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This paper examines whether exposure to spatially proximate homicide affects norms, attitudes, and the adaptive strategies adolescents take to insulate themselves from violent victimization. Drawing on survey data from a large sample of urban youth (n = 3195), we assess the impact of homicides occurring within a one-mile radius of respondents' homes on a variety of psychosocial outcomes. We exploit random variation in the timing of survey administration to compare the survey responses of youths who were exposed to a homicide in the immediate vicinity of their homes in the one-month period leading up the administration of the survey with students who did not experience a homicide near their homes during that period but would the following month. This strategic comparison approach minimizes the confounding influence of endogenous processes that funnel children and families into places where homicides tend to concentrate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Subjective well-being (SWB) describes an individual's life evaluation. Direct elicitation methods for SWB via rating scales do not force individuals to trade-off among life domains, whilst best-worst scaling (BWS) approaches only provide relative measures. This paper instead offers a dual-response BWS task, where respondents nominate areas of most and least importance and satisfaction with respect to 11 SWB domains, whilst also eliciting anchoring points to obtain an absolute measure of domain satisfaction. Combining domain satisfaction and importance produces a robust measure of individual SWB, but statistically unique relative to other life satisfaction measures utilizing single- and multi-item ratings, including global satisfaction and those aggregated over SWB domains, as well as eudemonia. Surveying 2500 Australians reveals anchored-BWS improves discrimination amongst domains in terms of importance and satisfaction, illustrating its value as a diagnostic tool for SWB measurement to focus services, policy, and initiatives in areas to most impact wellbeing. This includes highlighting a major discrepancy between health satisfaction and importance, whilst also reporting that SWB is significantly lower for Indigenous, unemployed, middle-aged, males and lower income groups. • Subjective well-being (SWB) is measured using anchored best-worst scaling. • Respondents nominate most/least important and satisfactory well-being domains. • Individual absolute satisfaction anchors are determined by separate ratings task. • Domain importance varies considerably, with health and personal relationships most important. • SWB is lower for Indigenous, unemployed, middle-aged, males and lower income groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the existence and mechanisms of segmentation in the welfare assimilation process of first-generation immigrants in the Netherlands. Using longitudinal administrative data (2007–2015) from Statistics Netherlands (CBS), we estimate the welfare utilization trajectories of migrants over the working-age life course vis-à-vis two reference groups representing different economic segments from the population, namely: average Dutch natives and Dutch natives with low education level. Empirical evidence shows a predominant trend of mainstream assimilation; however, two findings with more concerning implications should be highlighted. Welfare assimilation into the economically disadvantaged segment is found to concentrate among first-generation immigrants characterized by structural and human capital disadvantages, despite the notable extent of upward intragenerational mobility observed. In the worst-case scenario, there seems to be a lack of welfare assimilation to the comparison segments, raising concerns over the prospective emergence of marginalized ethnic groups at the bottom of the economic ladder. The implications of this finding are twofold. Firstly, automatic closing of the migrant-native gap over time should not be presumed in the absence of a level playing field for all regardless of their migration backgrounds. Secondly, systematic discrepancies observed between refugees and other types of migrants in terms of welfare assimilation patterns and determinants point to the need to have a clear distinction between immigration policy and refugee policy, which explicitly avoids bundling all migrants as one homogenous group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose a set-analytic approach to the study of intersectionality. Our approach builds on the intersectional view that combinations of attributes, such as black females , should be understood as qualitatively distinct states, not reducible to their component attributes. We show that interaction-based, quantitative approaches are not only inconsistent with the core assumptions of intersectionality but also may underestimate the presence of penalties linked to multi-category memberships. In contrast, we show that truth table analysis, a core feature of Qualitative Comparative Analysis, directly implements several of the core methodological concerns of the intersectionality perspective. The truth table approach offers two important advantages. (1) It provides a foundation for the comparison of logically 'adjacent' configurations—combinations of case characteristics that differ by only a single attribute. (2) It can accommodate case attributes that vary by level or degree in a set-theoretic, intersectional framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children's developmental processes are not always linear. During the childhood period, children usually experience ups and downs in their skills, and how parents respond to these changes can crucially condition the subsequent process of child development. This paper examines (1) how children's developmental declines impact the level of cognitive stimulation implemented by the mothers, and (2) whether these effects vary by socioeconomic groups. Using longitudinal NLSY79-CYA data from the US, I implement a series of two-way fixed effects and fixed effects counterfactual models. Findings show that mothers respond negatively to the declines in their children's mathematical skills by decreasing their levels of cognitive stimulation, although the effects are relatively small, approximately one-tenth of a standard deviation. This effect is concentrated among mothers with low levels of education or those at the bottom part of the income distribution. Additionally, it's observed that mothers in the sample do not modify their behaviours in response to declines in their children's reading skills. All in all, this evidence suggests that mothers might be reinforcing existing disadvantages by decreasing their cognitive stimulation when their children show developmental declines and that this mechanism could be responsible for broadening the developmental gap between children from low- and high-socioeconomic backgrounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do economically disadvantaged people often regard inequality as fair? The literature on deliberative justice suggests that people regard inequality as fair when it is proportional to inequality in effort or other inputs – i.e. when it is meritocratic. But in the real-world there is substantial uncertainty over the distribution of income and merit – so what compels disadvantaged people to legitimate their own disadvantage? This paper suggests it is a reaction to cognitive dissonance. When inequality is high, and when people lack control, their only way to reduce dissonance is to convince themselves the distribution is fair. I implement an online experiment to test this theory. Results do not support a cognitive dissonance mechanism behind meritocracy. But they do indicate that disadvantaged individuals are more likely to regard inequality as fair when they lack control. Analysis of qualitative data indicates that deprivation of control engenders a fatalistic response to inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This paper develops a unified framework for studying justice and impartiality – identifying six opportunities for impartiality, four for observers and two for allocators; generating the person-specific impartiality profile, including separate subprofiles for observer and allocator activities; and characterizing groups and societies by the impartiality profiles of their members. The immediate challenge is to measure the six kinds of impartiality. This paper takes a first step, focusing on three kinds of observer impartiality – the classic just-reward impartiality and the two new kinds identified by justice theory, framing impartiality and expressiveness impartiality. Understanding the two new forms of impartiality is important because their absence could destroy the good effects of impartiality in other justice elements. The paper reports the results of three factorial surveys carried out among college students in the United States, assessing the students' just-reward, framing, and expressiveness impartiality with respect to the earnings of fictitious workers. The paper makes three main contributions. Theoretically, it illuminates the marriage of justice and impartiality, leading to new insights and new research avenues. Methodologically, the paper develops new analytic and graphical tools for assessing observer impartiality. Substantively, the paper shows that (1) while just gender gaps in aggregate analyses of college students are almost nil (contrary to the just gaps found among adults), closer respondent-specific analyses indicate an intricate mix of subsets of respondents favoring one or the other gender; (2) framing impartiality by gender is almost universal; and (3) expressiveness impartiality ranges from 28 to 57 percent, with an intriguing mix of results by sample and respondent gender. Overall these results suggest that there may be "little cultures" of justice and impartiality on U.S. college campuses. If that is so -- and pending future research on all six kinds of impartiality in a variety of samples across countries and over time and as well with respect to rewards other than earnings, such as grades, bequests, and prison sentences – we have offered a way to measure those cultures and understand them theoretically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can international nongovernmental organizations (INGO) mitigate human rights violations when armed conflict ensues? There is a reason to believe that the harsh conditions of war, which destabilize society and incite nationalist and militarist notions, would prevent the work of INGO from being effective. However, world polity scholarship suggests that regardless of these conditions INGOs can improve human rights standards. INGOs are one of the principal and most effective vehicles for the diffusion of international human rights norms. In this paper, we highlight the part INGOs play in monitoring human rights violations and its potential effect on states' human rights violations during war. Examining a global sample of countries that experienced war on their soil between 1977 and 2003, this paper studies the association between INGOs count per country per year with four human rights indexes. Results show an association between the presence of INGOs and improvement of human rights conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prominent theoretical positions in sociology and labor economics disagree whether educational expansion has outstripped the demand for qualified labor (overexpansion), or whether economies face a skill shortage despite increases in education (underexpansion). Focusing on the United Kingdom and West Germany, two countries with dissimilar skill formation institutions, patterns of expansion, and labor markets, this paper asks to what degree expansion of education has been absorbed. I point out shortcomings of wage-centered analyses and develop an approach that focuses on trends in self-assessed over- and underqualification. Using repeated surveys among workers and official labor market statistics, I estimate regression models that link the cohort-level expansion of education to the cohort-level prevalence of mismatch. Results suggest overexpansion in the United Kingdom, with overqualification increasing and underqualification decreasing over historical times and cohorts. West Germany, on the other hand, shows signs of underexpansion. While dominant theoretical accounts focus on the under-/overexpansion of tertiary education, my results show that mismatch-dynamics in both contexts are strongest for workers without university degrees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, researchers have begun to explore the extent to which the impact of switching firms (inter-firm mobility) on wages varies between men and women. Using data from the NLSY79 from 1979 to 2012, this paper extends existing research by exploring how occupational segregation and individual level factors contribute to gender differences in the impact of voluntary inter-firm mobility on wages. The paper also examines how patterns vary depending on education level. Findings suggest that men without a college education receive greater wage gains from voluntary inter-firm mobility than similarly educated women although there is no overall gender difference for individuals with a bachelor's degree. The wage returns to voluntary inter-firm mobility for both men and women increase as a function of the male representation in the occupation. For individuals without a college education, the male premium to voluntary inter-firm mobility is largest in highly male dominated occupations. However, women with a bachelor's degree employed in highly male dominated occupations use voluntary inter-firm mobility to narrow the gender wage gap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the effect of political regimes on healthcare outcomes with a novel approach. Instead of focusing on cross-country comparisons, like most studies do, we utilize the within-country variation of political regimes across individual regions. We use the case of the Russian Federation, where large sub-national differences exist in both health outcomes and political regimes in different provinces. General differences in sub-national politics in Russia have been subject of investigation of a large literature our paper adds to. The paper shows that the effect of political regimes on health is heterogeneous and depends on the type of health problems more salient for the region. More pluralist and competitive regimes are able to produce better results than the less competitive ones in rich regions, while in poor regions political pluralism and competition have an adverse impact on health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For over 30 years, researchers have examined social influence using status characteristics theory (Berger and Conner, 1974). While research has investigated beauty and attractiveness as status characteristics (e.g., Webster and Driskell, 1983), there is a dearth of research that examines whether obesity has status value using status characteristics theory. The current paper reviews the literature on, demonstrating how they are related to status characteristics. Next, this paper demonstrates how the effects of both gender and obesity can be explained by considering them as status characteristics, which have the potential to create subsequent status beliefs and stigma. Finally, this study reports empirical findings that support obesity as a status characteristic. We find an effect for obesity on ratings of diffuse status, and effects for both obesity and gender on ratings of influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on data from a survey of 1043 ex-combatants who took part in the civil war in Sierra Leone (1991–2002) this paper explores the conditions that predict a key outcome in the conflict literature: defection, or side-switching between the various organizations at war. This paper advances arguments drawn from the organizational ecology school and works to extend key theories related to “Blau Space” to the study of civil war. Using a series of logistic regression procedures, this paper tests various competing hypotheses against key contributions of the organizational ecology school. Key findings of this work suggest support for major hypotheses in this literature as net of important theoretical conditions, defections are most likely when individuals are either demographically atypical of their organization (niche edge) or most susceptible to competition for their services by other groups (niche overlap). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the link between residential segregation and political engagement among Asian American voters in New York City. Despite frequently being perceived as apolitical and concentrated in ethnic enclaves, Asian Americans constitute a diverse group. This paper investigates how multifaceted spatial isolation based on race, class, and partisan affiliation was associated with the likelihood of Asian American voters participating in the 2020 general election. We demonstrate that a monolithic view of Asian Americans perpetuates stereotypes of political passivity, but a closer examination of distinct ethnic groups reveals varied patterns of political engagement. For instance, Japanese Americans showed a high level of political engagement comparable to that of non-Hispanic whites. Our findings further indicate that spatial isolation across race, class, and partisan dimensions had varying impacts on political engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Internal political efficacy (IPE) is an important yet unequally distributed driver of political action. Following cultural sociological explanations for political disengagement, we study how students' political home environment reproduces inequalities in IPE and how citizenship education moderates this. We test whether citizenship education compensates, reproduces, or accelerates inequalities in IPE due to differences in one's political home environment. These moderating effects are tested for three components of citizenship education; the number of civic learning experiences, open classroom climate for discussion, and active student participation at school. We consider the school a potential equalizer and a segregated breeding ground for democracy. Based on multilevel analyses employing cross-sectional data (3838 students across 147 schools) gathered to test the attainment targets in citizenship education among Flemish senior high school students (Belgium), we show that privileged students receive more citizenship education. However, each citizenship education component increases IPE and has a small yet significant compensation effect. This paper makes theoretical and empirical contributions to the literature on inequalities in political socialization processes while critically investigating the school's functioning as a democratic equalizer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines drivers of prejudicial attitudes among adults in the UK, focusing on the interaction between ethnic out-group size and personality traits. Leveraging data from the National Child Development Study (NCDS), we use two survey waves carried out in 2000 and 2008, just before and after the EU enlargement policy that drove a wave of immigration in the UK. We test the extent to which personality traits moderate the relationship between both absolute levels and changes in ethnic diversity at the local level, respectively, and prejudice. Key findings suggest that personality traits, in particular one's agreeableness, are important for conditioning how the proportion of non-white British in one's neighbourhood affects out-group attitudes. We observe a tendency towards polarisation in prejudicial attitudes between low-/high-agreeableness residents as their neighbourhoods become more diverse. These findings have important implications for theorising how contextual and individual characteristics jointly affect intergroup relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates how much the geographic shapes of school attendance zones within urban school districts are associated with levels of attendance zone racial segregation (while holding constant levels of residential segregation). Based on an analysis of 304 school districts, findings show that more irregularly-shaped school attendance zones are correlated with lower levels of racial segregation in attendance zones after accounting for residential segregation. In fact, not one school district contains both highly irregularly-shaped attendance zones and unusually high levels of attendance zone racial segregation—although there are several school districts with irregularly-shaped zones and unusually high levels of racial integration. These findings undermine recent claims that irregularly-shaped attendance zones generally serve to segregate students by race. In addition to these empirical findings, this paper introduces a variation of the spatial information theory segregation index H ˜ that is useful for predicting segregation in school attendance zones and other types of geographic boundaries containing roughly equal populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study draws upon a sample of men and women from Waves I and IV of Add Health to examine the linkages between the adolescent family environment and cohabitation behavior across the transition to adulthood. Using event history modeling the current paper considers the association between a variety of family factors and both the timing of first cohabiting unions and their outcomes (marriage, break up, still cohabiting). This paper also considers whether the impact of predictors for cohabitation timing and outcomes varies depending on the age of individuals. Results indicate that exposure during adolescence to family instability, parental cohabitation, lower parental SES, and low family belonging were associated with an elevated likelihood of entering into cohabiting unions, but primarily during adolescence and early adulthood. Family factors, including family belonging and parental relationship history, were also associated with the outcomes of first cohabitations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes using contextual models to disentangle the effects of dyad characteristics from the effects of characteristics of the networks in which they reside. Multilevel models that nest dyads in personal networks can be coded for contextual analysis by entering both the dyad value of a predictor and the network mean of that predictor into the prediction equation. These models can then be used to measure a within-network effect for dyads and a network contextual effect. This paper conducts an example analysis of how dyad redundancy, and the network's average dyad redundancy, impact discussions of job opportunities. The findings suggest that the dyad and network effects of redundancy are in opposite directions: redundancy has a positive effect at the dyad level and a negative effect at the network level when predicting number of jobs discussed. These results support the major social capital tenets of closure and brokerage, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a new method to distinguish structural from exchange mobility in status attainment models with interval endogenous variables. In order to measure structural mobility, the paper proposes to trace occupational and educational changes across generations using information provided by children about their fathers. The validity of the method is assessed by comparing the effects of father’s socio-economic status and education on son’s status and educational attainments, net of occupational upgrading and educational expansion, in five European countries: Britain, Denmark, Germany, Norway, and Spain, using data from the 2005 EU-SILC survey. The results show that the effect of father’s on son’s ISEI weakens greatly in all countries after considering occupational upgrading, and that much of father’s influence over sons occurs by directing them towards occupations with good economic prospects. Useful extensions to the method are discussed in the conclusions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This review summarizes the current state of the art of statistical and (survey) methodological research on measurement (non)invariance, which is considered a core challenge for the comparative social sciences. After outlining the historical roots, conceptual details, and standard procedures for measurement invariance testing, the paper focuses in particular on the statistical developments that have been achieved in the last 10 years. These include Bayesian approximate measurement invariance, the alignment method, measurement invariance testing within the multilevel modeling framework, mixture multigroup factor analysis, the measurement invariance explorer, and the response shift-true change decomposition approach. Furthermore, the contribution of survey methodological research to the construction of invariant measurement instruments is explicitly addressed and highlighted, including the issues of design decisions, pretesting, scale adoption, and translation. The paper ends with an outlook on future research perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By examining the association between employees' perceptions of job security and central labor market policies and characteristics, this paper seeks to understand the mechanisms through which institutions generate confidence and positive expectations among individuals regarding their economic future. The analyses distinguish between different facets of perceived job security and different institutional mechanisms. My multilevel analyses of a data set that contains information on 12,431 individuals and 23 countries show that some labor market policies and characteristics are more likely than others to provide workers with subjective security. Unemployment assistance in particular is an effective means of reducing workers' worries about job loss. Dismissal protection, by contrast, only unleashes its psychologically protective effects under certain conditions. The paper's main conclusion is that the effectiveness of policies varies and that different types of labor market institutions serve as complements rather than as substitutes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term big data is currently a buzzword in social science, however its precise meaning is ambiguous. In this paper we focus on administrative data which is a distinctive form of big data. Exciting new opportunities for social science research will be afforded by new administrative data resources, but these are currently under appreciated by the research community. The central aim of this paper is to discuss the challenges associated with administrative data. We emphasise that it is critical for researchers to carefully consider how administrative data has been produced. We conclude that administrative datasets have the potential to contribute to the development of high-quality and impactful social science research, and should not be overlooked in the emerging field of big data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports a first look at the founding of Social Science Research , providing a few key signposts but keenly aware that a full history must await recovery of many additional documentary materials. The journal was founded by James S. Coleman and Peter H. Rossi, who had trained at Columbia, taught at Chicago, and founded the interdisciplinary Department of Social Relations at Johns Hopkins. The Coleman-Rossi vision statement embeds three key ideas: (1) quantitative theoretical work and quantitative empirical work are close and constant partners; (2) quantitative theoretical work and quantitative empirical work each require special methods; and (3) crossing disciplinary lines spurs the growth of knowledge. The first issue of Social Science Research appeared in 1972. Then as now, SSR welcomed papers that may be too innovative or too technical (or too long or too short) for other journals, inclusive of papers that cross traditional disciplinary lines. Examination of the first four volumes (1972–1975) reveals a beautiful realization of the founders' vision — a collection of rigorous quantitative papers from across the social sciences, pushing frontiers in both theory and empirics and in both substance and methods. There is innovation and creativity – and a touch of the playfulness that accelerates the growth of knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article marks the occasion of Social Science Research 's 50th anniversary by reflecting on the progress of sequence analysis (SA) since its introduction into the social sciences four decades ago, with focuses on the developments of SA thus far in the social sciences and on its potential future directions. The application of SA in the social sciences, especially in life course research, has mushroomed in the last decade and a half. Using a life course analogy, we examined the birth of SA in the social sciences and its childhood (the first wave), its adolescence and young adulthood (the second wave), and its future mature adulthood in the paper. The paper provides a summary of (1) the important SA research and the historical contexts in which SA was developed by Andrew Abbott, (2) a thorough review of the many methodological developments in visualization, complexity measures, dissimilarity measures, group analysis of dissimilarities, cluster analysis of dissimilarities, multidomain/multichannel SA, dyadic/polyadic SA, Markov chain SA, sequence life course analysis, sequence network analysis, SA in other social science research, and software for SA, and (3) reflections on some future directions of SA including how SA can benefit and inform theory-making in the social sciences, the methods currently being developed, and some remaining challenges facing SA for which we do not yet have any solutions. It is our hope that the reader will take up the challenges and help us improve and grow SA into maturity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Past research has found that participation in extracurricular activities helps develop children's cultural capital that is crucial to both education and career successes. Previous studies have examined various determinants of extracurricular participation, but mostly focused on social class, demographics, and school characteristics. In this paper we renew the Coleman tradition by putting social capital (as measured by family structure and neighborhood cohesion) in the spotlight and studying the effect of social capital on youth participation in organized extracurricular activities. By using longitudinal data from the 2004 panel of the Survey of Income and Program Participation of representative households in the U.S. and conducting various robust statistical analyses, we provide updated results on the subject. We find that a two-parent household (especially in relative to households with cohabiting parents) and neighborhood cohesion (i.e., a set of cohesive relationships among parents in the neighborhood) both have a positive and significant association with extracurricular participation. We also find such associations vary somewhat by child's sex, age, race, and the type of extracurricular activity. We conclude that to equalize children's participation in extracurricular activities future social policies should consider interventions that target low-income families and families with single-parent or cohabiting parents, that can improve neighborhood cohesion, and that are tailored by the type of extracurricular activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Undocumented immigrants concentrate in ethnic enclaves, but little is known about the implications of living in such neighborhoods for children of undocumented immigrants. Using data on Mexican-origin children from the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey and the decennial census, this paper examines the influence of co-ethnic concentrated neighborhoods on children's behavioral functioning, and the extent to which parental nativity and documentation status moderate the neighborhood effects. Multilevel linear regression models show that the proportion of co-ethnics in the neighborhood apparently has no influence on Mexican-origin children. However, cross-level interactions reveal that the neighborhood context has differential effects by parental documentation status. The higher the percentage of co-ethnics in the neighborhood, the lower (better) the externalizing scores for children of undocumented immigrants, a pattern not observed for children of US-born or documented parents. The mechanism through which co-ethnic enclaves benefit children of undocumented Mexican immigrants deserves future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The aim of this paper is to analyse cross-country differences in the maternal employment patterns and the demand for formal and informal child care as interrelated decisions across Europe. We explore a sample of preschoolers and their mothers drawn from the EU-SILC (2005–2013) in a set of 11 EU countries with different institutional settings. The analytical strategy – a set of simultaneous tobit models – allows for mutual interdependencies across decisions. The results vary across welfare regimes and are related to the public provision of child care as well as other dimensions of the institutional context and values. We have found complementarities between paid employment and child care while formal and informal care are shown to be mutual substitutes, even in countries where the provision of external, formal child care is very extended and child care does not depend much on families. This means that the mere expansion of public child care is not enough to improve maternal employment rates. Other institutional aspects of the labour market and societal values also need to be taken into account in this endeavour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The study of temporal dynamics is essential to the advance of social science. In the study of inequality, preliminary to explaining patterns in gaps between groups is the prior task of detecting those patterns. Developing a multiple latent trajectory strategy, this paper proposes an inductive approach to the detection of inequality trends. Investigating managerial representation for Black men, Black women, White women and White men in a very large panel sample of private sector workplaces, we show that trajectories of managerial representation for each status group are much more complex than the common deductive approach leads us to believe. In fact, the volatility and the multiplicity of trajectories is one of the markers of enduring disadvantage for African Americans. Further, we demonstrate that current organizational inequality explanations can be employed and improved within this inductive methodology. The findings underscore the importance of interaction and contingency in the production of inequalities, in agreement with relational approaches to organizational inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract A large body of research documents the sensitivity of women's employment to changing family circumstances, but we know little about the relationship between partner incarceration—a common family transition in the lives of disadvantaged women—and employment. Despite reasons to suspect that changes in resources associated with incarceration have consequences for the employment of family members, previous research suggests that partner incarceration does not influence the number of hours women work at their main jobs. This paper uses data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N = 3835) to examine how partner incarceration is associated with multiple job holding, an alternative strategy for increasing earnings. Results show that women with incarcerated partners are more likely to work multiple jobs than women in otherwise similar circumstances, suggesting partner incarceration is linked to a "third shift"—to additional employment on top of the paid work and caregiving women already do. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Little is known about the religious development of youth in Europe. In light of the growing ethnic diversity of Western European populations, this paper examines two groups of youth with an immigrant background, i.e. Christian and Muslim youth, and compares their religiosity to that of Christian native youth. We differentiate between three indicators of religiosity, namely, subjective importance of religion, frequency of service attendance, and praying frequency. In addition to comparing the changes in the mean of religiosity between groups, we also investigate variations within groups over time. We employ the first three waves of the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey in Four European Countries (CILS4EU), which were collected between 2010 and 2013 with adolescents residing in 958 classes within 480 schools in England, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden. Multiple group linear growth models show that there is an overall slight decrease in subjective importance of religion, frequency of service attendance and praying frequency for Christian youth, while Muslim youth do not experience any significant change on these accounts. Furthermore, the changes in service attendance and praying frequency vary significantly between youth within all groups, while the change with regard to subjective importance of religion varies most within Christian youth and least within Muslim youth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Individuals' gender attitudes influence their behaviors, and adherence to traditional gender ideology is an important mechanism contributing to the (re)production of gender inequalities. In developed nations, the 'gender revolution' was accompanied by marked societal shifts towards gender-egalitarian attitudes, but these trends have recently stalled. In this paper, we re-examine the role of birth cohort and ageing in influencing gender ideology through the lens of life-course theory and leveraging British panel data. We contribute to the field by considering cohort-differences in ageing effects on gender ideology and documenting within-cohort variability in such effects. We find that (i) people from older cohorts hold comparatively more traditional gender attitudes, (ii) the effect of ageing on gender ideology is positive, (iii) there are cohort-differences in these ageing effects, (iv) gender-attitude trajectories are less predictable in younger than older cohorts, and (v) factors capturing life-course experience explain little of the cohort differences. Our findings highlight important avenues for future research on gender ideology change, and offer insights into the likely pace and direction of social movements towards gender egalitarianism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Solidarity and punishment are both central to maintaining social order, but their interaction remains poorly understood. A number of studies report that punishment undermines solidarity in domains of generalized exchange, whereas other studies find that punishment furthers norm-compliant behavior and thereby promotes solidarity in the realm of public goods. Using a laboratory experiment, this study is the first to directly compare the effect of centralized punishment on solidarity between generalized exchange and public good settings. The results reveal that it is generalized exchange where centralized punishment induces solidarity, whereas in the public good setting the effect of punishment is negligible. The paper concludes that the structure of generalized exchange alone is insufficient to induce solidarity. In addition, generalized exchange systems require external stabilization, as provided by centralized punishment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Objectives Accurate representation of the association of health and well-being outcomes over age can inform us about how well the population is doing, where segments of the population may be in need, and allow hypothesis generation about correlates and causes of observed gradients. In this paper, we examine the possibility that response styles can impact associations between respondent age and four common, self-report variables: overall health; life satisfaction; pain intensity; and, fatigue level. Response styles (RSs) are defined as tendencies for people to use certain locations on response scales (e.g., extremes, middle) regardless of scale content. Although RSs have been shown in some circumstances to bias self-reports, often little attention is paid to this source of bias. Methods A sample of 2000 Internet panelists completed an online questionnaire that included a set of heterogeneous items to compute measures of the following RSs: acquiescence, disacquiescence, midpoint responding, and extreme responding. Results A total of 1839 participants formed the analytic sample and they had an average age of 54.4 (range: 21–89). RSs were associated with age and with the outcome variables. Moreover, the age pattern of the health and well-being variables was considerably altered when RSs were controlled. An alternative, item-response theory-based method of deriving measures of RSs confirmed many of the associations from the primary method of computing RS variables. Across the different self-report outcomes, disacquiescence had the greatest effect on the age patterns, and pain and fatigue were the outcomes most impacted by controlling for RSs. Discussion In accord with prior research, we recommend greater consideration be given to RSs in aging research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This paper looks at the effects of tax-benefit systems and social stratification determinants on the probability of poverty among mothers after childbirth and divorce/separation. The analysis was carried out for twelve EU countries, which represent a variety of welfare regimes providing different degrees of defamilialisation. We applied the stress-testing methodology using microsimulation techniques as proposed by Atkinson (2009) and carried out a regression analysis of the simulated results. We show that the degree of income replacement provided by the welfare state is higher for childbirth than for divorce. Countries with low post-childbirth poverty include those with an explicit pro-natalist orientation and socio-democratic regimes. High post-childbirth poverty rates are found in pro-traditional and South European conservative countries, and especially in the liberal regimes. The same is true for the post-divorce poverty rates. Moreover, our findings confirm that the mother's occupational class has a statistically significant effect for predicting poverty in the case of both events, with a stronger social gradient in case of divorce. Cross-country variation in the social gradient for post-childbirth poverty was insignificant. For post-divorce poverty we find weaker social class effects in the highly defamilialised welfare systems (Scandinavian countries and France) and stronger social class effects in the UK and the post-socialist countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Homeownership, as a way to build up housing wealth, is believed to play an increasingly important role in terms of providing welfare to citizens. However, homeownership does not always act as a nest-egg; it can be a source of financial anxiety as well. In this paper we investigate how homeownership and housing wealth impact on the relationship between divorce and subjective wellbeing (life satisfaction, happiness, financial satisfaction). Using longitudinal data for Australia we find that homeowners are more negatively affected with respect to wellbeing by divorce than tenants, amongst others because the owned house becomes a financial burden. We further find that gender moderates the impact of homeownership and tenure change upon divorce on wellbeing. When women move from an owned to a rented house, divorce has a smaller negative effect on happiness and financial satisfaction than when women stay in the owned house. For men, staying in the owned house or moving within the owner-occupied sector increases happiness, but moving to the rental sector from the owned house increases financial satisfaction. Furthermore, for men, housing wealth mitigates financial stress when remaining in an owner-occupied house after divorce. We conclude that the potential role of homeownership as a welfare resource – in this case for subjective well-being – seems rather limited to those who already possess other resources (e.g. financial security) and therefore cannot be expected to substitute more traditional forms of welfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Research indicates that when adult children marry, ties to parents weaken. Yet less is known about how spousal characteristics, and specifically, spouse's race or ethnicity, affect ties to the family of origin. This paper uses data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health to ask how interracial/ethnic marriage, compared to same-race/ethnicity marriage, is associated with ties to mothers among young adults in the United States. Results indicate that offspring who are intermarried differ little in their relationships to mothers compared to those who married same-race/ethnicity partners. However, findings from this study suggest that intermarriage may have greater consequences for some groups, such as Blacks, compared to other racial/ethnic groups. Overall, the results highlight how intermarriage has a relatively limited effect on offspring relationships with mothers and suggest a role for future research that examines how ties to parents during adolescence may shape partner choices during young adulthood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Analytical sociology explains macro-level outcomes by referring to micro-level behaviors, and its hypotheses thus take macro-level entities (e.g. groups) as their units of analysis. The statistical analysis of these macro-level units is problematic, since macro units are often few in number, leading to low statistical power. Additionally, micro-level processes take place within macro units, but tests on macro-level units cannot adequately deal with these processes. Consequently, much analytical sociology focuses on testing micro-level predictions. We propose a better alternative; a method to test macro hypotheses on micro data, using randomization tests. The advantages of our method are (i) increased statistical power, (ii) possibilities to control for micro covariates, and (iii) the possibility to test macro hypotheses without macro units. We provide a heuristic description of our method and illustrate it with data from a published study. Data and R-scripts for this paper are available in the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/scfx3/). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract In this paper, we apply multichannel sequence analysis of labour market positions and incomes to create a typology of careers starting with temporary employment in the Netherlands. For this purpose, we use detailed register data from Statistics Netherlands for all workers who entered temporary employment in 2007 and were observed for 96 months. This approach leads to a typology of 17 different career types that shows a considerably larger variation - in terms of employment and income security - than previous research has shown. Specifically, the typology shows that 29.6% of the research population has a stepping stone career with high career and income security, while 39.7% has a dead-end career with low career and income security. However, a large part of careers – 24.7% – cannot be classified in this traditional distinction, as they combine high employment security and low incomes or high incomes and low employment security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This paper examines the extent to which the black-white gap in happiness—an important indicator of subjective well-being—has narrowed over the 1972 to 2014 period. Analyzing data from the General Social Survey, we find that that the difference in levels of happiness between whites and blacks is substantial, but declined over time. Results from a decomposition analysis shed new light on the sources of change. We find that observable differences in characteristics of whites and blacks explain a significant and growing proportion of the happiness gap. The two most important characteristics are income and marital status, as both are strongly associated with race and happiness, and the proportion of the difference in the gap that they explain has generally increased over time. Overall, the declining gap in happiness is consistent with the moderate narrowing of substantial racial disparities in other realms, such as life expectancy, residential segregation, and neighborhood conditions, suggesting small steps toward equality in some realms, even as high levels of inequality persist in others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract In this paper, we expand previous research on the psychological foundations of social behavior by evaluating the role of the Big Five personality traits with regard to the formation of individual social networks. More precisely, we ask if personality traits significantly relate to individuals' social integration and position in their ego-network. While studies on both social capital formation and the impact of personality traits on social and political behavior have been flourishing in recent years, little is known about the main effects of personality traits, namely openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion, and emotional stability, on the characteristics of social ties as well as the agency of egos in their networks. To test our research question, we rely on data from a Swiss population survey carried out in 2005 that combines detailed information on ties in egocentric networks and personality traits for about 1600 respondents. We show that neurotic persons have a tendency towards triad structures encompassing structural holes, whereas extroverted persons show a preference for networks with stronger ties. Moreover, our findings support the potential relationship between the three hitherto neglected personality traits – agreeableness, openness to experience, conscientiousness – with personal networks structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Although neighborhood studies often focus on the presence of some particular entity and its consequences for a variety of local processes, a frequent limitation is the failure to account more broadly for the local context. This paper therefore examines the role of parks for community crime, but contributes to the literature by testing whether the context of land uses and demographics nearby parks moderate the parks and crime relationship. A key feature of our approach is that we also test how these characteristics explain crime in the park, nearby the park, and in other neighborhoods in the city with data from nine cities across the United States (N = 109,808 blocks). We use multilevel Poisson and negative binomial regressions to test our ideas for six types of street crime. Our findings show that nearby land uses and socio-demographic characteristics are a key driver of crime being located within the park or nearby the park. Our results also show a clear distance decay pattern for the impact of various land uses and socio-demographics nearby parks. The results emphasize a need for research to consider the broader socio-spatial context in which crime generators/inhibitors are embedded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper posits that individual religious engagement reduces people's motivations to hold governments accountable for their performance while in office. This expectation is based on previous research which shows that religion is closely linked with believing that the world is just, a place where people generally get what they deserve and deserve what they get. Using data from the European Social Survey 2012–13 in seventeen established democracies, the study shows that individual religious engagement – in a form of religiosity and attendance of religious services – is indeed negatively associated with believing that governing parties should be punished in elections for poor performance. Moreover, while strong believers are more satisfied with government than non-believers, religious engagement weakens the relationship between people's economic evaluations and government satisfaction. These findings have important implications for debates on democratic accountability, reward-punishment models of electoral politics, and the prospects of democratic legitimacy in states with considerable shares of religious individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The extensive literature on political trust has long suggested a link between macroeconomic conditions and public trust in political institutions. However, empirical evidence regarding this relationship remains ambiguous. Conflicting results appear to be related to differences in research design: while cross-sectional studies tend not to find evidence of a link between macroeconomic variables and trust in political institutions, most longitudinal studies do. In this paper, using recent advances in multilevel methodology, we examine both cross-sectional and longitudinal effects of macroeconomic variables on trust in national parliament within a single dynamic multilevel framework. By analyzing all seven waves of the European Social Survey (2002–2014), we demonstrate that declining macroeconomic performance has a negative within-country effect on trust in national parliament. At the same time, we find limited evidence in support of this association at the between-country level. This discrepancy suggests the presence of confounding factors that are unaccounted for in cross-sectional designs. We therefore argue for the importance of examining within-country effects as they provide a more stringent test of causality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the secondary data requirements for multilevel small area synthetic estimation (ML-SASE). This research method uses secondary survey data sets as source data for statistical models. The parameters of these models are used to generate data for small areas. The paper assesses the impact of knowing the geographical location of survey respondents on the accuracy of estimates, moving beyond debating the generic merits of geocoded social survey datasets to examine quantitatively the hypothesis that knowing the approximate location of respondents can improve the accuracy of the resultant estimates. Four sets of synthetic estimates are generated to predict expected levels of limiting long term illnesses using different levels of knowledge about respondent location. The estimates were compared to comprehensive census data on limiting long term illness (LLTI). Estimates based on fully geocoded data were more accurate than estimates based on data that did not include geocodes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital platforms that enable and foster associations and sharing among entrepreneurs and knowledge workers have become a vital part of the new knowledge economy, yet we know little about the new form of social organization of knowledge. This paper seeks to explore and evaluate two microscopic social mechanisms, namely network effect of recruitment and cultural affinity, that may produce knowledge clustering and differentiation within these communities. To understand the relative effect of mechanisms, we develop a novel estimation procedure that matches individual users based on their historical behavioral patterns. We collected and analyzed a large-scale event dataset from a digital platform for offline in-person meetups in two major U.S. cities, New York City and San Francisco Bay Area. We found that previous methods overestimate network effect in membership adoption decisions by 176%. Our findings show that the network effect is further amplified by varied levels of cultural affinity between individuals and groups, implying a clustering effect whereby individuals tend to gravitate towards groups that are culturally proximate. Implications for understanding social differentiation and the knowledge economy are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With more countries entering an era of low fertility, factors that may shape individuals' childbearing desires have been extensively explored. One's intergenerational social mobility experience, however, remains under-discussed. This paper examines this issue against the backdrop of China, in which the total fertility rate has rapidly declined to the lowest-low level in recent decades. Using pooled five-wave data from the Chinese General Social Survey from 2010 to 2017, we found a checkmark-shaped relationship between social class and fertility desire. Chinese farmers have the greatest desired number of children, manual workers have the lowest, and the two upper classes lie in the middle. In general, one's origin class and destination class play a similar role in shaping fertility desire, demonstrating the coexistence of socialization and acculturation processes. The gender-specific examination further suggests that, compared to women, men are more reluctant to change the fertility attitude learned from the origin class. Based on these findings, our study proposes a novel explanation of the decline in fertility desire in China and contributes to the literature on how social mobility experiences and gender ideology jointly construct fertility desire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Legislative action on issues of immigration emerged prominently across and within US states throughout the 2000s. The emerging literature on this topic demonstrates the political motivations driving anti-immigrant laws that negatively impact the mobility of Hispanic/Latino and Foreign-born populations across US states. Considerable research identifies the political mechanisms driving restrictive state-level immigration policies. Despite the growth of this scholarly work, the impact of these laws within states requires further study. This paper broadens the approach to the study of restrictive state-level omnibus immigration laws (OILs) using a rich dataset to uncover the effects of these laws on compositional change for undocumented, foreign-born, and Hispanic/Latino populations from 2005 to 2017. Using a quasi-experimental design, I show that by passing omnibus immigration laws, states shape demographic patterns of Foreign-born populations. Specifically, I find that states that pass omnibus immigration laws experience a decrease in undocumented and Foreign-born populations relative to states that did not pass similar laws. Effects are estimated each year after the passage of OILs, providing additional insight into the temporal impact of omnibus immigration laws on the settlement patterns of these groups. I conclude by discussing the theoretical implications of the multiple interior immigration law and policies, specifically at the state level, and their salience in shaping population dynamics across the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While research shows that cohabitation has increased significantly among highly educated individuals in Latin America, much less is known about how the relationship between educational attainment and first union formation has changed over time and across the region's countries. Accordingly, this paper describes the changes across cohorts in the type of first union (marriage or cohabitation) entered by women from seven Latin American countries. It also analyzes trends in the relationship between women's education and the type of first union within and between these countries. Using Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) data, life tables, discrete-time event history models, and predicted probabilities were estimated to analyze the changing determinants of first-union formation. The results pointed to an overall increase in first-union cohabitation over time, with some important differences across countries. The multivariate analysis suggested that women's education influences the type and sequencing of the first union, with socioeconomically disadvantaged women increasingly likely to transition to early unions and enter cohabitation rather than marriage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]