The Role of Corporations in the 1980 U.S. Congressional Elections*

The issues of whether and how corporate campaign donations affect the operation of American elections have recently become the focus of public and scholarly debate. Using Federal Election Commission campaign finance data, this analysis identifies a link betwren contributions from business PACs and candidate success in the 1980 U.S. congressional elections. Findings also confirm an association between corporate support and legislative voting for candidates re-elected in 1980. Candidates heavily supported by business PACs during the campaign did better at the polls and were more likely to vote conservatively if elected than those not so strongly endorsed by economic interests. Results are discussed in terms of various theories of the state as well as their relevance to potential election finance reforms.     

Resurgent Irish immigration to the U.S. in the 1980s and early 1990s: a socio-demographic profile

Irish immigration to the US has been motivated traditionally by a lack of employment opportunities at home. With the passage of the US Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, however, Irish immigrants were no longer explicitly favoured. Family reunification became the primary path of entry, which worked against the Irish who had lost their immediate generational link with US residents.
During the severe Irish recession of 1980–85 a resurgence in Irish outflows resulted in a large undocumented Irish population in the US. Most of this population was later legalized as a result of special legislation that targeted the Irish. There have been concerns in Ireland that the outflow in the 1980s, unlike prior flows, included a high proportion of skilled persons, leading some to characterize the outflow as a "new wave".
This article uses US immigration data to assess how the occupational characteristics of recent Irish immigrants compare with prior immigrant cohorts and also examines how Irish immigrants are incorporated into the US economy.
Recent Irish immigrants to the US spanned the occupational spectrum: accountants, engineers, nurses and other professionals found a booming job market in the most advanced sectors of the US economy, while less skilled immigrants found jobs in the informal economy. While the number of entering Irish professionals increased, flows of the less skilled increased even more dramatically, resulting in an overall decline in the occupational selectivity of Irish immigrants.
The 1980–85 Irish recession has been followed by robust growth for more than a decade. Ireland is now experiencing a net inflow of persons, including many Irish professionals returning from the US. However, Ireland continues to experience a net outflow of the young and less skilled which may once again result in a large undocumented Irish presence in the US.     

Performance evaluations of for‐profit and nonprofit U.S. hospitals since 1980

This synthesis of studies examines whether the published literature shows an evidence‐based consensus on performance differences between private for‐profit and nonprofit hospitals in the United States since 1980. The author systematically and comprehensively surveyed peer‐reviewed publications to clarify this question. The author's second objective was to learn what proportion of all research assessing for‐profit and nonprofit health care providers is devoted to hospitals compared to all other providers. The third goal was to discover how any trends in observed performance differences among hospitals compare with trends among other provider types. Computerized bibliographic searches of all relevant databases yielded seventy‐five studies (ninety‐three assessments) that compared the performance of for‐profit and nonprofit hospitals on four performance criteria: access, quality, cost or efficiency, and amount of charity care. The author coded findings on performance in one of three ways: for‐profit superiority, nonprofit superiority, or inconclusive. Most studies (60 percent) reported that nonprofit hospitals have better relative performance than for‐profit hospitals, clear evidence of their organizational effectiveness. Thirty‐one percent were inconclusive, and 8 percent reported that for‐profits were better.     

Healthcare-Related Financial Burden Among Families in the U.S.: The Role of Childhood Activity Limitations and Income

This study examined the impact of childhood activity limitations on family financial burden in the U.S. We used ten complete panels (1996–2006) of the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) to evaluate the burden of out-of-pocket healthcare expenditures for 17,857 families with children aged 0–17 years. Multivariate generalized linear models were used to examine the relationship between childhood activity limitation status and both absolute and relative financial burden. Families of children with limitations had higher absolute out-of-pocket healthcare expenditures than families of children without limitations ($594.36 higher; p < 0.05), and were 54% more likely to experience relative burden (p < 0.05). Substantial socioeconomic disparities in financial burden were observed. Policies are needed to enable these families to access appropriate and affordable healthcare services.     

The Changing Structure of U.S. Agriculture: Dualism Out,Industrialism In

Abstract Between 1982 and 1992, trends in farm structural change resumed patterns that had existed from the Great Depression to the 1970s. That is, farms became fewer and larger. By 1992, the number of American farms declined below two million for the first time since the Civil War. Also, the trend toward dualism noted in the 1970s is over, as the number of small farms again declined rapidly during the 1980s. The trend toward large-scale agriculture is most prominent in the most important agricultural counties.     

FORECASTING U.S. MORTALITY:

This article compares two methodologies for modeling and forecasting statistical time series models of demographic processes: Box-Jenkins ARIMA and structural time series analysis. The Lee-Carter method is used to construct nonlinear demographic models of U.S. mortality rates for the total population, gender, and race and gender combined. Single time varying parameters of k, the index of mortality, are derived from these model and fitted and forecasted using the two methodologies. Forecasts of life expectancy at birth, e₀, are generated from these indexes of k. Results show marginal differences in fit and forecasts between the two statistical approaches with a slight advantage to structural models. Stability across models for both methodologies offers support for the robustness of this approach to demographic forecasting.     

Enjoyment of Work by Full-Time Workers in the U.S., 1955 and 1980

Two questions concerning enjoyment of work asked on a 1955 AmericanGallup Poll were asked on a 1980 United States national surveyto gauge the net change during a quarter of a century. Onlythe responses of persons employed full-time were used for thisstudy. Indicated enjoyment of work was substantially lower in1980 than in 1955. The difference was especially great for manualworkers, Protestants, and older persons. A tentative conclusiondrawn from examining trend data for one birth cohort is thatthe change resulted from cohort succession and from orientationsand attitudes members of younger cohorts brought to their workrather than from changes in work conditions which affected workersof all ages and in all birth cohorts. Some implications of thefindings are disscussed.     

Set aside programmes: Using U.S. experience to evaluate U.K. proposals

The lengthy U.S. experience with cropland diversion is helpful in evaluating U.K. set aside proposals. Acreage reduction for supply control in the U.S. has never reached its promised potential. Now, a new programme is using set aside for erosion control. Despite 50 years of practice, the past and current U.S. cropland diversions suffer serious problems. Three major U.K. set aside proposals have surfaced, two aimed at supply control and one at the provision of conservation and environmental services from farmland. Each has strengths and disadvantages, but none suffer all of the problems of American programmes, at least in their proposed forms. Too much can easily be expected of set aside which in barest form is just a land use constraint. Its best role may be as an interim supply adjustment mechanism with price restraint, which also provides compensation to disadvan- taged farmers but, most importantly, secures non-market conservation and environmental services.     

World War II and the Transformation of the U.S. State: The Wartime Foundations of U.S. Hegemony

I present an analysis of the history of U.S. expansion and rise to hegemony in World War II, and argue that the concrete global perspectives and postwar ambitions of U.S. state managers were formed in the course of world war itself. They were not the result of preconceived economic or geopolitical policies or aims. I examine U.S. expansion and postwar goals in the military, economic, and political arenas, and show how social processes set in motion by world war in each of these dimensions were central in shaping the distinctive outcomes. I develop a theoretical perspective of world war as a social process, and argue that such an extraordinary period of violence, historical contingency, and state-led expansion involves potentially unique features of macrohistorical development and change.     

U.S. College Students' Sexual Activity: The Unique and Interactive Effects of Emotion Regulation Difficulties and Attachment Style

ABSTACT

Objectives: This study explored the association between emotion regulation difficulties and sexual activity, and whether emotion regulation difficulties moderated the link between attachment and sexual activity. Methods: U.S. college students (N = 373) from two institutions completed self-report measures of sexual activity, emotion regulation difficulties and attachment. Results: Findings indicated that greater emotion regulation difficulties were associated with less frequent exclusive sexual activity. Moreover, emotion regulation difficulties moderated links between attachment avoidance and sexual activity, and associations varied according to relational context and gender. Conclusions: Implications for promoting sexual health and relationship intimacy are discussed.     

U.S. CREDIT UNIONS: SURVIVAL,CONSOLIDATION, AND GROWTH

This study uses hazard function estimations and time‐series and cross‐sectional growth regressions to examine the impact of exit through merger and acquisition (M&A) or failure, and internally generated growth, on the firm‐size distribution within the U.S. credit union sector. Consolidation through M&A was the principal cause of a reduction in the number of credit unions, but impact on concentration was small. Divergence between the average internally generated growth of smaller and larger credit unions was the principal driver of the rise in concentration. (JEL G21)     

High stakes: U.S. nonprofit organizations and the U.S. standing abroad

This research sought to explain the agency of U.S.-based nonprofit nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in the U.S. standing abroad, and explore the NGO role in the U.S. public diplomacy. A multiple-case study method was used to look at five 501(c)(3) organizations that receive predominantly private funding and operate globally. The data gathered from in-person interviews and corporate documentation were compared between cases, and synthesized across cases using the theory-building technique. While U.S. standing affects American NGOs’ practices and discourses, American NGOs’ behavior might have a bearing on the attitudes, perceptions, and opinions of international publics about the United States. Both the NGO-owned state identities and American NGOs’ reputation for autonomy and freedom of expression enhance the U.S. public diplomacy efforts.     

The Institutionalization of U.S. Political Parties: Patronage Newspapers

There is general agreement that mass political parties emerged during the Jacksonian era, but there is no consensus about their precise origins. Institutional theorists within political science contend that political parties trace their beginnings to elite who nurtured them within the civil service bureaucracy, whereas theorists in political science who rely on microlevel explanations consider that parties developed to solve problems of social choice and collective action. Historians, in contrast, indicate that newspaper patronage in Washington, DC, beginning with Jefferson, was critical for the emergence of federal political parties. This study systematically examines the empirical implications of that assumption and considers both the organizational and political processes that underlie establishment of newspapers in the Capital, contributing to the understanding that newspapers provided a model both for the civil service and for political parties.     

Spatial Variation in U.S. Labor Markets and Workplace Gender Segregation: 1980–2005*

Many studies of workplace inequality have examined why workplace gender segregation still exists and how gender segregation affects workplaces (Cohen, Huffman, and Knauer 2009 Work and Occupations 36(4):318; Huffman, Cohen, and Pearlman 2010 Administrative Science Quarterly 55(2):255). Yet, fewer studies have examined how space might affect gender segregation. In this paper, we investigate two types of space, normative space and industrial space, and their influence on gender workplace segregation within geographic space. We use data from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and mixed models to examine how normative and industrial spaces affect workplaces within geographic space. We find that both measures of normative and industrial space predict differing levels of gender segregation within geographic spaces (measured via commuting zones). In addition, the effects normative space (women's share of the labor force) has on gender segregation are mediated by industrial restructuring.     

The sociology of U.S. gun culture

Despite the fact that a robust culture centered on the legal ownership and use of guns by law‐abiding gun owners exists in the United States, there is no sociology of U.S. gun culture. Rather, the social scientific study of guns is dominated by criminological and epidemiological studies of gun violence. As a corrective to this oversight, I outline what a sociology of U.S. gun culture should look like. In the first section, I give a brief history of U.S. gun culture from the founding era through the 1960s. Guns began as tools of necessity in the colonies and on the frontier, but evolved into equipment for sport hunting and shooting, as well as desired commodities for collecting. The second section examines these recreational pursuits which formed the core of U.S. gun culture for most of the 20th century. Although recreation remains an important segment, the central emphasis of U.S. gun culture has gradually shifted to armed self‐defense over the course of the past half‐century. The third section examines the rise of this culture of armed citizenship, what I call “Gun Culture 2.0,” the current iteration of the country's historic gun culture. I conclude by suggesting important avenues for future research.