The why, when, and how of immigration amnesties

This paper deals with granting of an amnesty to illegal immigrants. We consider government behavior with respect to allocations on limiting infiltration (border control) and apprehending infiltrators (internal control) and with respect to the granting of amnesties, the timing of amnesties, and limitations on eligibility for those amnesties. We demonstrate the effects of government actions on allocations and the flow of immigrants, and how the interactions between these factors combine to yield an optimal amnesty policy. We also consider two extensions—intertemporal transfers of policing funds and “fuzziness” in declarations regarding eligibility for an amnesty aimed at apprehending and deporting undesirables.     

‘Expressive-Instrumental Traits and Sexist Attitudes among Spanish University Professors’

In this study we analyze the link between Instrumental/Expressive traits and sexist attitudes. The sample is made up of 496 male and female Spanish university professors (230 women and 266 men). In addition to collecting sociodemographic information from the participants, the following scales were administered: the Personal Attributes Questionnaire by Spence and Helmreich (PAQ, 1978); the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory [ASI, Glick and Fiske: 1996, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 70, pp. 491–512]; and the Neosexism Scale [Tougas et al.: 1995, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 21(8), pp. 842–849]. The data reveal that while the participants in our study subscribe less to sexist attitudes than the general population, the men continue to hold more hostile and benevolent sexist attitudes than do the women in our study. Surprisingly, however, we find that both female and male professors are less favorable toward affirmative action aimed at increasing women’s presence in the public sphere than the general population. As expected, women and men are equally instrumental, although women continue to show a greater number of expressive traits than men. Conversely, men score higher on instrumentality/expressiveness, which correlates positively with instrumentality and negatively with expressiveness. We also find some significant differences in levels of instrumentality and expressiveness when comparing the male and female professors and taking field of study into account. Lastly, we find negative correlations between expressiveness and Hostile Sexism (HS) and between masculinity and HS among women, and between expressiveness and Benevolent Sexism (BS) among men. To conclude, we offer some insight into the potential implications of these results.     

Do amnesty programs reduce undocumented immigration? Evidence from Irca

This article examines whether mass legalization programs reduce future undocumented immigration. We focus on the effects of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, which granted amnesty to nearly 2.7 million undocumented immigrants. We report that apprehensions of persons attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border illegally declined immediately following passage of the law but returned to normal levels during the period when undocumented immigrants could file for amnesty and the years thereafter. Our findings suggest that the amnesty program did not change long-term patterns of undocumented immigration from Mexico.     

Sex differences in patterns of career mobility

Using the 1970 Census data, this paper examines differences by sex in patterns of intragenerational occupational mobility over a five year period (1965–1970) for two cohorts of white, U.S. men and women. The observed mobility patterns are separated into that part due to structural factors (i.e., the different distributions over occupational origins and destinations by sex) and that due to sex-related individual and group characteristics. Most of the observed differences in mobility patterns are found to be the result of occupational sex segregation.     

Immigrants at new destinations: how they fare and why

We explore matched employer–employee data for a new destination of international migrants in Europe—Portugal. We conclude that the difference between the earnings of immigrants and natives with similar personal characteristics is for the most part due to the characteristics of the matches they form, immigrants being penalized on two different counts: absence of match-specific human capital and occupational downgrading. Moreover, we show that non-random sorting across workplaces has a significant detrimental effect on immigrants’ wages. This is the flip side of joining migrant-crowded workplaces.     

Occupational mobility of American women: Compositional and structural changes, 1980–2007

In this paper, I document trends in women's occupational mobility between 1980 and 2007 in the U.S labor market, and link these trends to two distinct sources: compositional and structural changes. In this context, compositional changes refers to the over time trends in the distributions of men and women in the occupational wage hierarchy, while structural changes are the trends in the relative standing of occupations in the wage hierarchy over time. The findings provide empirical evidence for both processes, indicating that the impressive upward occupational mobility of American women is a consequence not only of their increased access to highly paid occupations, but also of the higher wage increments in their typical occupational profiles relative to men's—a structural change not often acknowledged by sociologists.     

The employment adjustment of male immigrants in England

In this paper the employment performance of native and foreign born men in England is examined, using 1993–1994 data from the Quarterly Labour Force Survey of the United Kingdom. Chiswick's (1982) hypotheses of immigrant employment adjustment are investigated using logistic regression analysis. We show that there are interesting and important employment effects arising from immigrant characteristics. Recent white immigrants experience a transitory employment disadvantage. However non-white immigrants never attain employment equality with native born white men. Education, potential experience, family characteristics and country of birth are also found to be important determinants of employment. Received: 13 September 1998/Accepted: 15 July 1999     

Life Domain Satisfaction: A Portugal–France Comparison

The study was aimed at replicating on a Portuguese sample the seven-factor model of life appraisal (physical autonomy, love life, family life, social life, occupational life, finances, and leisure life) that was suggested by Salvatore and Munoz Sastre Social Indicators Research 53:229–255 (2001). A sample of 1,111 Portuguese participants, aged 17–85, was presented with the Appraisal of Life Questionnaire. The “domain” model of life appraisal satisfactorily accounted for the data gathered on the Portuguese sample. Regarding finances and occupational life, Portuguese scores were lower than French scores. Regarding the occupational score and the leisure score, a clear linear decrease as a function of age was evidenced in the Portuguese sample. Finally, regarding the family score and the financial score, a non-linear relationship with age was found. An increase was observed from young adult age to adult age, and a decrease was observed from adult age to older age. A strong decrease in the physical autonomy scores among Portuguese females was also observed.     

Informal Networks Social Capital of Fathers: What Does the Social Engagement Survey Tell Us?

Using the General Social Survey on Social Engagement conducted by Statistics Canada in 2003, this paper examines social capital derived from informal networks and its variation among men categorized as: (1) men with no children, and (2) men living with children in (a) intact, (b) step, and (c) lone parent families. The focus on men stems from a concern that their role in families has not been as extensively studied as that of women. The results show that married men living with children have higher social capital – measured in terms of the number of friends, relatives, and neighbors, and in their level of trust in them – than lone fathers or step fathers in cohabiting unions. Compared to child-free men, married fathers have higher social capital but also tend to have friends who are more similar to themselves in age, education, or income.     

Does intergenerational mobility shape psychological distress? Sorokin revisited

Drawing from Sorokin's hypothesis that socially mobile individuals are at greater risk of experiencing psychological distress than their non-mobile counterparts, we investigate whether intergenerational occupational mobility influences psychological distress, as measured by the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression (CES-D) scale. Using data for men from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS) and Sobel's Diagonal Mobility Models, we find little evidence for Sorokin's hypothesis; mobile individuals are no more likely to be psychologically distressed than their non-mobile counterparts. In fact, one group of mobile men - those who left their farming origins - are actually less distressed than the sons who remain as farmers and non-mobile men in higher-ranked social classes. We speculate that this reflects the fact that farming became very arduous during the late 20th century and these mobile sons of farmers appreciate their improved life chances. Our findings suggest that the association between mobility and psychological distress varies across specific class backgrounds and is contingent upon the broader social and economic context.     

Selective Out-Migration from Florida

I test if selective out-migration of unhealthy seniors explains why disability rates are so much lower for Florida, as compared to the national average. This particular area of research is timely given the significant demographic changes relating to aging. Moreover, this study contributes to the body of literature examining migration with respect to disability and widowhood. Using State Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) and Public Use Microdata Areas (PUMA), I create national maps showing disability rates for the following age-groups: 50–59, 60–69, and 70+. After creating maps in ARCGIS and conducting univariate and clustering analysis on mobility disability and personal care limitation, I employ multinomial logit (MNL) analysis to test if individuals with disability are more likely to out-migrate from Florida. The regression analyses lend support to the relaxed Litwak and Longino (The Gerontologist, 27(3): 266–272, 1987) second-move hypothesis, which claims individuals with progressively worse health are more likely to undertake another move to be closer to family and friends. I state “relaxed” because the data does not allow one to determine the reason for migration—only that migration occurred during the past year. This research informs policy-makers to recognize that elderly in better health may migrate to places such as Arizona and Florida due to amenity-seeking behavior, but unhealthy elderly are more likely to leave these states due to assistance-seeking behavior. This out-migration can place excess demand on health services for the incoming regions, which requires state and local government to ensure resources are in place. Also noteworthy, my results are less likely to be flawed by erroneous age and sex data in the public use microdata samples (IPUMS) since I stack the 2006 and 2007 American Community Survey (ACS). A recent working studies by Alexander et al. (Inaccurate age and sex data in the Census PUMS files: Evidence and implications. Munich: CESifo, 2010) shows inaccuracies in the IPUMS for the 1 and 5% 2000 Census, the 2003–2006 ACS, the 2005–2007 3-year ACS, and the 2004–2009 current population survey (CPS) files.     

Social Networks and Support,Gender, and Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Hypertension Among Older Adults

Using data from the 2001 NHIS and the 2005–2006 and 2007–2008 NHANES, we examine how self-reporting a previous diagnosis of hypertension among adults aged 65+ differs by race/ethnicity for men and women; we explore the extent to which disparities are driven by group differences in social risk factors, particularly social support and integration; and last, whether these relationships mimic patterns seen for measured hypertension at interview. Findings indicate that rates of ever-diagnosed hypertension in both samples are highest among black seniors and older women and lowest among Mexican-American men, with the gender gap lowest among whites and substantially higher among blacks and Mexican-Americans. However, replication analyses of NHANES models using measured hypertension, instead of a self-report of having ever been diagnosed with hypertension, suggests that reporting bias and measurement error contribute to observed disparities, as racial/ethnic differences in hypertension rates are smaller when measured hypertension is examined, especially among women. Logistic regression models also show that while adjusting for group differences in measures of support and integration mediates some of the disparity in measured hypertension between Mexican-American and white seniors, adjusting for support and integration amplifies black-white disparities in both ever diagnosed and measured hypertension—driven primarily by adjustment for attendance at religious services, which reduces hypertension risk for all older adults but is more commonly reported among black seniors, especially women.     

Rethinking the Two-Body Problem: The Segregation of Women Into Geographically Dispersed Occupations

Empirical research on the family cites the tendency for couples to relocate for husbands’ careers as evidence against the gender neutrality of household economic decisions. For these studies, occupational segregation is a concern because occupations are not random by sex and mobility is not random by occupation. I find that the tendency for households to relocate for husbands’ careers is better explained by the segregation of women into geographically dispersed occupations rather than by the direct prioritization of men’s careers. Among never-married workers, women relocate for work less often than men, and the gender effect disappears after occupational segregation is accounted for. Although most two-earner families feature husbands in geographically clustered jobs involving frequent relocation for work, families are no less likely to relocate for work when it belongs to the wife. I conclude that future research in household mobility should treat occupational segregation occurring prior to marriage rather than gender bias within married couples as the primary explanation for the prioritization of husbands’ careers in household mobility decisions.     

Black–white differences in social mobility in the past 30 years: A latent-class regression analysis

This article presents an analysis of racial differences in intergenerational occupational mobility using a novel latent-class regression model. The model distinguishes mobility patterns by membership in four latent classes, which are labeled as the “stable middle” class, the “downwardly mobile” (DM) class, the “upwardly mobile” (UM) class, and the “stable working” (SW) class, and this distinction provides new substantive insights into mobility analysis. Compared with whites, blacks are shown to be disadvantaged in two of the three elements of mobility chances that the distinction of these four latent classes identifies: a disadvantage coming from their poor status backgrounds, and a disadvantage coming from a significantly smaller chance of experiencing upward mobility than whites. On the other hand, blacks are not significantly more likely than whites to experience downward mobility. Changes in the black–white differences in mobility chances are also analyzed.     

Dynamics of Internal Migration Determinants for American Jews, 1985–1990 and 1995–2000

This paper examines how individual characteristics and structural factors have changed in determining Jewish internal migration in the U.S. between 1985–1990 and 1995–2000. Multinomial logistic regression analysis of the 1990 and 2000 National Jewish Population Surveys shows that socio-demographic characteristics have both increased their power to explain variation in 5-year migration and have become more similar for intra- and interstate migration. Further analysis added migration status at the beginning-of-period, state context of residence characteristics, and ethnic concentration to the explanatory variables. Results from logistic regression analysis, which was limited to interstate mobility, were very much in accordance with the observations of the single-level analysis of the socio-demographic variables. Additional findings suggest that previous mobility increases subsequent interstate migration; that per capita income does not have a meaningful effect on migration; that unemployment encourages migration (yet later this relationship turned negative); and that warm climate deters migration. The importance of ethnic concentration has weakened over time albeit maintained statistically significant. Finally, when the two surveys were integrated into one data set, “time” enhances the tendency of Jews to migrate. The results are discussed in the context of ethnic diversity in contemporary America.

Male-female differences in labor market outcomes during the early transition to market: The cases of Estonia and Slovenia

Changes in women's relative wages and employment are analyzed, using social security data from Slovenia (1987–1992) and a retrospective labor force survey in Estonia (1989–1994). Estonia adopted liberal labor market policies. Slovenia took an interventionist approach. Nevertheless, relative wages for women rose in both countries. Factors favoring women included: returns to human capital rose in transition, benefiting women; relative labor demand shifted toward predominantly female sectors; low-wage women had a disproportionate incentive to exit the labor market, especially in Estonia. However, women were less mobile across jobs in both countries, so men disproportionately filled new jobs in expanding sectors. Received: 27 November 1997/Accepted: 20 December 1998     

Homogamy by education and migration status in Monterrey,Mexico: changes and continuities over time

This paper reviews changes in homogamy by migration status and educational level in Monterrey, Mexico, through the analysis of marriage patterns for two cohorts of men born in 1905–1934 and 1940–1969. Results show a significant increase in educational homogamy, as well as in homogamy by rural origins. The changes suggest that education has played an increasingly important role in the process of mate selection, although certain particularistic characteristics, such as being a rural immigrant, are still important in marriage formation. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of these findings for the relationship between homogamy and social stratification.

Changes in the earnings of Arab men in the US between 2000 and 2002

Using public-use microdata samples from the American Community Survey, we find that Middle Eastern Arab men and Afghan, Iranian, and Pakistani men experienced a significant earnings decline relative to non-Hispanic whites between 2000 and 2002. Further analyses based on the Juhn–Murphy–Pierce wage decomposition technique as well as quantile regression indicate that this earnings decline is not explained by changes in the structure of wages or in observable characteristics beyond ethnicity. Our interpretation is that the unanticipated events of September 11th, 2001 negatively affected the labor-market income of the groups most closely associated with the ethnicity of the terrorists.

Veteran Status,Income, and Intergenerational Mobility Across Three Cohorts of American Men

Existing research linking prior military employment with labor market outcomes has focused on comparing the relative income of veterans and nonveterans. However, people who join the armed forces are uniquely selected from the broader population, and the form and direction of selectivity has shifted over time, with differential enlistment rates by race, region, and socioeconomic status. Understanding changes in the demographic composition of enlistees and veterans has significant import for the study of social mobility, particularly given changes in the occupational structure since the mid-twentieth century and wage stagnation well into the new millennium. Furthermore, labor market polarization and increases in educational attainment since WWII raise additional concerns about the social origins of military personnel and their occupational trajectories after discharge. Using data from the National Longitudinal Surveys, we investigate how social background is linked to both income and occupational mobility among veterans from three cohorts of American men: World War II, Vietnam, and the All-Volunteer Force. We find few benefits for veterans, for either income or intergenerational occupational mobility, once social background is controlled, suggesting that selection into the armed forces largely governs outcomes in the civilian labor market. Our findings have significant importance for understanding civilian labor market outcomes and trajectories of social mobility during distinct phases of military staffing.     

Are Father’s or Mother’s Socioeconomic Characteristics More Important Influences on Student Performance? Recent International Evidence

Since the early 1970s the importance of mothers’ socioeconomic characteristics on their children’s educational and occupational attainment has been acknowledged. However, it is not clear if fathers’ characteristics have a stronger influence because men usually have stronger attachments to the labour market, or alternatively mothers’ characteristics are more important because of their greater role in children’s socialization. This study addresses this question by comparing the influence of father’s and mother’s education and occupation on student performance in literacy and numeracy using data from 30 countries. The impact of mother’s education is usually greater or comparable to that of father’s education. In contrast, substantially stronger effects for mother’s occupational status compared to father’s were rare. In most countries the impact of mother’s socioeconomic characteristics (education plus occupation) on student performance is comparable to that for father’s. Of the four indicators of socioeconomic background, father’s occupational status and mother’s educational attainment tend to have stronger effects, although many countries do not conform to this pattern. There are indications that the relative importance of mother’s characteristics have increased over time.