Neighborhood characteristics, parental practices and children’s math achievement in elementary school

This paper investigates the relationships among neighborhood characteristics, education-related parental practices, and children’s academic achievement during a critical but under-studied stage of children’s educational trajectories - the elementary school years. Using a large, nationally representative database of American elementary school students - the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study - Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K) - and contextual data from the 2000 US Census, we examine parental practices and neighborhood characteristics at the beginning of children’s school careers (grades K-1) and their associations with math achievement through the end of the 5th grade. Findings: Net of family-level characteristics, higher levels of early education-oriented parental practices were associated with higher mathematics achievement at the end of 5th grade, while neighborhood disadvantage was associated with lower 5th grade math achievement. Families residing in high poverty, high unemployment, low-education neighborhoods employed fewer education-oriented practices with their kindergarten-first grade children, but the positive effect of such parental practices on children’s mathematics achievement was stronger for children who live in disadvantaged neighborhoods.     

The impact of childhood neighborhood disadvantage on adult joblessness and income

Research on residential inequality focuses heavily on adult economic outcomes as crucial components of the intergenerational transmission of poverty. Yet, empirical evidence on whether youth neighborhoods have a lasting impact on adult economic outcomes at the national level is scarce. Further, we know little about how youth neighborhood effects on adult economic outcomes manifest. This study uses 26 years (14 waves) of restricted panel data from the NLSY79 and the NLSY Children and Young Adults cohorts – data that have never been used to analyze long-term neighborhood effects – to examine whether youth neighborhood disadvantage impacts adult economic outcomes through sensitive years in childhood, teen socialization, duration effects, or cumulative effects. Sibling fixed effects models that net out unobserved effects of shared family characteristics suggest that youth neighborhood disadvantage increases joblessness and reduces income in adulthood. However, exposure across specific developmental stages of youth does not appear to act as a significant moderator while sustained exposure yields pernicious effects on adult economic outcomes. Moreover, these results are robust to alternative variable specifications and cousin fixed effects that net out potentially unobserved confounders, such as the inheritance of neighborhood disadvantage across three generations.     

Diverging fortunes? Economic well-being of Latinos and African Americans in new rural destinations

The geographic diffusion of Latinos from immigrant gateways to newly-emerging rural destinations is one of the most significant recent trends in U.S. population redistribution. Yet, few studies have explored how Latinos have fared in new destinations, and even fewer have examined economic implications for other minority workers and their families. We use county-level data from the 1990 and 2000 U.S. Census and the 2006–2010 American Community Survey to compare the changing economic circumstances (e.g., employment and unemployment, poverty, income, and homeownership) of Latinos and African Americans in new Latino boomtowns. We also evaluate the comparative economic trajectories of Latinos in new destinations and established gateways. During the 1990s, new rural destinations provided clear economic benefits to Latinos, even surpassing African Americans on some economic indicators. The 2000s, however, ushered in higher rates of Latino poverty; the economic circumstances of Latinos also deteriorated more rapidly in new vis-à-vis traditional destinations. By 2010, individual and family poverty rates in new destinations were significantly higher among Latinos than African Americans, despite higher labor force participation and lower levels of unemployment. Difference-in-difference models demonstrate that in both the 1990s and 2000s, economic trajectories of African Americans in new Latino destinations largely mirrored those observed in places without large Latino influxes. Any economic benefits for Latinos in new rural destinations thus have not come at the expense of African Americans.     

农民工返乡的理性分析与现实思考

金融危机、经济结构调整和惠农政策的影响是导致2008年下半年以来农民工大量返乡的主要因素。农民工的返乡引发了其收入的减少、子女的上学困难,返乡后的农民工难以适应农村的生存和生活,农民工返乡后给基层政府的治理带来困境。农民工返乡背后所反映的是农民工技能的缺失、农民工创业政策的不完善、土地流转还存在政策上的缺陷、农民工的社会保障制度还有待深化等问题。建议加大农民工培训力度;完善社保制度,使更多的农民工享受到社会保障的权益;降低农民工返乡创业的门槛;采取一些措施消除返乡农民工可能带来的一些治安方面的隐患;规范土地流转制度。     

我国未来老年贫困的风险分析

未来老年人指在1975年以前出生的人群。伴随社会经济发展,未来老年人的收入来源多元化,经济和心理自立能力不断增强。但是,未来老年人中相当一部分人目前处于贫困或贫困的边缘,这种状况一方面会通过非正式支持对上下两代贫困风险产生影响,另一方面会影响到他们的老年期,表现出老年期资源累积不足的倾向。因此,延续性贫困可能是未来老年贫困的一大原因。     

Family structure and the economic wellbeing of children in youth and adulthood

An extensive literature on the relationship between family structure and children’s outcomes consistently shows that living with a single parent is associated with negative outcomes. Few US studies, however, examine how a child’s family structure affects outcomes for the child once he/she reaches adulthood. We directly examine, using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, whether family structure during childhood is related to the child’s economic wellbeing both during childhood as well as during adulthood. We find that living with a single parent is associated with the level of family resources available during childhood. This finding persists even when we remove time invariant factors within families. We also show that family structure is related to the child’s education, marital status, and adult family income. Once we control for the child’s demography and economic wellbeing in childhood, however, the associations into adulthood become trivial in size and statistically insignificant, suggesting that the relationship between family structure and children’s long-term, economic outcomes is due in large part to the relationship between family structure and economic wellbeing in childhood.     

新生代农民工社会保险参保意愿及其影响因素

利用广东省东莞市新生代农民工调查数据的研究表明,经济融入因素中,每天工作时间、职务层次和个人月收入对新生代农民工的参保意愿具有显著影响;社会生活融入因素中,与邻居的相熟度和参与社区活动的频率对新生代农民工的参保意愿具有显著影响;文化心理融入因素中,愿意参与本地社会事务、愿意和本地人交朋友对新生代农民工的参保意愿具有显著影响。此外,年龄、户口和受教育程度也都对新生代农民工的参保意愿具有显著影响。     

Citizen-making: The role of national goals for socializing children

The ecological, political, religious and economic constraints and opportunities characterizing a nation crystallize to set the agenda for socializing children, its future citizens. Parented accordingly, members of those nations would come to adopt the values, beliefs, skills and attitudes that constitute the requisite human capital to sustain that nation. This study reports on the profiling of 55 nations by two dimensions of the socialization goals for children extracted from the World Values Survey, viz., Self-directedness versus Other-directedness, and Civility versus Practicality. An affluent, less corrupt and more gender-equal society is associated with greater focus on Self-directedness and Civility. Both dimensions show convergent and discriminant validities in their correlation with nation-level psychosocial variables such as citizen subjective well-being, values, beliefs, pace of life and trust of out-groups. These dimensions are also shown to connect a nation’s ecological construct to the outcomes of its citizens, adding a psychological–developmental perspective to examine nation-building and cultural transmission.     

Segregation, the concentration of poverty, and the life chances of individuals

We outline a theoretical model that identifies residential segregation as a primary structural cause of the geographic concentration of poverty in U.S. urban areas. From this theory we specify and estimate a multilevel equation that links minority poverty and segregation within metropolitan areas to the concentration of socioeconomic deprivation within neighborhoods. We then estimate a second set of multilevel equations that connect neighborhood poverty rates to individual-level outcomes commonly associated with the underclass: male joblessness, teenage motherhood, and single parenthood. Our results link economic and social structures at the metropolitan level to individual outcomes that operate to perpetuate poverty and lead to the creation of the underclass.     

Self-esteem and self-efficacy in the status attainment process and the multigenerational transmission of advantage

Despite considerable evidence of the importance of self-esteem and self-efficacy for agentic, goal-oriented behavior, little attention has been directed to these psychological dimensions in the status attainment literature. The present research uses data from the longitudinal, three-generation Youth Development Study (N = 422 three-generation triads) to examine the extent to which adolescent self-esteem and economic self-efficacy affect adult educational and income attainment, and whether these psychological resources are transmitted from one generation to the next, accumulating advantage across generations. We present evidence indicating that both self-esteem and economic self-efficacy are implicated in the attainment process. Adolescent economic self-efficacy had a direct positive effect on adult educational attainment and an indirect effect through educational plans. The influence of self-esteem on adult educational attainment was entirely indirect, through school achievement. We also find evidence that economic self-efficacy was transmitted from parents to children. We conclude that future research should more broadly consider psychological resources in attainment processes from a longitudinal multigenerational perspective.     

关于城市街头劳动力市场务工人员的贫困文化分析

由于下岗失业人员和大量农民工共同汇集干我国城市的城乡结合带，一种”城市新边缘群体”逐渐形成。他们的生活具有明显的”贫困文化特征”，这种文化严重影响着我国的城市建设和农村劳动力的进一步转移。以长春市街头劳动力市场为例，通过对其中三个市场的实地观察，在对32名务工人员开展个案访谈的基础上，分析这一亚文化群体的职业观、消费观、成就观、交往观等文化形式，并且与农村中的贫困文化进行比较分析，对城市中贫困人口的贫困根源问题进行文化层面上的解释。     

进城务工人员随迁子女就读中学教师工作满意度研究——以昆明市为例

本文在对国内外教师工作满意度相关研究的基础上,对昆明市部分接收进城务工人员随迁子女就读中学教师工作满意度进行实证调查分析。研究得出了这类教师对领导管理、教学环境、师生关系等7个指标的满意度和影响教师工作满意度的因素,并提出了提高教师工作的满意度的积极对策。     

Heterogeneity in the rise and decline of city-level homicide rates, 1976-2005: A latent trajectory analysis

This study applies latent trajectory methods to the analysis of temporal changes in homicide rates among large US cities across recent decades. Specifically, annual homicide rates for 157 large US cities are analyzed for the 30 years from 1976 to 2005. We address the fundamental questions: Did all of cities experience similar levels and patterns of rise and decline in homicide rates over these three decades? Or is there hidden or unobserved heterogeneity with respect to these temporal patterns, thus leading to the identification of more homogeneous groupings of the cities? And if latent homogeneous groupings surface, is membership due to specific structural characteristics found within those cities? Evidence is found for the existence of four latent homicide rate trajectories. After identifying and classifying the cities into these four groups, multivariate statistical techniques are used to determine which social and economic characteristics are significant predictors of these distinct homicide trends. Criminal justice measures are also included as controls. It is found that larger cities located in the South with higher levels of resource deprivation/concentrated poverty, higher income inequality, higher percentages of the adult male population that are divorced, higher unemployment rates, higher percentages of youth, higher percentages of the population who are Hispanic and higher numbers of police per capita are more likely to be in a higher than a lower homicide trajectory group. Higher percentages of the population enrolled in colleges and universities and locations in states with higher incarceration rates are characteristics of cities associated with membership in a lower homicide trajectory group.     

Understanding trends in concentrated poverty: 1980–2014

Trends in concentrated neighborhood poverty in the United States have been volatile over the past several decades. Using data from the 1980 to 2000 decennial census and the 2010–2014 American Community Survey, we examine the association between concentrated poverty across metropolitan areas in the United States and key proximate factors, including overall changes in poverty, racial residential segregation, and income segregation. One of our unique contributions is assessing the relative contribution of each of these to long-term trends in such poverty using a decomposition analysis. We find that changes in the segregation of the poor explained the largest share of the change in concentrated poverty over most of the time period, with the exception of the 1990s, where the plunge in both black and white poverty rates had the largest role in explaining the considerable decline in concentrated poverty in that decade for both groups. The association between racial segregation and black concentrated poverty is positive but weaker, indicating that without declines in black segregation, concentrated poverty would have been higher. Overall, growing income segregation, along with weak economic performance in recent years, have put more poor people at risk for living in high-poverty communities.     

Scaling the prestige,authority, and income potential of college curricula

This paper develops the concept of “targeted education,” a theoretical ranking of college curricula, into a multidimensional framework. The new scales, based on the traditional stratification dimensions, prestige, authority, and income, are then used in a study of sex differences in the process of occupational achievement among men and women with college degrees. The targeted education scales predict occupational prestige and wages 7 years after the college degree, and they point out interesting differences between male and female attainment processes. In general, targeted education has a greater quantitative impact for men's occupational outcomes than for women's prestige and income, but results also suggest significant qualitative differences between men and women. A large proportion of women target their education toward, and end up in, an under-employed labor pool for the primary and secondary school system.     

温州城市外来务工者生活质量与幸福指数现状调查

本文基于温州城市外来务工者幸福指数现状实地调研,揭示该群体对收入、就业环境等经济因素以及社会保障、公共医疗卫生、公共教育、环境、安全等非经济因素的满意状况,探讨不同人口特征与"幸福指数"的关联性等问题,并提出若干提升该群体幸福指数的合理策略。     

Growth curve analyses of the relationship between early maternal age and children’s mathematics and reading performance

Regarding the methods used to examine the early maternal age-child academic outcomes relationship, the extant literature has tended to examine change using statistical analyses that fail to appreciate that individuals vary in their rates of growth. Of the one study I have been able to find that employs a true growth model to estimate this relationship, the authors only controlled for characteristics of the maternal household after family formation; confounding background factors of mothers that might select them into early childbearing, a possible source of bias, were ignored. The authors’ findings nonetheless suggested an inverse relationship between early maternal age, i.e., a first birth between the ages of 13 and 17, and Canadian adolescents’ mean math performance at age 10. Early maternal age was not related to the linear slope of age. To elucidate whether the early maternal age-child academic outcomes association, treated in a growth context, is consistent with this finding, the present study built on it using US data and explored children’s mathematics and reading trajectories from age 5 on. Its unique contribution is that it further explicitly controlled for maternal background factors and employed a three-level growth model with repeated measures of children nested within their mothers. Though the strength of the relationship varied between mean initial academic performance and mean academic growth, results confirmed that early maternal age was negatively related to children’s mathematics and reading achievement, net of post-teen first birth child-specific and maternal household factors. Once maternal background factors were included, there was no statistically significant relationship between early maternal age and either children’s mean initial mathematics and reading scores or their mean mathematics and reading growth.     

制约农民致富的制度分析

本文认为农民贫困有三重含义 :一是货币的和实物的收入低、享受的社会福利少 ,即收入贫困 ;二是创造财富和收入的能力差 ,即能力或人力资本的贫困 ;三是获取收入或财富和提高能力的权利和机会少 ,即权利和机会的贫困。这三重意义上的贫困内在联系 ,而且形成恶性循环。从根本上说 ,农民贫困是制度性贫困 ,是不合理的制度决定了农民贫困、制约了农民致富。现行土地制度、户籍制度、税费制度、教育制度和政治体制中不合理的成分是导致农民贫困或不能致富的主要因素     

Segregation by race and income in the United States 1970–2010

A systematic analysis of residential segregation and spatial interaction by income reveals that as income rises, minority access to integrated neighborhoods, higher levels of interaction with whites, and more affluent neighbors also increase. However, the income payoffs are much lower for African Americans than other groups, especially Asians. Although Hispanics and Asians have always displayed declining levels of minority-white dissimilarity and rising levels of minority-white interaction with rising income, income differentials on these outcomes for blacks did not appear until 1990 and since then have improved at a very slow pace. Given their higher overall levels of segregation and income's limited effect on residential attainment, African Americans experience less integration, more neighborhood poverty at all levels of income compared to other minority groups. The degree of black spatial disadvantage is especially acute in the nation's 21 hypersegregated metropolitan areas.     

Pathways of disadvantage: Explaining the relationship between maternal depression and children’s problem behaviors

A large body of literature documents that children of depressed mothers have impaired cognitive, behavioral, and health outcomes throughout the life course, though much less is known about the mechanisms linking maternal depression to children’s outcomes. In this paper, I use data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study to estimate and explain the consequences of maternal depression for 5-year-old children’s internalizing and externalizing problem behaviors. Ordinary least squared (OLS) regression models and propensity score models show that children exposed to both chronic and intermittent maternal depression have more problem behaviors than their counterparts with never depressed mothers. Results also show that economic resources and maternal parenting behaviors mediate much of the association between maternal depression and children’s problem behaviors, but that relationships with romantic partners and social support do little to explain this association. This research extends past literature by illuminating some mechanisms through which maternal depression matters for children; by utilizing longitudinal measures of depression; by employing rigorous statistical techniques to lend confidence to the findings; and by using a large, diverse, and non-clinical sample of children most susceptible to maternal depression. Given that early childhood problem behaviors lay a crucial foundation for short- and long-term life trajectories, the social consequences of maternal depression may be far-reaching.