Effects of family background on social autonomy at midlife

Social autonomy is the tendency to assert one’s opinion in the face of opposition. This paper investigates the social roots of that tendency by focusing on the long-term effects of childhood family background on midlife social autonomy. The effects of two aspects of family background are investigated—socioeconomic background and childhood household composition. Family background variables in these categories have small yet theoretically and statistically significant effects on midlife social autonomy. Parental education and occupation are associated with midlife social autonomy among both men and women. Early-life household composition variables and parental income are associated with social autonomy only among women. Adult status variables generally do not mediate the effects of of the family background variables on midlife social autonomy. This suggests that the long-term effects of family background on social autonomy are primarily due to early life socialization. Gender-specific socialization processes are discussed as explanations for these effects.     

Inequality in the family: The institutional aspects of women’s earning contribution

This paper examines the effect of employment-supportive policies and arrangements on women’s economic contribution to their family. Using samples of working-age couples in 21 countries we employ multilevel modeling to separate the effects of household and country-level variables on earnings. We distinguish two types of relevant contextual factors: those that support women’s employment while preserving their domestic roles and those that potentially reduce intra-family economic inequalities by allowing women to allocate more of their time to paid employment. The findings suggest that all employment-supportive policies and arrangements increase women’s relative contribution to the household income through their effect on female labor force participation. Among dual-earner families, however, higher rates of childcare facilities increase women’s contribution, while long maternity leave and part-time employment decrease it. These tendencies are more pronounced among mothers.     

Revisiting the Bott thesis on kin networks and marriage

Studying families in post-war London, Elizabeth Bott hypothesized that tight-knit kinship networks fostered gender segregated, rather than joint, conjugal role-relationships for husband and wife. Addressing this hypothesis with 2001 International Social Survey Program for 29 countries, this paper considers one aspect of joint role-relationships - whether married women prefer to turn to their husband, as opposed to kin, for household help and emotional support. Women with tight-knit kin who fill multiple functions in their lives are less likely to prefer to rely on husbands. Residential mobility is associated with greater reliance on the spouse, but there is no indication that the importance of kinship is diminished when mobility is controlled.     

社会资本、村务管理对农民收入影响的实证分析——基于村级数据的研究

文章分析了社会资本及村务管理对农民收入的影响机制。通过利用了6省的村级数据,构建了回归模型,定量分析了社会资本、村务管理对农民收入的影响。实证结果显示,社会资本变量对农民收入产生了正的显著影响。村务管理变量中,县乡政府干预村务管理的变量对农民收入产生了负的显著影响,村民接受技术培训人数变量却未对农民收入产生显著影响。     

Gender Inequality and Economic Growth in Rural China

This article joins the debate over the effect of market-driven economic development on women's work opportunities and household gender inequalities. It assesses women's opportunities for off-farm employment, the relative contributions of female off-farm workers to household income, and the distribution of power in families whose male members have left for off-farm jobs, leaving women behind in agricultural work. We find that women are not uniformly excluded from opportunities for off-farm employment and that economic development does not uniformly increase gender inequalities within Chinese households. Although men are more likely than women to obtain off-farm employment in China, women's opportunities for off-farm work improve significantly when the coexistence of local and regional marketization creates a shortage of male workers and compels employers to hire women. The relative size of contributions to household income for male and female nonfarm workers also narrows incrementally with increased marketization. In addition, women who are left in agricultural work are more likely to become heads of household, a position which brings greater household decision-making power to female family members.     

Income effects on living arrangements: Differences between male and female householders

This study analyzes the effects of income on the decision to marry, live alone, or share housing with unrelated individuals. It was found that the effects of income on household formation differed for male and female householders. A positive relation between the income of male householders and the probability of marriage was found. This positive relation was visible for the female householders only for the youngest group. It was also observed that householders tend to choose housemates with incomes similar to their own.     

Reevaluating the uses of status: The case of earnings determination

Status and prestige variables and measures have been central to the sociological study of individual variations in income and other dependent variables for at least 2 decades. Yet theoretical and methodological rationales for the use of such variables in the explanation of income are problematic. This conclusion, along with some similar conclusions about other uses of status and prestige variables and measures, were reached after a review of Weberian, functionalist, and other prominent discussions of the uses of status/prestige in theory and research on income. It is suggested that an emphasis upon structural attributes of jobs is more promising than a continued emphasis upon evaluatory, status/prestige conceptions of jobs for effective theorizing about income determination. A quantitative analysis of earnings shows that income effects of a common measure of socio-economic status disappear in the context of a rudimentary structural model of income. It is concluded that social scientists should move on to use more varied attributes of jobs and exercise more caution in the use of status and prestige variables.     

Taxation and the value of nonmarket time

In this study, the value of nonmarket time is estimated for American families using the opportunity cost approach whereby the market wage is taken as a measure of the value of time and used to impute nonmarket income to each household. In cases where the market wage is not observed, a new estimation technique is used to obtain consistent estimates of the wage. It is shown that the nonmarket income of families increases with family money income and family size, but decreases with age and the number of job holders in the family. The implications for taxation are discussed.     

Analyzing social processes: Life tables and proportional hazards models

A number of techniques useful in describing and modeling social processes are detailed. Emphasis is placed on the analysis of changes in categorical variables as they occur in continuous time. The procedures considered are mainly non-parametric, although parametric alternatives do exist when the appropriate distributional assumptions are met. Specifically, life tables and proportional hazards models are discussed and illustrated through an analysis of first live birth intervals for a sample of white American women. The generality of proportional hazards models is outlined by considering extensions of the basic model to include competing risks, time-dependent covariates, and repeatable events.     

How different are the adult children of parents who have same-sex relationships? Findings from the New Family Structures Study

The New Family Structures Study (NFSS) is a social-science data-collection project that fielded a survey to a large, random sample of American young adults (ages 18-39) who were raised in different types of family arrangements. In this debut article of the NFSS, I compare how the young-adult children of a parent who has had a same-sex romantic relationship fare on 40 different social, emotional, and relational outcome variables when compared with six other family-of-origin types. The results reveal numerous, consistent differences, especially between the children of women who have had a lesbian relationship and those with still-married (heterosexual) biological parents. The results are typically robust in multivariate contexts as well, suggesting far greater diversity in lesbian-parent household experiences than convenience-sample studies of lesbian families have revealed. The NFSS proves to be an illuminating, versatile dataset that can assist family scholars in understanding the long reach of family structure and transitions.     

Specialization and happiness in marriage: A U.S.–Japan comparison

This paper examines the relationship between specialization and happiness in marriage in the U.S. and Japan. Our findings, based on the General Social Surveys in the U.S. and Japan, indicate both similarities and differences in the determinants of marital happiness in the two countries. In the U.S., the findings are mixed. Women’s reported marital happiness in the U.S. is more likely to follow the predictions of the bargaining model where their happiness is determined by their own income. Men’s marital happiness in the U.S. follows the predictions of the specialization model; they are happier if their wives are not working or, alternatively, if they are financially dependent on their wives. In Japan, we find support for the specialization model, particularly in the case of women; they are happier if they are specialized in the household and they have a higher household income. Our research highlights how marital quality is affected by the institutional context and the normative environment.     

城乡差距:衡量标准与成因分析

改革开放以来,我国城乡居民在收入水平提高的同时,其收入差距也明显扩大。文章采用城乡居民收入、消费以及恩格尔系数等数据历史地考察城乡居民收入水平、消费水平及消费结构的差异,对我国居民收入差异的现状、原因及对策作出分析,认为主要是户籍制度、土地制度等深层体制原因导致了城乡收入差异。     

中国城镇居民储蓄率的影响因素研究

本文使用2006年中国综合社会调查(CGSS2006)的微观数据,在综合考虑生命周期-持久收入假说(LC-PIH)和预防性储蓄理论的基础上,对城镇居民储蓄率的影响因素进行了实证研究.主要得出以下结论:(1)持久收入、收入的不确定性与城镇居民储蓄率之间存在着显著的正相关关系,并且收入差距的上升将会导致城镇居民总体储蓄率的上升;(2)与LC-PIH不同,中国城镇居民储蓄率显示出U型的生命周期特征,在考虑了家庭的教育、医疗支出以后,这一特征表现得更加显著;(3)家庭的人口年龄构成对于储蓄率产生了显著的影响;(4)城镇居民的住房财富水平与其储蓄率之间基本没有显著关系,但户主的政治面貌、受教育程度、性别对城镇居民储蓄率存在一定的影响.     

Household migration and the labor market position of married women

The present paper conceptualizes labor force participation among U.S. wives as both a determinant and consequence of household migration. A theoretical justification is provided for decomposing these relationships by occupational position of the wife. Applying log-linear models to data from the 1970 One-in-a-Thousand Public Use Sample, we corroborate previous research in that, on the average, the likelihood of interstate migration between 1965 and 1970 was greatest among families in which the wife was not employed prior to the move. However, among employed wives, those classified as professionals or managers were also found to accentuate the probability of household migration, particularly if the husband was not employed in 1965. The implication is that all types of employment by the wife need not limit family mobility as previous studies have suggested. Although migration was found to have a disrupting effect on the continuity of employment among most wives, this effect was most in evidence among wives employed in blue collar occupations. The data suggest the need for a careful reappraisal of traditional economic notions of migration, particularly as they apply to married women.     

Buffering income loss due to unemployment: Family and welfare state influences on income after job loss in the United States and western Germany

This article analyzes how the family and the welfare state influence household income trajectories after job loss in the United States and in western Germany. Drawing on panel data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) and the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP), I study the income buffering effects of the family and the welfare state in the short an in the long run after job loss. I demonstrate that household income trajectories after job loss in the two countries are similar for couple households. However, men in the United States rely relatively more on family resources to overcome income loss, whereas German men’s incomes are secured mostly by the welfare state. Women’s unemployment in both countries is mainly buffered by their partners’ higher earnings. Because single households have no access to family support, they face much higher losses in the United States than in Germany. I also show that the more generous German welfare state triggers less private self-help in the form of increased labor force participation on the part of women when their partners lose their jobs. Over time, the family has become more important in buffering incomes after job loss in the United States which smoothed men’s and roughened women’s income trajectories in couple households. In Germany, worsening re-employment chances increased income losses in the long run after job loss.     

Gender,justice and work: A distributive approach to perceptions of housework fairness

Most women and men report that the division of domestic labor in their household is fair, despite women undertaking approximately seventy percent of housework. This raises questions about how fairness is evaluated within partnerships. We explore how parenthood and relationship transitions affect perceptions of housework fairness using panel data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey and panel regression models. Our results indicate that net of actual housework divisions, socio-demographic factors, time availability and relative resources, the transition to parenthood increases women’s perceptions of housework fairness immediately following the birth of a child, but decreases them in the long run. Relationship transitions have no independent effects. Our findings suggest that parenthood transitions are associated with changes in women’s identity, cognitive evaluations of fairness and feelings of entitlement, as indicated by distributive justice 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.     

Kin connection: kin involvement while growing up and marriage in adulthood

Although previous research demonstrates the importance of the availability of marriageable men, earnings, and employment stability for racial differences in marriage, it also suggests that other factors likely contribute to this variation. This study investigates a new factor that might help to explain racial variation in marriage, the kinship group. To explore this possible connection, we examine the influence of parental kin involvement experienced during childhood and adolescence on marriage in adulthood using all three waves of the National Survey of Families and Households. While few of the measures of kin ties have significant effects on marriage, some measures were significantly related and the patterns of associations sometimes varied by race.     

A dynamic macro social indicator model of changes in marriage, family, and population in the United States: 1947–1974

This paper presents an integrated 21-equation model of how marriage, family, and population conditions, as indexed by macro social indicators, affect each other and are affected by other social, demographic, and economic forces. An opportunity structures theoretical paradigm is applied to the specification of dynamic structural equations for determining changes (both trends and cyclical fluctuations) in marriage formation and dissolution, family and household composition, fertility, mortality, population growth, and population distribution. The equations are estimated on annual national data for the United States during the post-World War II years 1947 to 1972, and then they are used to make conditional forecasts of the values of some of the endogenous variables for 1973 and 1974. It is found that the equations fit the observed data well, lack demonstrable autocorrelation of disturbances, and forecast the 1973 and 1974 values usually with less than 2% error. Strategies are sketched for further refining some of the equations, and it is suggested that this model should be integrated into a larger societal model in order to estimate some of the effects of changes in demographic phenomena on other social conditions.