Light and shadows: An analysis of racial differences between siblings in Brazil

Using data from the 2010 Census of Brazil, this article quantitatively examines the phenomenon of sibling differences in racial classification. In sum, the findings demonstrate that within-sibling racial heterogeneity occurs in 17–19% of families. The strongest predictor of racial discordance between siblings is racial discordance between parents. Furthermore, within-sibling regression models establish that race exhibits a modest but statistically significant association with some education and labor market outcomes. Most outcomes are not associated with race for siblings aged 15–19, although in families with both sexes, darker females have more favorable educational outcomes, while darker males have less favorable outcomes. In contrast, darker siblings aged 20–25 are less advantaged than their lighter brothers and sisters along a number of dimensions. They have significantly lower education, lower personal income, lower formal employment, and lower occupational status. It is argued that patterns for siblings aged 20–25 may be indicative of individual racial discrimination.     

The academic attitudes of American teenagers, 1990–2002: Cohort and gender effects on math achievement

Using data from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 and the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002, I compare the academic attitudes of high school students from Generation X and the Millennial Generation. I then analyze the effects these attitudes have on mathematics achievement test scores. Compared to the earlier group, students in the later cohort were less likely to indicate academic reasons for attending school and largely perceived their friends as being less engaged academically. Students in both cohorts whose friends held academic values experienced an increase in math scores. The more students in the earlier cohort disagreed that they came to school for academic reasons, the more their math scores decreased; this relationship did not appear for the later cohort. Females in each cohort showed stronger academic attitudes than males; additionally, believing that popularity was important was associated with lower test scores for females, but not males, in the Millennial cohort.     

Qualitative variance,entropy, and correlation ratios for nominal dependent variables

In this paper we derive a measure of dispersion for a nominal variable having k ? 2 categories and compare it with ordinary quantitative variance and with entropy. We then develop two qualitative analogs to the R² statistic, one based on qualitative variance, the other on entropy. For concreteness, data from the study of The American Soldier by S. A. Stouffér, E. A. Suchman, L. C. Devinney, S. A. Star, and R. M. Williams, Jr. (1949, Princeton Univ. Press, Princeton, N.J.) are used to illustrate the computations and compare these two correlation ratios for a variety of logit models. It is shown that both measures are reasonable measures of the proportion of variation of one or more qualitative dependent variables explainable by any mixture of qualitative and quantitative predictor variables. They can be used with logit, probit, dummy variable regression models, or probability models of some other type.     

Effects of instructions and verbal modeling in a survey interview setting

The effects of two interviewing procedures, Instructions and Verbal Modeling, on the reporting of health information in a survey interview setting were evaluated. The theoretical basis for selecting these procedures was derived from a conceptualization of the cognitive requirements for effective reporting. Two main dependent variables were used: number of health conditions reported, and number of ideas reported. An experimental sample design was employed, with the sample restricted to white females aged 18–64 yr, living in several towns and cities of a large metropolitan area.Results indicate various mediating effects of educational level and subjective health rating; and implications of the study for research on interviewing methodology, as well as on the cognitive and motivational aspects of reporting performance, are discussed.     

Changing perceived importance of religion in mainland China, 1990–2012: An age-period- cohort analysis

The comprehensive social reform and relaxation of religious regulation in mainland China have encouraged scholars to propose a revival thesis of religion, predicting a rising prevalence of religious adherence in the Reform Era. This study extends the revival thesis by focusing attention on people's subjective religiosity, and investigates age, period, and cohort effects on the transition in perceived importance of religion from 1990 to 2012. Capitalizing on the repeated cross-sectional data of the China sample in the World Values Survey, this study shows that (1) The senior population, relative to the younger counterpart, attaches greater importance to religion. (2) The net period effect suggests that Chinese citizens' perceived importance of religion follows an upward trend by the early 2000s, but no significant growth is detected henceforward. (3) The cohorts who experienced the anti-religion Mao's Era in their adolescent life course stage have an evidently lower probability of viewing religion to be important, in relation to the cohorts of the Reform Era. Theoretical implications of the empirical age-period-cohort patterns for the religious economies theory and change of Chinese religious landscape are discussed.     

Religious intermarriage in the United States: trends, patterns, and predictors

The reciprocal connection between religion and family life makes the topic of religious intermarriage of particular importance in the sociology of religion. Spousal influences are key for motivating religious switching and other religious commitments. Religious intermarriage has also been shown to influence a host of other outcomes, including spousal conflict, domestic violence, divorce, and fertility. Using data from the 1973–1994 GSS, I estimate log-multiplicative models examining patterns of association between spouses’ religious affiliations across two broad cohorts. Two-step and FIML Heckman’s selection models are used to determine how education, migration, cohort, and denominational origins influence the probability of intermarriage and the distance of intermarriage if it occurs. Religious intermarriage increases across cohorts, but declines in homogamy are limited to liberal religious groups. Catholics and members of conservative sects are less likely to intermarry compared to others. The relative ordering of distances between religious groups was unchanged across cohorts. Educational attainment increases the likelihood of intermarriage, and marriages in which the woman has more education are more likely to be heterogamous. However, educational factors have no impact on the distance of intermarriage if it occurs. Geographically stable rural Southerners are least likely to intermarry and if they do, choose a more similar spouse.     

农村老年残疾人的养老困境及对策——以山西为例

农村老年残疾人是一个多重弱势群体,自养能力不足、家庭养老功能弱化、社会养老体系不健全。使他们普遍面临经济困顿、生活照料和精神慰藉缺乏等多重困境。随着城市化与老龄化进程的加速,这一群体的养老问题将愈加突出。在推进残疾人社会保障体系和服务保障体系建设中,应该高度重视农村残疾人的养老问题。应从农村实际出发,兼顾当下与长远,强化政府责任,多种措施并举,使他们老有所养,能有尊严地生活。     

The risk of divorce as a barrier to marriage among parents of young children

Using data from the Fragile Families Study, we examine how unmarried parents’ risk of divorce influences their decision to marry. Regression results show that unmarried parents with a high predicted probability of marital dissolution (based on estimates of marital dissolution for a sample of initially married mothers with similar characteristics) had significantly lower odds of marriage to the father of their child even after controlling for individual and relationship characteristics expected to influence marriage transitions. The dissolution propensity we examine also includes a measure of the local divorce climate. As such, our results provide support for the argument that high rates of divorce in the population have led to a fear of divorce among unmarried parents which reduces their probability of marriage.     

居家养老服务的结构困境及破解之道

居家养老服务是社会养老服务体系的重要组成部分,是国家老龄事业发展"十二五"规划的重要内容。目前,居家养老服务仍然面临许多结构性问题,主要体现在服务供给上的主体结构困境、认知结构困境和组织结构困境。本文力求以结构理论为指导,在总结国内一些地方实践经验的基础上,探求破解居家养老服务结构困境的路径和方法,以期建构一套可供推广的居家养老服务供给模式。     

Variations in age-specific homicide death rates: a cohort explanation for charges in the age distribution of homicide deaths

An age-period-cohort characteristic model previously used to explain age-period-specific rates of homicide arrests for those 15 to 49 from 1960 to 1995 is applied to measures of age-period-specific homicide deaths. The extension of this model to the examination of homicide victimization is significant because we are able to test the utility of the model across a longer time span (1930 to 1995) and a wider range of ages (10 to 79) and disaggregated by sex and race (Whites and non-Whites). Although the results indicate that past and recent shifts in age-period-specific rates of homicide deaths are associated with specific characteristics of cohorts, there are some important differences across race and sex groupings in the effects of these characteristics. The effects of the cohort variables examined in our model are independent of age and period, often substantively large, and last throughout the life course. The results are consistent with Durkheimian explanations of lethal violence, hypotheses from victimization theory, and basic tenets of cohort theory.     

Financial satisfaction and perceived income through a demographic lens: Do different race/gender pairs reap different returns to income?

The subjective assessment of personal income, insofar as it reflects or sheds light upon the (potentially different) economic incentive structures facing workers of different demographic groups, has far-reaching implications for public policy and private decision-making alike. This paper explores the impact of personal income on financial satisfaction and on perceived income, focusing on demographic differences across the following groups: white males, black males, white females and black females. The results indicate that different race/gender pairs do respond to income differently. For both financial satisfaction and perceived relative income, white females, black females and black males all have lower returns to personal income than do white males. White males, in other words, appear to reap more “bang for the buck” in terms of both of the outcome variables, even after a host of control variables are introduced. The possibility that social comparison among (racial and gender) ingroups is driving the observed demographic differences is discussed.     

Separating age,period, and cohort effects in white U.S. fertility, 1920–1970

Four models are developed to describe the odds transformation of period- and age-specific fertility rates as products of age, period, and cohort effects. These are applied to data for white U.S. women age 15–44 from 1920 to 1970, with equal weights given to each rate. All models which include age fit subsets of the data extremely well. Per effect, the incorporation of periods improves the fit much more than the incorporation of cohorts. It is shown that first differences are invariant in two-effect models, and second differences are invariant in the three-effect models.     

Age, period, and cohort effects on religious activities and beliefs

Despite the theoretical emphasis on religious decline in modern societies, sociologists remain divided over trends in religious activity and belief that support or refute claims of religious decline. Much of this disagreement stems from the inability to distinguish between period and cohort effects when analyzing repeated cross-sectional survey data. I use the intrinsic estimator, a recently developed method of simultaneously estimating age, period, and cohort effects, to examine changes in Americans’ religious service attendance, prayer, belief in the afterlife, and biblical literalism. Results show that regular service attendance declines, predominantly across cohorts. There are also period- and cohort-based declines in biblical literalism and a cohort-based decline in prayer. Belief in the afterlife is relatively stable across periods and cohorts. These results provide mixed support for theories of religious decline, and they demonstrate the importance of differentiating between period and cohort effects on social change.     

城市老年人主观幸福感的影响因素:豫省例证

通过对开封市六个社区老年人调查数据的统计分析发现,老年人主观幸福感的高低并非取决于诸如性别、年龄、教育、退休前的单位类型等外在的个体特征,而是家庭状况和社区因素。家庭关系越和睦,子女越多,社区服务水平越高,社区内邻里交往越频繁,老年人的主观幸福感越高。     

老龄产业发展的障碍及其扶持政策

近年来,我国老龄产业有了较大的发展,老龄产业存在着潜在消费市场,但总体看来,其发展仍然滞后于人口老龄化和经济发展。在老龄产业发展中存在认识不到位、政策扶持不得力、职能部门条块分割、没有形成合力等问题。应该加大宣传力度,尽快出台相关老龄产业的扶持政策,确定老龄产业发展的优先行业,培育老龄产业市场,以此带动老龄产业的健康发展。     

论人力资本出资的适格性

人文主义公司制度的典型表现形式是,人力资本成为股东的出资,参与公司剩余索取权和剩余控制权的分配。人力资本出资的可行性取决于人力资本具备适格性,人力资本具有出资的有益性、可支配性、债权人保护可能性,符合股东出资的适格条件,具有出资的现实可行性。     

Gender inequalities in the college pipeline

In this paper, we present a comprehensive framework for understanding gender inequality in baccalaureate degree attainment. Our “college pipeline” model addresses two main shortcomings in prior research. First, we examine multiple outcomes and stages in the pipeline that lead to four-year college entry and completion. Second, we examine multiple different pathways that students can pursue in attaining a four-year degree. Our findings indicate that females enjoy a cumulative advantage over males in the pursuit of a baccalaureate degree, but with two important exceptions. First, although females are more likely apply to college at the end of high school, they are also more likely to terminate their schooling in a two-year college than comparable males. Second, females who make an on-time transition into a four-year college experience the greatest advantages over males, and females who delay entering the college pipeline actually do no better than males in attaining a bachelor’s degree.     

Gender and homophily: Differences in male and female association in Blau space

Homophily, the tendency for similar individuals to associate, is one of the most robust findings in social science. Despite this robustness, we have less information about how personal characteristics relate to differences in the strength of homophily. Nor do we know much about the impact of personal characteristics on judgments of relative dissimilarity. The present study compares the strength of age, religious, and educational homophily for male and female non-kin ties using network data from the 1985 General Social Survey. It also compares the patterning of ties among dissimilar alters for both sexes. The results of this exploratory effort indicate that males and females are almost equally homophilous, although religious homophily exerts a stronger influence on females than males. Males and females do, however, differ in their tendency to associate with certain types of dissimilar alters. Education is essentially uniform for both sexes, religious difference is more important for females than males, and those over sixty or under thirty are less different from the middle categories of age for females than for males. The results suggest that males are able to bridge larger areas of social space in their non-kin interpersonal networks and likely accumulate greater social capital as a consequence.     

Ethnoracial patterns of schooling and work among adolescents: Implications for Mexican immigrant incorporation

This paper investigates Mexican immigrant incorporation by examining labor force participation and schooling among Mexican-origin adolescents in the United States. Theoretical perspectives on immigrant incorporation, labor migration-related cultural repertoires and adolescent development considered together imply that studying ethnoracial differences in schooling among adolescents without taking work into account can yield mis-leading pictures of Mexican-origin non-high school completion patterns, thus hampering the assessment of incorporation theories. To avoid this, we analyze Mexican-origin generational differences in the relationship between schooling and workforce participation among adolescents compared to non-Hispanic whites and blacks. Using micro-data from the 2000 US Census, we find that Mexican immigrant boys who are not enrolled in school are more likely to be in the workforce, and conversely that those who are enrolled in school are much less likely to be in the workforce, compared to whites and blacks. Such relative differences in school/work specialization, as predicted, diminish across Mexican-origin generations. Moreover, based on supplementary analyses, we find similar patterns for a cohort of young adults who failed to complete high school during the 1990s. Overall, the results are consistent with the idea that cultural orientations growing out of the nature and experience of Mexican labor migration are important for assessing school enrollment patterns among Mexican-origin youth and for gauging their implications for educational policy and immigrant-group incorporation.     

明清世情小说中女性在两种文化下的审美意蕴和生存价值

女性的生存价值是历代思想家和学家探讨的重要命题之一,也是明清世情小说的重要描写对象,这个小说流派中的女性形象与历代不同,它具有独特的个性,是叛逆性、依附性、矛盾性的化身。通过剖析世情小说年轻女性形象来解读现实社会中的女性生存价值,找到女性生存的最佳方式,这既是对小说的读解,也是对当时社会的读解。