Naturalizing Korean ethnicity and making ‘ethnic’ difference: a comparison of North Korean settlement and foreign bride incorporation policies in South Korea

This article compares North Korean immigrants and foreign bride policies in South Korea. Despite being constructed as distinctive policy target groups, North Korean settlement and foreign bride incorporation policies exhibit striking similarities. The similarities result from the way policy problems are identified and certain solutions are justified; both North Korean immigrants and foreign brides are constructed a burden on welfare and as potential threats to social stability. Policy solutions are justified as they are designed to transform North Korean immigrants and foreign brides into ‘normal’ South Korean citizens. The major difference between two sets of policies lies in assumptions regarding cultural differences. Foreign brides are assumed to carry practices that are foreign and alien to Koreans, while North Korean immigrants are presumed to carry ‘authentic’ and ‘traditional’ Korean culture. Foreign brides’ cultures are visible and alien to South Koreans, and therefore are addressed under the banner of multiculturalism policies. North Korean immigrants are excluded from such policies. This exclusion reflects and reproduces the view of a Korean nation bounded by ethnic and cultural homogeneity.     

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Benign stereotypes of Jews are widespread, but whether they are genuinely complimentary remains unresolved. This study addresses the question using data from the 1990 General Social Survey. There are four main findings. First, benign Jewish stereotypes are far more common than corresponding blatantly anti-Semitic images. Second, there is no evidence that benign stereotypes are genuinely complimentary but strong indications that they are subtle expressions of underlying prejudice. Third, many non-Jews simultaneously both benign stereotypes and blatantly anti-Semitic stereotypes. Fourth, unlike blatant expressions of prejudice, benign stereotypes are more common among the well educated and affluent. Implications are drawn concerning the nature, extent, and future of anti-Semitic prejudice.     

Health status and behaviors of unwed fathers

This article focuses on the well-being and capacities of 1759 new fathers in seven cities using data from the Fragile Families Study. Comparisons are made between married (N=478) and unmarried fathers (N=1281). With the unwed fathers, we compare those who are cohabiting, who are stably romantically involved but not cohabiting, who are involved in an unstable romantic relationship, who are not romantically involved but friends, and who have no relationship with the mother. The six indicators of fathers' well-being capacities include physical health, depressive symptoms, drug and alcohol use, smoking, and physical abuse of the mother. These findings show that married fathers are more advantaged than unwed fathers vis-à-vis education, income, and age; they also are in better physical and mental health. Among the unwed fathers, those who are cohabiting are more advantaged and healthier than those who are not cohabiting, although the differences are not as great as those between married and unmarried fathers. Non-resident fathers who are romantically involved are similar in income, age and education to fathers who are not romantically involved but are friends, although the former are less likely than the latter to be using drugs, to be depressed or to have hit or slapped the mother. The fathers who are romantically involved in an unstable (i.e., off-and-on) relationship are less healthy than those in a more sustained romantic or cohabiting relationship. The fathers who have no relationship with the mother are most likely to exhibit unhealthy behaviors. About two percent of the married fathers, 3% of the unmarried cohabiting and stably romantically involved, 5% of the unstably romantically involved, 7% of the friends, and 11% of those with no relationship had hit or slapped the mother as reported by her. About one-half of the married fathers, a little over a third of the unwed fathers who are cohabiting, stably romantically involved or unstably romantically involved or friends, and only one-sixth of the fathers with no relationship have none of the six behaviors. In contrast, one-fifth of the unwed fathers with no relationship and one-eighth of the unstably romantically involved fathers have three or more of the six risky behaviors, as compared to one-tenth of the unwed fathers with involvement and 3% of the married fathers. Implications for welfare reform and child support are discussed.     

Chinese Children's Changing Family and School Environments

As a result of modernization, major changes are taking place in children's social relationships. Children are beginning to view their parents more as friends and colleagues rather than powerful authority figures. Parents are realizing that their children face a new, uncharted future and are more inclined to consider their children's point of view. The generation gap is viewed as evidence of social progress. Children and parents are growing into the future together. Increased pressure from economic development results in increasing demands on the educational system. Private schools, some of which are very costly, are on the rise. The entire educational system, including laws governing schools, student-teacher relations, and expectations about goals for educational quality are being revised.     

Job Loss and the Occupational Social Worker

Economic and technological changes are creating workplace and labor market upheavals. While new jobs are being rapidly created, many old ones are destroyed. Some new jobs are high-paying, but many are low-paying with little opportunity for advancement. Especially affected are higher-paid blue-collar workers and middle managers, often ill-equipped to cope with jobchange. The authors discuss the impact of job-loss and downsizing on individuals and organizations, and describe current dislocated worker and outplacement services. Occupational social work skills are seen as particularly appropriate for lay-off interventions.     

Paternal involvement among unwed fathers

Paternal involvement among unwed fathers is examined during pregnancy and at birth. The effects of relationship status, race and ethnicity, age, education, income, family structure and father values on father involvement are also examined. The findings suggest that overall there is a high degree of involvement among all the fathers examined. Relationship status is statistically significant and most predictive in assessing paternal involvement in each analysis. Fathers who are romantically involved and cohabiting are more involved than those who are romantically involved but do not cohabit. Fathers who are no longer romantically involved are least likely to sustain involvement. In addition, fathers who are employed are also more likely to sustain involvement.     

Metaphysics and professional resistance to program evaluation

One of the most common and most difficult problems confronting program evaluators is the resistance they encounter when attempting to implement evaluation efforts. The philosophical and psychological foundations of this resistance are explored. Problems in the evaluative paradigm are presented. Value differences between evaluators and practitioners are highlighted. Emotional bases for practitioner behavior are clarified and types and loci of resistance are outlined. Suggestions for coping strategies are discussed.     

Are salaried workers compensated for overtime hours?

I explore the difference in hours of work and compensation between workers who are compensated for overtime hours and those who are not. I find that workers not paid for overtime work significantly more than workers who are. No previous research has tested whether or not salaried workers who are not paid for extra hours of work are compensated for their additional hours. My results indicate that these salaried workers are compensated for their additional work by receiving higher salaries in both current and future time periods.     

TEACHING TOOLS: ON JOURNALISTS' USE OF MACROECONOMIC CONCEPTS

Five macroeconomic concepts are presented which are prominent in the business sections of newspapers, but which are not given equivalent prominence in macroeconomic textbooks. These are the discouraged worker phenomenon, the use of inventories in forecasting, the effect of changes in the money supply on the bond market, and the effects of inflation and nominal interest rates in the foreign exchange market. These concepts are presented via news clips illustrating the way they typically appear in the press. Instructors are urged to place extra emphasis on these concepts.     

On continuity of incomplete preferences

A weak (strict) preference relation is continuous if it has a closed (open) graph; it is hemicontinuous if its upper and lower contour sets are closed (open). If preferences are complete these four conditions are equivalent. Without completeness continuity in each case is stronger than hemicontinuity. This paper provides general characterizations of continuity in terms of hemicontinuity for weak preferences that are modeled as (possibly incomplete) preorders and for strict preferences that are modeled as strict partial orders. Some behavioral implications associated with the two approaches are also discussed.     

Fertility and fertility-related behavior among Mexican-American and non-Hispanic white female adolescents

Ethnic differences in fertility-related behavior are examined in a community-based probability sample of 706 Mexican-American and 317 non-Hispanic white females aged 13 through 19 years. Mexican-Americans are more likely than whites to have had a live birth, but are no more likely to have been pregnant and are less likely to have had sexual intercourse. Sexually experienced Mexican-Americans, however, are twice as likely as whites to have been pregnant. Among those ever pregnant, Mexican-Americans are more likely to have had a live birth, while whites are more likely to have had an abortion. Ethnic differences remain strong when socioeconomic status and indicators of social instability are controlled statistically, lending more support to the "minority status" hypothesis than to the "characteristics" hypothesis concerning the fertility-related behavior of minority group members.     

The Influence of the Socio-economic Characteristics of Disabled People on Their Employment Status and Income

Most of the studies of the employment and income levels of disabled people focus on a specific disability or on severely disabled persons. A few studies are cross disability ones, but they fail to go beyond simple associations or else have extremely small sample sizes. There is a need for studies which are cross disability and which have an adequate sample size in order to determine if there are structural variables in society—like a class system-which operate upon the employment opportunities of disabled persons. Using a sample (n = 733) of the Disability Community in Massachusetts, socio-economic variables related to employment and income are studied. Statistically significant relationships are found. Several models are developed and the implications for social theory are discussed.     

Design for worksystem safety using employees' perception about safety

In this paper, the predictors of work injuries based on Leamon's Man-Machine model are identified in a sociotechnical framework. Several hypotheses are developed and tested to describe the accident/injury phenomena in mining worksystems. Possible designs for improving work-system's safety are specified using scaled Mahalanobis distance (MD). A case control study design is adopted. Five variables namely, age, negative-affectivity, physical-hazards, job-dissatisfaction, and safety-practice are emerged as significant contributors to work injuries for the mines studied. Two most interesting findings obtained through this study are (i) 36% of cases (injured employees) (MD < 1) are unlucky to meet an accident and (ii) 40% of the controls (non-injured employees) (MD > 1) are lucky to be able to avoid an accident. The most probable reason for the former case is the organizational ineffectiveness while that for the latter may be risky adventures of employees which are due to lack of education, awareness, and appropriate training. Based on the MD values for cases and controls, possible design guidelines are suggested. The study categorically identifies the accident situations where engineering control, education and training, and other organizational safety measures are to be adopted.     

The Social Worker's Role in Serving Vulnerable Athletes

Athletes are a population group with unique vulnerabilities whose social work-related needs are often not met. Because of the perception that they are young and healthy, athletes are seen as free from mental health challenges and social problems. Yet athletes are at high risk for distress due to pressures to perform, avoid showing pain, hide physical injuries and substance abuse problems, eating disorders and burnout. At the same time, they may have false support systems that are interested in the athlete for social or monetary status. Social workers are broad systems practitioners who can focus on how the environment and other influences affect an athlete's mental health and well-being. Because social workers are strengths-based, they can assist athletes in achieving their highest level of functioning on and off the playing field.     

Medicaid Funding for Assisted Living Care: A Five-State Examination

Medicaid waiver programs financing assisted living care are examined in five states to gain insights about program implementation, accomplishments, and challenges. Documents, augmented with stakeholder interviews, are used to describe income eligibility, options for supplementing payments to facilities, risk adjustment payment levels, and participation. Needs determination and waiver-based payments are in place. Eligibility and funding levels are complicated by room and board allocations that are linked to the federal benefit rate for Supplemental Security Income. Provider participation may be diminishing. Many recipients have to accept shared occupancy as program payments are insufficient for single units.     

Global Mental Health in Action: Reducing Disparities One Community at a Time

There are great disparities in mental health care around the world. Traditional approaches to mental health care have not been found to be transferrable to many parts of the world and are inadequate to address these disparities. Unconventional approaches are needed that match the traditions of care‐seeking and care‐giving within the communities where they are delivered. The authors review the global mental health literature and discuss how marriage and family therapists are in a particularly good position to have worldwide impact on mental health disparities. Five principles of global mental health are presented along with an example of how these principles are applied through the Reducing Mental Health Disparities One Community at a Time (RD1CT) model.     

Glossing inadequacies: problems with definitions of key concepts in some methodology texts

It is argued in this paper that a significant number of definitions of terms provided in currently available methodological texts are inadequate or positively misleading. Some do not cover the main meaning of the term but focus instead on a non-standard one. Others fail to pick out the distinctive features of what is being defined. There are also those that fail to indicate relationships to related terms or those with similar meanings. Finally, there are some definitions that are simply incorrect in significant respects. It is argued that defective definitions are worse than useless and are a disservice to students.     

Social Class and a Division of Labor within the Corporate Elite: a Note on Class,Interlocking, and Executive Committee Membership of Directors of U. S. Industrial Firms*

Upper-class directors of major industrial companies are directors of more corporations than are the non-upper-class directors, but they are less likely to serve on executive committees of corporate boards. This may indicate that there is a class-based division of labor in which the upper-class directors are more concerned with inter-organizational relationships and with the functioning of the economy as a whole, and that non-upper-class directors are concerned with day-to-day operations of individual companies.     

Immigrants,Natives and Social Assistance: Comparable Take‐Up Under Comparable Circumstances

Are immigrants on welfare because they are more likely to be eligible or because they are more likely to claim benefits for which they are eligible? The answer is politically important, but because most current research on immigration and welfare is based on data from the United States, the answer is difficult due to the complexities of the transfer system which make eligibility determinations difficult. In Germany, by contrast, eligibility for the main cash transfer program, Sozialhilfe (Social Assistance), is determined by a comparatively simple nationwide formula. We use data from the German Socio‐Economic Panel to test whether immigrants to Germany are more likely than natives to claim welfare benefits for which they are eligible. We find that immigrants are more likely than native Germans to receive welfare, both because immigrants are more likely to be eligible and because they are more likely, when eligible, to claim their benefits. However, we also find that this greater propensity to take‐up benefits is not related to immigrant status per se: when other sociodemographic factors are accounted for in an appropriate manner, immigrant households are no more likely to take‐up benefits than native households.     

A cohort analysis of female labor participation rates in the U.S. and Japan

Aggregate data of female labor participation rates in U.S. and Japan, classified by period and by age, are decomposed into age, period, and cohort effects using innovative Bayesian cohort models that were developed to overcome the identification problem in cohort analysis. The main findings are that in both countries, age effects are the largest and period effects are the smallest; in both countries, age effects are roughly consistent with life-cycle movements expected by labor economics, but the negative effects of marriage and/or childbearing on women?’s labor supply in Japan are much larger than those observed in the U.S.; and in both countries, upward movements of cohort effects during 1930s–1960s were found. However, cohort effects are larger for the U.S. than for Japan. All the cohort results are roughly consistent with the marriage squeeze hypothesis and the Easterlin hypothesis.