Assisting the status offender

System change has not kept pace with the accumulating evidence that subjecting the status offender to judicial sanctions is both unfair and unhelpful. Principal arguments for change are presented here, as well as the principal arguments of those opposing removal of the status offender from court jurisdiction.     

Third parties and status position: How the characteristics of status systems matter

For organizations, as for individuals, status position governs access to a variety of valued rewards. To uncover the causes of status position, recent research has focused on the relationship between the attributes of individual organizations and their standing in a status hierarchy. Although this research has made valuable contributions to our understanding of both the consequences of status to organizations and the determinants of status, its emphasis on organizational attributes has not addressed how the characteristics of status systems shape the nature and distribution of these positions. Drawing on data from 134 in-depth interviews with law school administrators and faculty, this article investigates how variations in the characteristics of status systems influence status processes. Concentrating on the theoretically underdeveloped role that third parties play in status systems, I examine how a third party change – the emergence and increasing popularity of the U.S. News and World Report’s law school rankings – has had powerful effects on the shape of the status hierarchy of legal education as well as the values that underlie this hierarchy. These changes have, in turn, transformed the landscape of positions that are available to actors, the process by which these positions are allocated among various actors, and the bases upon which this allocation is carried out.     

Women's status and fertility in the Sudan

This paper summarizes the history of women's education in Sudan; data on the relationship between their educational levels and fertility; and data on the relationship between fertility and women's employment. In general, the data point to an inverse relationship between the education of women and fertility. This relationship exists when considering the education of husbands. In terms of employment, women who report no work experience have the highest fertility, those who are self-employed or are family workers have an intermediate level of fertility, while those women who work for others have the lowest level of fertility. Education appears to be more closely associated with fertility than employment. The author concludes that as the status of women shifts to perceptions based on education and gainful employment, fertility will decline. However, in the Sudan, strong traditional values, based on women's roles related to childbearing and childrearing, will continue to sustain a relatively high fertility rate. (author's)     

Effects of sexually transmitted infection status, relationship status, and disclosure status on sexual self-concept

Research has indicated that having a sexually transmitted infection (STI) such as genital herpes and genital human papilloma virus (HPV) can have a negative impact on an individual's sexuality. The current study was designed to evaluate the effect of STI status, relationship status, and disclosure status on various dimensions of sexual self-concept. A questionnaire that evaluated the above variables was completed by 117 individuals with genital herpes, 82 individuals with HPV, and 75 individuals with no STI. The results demonstrated that having herpes or HPV had a significant negative impact on aspects of sexual self-concept. It does not appear that an individual's relationship status is a factor associated with the impact of having an STI on the sexual self-concept. Respondents who had disclosed their STI to their partners, however, had significantly more positive feelings about aspects of their sexual self-concept than those who had not disclosed their STI to their partners. The implications of these research findings for health practitioners are discussed.     

Migration and women's status: the Jordan case

This study examines whether women's improved status is dependent upon fulfillment of husbands' roles after their departure and the degree of success in economic participation. The sample includes 518 households with out-migrant husbands (HOMH) and 532 households with resident spouses (HRS). HRS were located in the same cluster as HOMH. The samples are not nationally representative. HOMH are distinctive in their having higher educational levels. A larger percentage of migrant wives perform household tasks by themselves. Wives of migrant husbands, who worked in the labor force, have a greater burden of work after departure. 52% of migrant wives decreased the number of social visits to family and friends. Migrant households have fewer relatives and parents living in the household. 40% report improvement in spousal relations and 41% report no change. 19-21% report that the wife's relations with relatives improved. Findings contradict conclusions by Kamiar and Isamil. The proportion of children attending school was higher among HOMH. 13% of married women in HOMH and 7% of married women in HRS participate in the labor force. After controlling for educational levels, findings indicate that labor force activity is still greater among migrant wives. Almost 50% join the labor force after their husband's departure. None work in agriculture. Labor force participation rates remain high during the first 15 years of migration. Participation declines after 15 years and as husbands reach age 40. Wives view their husbands' migration as beneficial.     

State ideology and the status of Iranian war widows

Imbedded in widowhood are emotional loss and change in personal life. For women, depending on social constructions of gender relations, widowhood can also lead to identity change, role adjustment and change in social status. Socio-economic and emotional supports rendered by family, community and society at large can highly impact widows in coping with change and making adjustments. These changes and the corresponding societal supports find new dimensions for ‘war widows’. The political nature of their widowhood may provide them with some benefits not enjoyed by non-war widows. As a token of public gratitude, political regimes compensate war widows and their children for their losses. Some political regimes weave political ideology into their compensatory programs, and through these programs they simultaneously raise widows' self-sufficiency and control their lives and thoughts. The specific case of the Islamic Republic of Iran will be examined here.     

Marriage and the economic status of women with children

Marriage is positively correlated with income, and women with children are much less likely to be in poverty if they are married. Selection into marriage makes it difficult to assess whether these correlations represent a causal effect of marriage. One instrument for marriage proposed in past research is the gender of a woman’s first child. We find that women who have a boy first are about 0.33 percentage points more likely to be married at any point in time. This effect operates through both increasing the probability that unmarried mothers marry the child’s father and reducing the probability of divorce. We also find that women whose first child is a boy experience higher levels of family income and are less likely to receive welfare income, be below the poverty line, and receive food stamps. Estimates using child gender as an instrumental variable for marriage suggest that marriage plays a large causal role in improving the economic well-being of women with children and that these effects are largest among women at the lower end of the income distribution.     

On defining at-risk status

You can include many in the at-risk group at the expense of including many not at-risk, or include few at the expense of missing many truly at-risk. The paper discusses the use of prevalence data and the relative costs of these two possibilities to help find the best way to separate at-risk and not-at-risk groups. The implications of the data being distributed normally are discussed, and several examples, including one with a nonnormal distribution, are given.     

Socioeconomic status and the concentric zonal structure of Canadian cities

La plupart des rechercheurs qui étudient la structure des régions metropolitaines canadiennes ont utilisé les données du recensement du Canada qui ont été groupées en secteurs de recensement. Dans cette recherche un type alternatif de données est utilisé, qui vient ?un sondage qui donne les renseignements sur les répondants individuels. Les comparaisons sont faites des caractéristiques des répondants qui demeurent au centre-ville, les plus vieux faubourgs et les nouveaux faubourgs. Comme dans la recherche précédente, on trouve que le statut socio-économique augmente avec la distance du zone central de la ville. Les effets sont moins forts que ceux que ?on trouve dans les différents stages de la vie et plus forts que ceux de ?ethnie ou du lieu de naissance. Le niveau de revenu des répondants démontre un rapport plus marqué que ?autres mesures de statut socio-économique, de profession et ?éducation. Tous les liens, pourtant, sont très modestes en comparaison avec ceux que ?on trouve en analysant les données des secteurs de recensement. Most researchers studying the structure of Canadian metropolitan areas have used data from the Census of Canada which has been grouped into Census tracts. In this research an alternative type of data is used from a large national survey which provides information on individual respondents. Comparisons are made of the characteristics of respondents living in the central city, the older suburbs and the new suburbs. As in earlier research, socioeconomic status is found to increase with distance from the city core. The pattern is less strong than that found for life cycle stage, and stronger than that for ethnicity or birthplace. The income level of the respondents shows a stronger relationship than the other measures of socioeconomic status, occupation and education. All the retionships, however, are found to be extremely modest, in contrast to those found in analysis of the census tract data.     

The nature of work and the stress of higher status

Are occupational and work conditions associated with work-to-home conflict? If so, do those associations vary by gender? Among a sample of adults in Toronto, Canada, we found that men and women in higher-status occupations reported higher levels of work-to-home conflict than workers in lower-status jobs. In addition, we observed higher levels of work-to-home conflict among workers who are self-employed and among those with more job authority, demands, involvement, and longer hours. The only significant gender-contingent effect was found for nonroutine work, which is associated positively with work-to-home conflict among men but not women. Higher levels of job demands, involvement, and hours among individuals in higher-status occupations significantly contribute to occupation-based differences in work-to-home conflict. Moreover, despite some overlap, these work conditions have largely independent associations with work-to-home conflict. Results generally support the "stress of higher status " hypothesis among both women and men. Although higher-status positions yield many rewards, such positions are not impervious to inter-role stress, and this stress may offset those rewards.     

The economic status of union workers in the United States

Although American labor unions evolved out of poverty, today’s typical union worker is relatively affluent. Current Population Survey data show that average annual household earnings in 2002 for full-time union workers were nearly $79,000, nearly double the median of all households (including ones with non-workers), and more than for nonunion worker households. While relatively few union workers are truly “poor,” a larger proportion (over one-third for members of teachers’ unions) comes from households with over $100,000 in annual income. A puzzle: why do union members tend to support liberal policies and politicians far more than their relative affluence would predict? Perhaps it partly reflects rent-seeking behavior.