Income distributions,labour market sectors and the Goldschmidt hypothesis: the nonmetropolitan United States in 1970 and 1980

Local social structures are not simply their national counterparts writ small. There are autonomous, locality-specific influences which have a significant bearing on variations in socio-economic conditions. To show this. this paper concentrates on two measures of income distribution — family/household income inequality and poverty rates. Drawing on data from a one-in-six systematic sample of nonmetropolitan U.S. counties for 1970 and 1980, variations in these conditions are evaluated in the context of labour market segmentation and Goldschmidt's ideas on the socio-economic consequences of large-scale farms. The direct effects of these causal forces are shown to be influenced by the employment structures of local labour markets. The most important determinants of income distribution differences within labour market types are shown to be monopoly sector employment, competitive sector employment, large farm holdings, nonwhite population compositions and location within the southern United States.     

Beyond Oaxaca–Blinder: Accounting for differences in household income distributions

This paper develops a method to decompose differences across distributions of household income, based on counterfactual distributions that ‘lie between’ the actually observed distributions. Our approach decomposes differences between any two income distributions (or functionals such as inequality or poverty measures) into shares due to price effects; occupational structure effects; and endowment effects. Comparing the household income distributions of the USA and Brazil in 1999, we find that most of Brazil’s excess inequality (of 13 Gini points) is accounted for by underlying inequalities in the distributions of education and of non-labor income, notably pensions (between four and six Gini points each). Steeper returns to education in Brazil also make an important contribution (of two to five points). Differences in occupational structure and in racial and demographic composition are much less important. An erratum to this article can be found at     

Social capital,information flows,and income creation in rural Canada: a cross-community analysis

We propose that (I) social capacity, defined as the ability of people to organize and use their social capital, does influence their level of income, and that (II) this is because social capital use facilitates the flow of income-related knowledge and information between economic agents. Tests of these propositions based on a framework classifying social capital as a productive asset embedded in four types of social relations, and using data on household and community social capital for rural Canada, revealed some supportive evidence.     

Social Civility in the United States

The existence of social civility is explored in terms of the components of social responsibility, social concern, and social involvement. Social civility is viewed as consisting of the degree to which people have a sense of duty or obligation to society, the extent of their concern for the welfare of others as well as themselves, and whether they help others through voluntary activities. The purpose of this article is to describe the level and distribution of the components of social civility in the population. Data are from a 1995 random digit–dialing sample of U.S. adults between the ages of 25 and 74. The findings fail to support the hypothesis of social incivility in the U.S. Adults report high levels of social responsibility and invest a great deal of thought and effort into their life and their contributions to others' welfare. Social civility is found to be higher among more educated, married, female, and older adults. Regular religious attendance, which predicts greater social civility, mediates the relationship of the key demographic variables with social civility.     

Migration and household/family structure: Puerto Ricans in the United States

"The analyses in this research were intended to demonstrate the advantages of utilizing microdata from [U.S.] census sources for examining migration status and related household and family structures. By asking for the self-identification of ethnic origin, in this case Spanish/Hispanic origin, a census is able to trace not only first generation migrants by different durations of residence, but also later generations. The flexibility afforded by microdata tape files enables [the authors] to further examine multilevel effects of migration and family patterns. In this present example, the widespread nature of family instability among persons of Puerto Rican origin in the New York/New Jersey area has been noted." (summary in FRE, SPA)     

Sexual orientation and household financial decisions: evidence from couples in the United States

We analyze how sexual orientation is related to household financial decisions using 2000 US Census data, and find that lesbian couples pay higher annual mortgages relative to house value than do heterosexual or gay couples. We also estimate that cohabiting heterosexuals pay more than their married counterparts. We link this homosexual-specific differential to homeowners’ propensity to save. This differential reflects the gender composition of same-sex households, and their very low fertility, in addition to the precautionary motives increasing cohabiting couples’ propensity to save relative to married ones. Evidence from retirement and social security income of older couples exhibits the same pattern of differentials by sexual orientation and cohabiting status.     

Labor immigration and capital flows: long-term Australian,Canadian and United States experience

"Evidence on labor immigration and capital inflows to three high labor-immigration economies (Australia, Canada, the United States) is examined over periods ranging from 1820-1870 through to 1991. Data show a close association between capital flows and immigration, although causality implications are ambiguous. For the United States, the relation between factor flows is more complex than for the other countries, but flows to the United States have influenced those to smaller economies. All three nations have been subjected to common immigrant push factors through to 1930-1950 but, since World War II, linkages between factor flows have altered. Post-World War II U.S. immigration restrictions have become more important as a global determinant of labor flows, with factor flow policymaking becoming increasingly internationally interdependent."     

Family capital: Examining social capital,family commitment,and acculturation among college-enrolled Mexican-American men and women in the Southwestern United States

Social capital is integral to an individual’s ability to access various resources embedded in social and familial networks that are important in academic access and future success. The types and dynamics of social relationships created by men and women are thought to generate different forms of social capital with factors such as acculturation resulting in differences in intercultural networks and potential resource access. However, the factors that contribute to the development of social capital require further investigation. The current study examines the relationship between acculturation, family role commitment, and various social network characteristics associated with social capital among Mexican-American college-enrolled men (n = 119) and women (n = 196). Several multiple regressions were conducted. Findings indicate that acculturation and family role commitment relate differently to social-capital-network characteristics among Mexican-American men and women. For women, marital commitment was consistently related to social-capital-network characteristics whereas acculturation factors seemed to be more salient among men. Overall, study variables accounted for a larger portion of the variance for social-capital-network characteristics across analyses for men than women indicating that other factors may be at play in generating social capital for women.     

International trade,labour migrations and capital flows: long-term evidence for Australia,Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States

The historical links between international factor mobility and the extent of international trade are analysed over the long term for three high labour immigration countries (Australia, Canada and the United States) and one high labour emigration country (the United Kingdom).
Time series data are used. Current international openness is assessed relative to this experience. International factor market integration has increased over time with trade liberalization, suggesting that traditional Hecksher-Ohlin thinking cannot be readily used to account for long-term trends in several important economies.
Both trade and factor mobility have an episodic character that makes it misleading to assess current international openness only in terms of post-World War 2 economic trends.     

Mexican Migration Networks in the United States, 1980–20001

Between 1980 and 2000, about 1.2 million Mexican immigrants settled in 47 new settlement states. In the past, these immigrants would have settled in California, Texas, or Illinois, the three traditional states for Mexican settlement. Explaining this dispersion, the network saturation theory claims that high‐volume migration of Mexicans finally saturated the housing and job opportunities of Mexicans in traditional states and especially in Los Angeles. High rents and low wages then encouraged Mexican immigrants to select new states for settlement. This article subjects the network saturation theory to a rigorous reanalysis using new evidence. The empirical results tend to confirm the network saturation theory.     

Values,Commitments, and Ethics of Social Work in the United States

Social workers in the U.S. practice at the margins of society where value conflicts in the larger culture are particularly acute. This paper reviews the value and ethical conflicts that social workers encounter daily and explores the impact of the continuing drive for professional recognition and status upon the profession's traditional commitment to the poor.     

Health Social Movements in the United States: An Overview

This article reviews the literature on health social movements (HSMs) and provides an overview of their main conceptual, theoretical and empirical underpinnings. Health social movements is not a single paradigm but spans several decades’ worth of theoretical and research activity in the areas of social movements, medical sociology and social studies in science. Case studies of HSMs have been accumulating for years, and several new collections of papers attempt to systematize the various strands of health social movements research to answer questions about their origins, different strategic and political approaches to social change, their trajectories and consequences. We provide a selective overview of the literature on health social movements that explore these questions, while distinguishing between health social movements seeking greater access to healthcare, those focusing on health disparities and inequality, and those challenging the underlying science of health and healthcare. We conclude with some suggestions for the direction of future studies.     

The influence of earnings on income distribution in the United States

This article discusses whether the so called “skill-biased technological change” hypothesis is able to explain the individual earnings inequality in the U.S. during the period 1968–2000. Using the statistic information supplied by the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the article analyzes the earnings evolution, explaining the reasons why earnings inequality has increased, and the relation of this increase with the household income distribution. The main conclusions are the following: (a) changes on labor productivity are not the main cause of the increase in earnings’ inequality, and (b) this earnings’ inequality is not the only reason for the increase of the households’ income inequality.     

Foreign retirement income among new older immigrants in the United States

Older adults make up an increasing share of new legal immigrants to the United States. These immigrants are often financially dependent on family since they are often barred from receiving several US support programmes and are less likely to receive US retirement benefits than natives. However, little information exists as to whether they receive retirement income from abroad. Using the New Immigrant Survey (N=2,150), we find that only 8.1 per cent of older recent immigrants report receiving foreign retirement income. In logistic modelling, older immigrants from Asia and Latin America were less likely to receive retirement income from abroad than those from Europe (Odds ratio = 0.50, p<0.05; Odds ratio = 0.22, p<0.001, respectively). Results suggest that newly admitted older immigrants from Asia and Latin America face an additional economic disadvantage compared with older Europeans that cannot be attributed to their demographic and migration characteristics.     

Social Class and Political Engagement in the United States

The relationship between class and political engagement in the United States is well‐established: people with lower incomes, who have less education, or who work outside the professional and managerial occupations do less of all forms of political engagement. They vote less than better‐off people, are less likely to give money to candidates, pay less attention to politics, and contact their representatives less often than those with more resources. They are also less likely to believe they can influence political decisions or to feel entitled to participate in politics. This article reviews the dominant (individualist and institutionalist) approaches to explaining inequalities in political participation and highlights recent “relational” work that offers a more integrated perspective on political engagement and class position.     

Women's Status and Social Capital in the United States

SUMMARY

Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone found that social capital is closely associated with a variety of important indicators of community health, and women benefit from many of these resources as members of their communities. But is there anything distinct about how women experience social capital? Is there a relationship between social capital and women's status overall? Using data on social capital from Bowling Alone and data collected by the Institute for Women's Policy Research for its Status of Women in the States project, we assess trends across the states on both dimensions. Overall, the findings suggest that there is a strong relationship between the two.     

Social security reform in the twenty-first century: the United States

The paper reviews the history of the Social Security system in the United States in the twentieth century and discusses options for the twenty-first. Because of the steady aging of the U.S. population and the impending retirement of the large baby boom cohort, the Social Security program now is in long-term actuarial deficit. The standard twentieth century approach to this actuarial deficit would be to raise payroll taxes enough to pay for anticipated future benefit increases, but for several reasons that approach may not be so popular this time around. The author's preferred approach is a gradual trimming of long-term benefit growth, plus "add on" individual accounts to provide new saving, for the economy and for the retirement system. The paper also criticizes proposals for Social Security reform made by President Clinton and a committee appointed by President Bush, generally because these proposals do not provide enough new saving.     

Movement Building and the United States Social Forum

Despite the growing academic literature on the World Social Forum process, few scholars have attempted to systematically analyze the social, cultural, and political impact of the forums. This has to do in part with the inherent difficulties of assessing movement consequences, which is particularly complicated for an activity geared toward creating ‘open spaces.’ This article presents an analytic framework for evaluating the impact of the social forums through an analysis of the 2010 United States Social Forum (USSF) in Detroit from the perspective of a local Boston-based delegation called the Boston Freedom Rides. We then use that framework to consider the impact of the 2010 USSF, bridging the academic literature on movement outcomes with activist perspectives. We make two related claims. First, the social forums, and the USSF in particular, should be viewed and their impact assessed in light of their generativity as ‘movement-building machines’: infrastructures designed for the production of social capital, networks, solidarities, meanings, frames, identities, knowledges, strategies, skills, and repertoires. Second, with respect to the Freedom Rides, the 2010 USSF contributed to movement building on multiple levels, but more so within rather than across movement sectors. Our goal is less to make a definitive argument about the impact of the 2010 USSF than to provide a helpful way of thinking about movement building as a social movement outcome, which can be applied and refined through further comparative and longitudinal research. We thus favor breadth over depth in outlining a broad framework for future inquiry.