Breadwinning and bread‐losing: Exploring opportunities to rework manhood

Manhood in the USA today is at a crossroads. There are more models of how to be a man than ever before. And yet, despite myriad changes to the structures of work and family, the breadwinner ideology, or the heterogendered ideal that husbands should be the sole or primary earners in their families, persists in US society. This ideology affects the structure of work and family, regardless of whether individual people agree with it. Here, we discuss the breadwinner ideology and the ways that this meaning system tethers employment to masculinity and vice versa. We examine strategies for decoupling manhood from work and family and suggest ways to facilitate the undoing of gender.     

Determinants of stated willingness to pay for public goods: A study in the headline method

Respondents were shown brief statements (“headlines”) referring to various threats to the environment or to public health, and other public issues. An intervention to deal with each problem was also introduced by a single sentence. Some respondents were asked to indicate their willingness to pay for the interventions by voluntary contributions. Others indicated their opinion of the intervention on a conventional rating scale, rated the personal satisfaction of contributing to it, or rated the importance of the problem. Group averages of these response measures were obtained for a large set of issues. Computed over issues, the rank-order correlations between the different measures were very high, suggesting that group averages of WTP and of other opinion statements are measures of the same public attitudes. Observed preference reversals and violations of monotonicity in contributions are better explained by a concept of attitude than by the notion of economic value that underlies the contingent valuation method. Contributions and purchases do not follow the same logic. Possible implications for the contingent valuation method are discussed.     

Unhealthy Weight in Indian Families: The Role of the Family Environment in the Context of the Nutrition Transition

India faces a dual burden of increasing obesity and persistent underweight as it experiences the nutrition transition—the dietary and lifestyle changes that accompany globalization, economic development, and technological change. Yet, the nutrition transition is not solely a top-down process; rather, global forces converge with local practices at multiple levels of the social ecology. The family environment, a key site for the transmission of local customs and norms, remains largely unexplored in India. We examined the extent to which opposite-gender siblings and mother–child pairs were concordant or discordant in body weight, and whether domains of the family environment, specifically, food practices, food-related gender norms, and household resources, were associated with patterns of unhealthy weight within and between families. Multilevel dyadic analysis and logistic regression were conducted using survey data from a representative sample of 400 families in a Southern Indian city. We identified substantial clustering of weight among opposite-gender sibling pairs (ICC = 0.43) and mother–child pairs, as well as important patterns of discordance, including 11% of families experiencing a dual burden of underweight and overweight. Household resources, including mother’s education and income, were salient in explaining the distribution of body weight within and between families. Importantly, less examined domains of the family environment were also relevant, including food practices (e.g., grocery shopping frequency), and food-related gender norms (e.g., mother’s control of food served at home). Continued exploration of how global and local practices converge in households will be necessary to develop programming that effectively addresses India’s dual burden of unhealthy weight.     

Social Patterning in Body Mass Index (BMI) Among Contemporary Immigrant Groups: The Emergence of a Gradient

Although adult body mass index (BMI) displays considerable social patterning worldwide, the direction and strength of the relationship between BMI and socioeconomic status (SES) varies cross nationally. We examine social gradients in BMI for contemporary U.S. immigrants and evaluate whether their SES-BMI gradient patterns are shaped by underlying gradients in immigrant origin countries and whether they are further patterned by time in the United States. Data come from the New Immigrant Survey, the only nationally representative survey of contemporary immigrants. Results indicate that the inverse SES-BMI gradients observed among this population are strongest among women originating in highly developed countries. After arrival in the United States, however, inverse gradient patterns are driven largely by higher weights among low-SES individuals, particularly those from less-developed countries. We conclude that although certain immigrants appear to be uniquely protected from weight gain, poorer individuals from less-developed countries are doubly disadvantaged; this raises concerns about worsening inequalities in both diet and behavior between the rich and poor upon arrival to the United States.     

Health Service Utilization Among Immigrants to the United States

This study uses data from the New Immigrant Survey and Andersen’s behavioral model, a commonly used framework for health care utilization, to examine the utilization patterns of Asian and Hispanic immigrants to the United States. Results indicate that the behavioral framework is well suited to predicting immigrants’ physician visits and dentist visits. However, this model is less appropriate for determining the likelihood of reporting a hospital as the primary source of medical care or immigrants’ use of non Western treatments. Importantly, years in the U.S. exhibits a robust, positive relationship with physician and dental visits for both groups even after controlling for several predisposing characteristics, self-assessed and physician-diagnosed need, pointing to the importance of this as an enabling factor in health care access and use.     

Housing Cost Burden and New Lawful Immigrants in the United States

Housing in the United States constitutes the largest expenditure for many households. Increasing rents and home prices, changes in the mortgage industry, and the growing importance of immigrants in the U.S. housing market underscore the value of examining the economic hardship that housing costs pose for immigrants. As is true for the native-born, immigrants’ allocation of financial resources to housing influences the funds available for savings, investments, survival of emergencies, and the overall economic well-being of children and families. This project employs 2003 national-level data of legal permanent residents from the New Immigrant Survey to examine an outcome lacking sufficient empirical study: the proportion of household income spent on housing. The study examines whether disparities in immigrant housing cost burden by country/region of origin persist after accounting for differences in human capital, stage in the life cycle, assimilation, and other factors. The analyses disaggregate immigrants from Latin America, Asia, Europe and other areas into more nuanced categories. The results document that after controlling for a diverse array of variables, legal immigrants vary widely in housing cost burdens by country/region of origin. These disparities have implications for the future wealth accumulation and long-term financial security of immigrants in the United States.     

Social model of emotional labour and client satisfaction: exploring inter- and intrapersonal characteristics of the client−provider encounter

As part of healthcare organisations’ efforts to improve client satisfaction, special attention is directed to care providers’ expression of authenticity through genuine emotional displays in care encounters. The study’s aim was to test a mediating–moderating model for predicting clients’ satisfaction. The model combined intrapersonal forces (the healthcare provider’s level of caring and emotional load) and interpersonal forces (meeting the client in a team of professionals or alone, and client?provider similarity), as predictors of emotional labour strategies, and subsequent client satisfaction. Clients’ evaluation of whether or not the emotional displays were authentic was intended to moderate the link between emotional labour and client satisfaction. The sample consisted of 103 healthcare providers’ encounters with clients’ family members, randomly selected from five nursing homes. Data were collected by validated questionnaires at three time points. Mixed linear model analyses generally supported the proposed model. Meeting a client’s family in teams, ethnic similarity, and providers’ caring and emotional load stimulated higher levels of deep acting. Meeting clients alone and less emotional load involved more surface acting. These findings offer empirical support for the social interaction explanation of emotional labour, pointing to the importance of social characteristics of the service encounter in shaping emotional labour strategies and maintaining client satisfaction.     

Prevalence and Correlates of Gambling Problems Among a Nationally Representative Sample of Brazilian Adolescents

The objectives of the study are: (a) to provide the first prevalence estimates of pathological gambling among Brazilian adolescents using an age-specific instrument in a nationally representative sample; (b) to investigate the extent to which adolescents participate in gambling activities in a developing country; and (c) to correlate different levels of gambling behavior with demographic variables. Multistage cluster sampling selected 3,007 individuals over 14 years of age from Brazilian household population. A total of 661 participants were between 14 and 17 years old. The Lie/Bet Questionnaire and the DSM-IV-MR-J were used for assessing problem and pathological gambling. 2.8% scored positive on the screening questionnaire, while 1.6% were classified as problem and pathological gamblers. Factors associated with problem and pathological gambling were male sex, not currently studying and considering religion as not important. Less than 4 months elapsed between the age of regular gambling involvement and the first gambling problem. Prevalence rates were quite similar from recent studies which used nationally representative samples. The association of problem and pathological gambling with male sex, school drop-out and low religiosity supports the Problem Behavior Theory. The fast progression to problem gambling adds evidence that adolescents may be more vulnerable to the effects of gambling.