Welfare Reform and Elderly Immigrants' Naturalization: Access to Public Benefits as an Incentive for Naturalization in the United States

Welfare reform in the United States restricted non‐citizens' eligibility for public assistance programs and strengthened economic benefits from naturalization. We examine the impact of these policy changes on elderly immigrants' naturalization, considering their level of need for public benefits. Using individual data from the Current Population Survey as well as state‐level data, we employ a differences‐in‐differences approach to consider variations in time, state policy, and probability of Medicaid participation. Results show that naturalization significantly increased among elderly immigrants who were likely to participate in Medicaid, suggesting that elderly immigrants in need of Medicaid became naturalized to maintain their eligibility for public benefits after welfare reform.     

Internalising and externalising children's behaviour problems in Britain and the US: relationships to family resources1

A large sample of British children (n=994) of varying ages (7–18 years) and a large sample of American children (n=886) of varying ages (7–16 years) were rated by their mothers using respectively the Rutter Child Scale A and the Behaviour Problems Index both of which cover a variety of behavioural problems. Factor analysis of the behavioural scales distinguished externalising and internalising dimensions of behaviour in both countries. We examined whether children's experiences of family change, cognitive ability and family adversity including economic deprivation were associated with differences in the prevalence of the behavioural dimensions. Mean cognitive scores decreased significantly with increasing level of externalising behavioural problems in British and American children but showed no significant relationship to levels of internalising behaviour problems in either sample. Among American children internalising and externalising behavioural problems were related to experience of non‐intact family structures and measures of family adversity. Externalising behavioural problems were related to measures of family adversity among British boys and girls but were only related to experience of non‐intact family structures in the sample of British girls. Among British girls, internalising behavioural problems were also related to non‐intact family structures. The associations between non‐intact family structures and behavioural problems were independent of measures of economic deprivation in both samples of children. This study documents some of the background factors which affect children's behavioural and cognitive outcomes. Unlike children's family structure economic deprivation can be influenced through policy intervention, and the analysis supports the view that relieving economic deprivation would help improve children's behavioural outcomes. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Constructing a Life That Works: Part 1, Blending Postmodern Family Therapy and Career Counseling

Postmodern approaches to career counseling are well suited to addressing the challenges a postindustrial world poses to career development and overall life design. In this, the 1st of 2 articles exploring theory and practice, the authors examine the differences between traditional trait and factor models of career counseling and postmodern approaches using life narratives and social constructionism. As career counselors and marriage and family therapists, the authors' approach to career development integrates the literature on postmodern family therapy with emerging narrative approaches to career counseling. The 2nd article (C. Campbell & M. Ungar, 2004) discusses 7 aspects of the authors' daily practice as postmodern career counselors.     

Economic Circumstances and Family Outcomes: A Review of the 1990s

This review documents the economic context within which American families lived in the 1990s. Despite nearly full employment and growing income and wealth for many Americans, problem areas included persistent racial gaps in economic well‐being, growing inequality, and declining wages for young men. Women showed stronger income growth than men in the decade, and 2‐earner households became increasingly associated with advantage. We review the consequences of these trends and of economic well‐being generally on 4 dimensions of family outcomes: family formation, divorce, marital quality, and child well‐being. Despite hypotheses suggesting that women's earnings might have different effects on family outcomes than men's earnings, generally the review supports the expectation that both men's and women's economic advantage is associated with more marriage, less divorce, more marital happiness, and greater child well‐being. Important issues regarding measurement, reciprocal relations between family structure and economic well‐being, and race and gender effects remain unresolved.     

Internal Migration of Ethno‐national Minorities: The Case of Arabs in Israel

Recent scholarship emphasizes differences among ethnic groups' internal migration patterns. Yet, with few exceptions, research has focused on the Anglo‐American world, neglecting experiences from other regions. This paper is part of a larger research project that studies mobility among the Arab minority in Israel and its driving forces. In this paper we examine patterns of internal migration by analysing the propensity to migrate as well as migrants' individual and social characteristics. First, we survey the theoretical backdrop that is suggested by recent geographic literature on internal migration among ethnic and racial minorities, including native groups. Second, we contextualize the group studied, providing necessary background information on the political, socio‐economic and demographic conditions of Arabs in Israel. We briefly discuss attributes that are – or have been – potential hindering factors to Arab mobility in the Jewish state. Finally, we analyse 1995 national census data at the micro scale and provide a basis for future explanations of the phenomenon. We conclude by outlying some future directions in the study of internal migration of minorities in Israel.     

European Union Policy on Older Adult Learning: A Critical Commentary

Recently, some researchers have argued that high state rates of Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Online Survey, Certification and Reporting (OSCAR) nursing facility deficiencies indicate stringent enforcement, leaving the impression of better-quality care soon to follow; others maintain that the rank ordering of states' quality of nursing facility care remains fairly constant, resting on deep-seated state characteristics that change slowly, so that short-term improvement in poor-quality care is unlikely. The authors examine change in the process and outcome quality of states' Medicare nursing facility long-term care programs across 1999 to 2005, using linear and two-stage least squares regression. They find that (1) nationally, process quality generally falls across this period while outcome quality generally increases; (2) neither a prominent enforcement stringency index nor state culture, a relatively stable state characteristic, exerts much influence on state process and outcome quality scores over time, but (3) the relative costs and benefits for CMS compliance appear to contribute to explaining change in states' quality of resident outcomes over time; and (4) states' process quality is much less stable than outcome quality, and outcome indices distinct from OSCAR deficiency data provide more reliable and possibly more valid measures of care quality.     

Poverty,Place, and Coal Employment across Appalachia and the United States in a New Economic Era

The impacts of employment in the coal industry remain controversial. Few studies have investigated these impacts over the decade of the great recession and in light of the nation's changing energy economy. We bring together two long‐standing rural sociological traditions to address debates framed at the national level and for Appalachian communities facing the throes of transition from the coal industry. Building from rural sociology's “poverty and place” tradition and from natural resources sociology, we examine the relationship between coal employment and communities’ economic well‐being as indicated by poverty, household income, and unemployment. The study spans U.S. and Appalachian counties from 1990 to 2010. U.S. counties with greater coal employment in 1990 had lower income and higher poverty in 2000. Overall, however, coal employment's effect is mixed in the 1990–2000 decade. By contrast, for the recent 2000–2010 decade, coal employment is positively associated with indicators of well‐being. In Appalachia, fewer employment alternatives outside mining are related to higher well‐being. Our findings extend the poverty and place literature and the natural resources literature and underscore why a just transition away from coal should focus on moving communities toward sectors offering better future livelihoods.     

Comparing States' Medicaid Nursing Facilities and Home and Community-Based Services Long-Term Care Programs: Quality and Fit with Inclination,Capacity, and Need

States employ home and community-based services (HCBS) increasingly in Medicaid support of long-term care and rely less on nursing facilities. We examine how states' nursing facilities and HCBS programs compare and whether states' long-term care responses match their ideological inclination toward, material capacity for supporting, and their citizens' need for these public social programs. We use cross-sectional panel data on structural, process, and outcome quality for nursing facilities and HCBS congregate residential programs. We rank states, correlate these measures, and use regression to link inclination, capacity, and need to quality. We find that states' nursing facility and HCBS program quality are not closely related and that state HCBS congregate residential program quality is independent of inclination, capacity, and need. This latter result underscores a need for uniform HCBS standards and better data on quality.     

“No Thanks,We’re Full”: Individual Characteristics,National Context,and Changing Attitudes Toward Immigration1

In this paper we examine how individual‐level characteristics and national context affect attitudes toward immigration. Although many previous studies have compared attitudes toward immigration across countries, little attention has been paid to how attitudes may be affected by changes within a country over time. We take advantage of seventeen national Canadian Gallup surveys to consider how differences in national economic conditions and changing immigration flows affect attitudes and changes in attitudes between 1975 and 2000. While the state of the national economy affects attitudes this is not the case for the rate of immigration. Rather than affecting some groups more than others the state of the economy has a relatively uniform effect across groups. Our results also show that far from being a continuum, being anti‐immigration and being pro‐immigration are qualitatively different. Interest, ideology, and the national economy affect anti‐immigration sentiments, but only ideology affects pro‐immigration sentiments.     

Economic Penalties and Rewards of Family Formation,Gender and Education in the Low‐income Sector in Germany1

This article examines the differential effects of changes in family formations on men's and women's economic vulnerability. The motivating question is whether investments in education provide sufficient resources to escape the risk of poverty in the low‐income sector or if changes in household characteristics are more important determinants of one's living standard. Changes in household characteristics are defined in terms of partners' entry into and exit from households and partners' different labour market profiles. The analysis focuses on households in the low‐income sector in Germany, a population that is at high risk of poverty in a social welfare state that is expected to mitigate the effects of changes in family formation independent of gender. Findings from panel regression analysis demonstrate that women, in contrast to men, benefit economically as much as or more from investing in traditional family formations than in their own labour market position. This is especially the case for women with lower levels of education.     

Religion and Non‐traditional Families in the United States

Family forms that have historically been considered “nontraditional” and even “transgressive” are becoming increasingly accepted in the United States, bringing the United States into greater conformity with other western nations. The United States is still unique, however, in that religion continues to play an exceptionally powerful role in shaping Americans' perceptions of and engagement in non‐traditional families. Focusing our attention on same‐sex and interracial families specifically, we consider the recent work on how religion serves to stimulate and justify opposition or (in a minority of instances) support for such families. We contend that studies typically limit their focus to the cognitive aspects (beliefs, ideologies, identities, schemas, salience, etc.) of religion, while often ignoring the influence of religion's more structural aspects in shaping Americans' relationship to non‐traditional families. Given that religion impacts Americans' approaches to family formation at the micro, meso, and macro levels, we propose a more Durkheimian perspective on the topic, one that synthesizes social psychological and structural frameworks in future studies, thus allowing for a more comprehensive understanding of religion's evolving role in American family formation. We also call for more attention to how religion shapes the functioning of non‐traditional families.     

Rules, Red Tape, and Paperwork: The Archeology of State Control over Migrants

Abstract Conventional accounts of a drastic shift to migration restriction after World War I following a golden era of free movement obscure crucial processes of state formation around matters of administering migration. How and with what consequences did state control over migration become acceptable and possible after the Great War? Existing studies have centered on core countries of immigration and thus underestimate the degree to which legitimate state capacities have developed in a political field spanning sending and receiving countries with similar designs on the same international migrants. Relying on archival research, and an examination of the migratory field constituted by two quintessential emigration countries (Italy and Spain), and a traditional immigration country (Argentina) since the mid‐nineteenth century, this article argues that widespread acceptance of migration control as an administrative domain rightfully under states' purview, and the development of attendant capacities have derived from legal, organizational, and administrative mechanisms crafted by state actors in response to the challenges posed by mass migration. Concretely, these countries codified migration and nationality laws, built, took over, and revamped migration‐related organizations, and administratively encaged mobile people through official paperwork. The nature of efforts to evade official checks on mobility implicitly signaled the acceptance of migration control as a bona fide administrative domain. In more routine migration management, states legitimate capacity has had unforeseen intermediate‐ and long‐term consequences such as the subjection of migrants (and, because of ius sanguinis nationality laws, sometimes their descendants) to other states' administrative influence and the generation of conditions for dual citizenship. Study findings challenge scholarship that implicitly views states as constant factors conditioning migration flows, rather than as developing institutions with historically variable regulatory abilities and legitimacy. It extends current work by specifying mechanism used by state actors to establish migration as an accepted administrative domain.     

Constructing a Life That Works: Part 2, An Approach to Practice

The 1st article (C. Campbell & M. Ungar, 2004) of this 2‐part exploration of postmodern approaches to family therapy and narrative approaches to career counseling explored the differences between traditional trait and factor counseling models and postmodern approaches using life narratives and social constructionism. In this 2nd article, the authors discuss 7 aspects of their practice as postmodern career counselors that ask clients to (a) know what you want, (b) know what you have, (c) know what you hear, (d) know what constrains you, (e) map your preferred story, (f) grow into your story, and (g) grow out of your story. Several case studies demonstrate the applicability of these theories to practice.     

The Role of Community Assessments,Place, and the Great Recession in the Migration Intentions of Rural Americans

Many rural areas of the United States are experiencing population decline due to out‐migration. However, others—especially those places rich in natural amenities and recreational opportunities—are attracting new residents and losing less of their native population. In this article we investigate the predictors of rural Americans' migration intentions by examining how individual‐level community assessments, including community attachment and perceptions of community‐level problems, shape rural Americans' migration decision making while controlling for individual and place effects. Drawing on survey data from 17,000 residents in 11 different rural areas around the United States, we find that community attachment is a key predictor of rural migration, even during periods of economic recession, and regardless of individual and place characteristics or perceptions of community‐level problems. We also find that multiple dimensions of community attachment (e.g., practical, natural, family, community trust) have independent effects on the propensity of rural residents to migrate. Our research contributes to knowledge on migration trends among rural Americans by exploring the complicated reasoning behind why people stay in, or move to, certain rural communities and not others.     

Family Diversity and Child Health: Where Do Same‐Sex Couple Families Fit?

Increasing family diversity during the past half century has focused national attention on how children are faring in nontraditional family structures. Much of the limited evidence on children in same‐sex couple families suffers from several shortcomings, including a lack of representative data. We use the National Health Interview Survey (2004–2012) and the National Survey of Children's Health (2011–2012) to identify children in different‐sex married and cohabiting families, never and previously married single‐parent families, and same‐sex couple families. Considering important characteristics such as the child's race or ethnicity and adoption status, household socioeconomic standing, family stability, and parent health, we examine the relationship between family type and parent‐rated overall child health. The results suggest that poorer health among children in same‐sex couple as well as different‐sex cohabiting couple and single‐parent families appears to be largely the product of demographic and socioeconomic differences rather than exposure to nontraditional family forms.     

The Cost of Not Being Christian: Hindus,Sikhs and Muslims in Britain and Canada

This article compares foreign born Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims to native born white Christians on four economic outcomes in two nations: Britain and Canada. For Canada, our data come from the 1991 Census, for Britain from the Fourth National Survey of Ethnic Minorities (1994). Theory and research lead us to predict that, ceteris paribus, non‐Christians will fare better in Canada on three of the four outcomes. In the main, however, this expectation does not hold up. Compared to their British counterparts, Canada's Muslims fare less well on labor force participation and Canada's Hindus and Sikhs less well on unemployment. Compared to their Canadian counterparts, British Muslims fare less well on unemployment. On occupation and earnings, we detect no cross‐national differences. To explain the paucity of cross‐national disparities, we draw on Reitz's argument that Canada's reputation as an attractive immigrant destination has been exaggerated. To explain the few differences we do find, we emphasize cross‐national differences in religious discrimination and our inability to control adequately for differences in sending countries.     

The State Connection in China's Rural‐Urban Migration1

This study explores the role of China's rural local state‐owned and urban state‐owned units in its rural‐urban migration process. Most studies on Chinese migration have focused on migrants moving from rural to urban areas through informal mechanisms outside of the state's control. They therefore treat the Chinese state as an obstructionist force and dismiss its facilitative role in the migration process. By documenting rural local states' “labor export” strategies and urban state units' employment of millions of peasants, this article provides a corrective to the existing literature. It highlights and explains the state connection in China's rural‐urban migration.

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Childhood poverty, early motherhood and adult social exclusion

Childhood poverty and early parenthood are both high on the current political agenda. The key new issue that this research addresses is the relative importance of childhood poverty and of early motherhood as correlates of outcomes later in life. How far are the ‘effects’ of early motherhood on later outcomes due to childhood precursors, especially experience of childhood poverty? Subsidiary questions relate to the magnitude of these associations, the particular levels of childhood poverty that prove most critical, and whether, as often assumed, only teenage mothers are subsequently disadvantaged, or are those who have their first birth in their early twenties similarly disadvantaged? The source of data for this study is the National Child Development Study. We examine outcomes at age 33 for several domains of adult social exclusion: welfare, socio‐economic, physical health, emotional well‐being and demographic behaviour. We control for a wide range of childhood factors: poverty; social class of origin and of father; mother's and father's school leaving age; family structure; housing tenure; mother's and father's interest in education; personality attributes; performance on educational tests; and contact with the police by age 16. There are clear associations for the adult outcomes with age at first birth, even after controlling for childhood poverty and the other childhood background factors. Moreover, we demonstrate that the widest gulf in adult outcomes occurs for those who enter motherhood early (before age 23), though further rein‐forced by teenage motherhood for most adult outcomes. We also show that any experience of childhood poverty is clearly associated with adverse outcomes in adulthood, with reinforcement for higher levels of childhood poverty for a few outcomes.     

Local Labour Markets,Organizations and the Distribution of Family‐responsive Benefits in the USA

Family‐responsive benefits have important consequences for workers balancing work–family demands. Previous research on the distribution of family‐responsive benefits has focused on intra‐organizational determinants or general labour market characteristics, at the expense of local labour market factors. We address this deficiency by analysing a unique random sample of US work establishments nested in their local labour markets. Specifically, we ask whether, net of establishment and local labour market characteristics, women's local labour market standing influences the prevalence of family‐responsive benefits. The results indicate that women's labour market status, measured with a composite of occupational gender integration, aggregate educational attainment and percentage of women in managerial roles, has a strong positive net effect on the prevalence of family‐responsive workplace benefits. However, no significant interaction between women's status and establishment‐level characteristics was found. Our findings highlight the importance of local labour markets in the distribution of family‐responsive benefits across organizations.     

Social Capital,Organic Agriculture,and Sustainable Livelihood Security: Rethinking Agrarian Change in Mexico*

Abstract This paper explores the relevance of extra local market linkages and local‐level social capital to sustainable livelihood outcomes in two agrarian communities on Mexico's Baja Peninsula. Contextualized by the specificity of Mexico's transition from state‐directed rural development to neoliberally‐guided rural development in the 1990s, findings suggest that market linkages can intersect with pre‐existing social capital to both create new and destroy preexisting social capital, thus shaping the direction of development and inequality outcomes. The nature of a community's social fabric is often a result of long‐standing historical legacies. In the communities presented, the quantity and quality of social capital was intricately connected to their history of state‐sponsored or market agriculture; the nature of local institutions, with particular emphasis on the formation and evolution of the ejido; and the access to and availability of natural resources, namely land and water, which are both intricately connected to market access options. Moving beyond a simple demonstration that social capital matters, this analysis explores the complex and dynamic interaction between local‐level social capital and extralocal market linkages. In doing so, it contributes to the larger debate on how the historical legacy of populist reforms and the social and political institutions created during state populism have nuanced the trajectory of neoliberal development in Mexico.