The effect of climate on migration: United States, 1995–2000

This paper examines the effect of climate on migration. We examine whether climate is an influential factor in internal migration. We assume that most persons tend to avoid exposure to bitter and cold winters, and excessively hot and humid summers, preferring climates between these extremes. When engaging in-migration decision-making, therefore, to the extent possible, considerations involving climate are believed to be brought into the calculus. There is a very limited demographic literature on the effects of climate on migration.In this paper, we undertake an aggregate-based analysis of the effect of climate on migration. We examine this relationship among the 50 states of the United States. We focus attention on the varying effects of climate on three migration measures for the 1995–2000 time period, namely, in-migration, out-migration, and net migration. We next evaluate the effect of climate on migration in the context of a broad application of human ecology. Here climate, a manifestation of the physical environment, is measured with three major independent variables. The other ecological predictors pertaining to organization, population, technology, and the social environment are used as controls. This enables us to examine the effects of climate on migration in the context of competing ecological hypotheses.     

Religion, politics, and support for same-sex marriage in the United States, 1988-2008

We examine how religious and political factors structure support for same-sex marriage in the United States over the last two decades. Using data from the General Social Surveys, we show that respondents who identify more strongly with the Republican Party, sectarian denominations, and those who subscribe to biblical fundamentalism and political conservatism are substantially more opposed to same-sex marriage than are other Americans. Heterogeneous ordinal logistic regression models show that these religious and political factors have become more important over the last two decades. Cohorts born after 1945 became substantially more supportive of marriage rights between 1988 and 2008, but shifts in support for marriage rights were less sizeable for persons affiliated with sectarian denominations, religious fundamentalists, Republicans, and political conservatives. Estimates from structural equation models show that religious factors influence political conservatism and Republican identification, yet both religious and political factors have significant and substantial independent direct effects on support for same-sex marriage.     

Education, gender, and migration in the context of social change

Although sociologists have identified education as likely determinant of migration, the ways in which education affects migration are unclear and empirical results are disparate. This paper addresses the relationship between educational attainment, enrolment, and migration, focusing on the role of gender and how it changes with evolving social contexts. Using empirical analyses based in Nepal, results indicate that educational attainment has positive effects and enrolment has negative effects on out-migration and including enrolment in the model increases the effect of attainment. In the case of women, with the changing role of gender, increased education and labor force participation, the affect of educational attainment changes drastically over time, from almost no effect, to a strong positive effect. Consideration of enrolment, and the role of gender in education, employment, and marriage may help to explain the disparate results in past research on education and migration.     

The growth of survey research in the United States: Government-sponsored surveys, 1984-2004

Although it is widely assumed that survey requests to the general public have grown steadily over time, there are no good studies documenting the trend. This article describes the growth in survey requests from one sector of the industry: the US government. Using the 83-I clearance forms that agencies must file with the Office of Management and Budget in order to collect information from the public, we estimate the changes between 1984 and 2004 in the number of federal government surveys, number of respondents interviewed, average survey lengths, and total survey hours. In addition, we compare the changes in these variables with the changes in a measure of dollars spent on the surveys. The results are discussed in the context of the “over-surveying” explanation for the long-term decline in response rates to surveys.     

Components of change in the number of female family heads ages 15 to 44, an update and reanalysis: United States, 1940 to 1983

We review the literature dealing with the various components of change in the number of female family heads and conclude that P. Cutright's (1974, Journal of Marriage and the Family 36, 714–721) four components of change in the number of ever-married female family heads can be usefully applied to a reanalysis of decade-by-decade changes in this quantity among white and nonwhite women ages 15–44, from 1940 through 1980. However, we substantially revise and update Cutright's (1974) original data. Our findings include the fact that while the relative importance of the various components of increases in ever-married female family headship vary from decade to decade, overall trends are fairly similar for white and nonwhite women. Moreover, the rapid rise between 1970 and 1980 in the number of white and nonwhite female family heads among the never-married (single) continued through the 1980 to 1983 period. A decade ago, Cutright (1974) predicted that a change in the number of female family heads from 1970 on would reflect little more than changes in the numbers of ever- and never-married women ages 15–44. We discuss this inaccurate prediction and conclude that wishful thinking is a poor guide in forecasting the future.     

论德国、日本、澳大利亚和美国生态环境保护的特点

德国、日本、澳大利亚、美国对本国生态环境的保护有各自的特点,在实践中积累了许多宝贵经验,我们可以从中获得不少有益启示,用以推进我国的生态文明建设。     

Comparisons of the success of racial minority immigrant offspring in the United States, Canada and Australia

The educational, occupational and income success of the racial minority immigrant offspring is very similar for many immigrant origins groups in the United States, Canada and Australia. An analysis based on merged files of Current Population Surveys for the United States for the period 1995-2007, and the 2001 Censuses of Canada and Australia, and taking account of urban areas of immigrant settlement, reveals common patterns of high achievement for the Chinese and South Asian second generation, less for other Asian origins, and still less for those of Afro-Caribbean black origins. Relatively lower entry statuses for these immigrant groups in the US are eliminated for the second generation, indicating they experience stronger upward inter-generational mobility. As well, ‘segmented assimilation’ suggesting downward assimilation of Afro-Caribbean immigrants into an urban underclass in the US, also receives little support.     

外交政策视角下的中美战略安全关系（2001—2008）

中美两国权力和利益的分配结构及其关系决定了中美战略安全关系在内容上表现为两国在安全领域中的不平衡相互依赖。通过研究中美两国问围绕各自的长远性、根本性目标和核心安全利益而产生的针对对方的政策措施及其互动,论述了乔治·布什政府对中国实施“融入战略”的理论与实践情况,提出了中国对美政策的反馈及其对策。     

Race,deprivation, and immigrant isolation: The spatial demography of air-toxic clusters in the continental United States

This article contributes to environmental inequality outcomes research on the spatial and demographic factors associated with cumulative air-toxic health risks at multiple geographic scales across the United States. It employs a rigorous spatial cluster analysis of census tract-level 2005 estimated lifetime cancer risk (LCR) of ambient air-toxic emissions from stationary (e.g., facility) and mobile (e.g., vehicular) sources to locate spatial clusters of air-toxic LCR risk in the continental United States. It then tests intersectional environmental inequality hypotheses on the predictors of tract presence in air-toxic LCR clusters with tract-level principal component factor measures of economic deprivation by race and immigrant status. Logistic regression analyses show that net of controls, isolated Latino immigrant-economic deprivation is the strongest positive demographic predictor of tract presence in air-toxic LCR clusters, followed by black-economic deprivation and isolated Asian/Pacific Islander immigrant-economic deprivation. Findings suggest scholarly and practical implications for future research, advocacy, and policy.     

A dynamic macro social indicator model of changes in marriage, family, and population in the United States: 1947–1974

This paper presents an integrated 21-equation model of how marriage, family, and population conditions, as indexed by macro social indicators, affect each other and are affected by other social, demographic, and economic forces. An opportunity structures theoretical paradigm is applied to the specification of dynamic structural equations for determining changes (both trends and cyclical fluctuations) in marriage formation and dissolution, family and household composition, fertility, mortality, population growth, and population distribution. The equations are estimated on annual national data for the United States during the post-World War II years 1947 to 1972, and then they are used to make conditional forecasts of the values of some of the endogenous variables for 1973 and 1974. It is found that the equations fit the observed data well, lack demonstrable autocorrelation of disturbances, and forecast the 1973 and 1974 values usually with less than 2% error. Strategies are sketched for further refining some of the equations, and it is suggested that this model should be integrated into a larger societal model in order to estimate some of the effects of changes in demographic phenomena on other social conditions.