: When students galvanized anti-sweatshop activism on US and Canadian university campuses in the late 1990s, their actions struck at the core of recent debates about the geographies of counter-hegemonic politics (Blunt and Wills 2000; Herod and Wright 2002; Miller 2000; Sharp et al 2000; Traub-Werner and Cravey 2002). Students staged rallies and sit-ins to challenge their universities’ complicity with the corporate exploitation and abuse of low-wage workers in factories overseas. They directed attention to the embeddedness of academic institutions in the systems that perpetuate global economic inequality, and signaled the re-emergence of students as vocal, vibrant political actors. Observers have celebrated the anti-sweatshop movement’s capacity to build transnational alliances across difference, influence the shape of labor internationalism, link distant nodes in regimes of accumulation, and in some cases even jump scale from the grassroots to international regulatory institutions. Indeed, the movement is cause for optimism among geographers who seek new approaches to the injustices wrought by neoliberal globalization.
Silvey, Rachel. "Transnational Migration and the Gender Politics of Scale: Indonesian Domestic Workers in Saudi Arabia, 1997-2000." Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 25, no. 2 (2004): 141-55.
Abstract: Recent research has begun to explore the dynamics of transnational migration from a feminist perspective, and studies of migrant domestic workers have played a prominent role in pushing forward this work. Emerging simultaneously, but largely separately, are explicit debates within geography about the politics of scale, the social construction of scale, and the gender dimensions of scale. This article develops an analysis of the gender politics of the production of scale, specifically, the ‘transnationalisation’ of Indonesian activist approaches to overseas migrant domestic workers' issues. Based on fieldwork in an Indonesian community in West Java that has recently become a sending area for migrants to Saudi Arabia and interviews with activists representing Indonesian migrant women, the article examines the various gender-specific ways in which migrant women's rights activists construct and deploy the scales of the body, the nation and the transnational. It argues that activist approaches to migrant domestic workers' rights and the ways in which activists mobilise migrant women's narratives represent sophisticated feminist theoretical approaches to scale. By identifying and exploring the scale theory embedded in activist strategies, the analysis highlights the imbrication of feminist theory with practice, and underscores activists' agency in producing the meanings of specific scales. In so doing, the article is aimed more broadly at elaborating the ambivalent relationship between feminist activism/theory and transnationalism.
Silvey, Rachel. "Power, Difference, and Mobility: Feminist Advances in Migration Studies." Progress in Human Geography 28, no. 4 (2004): 1-17.
Abstract: The feminist migration literature in geography has contributed to bringing several critical social theoretical themes to the forefront of migration studies. Specifically, feminists have foregrounded: the politics of scale, mobility as political process, questions of subjectivity/identity, and critical theorizations of space and place. This article provides an overview of the feminist migration literature organized around these themes. In addition, it argues that feminist migration studies can play a pivotal role in the on-going project of marrying materialist approaches to political-economy with those of critical social theorists.
Rogers, Andrei, and Lisa Jordan. "Estimating Migration Flows from Birthplace-Specific Population Stocks of Infants." Geographical Analysis 36, no. 1 (2004): 38-53.
Abstract: When adequate data on migration are unavailable, demographers infer such data indirectly, usually by turning to residual methods of estimating net migration. This paper sets out and illustrates an inferential method that uses population totals in the first age group of birthplace-specific counts of residents in each region of a multiregional system to indirectly infer the entire age schedule of directional age-specific migration flows. Specifically, it uses an estimate of infant migration that is afforded by a count of infants enumerated in a region other than their region of birth to infer all other age-specific migration flows. Since infants migrate with their parents, the migration propensities of both are correlated, and the general stability of the age profiles of migration schedules then allows the association to be extended to all other age groups.
Krueger, Patrick M., Richard G. Rogers, Cristobal Ridao-Cano, and R. A. Hummer. "To Help or to Harm? Food Stamp Receipt and Mortality Risk Prior to the 1996 Welfare Reform Act." Social Forces 82, no. 4 (2004): 1573-99.
Abstract: The authors use data from the National Health Interview Survey-Family Resources Supplement to examine the relationship between Food Stamp receipt and prospective adult mortality, among eligible households. They specify a switching probit model to adjust for observed and unobserved factors that correlate with selection into the Food Stamp Program and mortality, and to estimate mortality under counterfactual conditions that we do not observe. The average individual, based on observed characteristics, has higher mortality when participating than when not participating. But due to unobserved differences between participants and nonparticipants, those who self-select into participation experience lower mortality than if they did not participate. Our findings suggest that Food Stamps provide an important safety net that protects the health of those who are most likely to participate.
Silvey, Rachel. "Transnational Domestication: State Power and Indonesian Migrant Women in Saudi Arabia." Political Geography 23, no. 3 (2004): 245-64.
Abstract: Recent efforts to elaborate a feminist geopolitics have centered on challenging and expanding classical spatializations of "the political." Building on this growing body of work, this article explores the gender politics of state power as refracted in struggles over women’s transnational migration and domestic labor. Specifically, it analyzes the Indonesian and Saudi states’ involvement in shaping the migration and working conditions of Indonesian domestic servants employed in Saudi Arabia. It examines key aspects of both states’ direct and indirect influences on the feminization of the migrant labor force, the limitations of their policies for protecting overseas migrant women, and the political strategies that activists are employing to broaden the states’ spaces and scales of jurisdiction. It points up gender-specific limits to the internationalization of state labor regulation, as well as possibilities that NGOs have identified for improving the protection of migrant workers in this transnational context. It thus identifies some particular ways in which contestations around women’s transnational labor migration and gendered constructions of domestic labor are interlinked with the changing geographies of state power.
Entries in The SAGE Encyclopedia of Social Science Research Methods, 2004 (Vol. 3). M. S. Lewis-Beck, A. E. Bryman, & T. F. Liao (Eds.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Kuhn, Randall
"Stable Population Model"
Little, Jani S.
"Goodness of Fit Measures"
"Logarithms"
"Nonlinearity"
"Standard Error"
Pampel, Fred
"Exploratory Data Analysis"
Abstract: Each entry is written by a leading authority in the field, covering both quantitative and qualitative methods. This unique multi-volume reference set offers readers an all-encompassing education in the ways of social science researchers. Written to be accessible to general readers, entries do not require any advanced knowledge or experience to understand the purposes and basic principles of any of the methods. The Encyclopedia features two major types of entries: definitions, consisting of a paragraph or two, provide a quick explanation of a methodological term; and topical treatments or essays discussing the nature, history, application/example and implication of using a certain method.
