American crime drops: Investigating the breaks,dips and drops in temporal homicide

ObjectivesWhile a great deal of attention has been given to the 1990s crime drop, less is known about the more recent decline in homicide rates that occurred in several large U.S. cities. This paper aims to explore whether these represent two distinct drops via statistical evidence of structural breaks in longitudinal homicide trends and explore potentially differing explanations for the two declines. Methods: Using homicide data on a large sample of U.S. cities from 1990 to 2011, we test for structural breaks in temporal homicide rates. Combining census data and a time series approach, we also examine the role structural features, demographic shifts, and crime control strategies played in the changes in homicide rates over time. Results: Statistical evidence demonstrates two structural breaks in homicide trends, with one trend reflecting the 1990s crime drop (1994–2002) and another trend capturing a second decline (2007–2011). Time series analysis confirms previous research findings about the contributions of structural conditions (e.g., disadvantage) and crime control strategies (e.g., police force size) to the crime drop of the 1990s, but these factors cannot account for the more recent drop with the exception of police presence. Conclusions: Although both structural conditions and crime control strategies are critical to the longitudinal trends in homicide rates over the entire span from 1990 to 2011, different factors account for these two distinct temporal trends.     

Broken promise of college? New educational sorting mechanisms for intergenerational association in the 21st century

Previous studies have shown that intergenerational socioeconomic association becomes weaker as children's education level increases and is negligible among college graduates. A college degree is known as the great equalizer for intergenerational socioeconomic mobility. Recent studies, however, reported that the strong intergenerational association reemerges among advanced degree holders although it stays weak among BA-only holders. Despite the substantial theoretical importance and policy implications, the mechanisms behind the reemergence of the intergenerational association at the post-baccalaureate level have been less studied. In this paper, we examine the association between parents' education and children's earnings using the 2010, 2013, 2015, and 2017 National Survey of College Graduates data. Our results show that the strong intergenerational socioeconomic immobility among advanced degree holders is fully attributable to three educational sorting mechanisms: children from high-SES families (1) obtain expensive and financially rewarding advanced degrees, (2) attend selective institutions and major in hyper-lucrative fields of study such as law and medicine in graduate school, and (3) complete their education at a younger age and enjoy income growth over more years in the labor market. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

Is happiness inequality immune to income inequality? New evidence through instrument-effect-corrected standard deviations

Previous research has found that a nation’s income inequality does not affect its happiness inequality. This article questions the appropriateness of the standard deviation as measure of happiness inequality used in these studies. Our main criticism concerns structural dependency, i.e. the technical dependency of the standard deviation on a nation’s mean happiness which is induced by measuring happiness with limited rating scales. To overcome this drawback, two new measures are proposed which adjust for the effects of limited instruments. Applying these new measures to the most recent World Values Survey data demonstrates that some countries change their ranking in the league table of happiness inequality considerably. Moreover, income inequality does affect corrected happiness inequality, a finding which has significant public policy implications.     

Coalitional affiliation as a missing link between ethnic polarization and well-being: An empirical test from the European Social Survey

Many studies converge in suggesting (a) that ethnic and racial minorities fare worse than host populations in reported well-being and objective measures of health and (b) that ethnic/racial diversity has a negative impact on various measures of social trust and well-being, including in the host or majority population. However, there is much uncertainty about the processes that connect diversity variables with personal outcomes. In this paper, we are particularly interested in different levels of coalitional affiliation, which refers to people’s social allegiances that guide their expectations of social support, in-group strength and cohesion. We operationalize coalitional affiliation as the extent to which people rely on a homogeneous social network, and we measure it with indicators of friendships across ethnic boundaries and frequency of contact with friends. Using multi-level models and data from the European Social Survey (Round 1, 2002–2003) for 19 countries, we demonstrate that coalitional affiliation provides an empirically reliable, as well as theoretically coherent, explanation for various effects of ethnic/racial diversity.     

Comparing measures of homicide trends: Methodological and substantive differences in the Vital Statistics and Uniform Crime Report time series (1933–1975)

Several Uniform Crime Reports (FBI) and Vital Statistics (NCHS) homicide time series for the United States, 1933–1975, are compared with respect to (a) definitions and collection procedures used; (b) differences in estimating procedures; and (c) substantive differences that result from use of either series. Among the findings from this investigation are that: (1) the sampling procedures employed by the NCHS appear to be superior to those of the FBI; (2) the FBI time series most commonly employed by researchers is discontinuous prior to 1958 due to revision procedures which were instituted at that time. Analyses over time periods which began prior to this year should employ a more accurate FBI time series which is published by the Office of Management and Budget (1973). (3) The specific time period under study may lead to different substantive conclusions with different indicators; (4) the results of statistical analyses of structural equation models contained herein indicate that while the difference is not generally statistically significant, the deterrent effect of execution is consistently estimated to be greater with the Vital Statistics series. This finding has important policy implications if estimates of the number of lives saved by executing prisoners are projected and utilized by policy makers. (5) Neither series indicates serious problems of autocorrelation of disturbances with the exogenous variables employed here; and (6) use of either series for the period after 1949 appears to produce the same substantive results.     

Welfare deservingness opinions from heuristic to measurable concept: The CARIN deservingness principles scale

A steadily growing number of studies investigate how popular support for social policies targeting particular groups is rooted in citizens’ deservingness opinions. According to theory, people fall back on five criteria – Control, Attitude, Reciprocity, Identity and Need (CARIN) – to distinguish the deserving from the undeserving. Deservingness opinions are assumed to be important predictors of support for particular welfare arrangements. A striking feature of this emerging research, however, is that there is no agreed-upon strategy to measure deservingness. Most previous studies rely on proxy-variables rather than measuring the actual deservingness criteria. Deservingness functions as a heuristic rather than as a measured concept, which leads to conceptual confusion. To remedy this shortcoming, this contribution proposes and validates a new instrument –the CARIN deservingness principles scale- that captures the five basic deservingness principles. We analyse data from the Belgian National Election Study by means of structural equation modelling (SEM) to (1) test the dimensionality, validity and reliability of the scale, and (2) verify to what extent the five deservingness principles predict specific policy preferences (as a test of construct validity). Our analyses confirm that the five deservingness principles are distinct dimensions that are differently related to social structural variables and have divergent consequences for policy preferences. The finding of theoretically meaningful patterns of differentiated effects illustrates that the CARIN criteria represent distinct logics of social justice, and corroborates that our measurement instrument is capable of tapping into the essence of these criteria.     

At which geographic scale does ethnic diversity affect intra-neighborhood social capital?

The claim that ethnic diversity within the living environment would hamper bonding and bridging social capital has been studied extensively, producing highly inconsistent findings. We studied whether ethnic diversity effects depend on the geographic scale at which ethnic diversity is measured. We examined ethnic diversity effects on intra- and inter-ethnic contacts in the neighborhood, respectively on opposition to ethnic in- and out-group neighbors. Hypotheses were derived from Blau’s meeting opportunities thesis and contact theory, ethnic competition theory, and constrict theory. Using information about 2545 Dutch respondents with their locality defined as egohoods and administrative units, we found that ethnic diversity effects vary with the geographic scale. Ethnic diversity of smaller localities is positively associated with bridging social capital. At larger scales, the findings are mixed: ethnic diversity is positively related to inter-ethnic contacts and opposition to out-group neighbors. Ethnic diversity of smaller localities is negatively related to bonding social capital. In contrast to often-made claims that diversity within the local context would matter most, estimates of diversity effects are not always stronger when diversity measures are aggregated to smaller geographic areas.     

基于文本挖掘的建党百年来高校思想政治教育政策的演变与启示

党的十九届五中全会明确提出了我国迈入高质量发展的新阶段,对高校思想政治教育提出了新要求.高校思想政治教育政策的科学制定能够有效提升思想政治教育质量.通过文本挖掘与分析,系统探索高校思想政治教育政策从早期萌芽到创新发展等阶段的内容特征、总结演变经验,以期为未来高校思想政治教育政策发展提供对策建议.回顾建党百年来我国高校思想政治教育政策的发展历程,高校思想政治教育政策立足于国家发展实际情况、以学生为本并遵循思想政治教育发展规律,走出了一条具有中国特色和发展实际的道路.在未来制定高校思想政治教育政策的过程中,应当加强顶层设计,注重政策制定的系统性与协同性;增强问题意识,确保政策价值的应对性与引领性;丰富政策主题,促进政策内容的精准性与全域性;借助载体,增强政策环境的保障性与共生性.     

Ethnoracial patterns of schooling and work among adolescents: Implications for Mexican immigrant incorporation

This paper investigates Mexican immigrant incorporation by examining labor force participation and schooling among Mexican-origin adolescents in the United States. Theoretical perspectives on immigrant incorporation, labor migration-related cultural repertoires and adolescent development considered together imply that studying ethnoracial differences in schooling among adolescents without taking work into account can yield mis-leading pictures of Mexican-origin non-high school completion patterns, thus hampering the assessment of incorporation theories. To avoid this, we analyze Mexican-origin generational differences in the relationship between schooling and workforce participation among adolescents compared to non-Hispanic whites and blacks. Using micro-data from the 2000 US Census, we find that Mexican immigrant boys who are not enrolled in school are more likely to be in the workforce, and conversely that those who are enrolled in school are much less likely to be in the workforce, compared to whites and blacks. Such relative differences in school/work specialization, as predicted, diminish across Mexican-origin generations. Moreover, based on supplementary analyses, we find similar patterns for a cohort of young adults who failed to complete high school during the 1990s. Overall, the results are consistent with the idea that cultural orientations growing out of the nature and experience of Mexican labor migration are important for assessing school enrollment patterns among Mexican-origin youth and for gauging their implications for educational policy and immigrant-group incorporation.     

培养道德选择能力:高校德育的新指向

当前社会处于转型期,人们的思想观念发生了深刻的变化。在这样一个多元化的、变化的社会,原来居于支配地位的道德观念受到来自不同方面的挑战,不同社会成员的道德取向多种多样,这不可避免地影响、感染着世界观、人生观、价值观尚不成熟的大学生,高校德育面临着前所未遇的挑战。所以,培育道德选择能力应成为高校德育的路径转向。高校德育要实现学会选择与教会选择的有机融合;要坚持一元价值取向与多元价值取向的对立统一;要把握大学生道德选择能力培养的教育策略。     

论高校领导班子建设的“一线四维”模式

高校领导班子是贯彻执行党委领导下的校长负责制的主体,加强领导班子建设,对于改进党对高校的领导、完善高校内部治理结构、促进高校科学发展,发挥着不可替代的重要作用。新形势下,面临高校发展过程出现的新情况、新挑战,面对高等教育领域依然繁重的改革发展稳定任务,本文尝试提出了高校领导班子建设的“一线四维”模式,即“一条主线、四个维度”。所谓“一线”,就是必须坚持在党的领导下,全面贯彻党的教育方针,以坚持中国特色社会主义办学方向为主线,培养中国特色社会主义事业合格建设者和可靠接班人;所谓“四维”,就是在学习创新、民主团结、勤政为民、清正廉洁四个维度上下功夫,科学统筹“一线”与“四维”的协调发展,加强领导班子作风建设,强化领导班子法治思维,增强领导班子思想政治素质和办学治校能力,全面提升领导班子建设水平。     

高校发展体育产业的可行性研究

高校办体育产业没有太多成功的前例可以借鉴,在思想认识上还存在误区,缺乏精干的管理人才和政策上的支持。但是高校在教育、科研、场地等方面有诸多优势。通过高校与高校联合、高校与企业联合办体育产业,将会产生良好的社会效益和经济效益。高校体育产业的良性发展,必将有力地推动高校体育事业的可持续发展。     

Comparative power structures in American communities

This is an argument for the plausibility of comparative network analyses of power in American cities. In terms of structural analyses of community power and decision-making, traditional methods of obtaining network data have fostered and enervating gap between the substantive richness of case studies and the generalizability of comparative studies. The purpose here is to describe a practical method of gathering ersatz network data from interviews with a small number of strategically chosen informants so as to conduct comparative network analyses of community power. The ersatz network element z_ij is the extent to which two types of actors I and J are perceived by informants as having simultaneous control over community issues. Using data from interviews with informants in 51 American cities, the ersatz network data are shown to be efficient, reliable and substantively valid despite their low cost. The data are efficient in the sense that the proportion of sampling variance in an estimated network element declines exponentially with increase in the element's magnitude. The data are reliable in the sense that estimated structures are stable over issue and informant bias per se. The data are valid in the sense that they are consistent with previous community research; types of ersatz power structures are located in the 51 cities (a machine structure, an urban structure, a faction structure, and a class of reform government structures) and these types occur in cities with characteristics known to be associated with each type of power structure. I conclude with a summary and comments regarding future research; the selection of informants and the use of a computer program in which easily available characteristics of a community are the basis for predicting the type of power structure it most likely exhibited during the late 1960s.     

Solamente Mexicanos? Patterns and sources of Hispanic diversity in U.S. metropolitan areas

Rapid Hispanic growth has been a major source of increasing ethnoracial diversity in the United States. However, diversity within the Hispanic population is frequently obscured by the tendency to lump all Latinos together. Our study examines Hispanic diversity at the local level, drawing insights from the Mexican dominance, Caribbean-centric settlement, spatial assimilation, and economic opportunity perspectives. Measures of the magnitude and structure of Hispanic origin-group diversity during the 1990–2010 period are constructed for 363 metropolitan areas based on each area's shares of Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Dominicans, Salvadorans, Guatemalans, Colombians, and ‘others’. We find that diversity magnitude varies markedly across metropolitan Hispanic populations. Although the most diverse metro areas lack a majority origin group, Mexicans often constitute a majority or plurality of local Latinos. Diversity levels and structures have remained relatively stable over time. In both 1990 and 2010, metro areas with more diverse, multigroup Hispanic communities are distinguished by their larger size, smaller proportion of Hispanics, location farther from Mexico and closer to the Caribbean, and greater odds of being a military hub. They also exhibit higher rates of housing construction and lower rates of agricultural and manufacturing employment. We use weighted data to show that Dominican metro dwellers experience the highest Hispanic diversity while the average Mexican lives in an area where four-fifths of all Latinos are Mexican. Overall, our results provide primary support for the Mexican dominance perspective but some support for the other three perspectives as well.     

Sexual inequality in the workplace: An employer-specific analysis of pay differences

This paper reports an analysis of employer-specific sex differences in the processes governing the salary attainment of personnel of a large company. The two dominant theories of inequality both view discrimination as the operative cause of pay differences, but locate the structural source of discrimination at different points in the employer-employee exchange space. The wage discrimination hypothesis asserts that the economic disadvantage of women issues directly from the pay practices of employers, with women receiving “unequal pay for equal work.” The crowding, or employment segregation, hypothesis asserts that inequality issues from the employment practices of employers; disparities in the allocation of jobs and promotions results in segregation along sexual lines, with women relegated to lower-paying positions. The findings show that both wage discrimination and sexual segregation of the company's job and rank structures contribute to inequality, but that the latter is more important. The implications for the issue of discrimination are briefly discussed.     

Unraveling the effect of offender citizenship status on federal sentencing outcomes

A large body of social science literature has focused on the factors that influence sentencing outcomes within the federal court system. A neglected variable in this line of research is the citizenship status of the offender. Using the United States Sentencing Commission’s Monitoring of Federal Criminal Sentences data from 2006, the present study examines the effect of citizenship status on the likelihood of incarceration and the length of the prison sentence. This study extends previous research in three ways: first, by examining citizenship status using post-Booker data; second, exploring the differences between citizens, legal aliens, and illegal aliens rather than comparing all non-citizens to US citizens; and third, examining all offenses rather than only drug offenses. Most importantly, this study partitions the data by citizenship status to determine if the effects of race/ethnicity and other variables (e.g., type of offense and level of education) vary by citizenship status. The results demonstrate that both legal and illegal aliens have a higher probability of incarceration than similarly-situated US citizens, but that the sentences imposed on illegal aliens are shorter than those imposed on citizens. However, different results emerged when the data were partitioned by citizenship status. Judges imposed shorter prison sentences on Latino citizens, but longer prison sentences on Latino illegal aliens. These results are discussed in relation to theoretical explanations and policy implications.     

高校学习型党组织建设探微——兼论农业院校学习型党组织建设策略

学习型党组织建设是建设马克思主义学习型政党的重大战略任务,同样也是高校基层党建工作的一项重要任务。文章从学习目标、学习理念、学习机制、创新能力培育等方面论述高校学习型党组织的内涵与特征,并反思在创建学习型党组织方面的误区,结合农业院校的实际,从理念、机制、战略等层面提出学习型党组织的建设策略。     

Donations and dependence: Individual contributor strategies in house elections

Despite the importance of individual contributors to financing federal candidates, past work has largely neglected this crucial financial constituency in favor of research on corporate and trade political action committees (PACs). By contrast, in this study I offer the first analysis of aggregate contributions from the population of individual contributors to House candidates. Using an original big dataset constructed from over fifteen million Federal Election Commission (FEC) disclosure records, I identify individual contributors (rather than contributions) and trace the variation in their strategies across types of House candidates. I distinguish between frequent donors, who are theorized to have more contact with members of Congress, versus infrequent donors in these elections. I find evidence that the character of aggregate donations from repeat donors is more access-oriented even while controlling for other salient candidate characteristics. Funds from infrequent donors, in contrast, appear more ideologically motivated. By also examining the percentage of funds that House candidates receive from repeat donors, I show that the fundraising coalitions of candidates may reproduce reliance on more access-oriented, repeat donors despite the influx of dollars from infrequent donors. I suggest that my findings provide a persuasive case for re-evaluating the diversity of roles individual contributors play in the campaign finance system, and for systematically analyzing variation in contributor strategies.     

Migration and stratification

Migration and stratification are increasingly intertwined. One day soon it will be impossible to understand one without the other. Both focus on life chances. Stratification is about differential life chances - who gets what and why - and migration is about improving life chances - getting more of the good things of life. To examine the interconnections of migration and stratification, we address a mix of old and new questions, carrying out analyses newly enabled by a unique new data set on recent legal immigrants to the United States (the New Immigrant Survey). We look at immigrant processing and lost documents, depression due to the visa process, presentation of self, the race-ethnic composition of an immigrant cohort (made possible by the data for the first time since 1961), black immigration from Africa and the Americas, skin color diversity among couples formed by US citizen sponsors and immigrant spouses, and English fluency among children age 8-12 and their immigrant parents. We find, inter alia, that children of previously illegal parents are especially more likely to be fluent in English, that native-born US citizen women tend to marry darker, that immigrant applicants who go through the visa process while already in the United States are more likely to have their documents lost and to suffer visa depression, and that immigration, by introducing accomplished black immigrants from Africa (notably via the visa lottery), threatens to overturn racial and skin color associations with skill. Our analyses show the mutual embeddedness of migration and stratification in the unfolding of the immigrants’ and their children’s life chances and the impacts on the stratification structure of the United States.     

Relative power: Material and contextual elements of efficacy in social dilemmas

In Step-Level Public Good (SPG) situations, groups of individuals can produce a public good if a sufficient number of them contribute. In SPG situations it is thus only rational for any group member to contribute if according to the beliefs of that group member her contribution is essential to the production of the public good. An individual's estimate of the impact of their contribution on the likelihood of public good production is known as their efficacy. The classic efficacy – cooperation hypothesis holds that individuals will be more likely to contribute if they estimate their contributions to be more necessary. Based on a game theoretical analysis of the SPG game, we contribute to the literature by identifying two distinct components of efficacy, viz. material efficacy and contextual efficacy. The former is based on objective characteristics of group members (such as resources, power, or skill) and the latter on beliefs about the material efficacy of other group members and expectations concerning their behavior. We present evidence from three experimental studies, showing how information on the distribution of material efficacy in the group can break the monotone material efficacy – cooperation relation. In addition, contrary to what one would expect based on both the efficacy – cooperation hypothesis and game theory, our results show that the effects of material efficacy are not mediated by contextual efficacy, both forms of efficacy having significant effects on behavior.