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Background and Objectives Reverse mortgages are loans that allow older homeowners to borrow from their home equity with no repayment due until the borrower dies or moves out of the home. We currently know very little about how homeowners evaluate and experience reverse mortgages as solutions to their financial and housing needs in later life. Furthermore, despite an increasingly diverse population of reverse mortgage borrowers, we know little about how social inequalities may contribute to reverse mortgage decisions and their outcomes. In this paper, we examine reverse mortgage decision-making and experiences in a racially and economically diverse sample of older US homeowners. Research Design and Methods We conducted 44 in-depth interviews with older homeowners who were considering or who had obtained a reverse mortgage loan. We inductively and iteratively developed a thematic coding scheme that was applied to all interview transcripts. Results Our analysis produced a dichotomous schema of reverse mortgage decision making that was shaped by social and economic opportunities and constraints. For some participants, reverse mortgages represented strategic tools used to maximize home equity and its benefits. For others, it was an option of last resort to which participants turned when faced with the imminent loss of their home. Discussion and Implications Focusing on reverse mortgages, our analysis suggests way that social inequalities may be reproduced through financial decisions and the unequal landscapes of opportunity in which they are made. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stratification and inequality are among the most central concepts in sociology, and although related, they are fundamentally distinct: inequality refers to the extent to which resources are distributed unevenly across individuals or between population subgroups, whereas stratification refers to the extent to which population subgroups occupy distinct hierarchical layers within an overall resource distribution. Despite the centrality of stratification in theories of class structure, prior empirical studies have focused exclusively on measures of inequality, which do not accurately capture the degree of class stratification and suffer from a variety of methodological limitations. In this paper, we employ a novel rank-based index of stratification to measure the degree to which occupational classes inhabit distinct, non-overlapping, and hierarchically arranged layers in the distribution of personal market income. The stratification index is nonparametric, both scale and translation invariant, and independent of the level of inequality. Based on this index, our results show that the US income distribution is highly stratified by occupational class and that the degree of class stratification increased substantially from 1980 to 2016. Moreover, we find that this trend is almost entirely due to growing stratification among aggregate occupational classes rather than among the disaggregate occupations nested within them. Finally, a set of counterfactual analyses indicate that the rise of occupational class stratification is driven by increases in the income returns to education, deunionization, and deindustrialization, although the relative importance of these factors varies by gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The most recent internationally widespread disease outbreak occurred during the flu season of 2009 and 2010. On April 2009, the first cases of influenza A (H1N1) (Popularly called, Swine Flu) were confirmed in the USA and UK following a novel virus that was first identified in Mexico. As the virus spread rapidly, the risk of morbidity and mortality increased in several countries. In this paper, we rely on the social cognitive theory of risk to assess the willingness of the US public to comply with vaccination and reduce the risk of sickness and death from the flu. We conduct a secondary data analysis of the Pew Research for the People and Press October 2009 and investigate the factors associated with willingness to take the swine flu vaccine (n = 1000). The findings indicate that the decision to take the swine flu vaccination was highly polarized across partisan lines. Controlling for education, income and demographic factors, the likelihood of taking the vaccine was associated with party identification. Individuals that identified themselves as Democrats were more likely to be willing to take the swine vaccine than individuals that identify themselves as Republicans and Independents. Confidence in the ability of the government to deal with the swine flu crisis seems to explain party identification differences in the willingness to take the vaccine. The implications of the findings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recently developed hierarchical age-period-cohort (HAPC) models, inferential questions arise: How can one assess or judge the significance of estimates of individual cohort and period effects in such models? And how does one assess the overall statistical significance of the cohort and/or the period effects? Beyond statistical significance is the question of substantive significance. This paper addresses these questions. In the context of empirical applications of linear and generalized linear mixed-model specifications of HAPC models using data on verbal test scores and voter turnout in U.S. presidential elections, respectively, we describe a two-step approach and a set of guidelines for assessing statistical significance. The guidelines include assessments of patterns of effects and statistical tests both for the effects of individual cohorts and time periods as well as for entire sets of cohorts and periods. The empirical applications show strong evidence that trends in verbal test scores are primarily cohort driven, while voter turnout is primarily a period phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Is there a difference between the social capital developed in faith-based and secular poverty-to-work programs? Comparative field research investigating five faith-based and secular poverty-to-work programs in southeastern America finds that values expressed by a secular non-profit organization and two faith-based programs correspond with more activities that develop social capital than the programs run by a for-profit organization and a reinvented government agency. In all the programs this social capital is both 'bridging,' by crossing barriers of race, gender, and class, and 'bonding' by tying participants and staff into at least a temporary supportive community. The programs see that this social capital is effective in supporting low-income persons through the transition to full-time employment. In addition, the faith-based programs seek to extend the social capital by developing long-term ties between clients and local religious congregations. This paper also specifies how social capital is developed in these programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This paper joins central concerns in the sociology of work and the sociology of aging. Age differences in work commitment and work values are examined, as well as their work and nonwork determinants, using data from 4,567 American and 3,735 Japanese employees. Our results show that older men are more committed to work than younger men in both Japan and the United States. This pattern also holds for American women, but there are no age differences in work commitment among Japanese women. Moreover, there are greater age differences among the Japanese in the importance placed on good pay. This is consistent with the view that there has been greater cultural change in recent years in Japan than in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the current religious mood in the tinned States and reflects upon its manifestations in the mid-1990s. It is argued that the religious mood has shifted -- away from the cognitive and fixed beliefs and toward the experiential arid expressive. It is further argued that given this change it is difficult to assess the current religious situation, especially given sociology-of-religion's reliance upon institutional categories and empirical indicators. Religious capital, like social capital, is not easily gauged without attention to new forms of community allowing individuals opportunity to express themselves as whole persons. A plea is made for a sociology of religion more attuned to body, mind, and self and thus to the dynamic and experiential qualities of religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]