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Is there a relationship between family income inequality and income mobility across generations in the United States? As family income inequality rose in the United States, parental resources available for improving children's health, education, and care diverged. The amount and rate of divergence also varied across US states. Researchers and policy analysts have expressed concern that relatively high inequality might be accompanied by relatively low mobility, tightening the connection between individuals' incomes during childhood and adulthood. Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, and various government sources, this paper exploits state and cohort variation to estimate the relationship between inequality and mobility. Results provide very little support for the hypothesis that inequality shapes mobility in the United States. The inequality children experienced during youth had no robust association with their economic mobility as adults. Formal analysis reveals that offsetting effects could underlie this result. In theory, mobility-enhancing forces may counterbalance mobility-reducing effects. In practice, the results suggest that in the US context, the intergenerational transmission of income may not be very responsive to changes in inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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]

This article analyzes the determinants of international child adoption. We argue that prospective parents' desire to reduce transaction costs and ensure a successfully completed adoption influences adoption flows. Drawing on dyadic panel data over the period 1991-2010, we fit hurdle models to identify sending-country and dyad characteristics that correlate with adoption flows. We show that an international agreement designed to ensure the integrity of adoption depresses foreign adoptions by raising transaction costs. By contrast, adoption is more likely when sending countries have a high-quality regulatory environment and when colonial or migration ties exist within the dyad. Our findings highlight the impact of transaction costs on transnational, non-market exchange, expand political economy models of migration, and emphasize the importance of private international law in international relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses U.S. President Barack Obama's views and nationalized electoral politics during the 2014 midterm congressional elections in America. According to the article, the U.S. Republican Party gained a majority in the nation's Senate after winning nine seats which were previously occupied by Democratic Senators. It states that the American electorate treated the 2014 midterm elections as a referendum on the U.S. economy and Obama's job performance. Obama's public approval rating is mentioned, as well as statistics regarding various membership changes in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate between 2006 and 2014. Democratic voters are also examined.

Deil Wright provided three models of intergovernmental relations in Understanding Intergovernmental Relations. The third model—the overlapping authority model—was essentially a new way of depicting those relationships. It provided the conceptual basis for moving beyond static views of the field. This article reviews the influence of the overlapping model on policy development, program relationships, and administrative practice. It reaches beyond the three institutional levels to include the proliferation of public and private players. It discusses the ways that decision-making processes and theories have absorbed that model. It concludes with a discussion of the current and future state of intergovernmental management. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

As jobs in the United States become less secure and traditional job ladders deteriorate, employees increasingly change employers to build their career. This article explores how this shift affects gender earnings disparities. I find that the effect of changing employers depends on whether changes occur in “good” or “bad” jobs and whether individuals leave voluntarily or involuntarily. Using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics 1979-2009, gender disparities narrowed among voluntary leavers in good jobs and involuntary leavers in bad jobs. Disparities stagnated among voluntary leavers in bad jobs. The gender gap actually increased among involuntary leavers in good jobs. Although the causal mechanisms driving these trends are still unknown, the results indicate that the externalization opens opportunities primarily to those who are already in good positions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article applies the tenets of Massey's (1999) cumulative causation theory of migration to explain variation in aggregate patterns of Mexican migration to U.S. metropolitan destinations during the late 1990s. Analogous to sending contexts, results suggest that the dynamics of migration vary substantially with the maturity of the Mexican settlement community within destinations (approximated here using characteristics of the resident Mexican-origin population and distance from the Mexican border). The rate of immigration between 1995 and 2000 was determined overwhelmingly by the rate a decade earlier, but the extent to which this was the case depended significantly on the level of destination settlement maturity. The immigration rate into newly emerging destinations was governed to a greater extent by pull factors in the local labor and housing market (e.g., unemployment and cost of living) than in more established destinations where the rate of immigration varied largely independently of such factors. Settlement maturity played a more direct role in explaining variation in the demographic composition of new immigration flows, and was inversely related to the percentage of adult inflows comprising unaccompanied males. The results are consistent with the hypothesis recently advanced by Light (2006), asserting that migratory shifts away from traditional destinations beginning in the late 1990s were driven, at least in part, by saturation of labor and housing markets resulting from network-driven migration. Implications of the findings for related avenues of research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

To evaluate a stutter-step model of academic performance in high school, this article adopts a unique measure of the beliefs of 12,591 high school sophomores from the Education Longitudinal Study, 2002-2006. Verbatim responses to questions on occupational plans are coded to capture specific job titles, the listing of multiple jobs, and the listing of multiple jobs with divergent characteristics. The educational requirements of detailed jobs, as specified in the Department of Labor's Occupational Information Network database, are then matched to all jobs that students list within their plans. Students with uncertain beliefs about their occupational futures are then shown to have lower levels of commitment to and performance in school. These results support the conjecture that uncertainty about the future has consequences for the short-run behavior that determines important educational outcomes, beyond the effects that are commonly attributed to existing models of performance. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

International migration yields pervasive cross-border social engagements, yet homeland political involvements are modest to minimal. This contrast reflects the ways in which the distinctive characteristics of expatriate political life impede participation in the polity that emigrants have left behind. As polities are bounded, moving to the territory of a different state yields political detachment: diminishing awareness of home country political matters and weakened ties to the home state's electoral institutions. To assess this argument, we use a representative survey of the Mexican-born population in the United States to analyze two critical conditions for participation in expatriate elections: emigrants' ability to demonstrate eligibility to vote and their knowledge about voting procedures. We find clear signs of detachment. Most Mexican emigrants are not in a position to participate in homeland politics. Social ties, while pervasive, are associated with more knowledge only for the very small segment of the most engaged. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The American system of fiscal federalism requires that state and local governments finance the bulk of their budgets from own-source revenues, not transfers. This article analyzes state total taxable resources from 1981 to 2003 to evaluate how state fiscal capacity has changed in that time and how it has been affected by national recessions, to examine the extent to which fiscal capacity differs among states and whether capacity has converged, and to consider whether states have responded to service demands by changing tax effort and whether tax effort has converged in the face of interstate competition and other harmonizing forces. Because the capacity measure employed here can be compared across years, something impossible with major alternative indices, the analysis provides insights important to the analysis of fiscal federalism and of the implications of revenue devolution not previously possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]