Random alliance networks

The morphological properties of kinship and marriage alliance networks, such as circuits, are typically considered as indicators of sociological phenomena — yet, they may also be partly coincidental. To assert the contribution of chance to these morphological features, we develop a standardized method where empirical alliance networks are compared with a random baseline. We apply our framework to a variety of empirical cases and show that some corpuses are remarkably well reconstructed by our random model, while others still feature significant divergencies which may be partly connected to field-based experience. On the whole, our approach may be used to scrutinize the matrimonial role of social groups as asserted by native or ethnological theory.     

Die Verfügbarkeit partnerschaftlich gebundener Akteure für den Partnermarkt

Drawing on data from the German Family Survey 2000, the paper analyses the availability of persons already committed in an intimate relationship for the marriage market on the background of family economics and exchange theory. The probability of separation and immediately getting involved in a Availability varies with some easily observable traits: duration of relationship, cohabitation and marital status, age of partners, sex and — for female actors — the age of the youngest child. The connection of these traits to the commitment in the current relationship is in most cases very obvious and common sense. Thus the traits may be interpreted as indicators of availability by other actors on the marriage market. In contrast to usual assumptions, unmarried persons are available for the marriage market only to a rather small extent if they cohabit with or without a shared household. Married persons are available for the marriage market up to a small, but measureable extent, too.     

THE ECONOMICS OF FAMILY FORMATION*

In this article an economic model of the determinants of first marriage is formulated and then empirically tested. The model incorporates household production theory and search theory in order to explain the incentives to marry and the determinants of the age at first marriage. Age at first marriage is viewed as depending on the determinants of entry into the marriage market and the duration of search for a spouse. Empirical results from the 1967 Survey of Economic Opportunity show a negative effect of male wages and a positive effect of female wages on own age at marriage. Additionally, education and urbanization are found to have positive effects and number of children a negative effect.     

Father,Son, Wife,Husband: Philanthropy as Exchange and Balance

This essay attempts to use exchange and balance theories to explain philanthropy. For exchange, such theoretical components as attractions or rewards, costs, barriers and alternatives are invoked to make sense of the biography of a Chinese philanthropist in Hong Kong who donated two schools to remember his father and wife. The balance theory was also used, which argues that people do not seek to maximize their pleasure or to minimize their pain, but to balance, advancing one purpose or concern without neglecting the other—to enhance their well-being and to act morally. The essay argues that the case study method is most able to handle complex behaviour and complex lives. It concludes with a plea for more active use of social theory in research on philanthropy as moral and economic behavior embedded in the social contexts of family, marriage and community.     

Women's Economic Standing,Marriage Timing,and Cross‐National Contexts of Gender

Proponents of the theory of specialization and exchange hypothesize that in any national context, women's higher economic standing will decrease their chance of marriage. Some researchers suggest, however, that only in industrialized countries with a high degree of role differentiation by gender does the inverse relationship between women's economic standing and the chance of marriage exist. To evaluate contrasting cross‐national predictions, I test with longitudinal data and standardized methods whether the inverse relationship exists in 3 similarly affluent industrialized countries that vary in their degree of role differentiation by gender: the United States, Japan (a context more differentiated by gender than the United States), and Sweden (a context less differentiated by gender than the United States). Contrary to the prediction that develops out of the theory of specialization and exchange, results indicate that women's higher levels of income discourage first marriage formation in Japan, but encourage it in the United States and Sweden.     

A consumer theory with competitive markets for work in marriage

The theory presented here aims at explaining individual consumer behavior inside marriage and prior to marriage. It is a New Home Economics (NHE) model in the sense that it assumes the existence of household production. It is an intra-household bargaining model in the sense that it assumes that husbands and wives typically have different economic interests with respect to marriage, and they try to negotiate arrangements that suit them best. The more resources they have, the more they may obtain results that favor them rather than their spouse. It is a market theory similar to standard labor market theory. This theory throws light on gender differences in demand for commercial goods that have home-produced substitutes. This theory leads to an explanation why women are charged more for dry-cleaning. The theory can also explain differences in demand for different products. Predictions include that of a sex ratio effect on consumption. For example, it is predicted that in countries with more emigration of men than women, women will be expected to make higher contributions to newly weds’ costs of housing. It is also predicted that there will be compensating differentials in marriage. For instance, women married to considerably older men are expected to have relatively more control over the use the couple’s income than women married to men who are close to their own age. In contrast to bargaining theory, the insights presented here apply to both married individuals and to those who anticipate being married in the future.     

A DIRECT TEST OF THE EFFICIENT MARRIAGE MARKET HYPOTHESIS

This paper takes Becker's efficient marriage market hypothesis at face value, and directly confronts it with data from Hong Kong. The theory of optimal assignment is used to develop an empirical model of spouse selection, which resembles a Tobit model. This model can address positive or negative assortative matching as well as marginal product pricing in marriage markets. We also use a computer algorithm to solve the assignment problem for imputed marital output. The degree to which the actual pairing of husbands and wives corresponds to the optimal pairing provides a goodness-of-fit test of the efficient marriage market hypothesis. ( JEL C51, C61, C78, J12)     

Marital Status and Depressive Symptoms

Marital status differences in depressive symptoms are examined in a random sample of 559 Anglos, 403 Blacks, and 822 Mexican American adults. Findings were generally consistent with a "crisis" model, with highest levels of depression observed among the separated, with lower distress levels among the divorced, although, marital differences remained significant after controls only among Anglo males. Differences were negligible among Blacks and Mexican Americans and lower levels of distress were found among never married than married Black females. Further analyses indicated that observed racial/ethnic differences can be partially explained by differences between groups in length of time since separation/divorce and likelihood of previous marriage, though significantly higher levels of depression and marital strain among married Black females relative to Anglo and Mexican American females-even among those in their first marriage-suggests differences between groups in the relative rewards or costs of marriage. These preliminary analyses underscore the need to examine alternative explanations of racial/ethnic and marital status differences in distress in a larger, prospective data base.     

Gambling,Exchange Systems,and Moralities

History and ethnography show us that, across societies of the past and present, gambling varies considerably with respect to its organization, social meanings, and how it is regarded in moral terms. This paper presents a basic scheme for analyzing the relationship between gambling and society. A theoretical starting point is that reciprocity is fundamental to social and economic systems. An anthropological theory of exchange systems makes a broad distinction between a structural dimension (generalized versus balanced reciprocity) and a normative dimension (from voluntary to involuntary). A model of four basic forms of reciprocity, each having a characteristic exchange mode and morality, can thus be constructed. Gambling is here understood as an exchange system embedded in the reciprocal orders of society and having a necessary relationship to these; it can take on the characteristics of such an order or it can be regarded as conflicting with it. Much of the variation in the form and morality of gambling therefore emerges as systematic and explainable by a theory of forms of reciprocal exchange.     

TRANSITION TO DIVORCE:

This study integrates social exchange theory and the literature on stressful life events into a life-course approach to women's marital duration. We hypothesize that circumstances facilitating a successful transition into marriage have a cumulative effect, enhancing the likelihood of increased marital duration. By contrast, factors easing the transition to divorce have a negative impact on marital duration. We draw on a sample of 313 wives and mothers in an upstate New York community interviewed in 1956 and reinterviewed thirty years later. We find that structural factors (marital duration and previous marriage) and factors that increase women's options outside of marriage, such as self-esteem and returning to school, are more important than attitudinal factors in hastening the transition to divorce. Factors that ease the transition to marriage (similarity in religious beliefs and educational level) may not necessarily affects its duration.     

The Substitution Hypothesis: The Impact of Premarital Liaisons and Human Capital on Marital Timing

Nonmarital romantic and sexual relationships occur concurrently with the human capital acquisition process and contribute to delaying or forgoing marriage. Event history analysis is used to model the marital hazard rate of 341 White women born between 1960 and 1963 in a Western metropolitan area. In addition to family background, adolescent characteristics, and employment and educational histories, the structure of the women's premarital liaisons is shown to play an important role in the timing of first marriage. The greater a woman's involvement in nonmarital romantic and sexual activity, the less likely she is to be married by age 27–30. Human capital characteristics and the dynamics of relationship histories operate independently to explain marital timing. This supports the theory that women substitute premarital liaisons for marriage early in the adult life course. However, there is no evidence that highly educated women, or those who are students, are more or less likely to do so than others.     

A noncooperative marriage model with remarriage

I propose a noncooperative marriage model that explicitly accommodates the possibility of endogenous exit and remarriage, and where marriages are of variable quality. The fundamental innovation is that the remarriage decision is infinitely repeated and the problem is fully stationary, reflecting the contemporary reality in marriage markets. I show that cooperative behavior within marriage is possible in subgame perfect equilibrium both in a setting where marriage quality is independently drawn and in a setting with persistent spouse-specific characteristics and an evolving marriage market quality. I show that spouses engage in cooperative behavior most easily when they have intermediate patience levels, which is a non-standard but intuitive game theoretic result in this setting. This model also contributes to the game theory literature by proposing another avenue for sustained cooperation in a repeated prisoner’s dilemma with endogenous exit: randomness in payoff streams.     

Relationship Dynamics and Healthy Exchange across the Family Life Cycle: Implications for Practice

The capacity to form and develop healthy interpersonal relationships with others is fundamental for human development. In the realm of practice, the theory of social exchange is among the most prominent conceptual frameworks for examining and understanding human behaviors and relationship dynamics. While interpersonal bonds may take several forms across the family life cycle, this article addresses how healthy social exchange can provide a basis for establishing a mutually fulfilling alliance by examining three different types of interpersonal relationships: dating relationships, marital relationships, and parent–child co-residential relationships. Interventions aimed at marriage and family therapists as well as social work practitioners working with couples and families facing relationship troubles are discussed.     

Analysis of contested reports in exchange networks based on actors’ credibility

Exchanges of information, goods, and services are an essential part of human relations. However, a significant number of reported exchange ties tend to be contested: the reports of the sender and the receiver in an exchange do not concur with each other. To accurately understand the exchange ties between actors and the properties of the associated exchange networks, it is important to address such disagreement. Common practices either eliminate the contested reports or symmetrize them. Neither of them is ideal, as both underuse valuable information in the reports. In this paper, we propose new methods for handling contested exchange ties. The key idea is to measure actors’ credibility based on their asymmetric connections. For example, an actor is less credible the more contested ties she or he has. Using the credibility scores thus calculated, we develop two methods for handling contested ties. The first method is deterministic: it takes the report of the more credible actor as a reflection of the true exchange status between two actors. The second method is stochastic: it assumes the true exchange status between two actors is a random draw from their reports with probabilities proportional to their credibility. We illustrate the above methods by analyzing contested reports in cigarette exchange networks among middle school students in China and social and economic exchange networks among rural households in South Africa. The results show that our methods provide more reasonable corrections to contested reports than previous methods.     

Sex Ratio Effects on Marital Formation and Dissolution, 1980–2000

Although marriage market characteristics are often used to explain in–out marriage transitions, Guttentag and Secord's sex ratio thesis provides a unique theoretical framework by which to elucidate marriage and divorce. The theory emphasizes the availability of “opposite” sex partners as an important factor, but hypothesized outcomes assume a gendered marriage market whereby males are more socioeconomically powerful than females. Using geographically standardized census tract data (N = 65,443), I examine the theory empirically across three decennial time points. After establishing that males, on average, hold a disproportionate amount of socioeconomic power, I conduct cross‐sectional regression analyses of marriage and divorce from 1980 to 2000. Results partially support the theory. While female marriage is consistently related to sex ratios as expected, sex ratios influence male marriage as expected only in some time periods and female and male divorce do not operate as expected in any time point. The findings imply that marriage entry and dissolution have distinctive causal mechanisms, suggesting the need for further theorization and research.     

The Role of Trust in Low‐Income Mothers' Intimate Unions

Recent scholarship concerning low rates of marriage among low‐income mothers emphasizes generalized gender distrust as a major impediment in forming sustainable intimate unions. Guided by symbolic interaction theory and longitudinal ethnographic data on 256 low‐income mothers from the Three‐City Study, we argue that generalized gender distrust may not be as influential in shaping mothers' unions as some researchers suggest. Grounded theory analysis revealed that 96% of the mothers voiced a general distrust of men, yet that distrust did not deter them from involvement in intimate unions. Rather, the pivotal ways mothers enacted trust in their partners were demonstrated by 4 emergent forms of interpersonal trust that we labeled as suspended, compartmentalized, misplaced, and integrated. Implications for future research are discussed.     

Withdrawing Divorce Petitions:

Social exchange theory is often used to explain why couples marry and divorce, but there are few attempts to test the theory. In this paper we test the empirical utility of an exchange model for predicting divorce or withdrawel of divorce petitions. The model used considers material, symbolic, and affectional rewards, costs and alternative attractions for relationships. Two data sets are used to test the model. The first is court records data for those who withdrew their petitions versus those who divorced. The second is interviews of suburban Cleveland, Ohio men and women who filed for divorce but subsequently withdrew their divorce petitions. Discriminant function analyses indicate that an exchange model can predict divorce versus petition withdrawel. Implications for therapeutic practice are discussed.     

Three Likelihood-Based Methods For Mean and Covariance Structure Analysis With Nonnormal Missing Data

Survey and longitudinal studies in the social and behavioral sciences generally contain missing data. Mean and covariance structure models play an important role in analyzing such data. Two promising methods for dealing with missing data are a direct maximum-likelihood and a two-stage approach based on the unstructured mean and covariance estimates obtained by the EM-algorithm. Typical assumptions under these two methods are ignorable nonresponse and normality of data. However, data sets in social and behavioral sciences are seldom normal, and experience with these procedures indicates that normal theory based methods for nonnormal data very often lead to incorrect model evaluations. By dropping the normal distribution assumption, we develop more accurate procedures for model inference. Based on the theory of generalized estimating equations, a way to obtain consistent standard errors of the two-stage estimates is given. The asymptotic efficiencies of different estimators are compared under various assumptions. We also propose a minimum chi-square approach and show that the estimator obtained by this approach is asymptotically at least as efficient as the two likelihood-based estimators for either normal or nonnormal data. The major contribution of this paper is that for each estimator, we give a test statistic whose asymptotic distribution is chi-square as long as the underlying sampling distribution enjoys finite fourth-order moments. We also give a characterization for each of the two likelihood ratio test statistics when the underlying distribution is nonnormal. Modifications to the likelihood ratio statistics are also given. Our working assumption is that the missing data mechanism is missing completely at random. Examples and Monte Carlo studies indicate that, for commonly encountered nonnormal distributions, the procedures developed in this paper are quite reliable even for samples with missing data that are missing at random.     

In guten wie in schlechten Tagen?

In this contribution the model of frame-selection as an approach to integrate “normative” and “rational” action is being used for the explanation of divorce, operationalized and empirically tested with data of the Mannheim Divorce Study. Not only the evident effect of the “framing” of marriage at the beginning on the subsequent stability of marriage is shown, even after introducing control variables, but also a non-trivial interaction that is predicted by the model and that can be regarded as a “hard” test of it, namely the interaction of the framing of marriage with the belonging to a certain marriage cohort. At the same time this contribution is also discussing possibilities and advantages of a “general” theory of action for the social sciences in general.     

STOCK RETURNS, ASYMMETRIC VOLATILITY, RISK AVERSION, AND BUSINESS CYCLE: SOME NEW EVIDENCE

We study how three interrelated phenomena—excess stock returns and risk relation, risk aversion, and asymmetric volatility movement—change over business cycles. Using an asymmetric generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity in mean model and a Markov switching model, we find that excess stock return increases and asymmetric volatility movement is weakened during boom periods. This suggests that investors become more risk-averse during boom periods (i.e., procyclical risk aversion), which we confirm using a calibration of a simple equilibrium model . ( JEL C32, E32, G12)