No trend in the intergenerational transmission of divorce

Previous studies on trends in the intergenerational transmission of divorce have produced mixed findings, with two studies (McLanahan and Bumpass 1988; Teachman 2002) reporting no trend in divorce transmission and one study (Wolfinger 1999) finding that divorce transmission has weakened substantially. Using a stratified Cox proportional hazard model, we analyze data from the National Survey of Families and Households and find no evidence for any trend in divorce transmission. To reconcile apparent differences in results, we note that the General Social Survey data used by Wolfinger lack information on marital duration, permitting analysis only for whether respondents have divorced by interview. As a result, an apparent decline in divorce transmission could be due to inadequate adjustments for the longer exposures to risk by earlier marriage cohorts, yielding a higher probability of divorce by interview for earlier cohorts relative to more recent cohorts even if divorce risks are identical across all marriage cohorts. We confirm this possibility by using a series of discrete-time hazard logistic regressions to investigate the sensitivity of estimates of trends in divorce transmission to different adjustments for exposure to risk. We conclude that there has been no trend in the intergenerational transmission of divorce.     

Sex,Arts and Verbal Abilities: Three Further Indicators of How American Life is not Improving

Despite clear evidence that Americans’ economic standard of living has improved over the last half-century in terms of income, ownership of technology and housing among other indicators, there is scant evidence from non-economic quality-of-life (QOL) indicators of improved life quality to parallel these economic gains. The present article adds to this list in showing little if any progress in three QOL indicators (the first two about time and activity) that have received less or no attention in the social indicators literature, namely (1) frequency of the highly enjoyable activity of sex, (2) participation in various serious arts activities and (3) scores of verbal ability. The data on sexual activity and verbal ability come from the 1974–2008 General Social Surveys (GSS) from the University of Chicago, and for the arts from the 2008 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts (SPPA) conducted by the US Census Bureau for the National Endowment for the Arts since 1982. All three surveys interviewed nationally representative samples, with over 70% response rates and sample sizes of more than 15,000 adults. The GSS data on sexual frequency show no significant increase in estimated frequency of sex since 1989, despite its strong appeal and the availability of new societal conveniences. This held both before and after adjustment for the age, marital status and education in the population; contrary to expectation, working long hours was associated with increased sex both before and after adjustment for these other demographic predictors. The SPPA trend data on arts participation actually showed a decline in participation, especially after adjustment for its major predictor of years of education; again no decreased participation was found among those working long hours. While scores on verbal ability in the GSS have stayed rather steady since 1974, they have decreased after MCA adjustment for the increased college education in more recent years, as documented by Nie et al. (2009). Thus, contrary to expectations, increases in public education have not been accompanied by improvements on these three indicators.     

Enforcing divorce settlements: Evidence from child support compliance and award modifications

This paper uses an implicit contracting framework to understand the dynamic nature of divorce settlements and to analyze the determinants of noncompliance with child support awards. In addition to the standard economic variables that affect the noncustodial parent’s (NCP’s) ability to pay child support, our approach focuses on factors that may affect the NCP’s desire to pay, such as the ongoing relationship between the two parents and between the NCP and the children. We also examine the “state-contingent” nature of child support payments and explore the factors that lead to modifications in child support agreements. Using a longitudinal data set collected by the Stanford Child Custody Project, the empirical analysis provides documentation that compliance by noncustodial fathers can vary substantially from month to month. In addition, we find that even within a short period after divorce, a substantial minority of parents agree to make informal modifications to their divorce settlement in response to changes in economic circumstances and in custodial arrangements     

Trends in the intergenerational transmission of divorce

I use data from the 1973-1996 NORC General Social Survey to examine trends in the intergenerational transmission of divorce, the propensity for the children of divorce to end their own marriages. The rate of divorce transmission declined by almost 50% in the study period. This result was essentially unchanged by statistical controls for various personal and family background differences between respondents.     

The ins and outs of unemployment and the assimilation of recent immigrants in Spain

We study the employment assimilation of the recent wave of immigration in Spain for the period 2002–2006. We differentiate the immigrants by their year of arrival in Spain. Following Shimer (Am Econ Rev 95(1):25–49, 2005) and using data from the Spanish Labor Force Survey, we calculate the job finding and the job exit rates. Throughout the period, immigrants show higher job finding and job exit rates. We also present a search and matching model with search intensity, where natives, new immigrants, and old immigrants compete in the labor market. The simulated model is able to reproduce the differences observed in their job finding and unemployment rates.     

Determinants of Life Satisfaction Among Immigrants from Western Countries and from the FSU in Israel

This study examines the integration of immigrants via their satisfaction with life in the new country. While most studies on immigrant integration have focused on objective integration parameters such as education, occupation and salary (e.g., Borjas in Friends or strangers: the impact of immigrants on the US economy. Basic Books, New York, 1990), subjective parameters have traditionally received less attention. However, in recent years it has become increasingly clear that subjective perceptions carry considerable weight in the social-integration process of immigrants (McMichael and Manderson in Human Organ 63(1):88–99, 2004; Massey and Redstone in Soc Sci Q 87(5):954–971, 2006). The study group consists of Jewish immigrants who arrived in Israel during the past two decades from two different regions of origin: Western countries, and the Former Soviet Union (FSU). All of these immigrants are generally highly educated and skilled, but they came to Israel from different societies and contrasting motives. The objective of this study is to learn about the integration of these immigrants via their satisfaction with life in Israel and to understand the factors that explain it, taking into account the differences between the immigrant groups. The findings, based on the 2007 Ruppin representative survey data (The data for this study was obtained with the support of the Israeli Ministry of Immigrant Absorption.), point to significant differences between the two immigrant groups under discussion. Western immigrants are more satisfied with their lives in Israel than FSU immigrants and have higher scores in most of the independent variables tested. The multivariate analyses for predicting an immigrant’s life satisfaction reveal that those reporting the greatest satisfaction are women, religious, with a high standard of living, with no academic education, and stronger Israeli identity (personal and as perceived by others). In addition, different variables play a role in predicting the life satisfaction for each immigrant group. This knowledge may be of service to Israeli policymakers dealing with the immigration and integration of highly skilled immigrants in Israeli society.     

Examining the appropriateness of importance weighting on satisfaction score from range-of-affect hypothesis: hierarchical linear modeling for within-subject data

This study examines the range-of-affect hypothesis in a within-subject context using the weighting situation faced in quality of life (QOL) measurement. Data collected in Wu and Yao’s (2006b) study were used (332 undergraduates at National Taiwan University). The mean age was 19.80 years (std = 1.98). They completed a QOL questionnaire and indicated satisfaction, importance, and perceived have–want discrepancy on 12 life domains. Hierarchical linear modeling with a random-coefficients regression model was applied. At the first level (within-individual level), the satisfaction scores for each item were regressed on the have-want discrepancy, importance, and the interaction between have-want discrepancy and importance (have-want discrepancy ×  importance) of the same item. At the second level (between-individual level), the intercept, coefficients of have-want discrepancy, importance and the interaction between have-want discrepancy and importance at the first level were regarded as varying randomly over all participants. Results of this study supported the range-of-affect hypothesis, showing that the relationship between item have-want discrepancy and item satisfaction is stronger for high importance items than low importance items for a given individual. Implications for important weighting on item satisfaction scores were discussed.     

Evaluating the products of alternative sampling methods

While theoretical work in survey sampling has offered the promise that selection procedures based on probabilities proportional to size would produce subgroups for surveys as efficiently as oversampling, there were fewer expectations that the two methods would produce comparable products. This research reports the results of an experiment conducted within the 1982 General Social Survey (GSS), which compares two subsamples of blacks (N=510). The multivariate normal distributions of the oversample and the black probability sample are demonstrated to be statistically similar. This similarity extends to subsets of demographic and substantive variables, and to most individual variables as well. For survey directors, these results imply that the choice between oversampling and pps methodologies used for locating population subgroups should depend more on the relative costs/efficiencies involved, than on concerns over product quality. More generally, these results mean that all of the blacks in the 1982 GSS may be combined and treated as a single, national probability sample of the American black population.     

Divorce,living arrangements,and material well-being during the transition to adulthood in rural Malawi

In this paper, we use longitudinal data to investigate how parental death and divorce influence young women’s own experience of divorce in Malawi, a setting where women marry relatively early and unions are fragile. We find that maternal death and parental divorce are positively associated with divorce for young women but, after controlling for socio-demographic and marital characteristics, only the association with maternal death remains statistically significant. Maternal and paternal death are both strongly associated with women’s post-divorce living arrangements, which in turn affects their material well-being. This finding suggests that divorcing at a young age shapes the subsequent life chances of women; although some women return to their parental home and may have the opportunity to reset the transition to adulthood, other women begin their 20s as head of their own household and with considerable material disadvantage.     

The intergenerational transmission of divorce in cross-national perspective: Results from the Fertility and Family Surveys

We used data on women's first marriages from the Fertility and Family Surveys to analyse the intergenerational transmission of divorce across 18 countries and to seek explanations in macro-level characteristics for the cross-national variation. Our results show that women whose parents divorced have a significantly higher risk of divorce in 17 countries. There is some cross-national variation. When compared with the USA, the association is stronger in six countries. This variation is negatively associated with the proportion of women in each cohort who experienced the divorce of their parents and with the national level of women's participation in the labour force during childhood. We conclude that differences in the contexts in which children of divorce learn marital and interpersonal behaviour affect the strength of the intergenerational transmission of divorce.     

Internet Communication Versus Face-to-face Interaction in Quality of Life

This study seeks to understand the role of the Internet in quality of life (QoL). Specifically, it examines the question of whether Internet communication serves, like face-to-face interactions, to enhance quality of life. It is hypothesized that the use of the Internet for interpersonal communication can improve quality of life among Internet users, just like face-to-face communication in everyday life. Sample survey data were collected in four Chinese cities, namely Hong Kong, Taipei, Beijing, and Wuhan, to serve as replicates to test the hypothesis. The Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS) of Diener (1984) was used to measure quality of life in the four cities. It was found that contrary to our expectation, Internet communication cannot predict quality of life while face-to-face communication with friends and family members can. The result was the same across the four Chinese cities. Possible reasons for this finding are examined and discussed.     

The educational attainment of second-generation mainland Chinese immigrants in Taiwan

The social status and well-being of political immigrants’ children are seldom touched upon in literature. This paper focuses on the impact of refugee experience on the relative educational attainment of second-generation immigrants in Taiwan. In contrast with the results in van Ours and Veenman (J Popul Econ 16(4):739–753, 2003) and Riphahn (J Popul Econ 16(4):711–737, 2003) who showed that second-generation immigrants lag behind their native counterparts, this paper’s principle finding is that the father’s immigration status can help his children achieve a higher educational qualification than native Taiwanese after controlling the relevant determinants of educational attainment, including parental background and the neighborhood where the interviewee grows up. In addition, women born in the earlier cohort benefit more by their fathers’ immigration status than their male counterparts do. However, Taiwanese schooling advances across generations are impressive, whereby the gap in schooling attainment between second-generation immigrants and native Taiwanese is found to decline over time.

The Mediator Roles of Life Satisfaction and Self-Esteem between the Affective Components of Psychological Well-Being and the Cognitive Symptoms of Problematic Internet Use

The factors associated with cognitions about problematic Internet use have been empirically tested in various studies. The aim of the present study was to examine the mediator roles of both life satisfaction and self-esteem between affective components of subjective well-being and cognitions about problematic Internet use. For this purpose, the model that was conceptualized by Davis (Comput Human Behav 17:187–195, 2001), Caplan (Comput Human Behav 18:553–575 2002), and Lent et al. (J Vocat Behav 74:190–198 2009) was modified and used as the theoretical framework for this study. The impacts of life satisfaction and self-esteem on the association between affective components of psychological well-being (positive and negative) and cognitions about problematic Internet use were tested by using structural equation modeling (SEM) in a sample of 480 Turkish university students. The results reveal that by playing a mediator role, self-esteem impacted positive/negative affect and life satisfaction and, hence, indirectly influenced cognitions about problematic Internet use. Examining the roles of self-esteem and subjective well-being will provide a new starting point for further studies.     

Alegría! Flow in Leisure and Life Satisfaction: The Mediating Role of Event Satisfaction Using Data from an Acrobatics Show

The aim of the current study was to examine the role of satisfaction-with-event as a mediator in the relations between flow and life satisfaction based on the bottom-up theory (Andrews and Withey in Social indicators of well-being: Americans’ perceptions of life quality. Plenum, New York, 1976; Lee et al. in J Macromarketing 22(2): 158–169, 2002). Four hundred and thirty-four participants with a mean age of 35.60 (SD = 11.76) were recruited from the audience of a “Cirque du Soleil” acrobatics show, performed in Taiwan in 2009. Participants completed the flow scale (Csikszentmihalyi in Flow: the psychology of optimal experience. Harper & Row, New York, 1990), a satisfaction-with-event scale (Lin and Hsu in Mark Rev 3(4): 497–528, 2008), and a satisfaction-with-life scale (Diener et al. in J Pers Assess 49:71–75, 1985) immediately after viewing the show. Structural equation modeling was conducted to examine our hypothesis that satisfaction-with-event levels would fully mediate the relationship between flow and overall life satisfaction. Results supported our prediction and are discussed in terms of bottom-up theory. Implications of the study are also provided for the leisure managers.     

Strategic altruistic transfers and rent seeking within the family

This paper examines the rent-seeking behavior of “selfish” children in competing for parental transfers. The paper extends Chang and Weisman (South Econ J 71:821–836, 2005), that focuses on compensated transfers, to allow for non-compensated transfers à la Buchanan (J Law Econ 26:71–85, 1983) and derives results for the case in which children’s time contributions as perceived by their parents are a merit good (e.g., service), pure waste (e.g., bugging), or a mix of both. For an increase in the proportion of time contributions that are pure waste, parents find it optimal to reduce the size of an overall transfer, thereby lowering the levels of wasteful rent-seeking activities by their children within the family.

The resort to divorce in England and Wales, 1858–1957

This paper consists of a statistical analysis of the increasing resort to divorce in England and Wales over the past hundred years. In view of the social, financial and procedural barriers surrounding the Divorce Court over most of the period it is impossible to regard the spread of divorce as an index of increasing marital breakdown. It indicates merely the greater ability and willingness of estranged couples to take advantage of the legal machinery for bringing their marriages to a formal end.

The analysis of published data shows that since 1857, the rate of petitioning per 10,000 married couples (of whom the wives were 15–49 years of age) has risen from 0.83 to 37.98. Various factors have been responsible for this fifty-foild increase: it seems that a five-fold rise was due specifically to the lowering of formal barriers (which made divorce more accessible to the poor and to women petitioners), while the remaining tenfold increase was brought about by the growing acceptance by society and by discordant couples, of divorce as an appropriate end to a broken marriage. This change in public opinion can be seen not only in the slow yet persistent rise in the rate of petitioning over all but the last few years, but also in the long-term effects of the two world wars.

Divorces since 1921 have been allocated to the various marriage cohorts involved so as to estimate the proportion of each cohort divorced by successive marriage anniversaries. This procedure has shown that the recent war had its greaters disruptive impact on the “hastliy contracted” marriages of the early war years; the impact on these cohorts was, however, only slightly in excess of that exerted on the immediately preceding cohorts married in the later 1930's. In fact the war took its toll of all cohorts back to 1921.

As complement to this study of trends the position near the beginning and near the end of the whole period was investigated by analysing a special extraction of statistics relating to all the 1871 petitions and to a sample of those of 1951. The study of couples involved in divorce in these two years, illustrates its extension in the intervening period to most sectors of the married population. From a tiny group of predominantly well-to-do and frequently childless couples in 1871, the divorce population by 1951 appeared to have become very nearly a cross-section of all married couples, at least in respect to occupational structure and family size. To some extent, the close similarity between the divorcing and the still married couples in 1951 was a temporary phenomenon, due to the entry into the divorce courts in that year of an unuually large number of poor petitioners using the new legal aid provisions introduced in 1950. Nevertheless, there is good reasong to believe that this factor has led to only slight over-emphasis of the long-term trend for the poor and those with families to take an increasing share in divorce petitioning.

So far as the mid-twentieth century position is concerned cohort analysis shows that, at least in the early years of matrimony, the couples married since 1945 have petitioned for divorce less than their immediate elders in the wartime or just pre-war cohorts. While the post-war marriages have not run their full course through the most divorce-prone years, this finding suggests that the rate of petitioning is not likely to go on increasing in the future nearly so rapidly or so persistently as it has done in the past. It seems possible that the rate may be stabilized in the next few years at approximately its present level, i.e. within the range of 5%–10% of each marriage cohort. If this should occur, it would probably mean that divorce in England and Wales had found its own level, and that virtually all those requiring to terminate marriage in the existing context of social circumstances were no longer prevented by extraneous barriers from using the appropriate legal procedures.     

The intergenerational transmission of divorce in cross-national perspective: results from the Fertility and Family Surveys

We used data on women's first marriages from the Fertility and Family Surveys to analyse the intergenerational transmission of divorce across 18 countries and to seek explanations in macro-level characteristics for the cross-national variation. Our results show that women whose parents divorced have a significantly higher risk of divorce in 17 countries. There is some cross-national variation. When compared with the USA, the association is stronger in six countries. This variation is negatively associated with the proportion of women in each cohort who experienced the divorce of their parents and with the national level of women's participation in the labour force during childhood. We conclude that differences in the contexts in which children of divorce learn marital and interpersonal behaviour affect the strength of the intergenerational transmission of divorce.     

On the contribution of sectoral natural population growth to the aggregate poverty change

This note extends the Ravallion and Huppi (World Bank Econ Rev 5(1):57–82, 1991) aggregate poverty change decomposition to account for the distinct contribution of migration and differential natural population growth between sectors to the aggregate poverty change. We apply our decomposition to three Least Developing countries. We find that accounting for sectoral difference in natural population growth has a considerable impact on national poverty change. Responsible editor: Alessandro Cigno     

Gratitude and Adolescent Athletes’ Well-Being

Two cross-sectional studies were conducted to examine the relationships between gratitude and athletes’ well-being. Study 1 examines the relationship between dispositional gratitude and well-being, while Study 2 investigates the relationship between sport-domain gratitude and well-being. In Study 1, 169 Taiwanese senior high school athletes (M = 16.43, SD = 0.7 years) were administered the Gratitude Questionnaire (GQ; McCullough et al. 2002, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82(1), 112–127), Team Satisfaction Scale (Walling et al. 1993, Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology, 15, 172–183), Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS; Diener et al. 1985, Journal of Personality Assessment, 49, 71–75), and the Athlete Burnout Questionnaire (ABQ; Raedeke and Smith, 2001, Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology, 23(4), 281–306). In Study 2, a separate sample of 265 adolescent athletes (M = 16.47 years, SD = 0.7) were administered the modified Sport-domain GQ, Team Satisfaction Scale, and ABQ. Study 1 results showed that dispositional gratitude positively predicts team satisfaction and life satisfaction, and negatively predicts athlete burnout. Findings from Study 2 revealed that sport-domain gratitude positively predicts team satisfaction and negatively predicts athlete burnout. A stronger gratitude and well-being relationship was observed in Study 2. This research provides the initial verification that gratitude and adolescent athletes’ well-being are related. Possible mechanism of this relation, limitations, and practical implications are discussed.     

Society’s (Virtually) Time-Free Transition into the Digital Age

Three early studies of the impact of IT on American society suggested that it was having a negative impact on social life, as well as mass media use. This article reviews the results from two large multiyear US national surveys that have been monitoring social change in US daily life with high response rates: (1) the 1974–2012 General Social Survey (GSS; with more than 55,000 adult respondents aged 18+) and (2) the 2003–2011 American Time-Use Survey (ATUS; with more than 100,000 such respondents). The GSS has collected time-estimate data on particular social and media activities, while the ATUS surveys have collected complete 24-h diary accounts across a single day. Our analysis is conducted on two levels to determine whether various social/media activities have changed (1) at the aggregate societal level as new IT have diffused over the last 20 years and (2) among individuals who use these new media more. In both surveys, there seems little if any significant impact of these new media on social/media time, even though they had become the predominant source of information and social contact by 2004. GSS respondents in general have not reported lower levels of social or media contact since the 1990s, and while those GSS respondents who spent more time on the Internet did report fewer social visits with relatives, they reported more visits with friends, compared to those who do not use the Internet. The main difference between users and nonusers in the ATUS was with time at paid work, and that was only partially explained by higher Internet use by teens and on days off from work. For reading and certain other behaviors, Internet use was sometimes associated with increased use in these surveys. Moreover, no consistent decline in either social or media activities was found in either survey across this period of Internet diffusion, much in line with the earlier national studies. At the same time, it seems clear that not only the ATUS but diary studies in other countries are failing to capture the significant social impact of IT on the rest of life in the new digital age.