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.     

In memoriam: L. H. M. Ling

In the early phase of its rule in Turkey (2002–4), the pro-Islamic government of the AKP (Justice and Development party) and various branches of the state collaborated in a series of political and economic reforms. The democratization process has gradually moderated and integrated Islamic actors into the secular Turkish Republic. However, it has also had polarizing effects on social groups. Among many, the polarization of two groups of women, ‘pious’ and ‘secularist’, deserves particular attention. Instead of bringing Turkish women together, gender reforms, particularly the lifting of the headscarf ban in universities, have divided women and created disarray and confrontation in society. This article reveals and compares the two dramatically different patterns of political engagement by pious and secularist women in leadership positions in contemporary Turkey. On the one hand, it reveals the increasingly radical backlash of secularist women against the increasing visibility in public spaces of pious women who veil. On the other hand, it examines how pious women, who see the tumult their religious observance in the public space is creating, are increasingly turning to a non-confrontational mode of non-response. What is the prognosis for the future of a democratic Turkey?     

Sexology in the U.S.:

No abstract available for this article.     

Anti-R.O.T.C. Sit-in: a Sociological Analysis*

This study compares social characteristics, political and protest activities, and the impact of social control violence on participants and nonparticipants in a sit-in ending in arrest at Kent State University. The findings show that participants are different from the nonparticipants on several variables including college major, religious preference, personal political position and parents' political position. Participants and nonparticipants were similar to one another in grade point average, financial dependence on parents, parents' total income and parents' education levels. Participants report more political and protest activities and indicate that social control violence did not “pacify” or reduce the level of their activism.     

Incorporation vs. Separation:

This article examines the approach to the study of women and politics in the People's Republic of China and assesses the impact of gender studies (or lack of it) on women and the larger part of society in China. The author argues that most materials for studying women and politics in China emanate from the office of the All-China Women's Federation, an appendage of the Chinese Communist Party, and not from political science textbooks. This approach, however, falls short of addressing major political and economic problems facing women of China.     

JARRETT V. JARRETT:

The Supreme Court of Illinois has held that "in the absence of evidence of contemporaneous adverse effect.. .the open and continuing cohabitation of the custodial parent with a member of the opposite sex" justified a transfer of custody. Jarrett u. Jarrett. 78 111.2d 337.400 N.E.8d 421 119791 Cert denied 101 S. Ct. 329 (1980). The consequences of the Jarrett decision on single parents, their children, and their lifestyle choices could be far reaching. According to the census bureau, there are over 12 million children in single parent homes and it is they who will most effectedly find themselves in the crossfire between the liberalism of the 60s and 70s and the emerging moralism of the 80s.