Before and After “I Do”: Marriage Processes for Mid-Life Gay and Lesbian Married Couples

ABSTRACT

This qualitative study examines how mid-life gay and lesbian married individuals articulate their decision to marry. Using 2013 data from 30 mid-life couples in Massachusetts, this study challenges previous literature that conceptualized marriage as entirely positive or negative for same-sex individuals. Mid-life individuals’ unique social and historical context influence their experiences of marriage, as mid-life individuals have witnessed the rise and feasibility of marriage equality, have formed relationships outside of the bounds of marriage, and have been in committed relationships long before they married. Using the framework of ambivalence, our findings provide three main contributions to the literature. First, we show that marital ambivalence is a common experience in our sample. Second, we detail how marital ambivalence is indicative of the age, life-course stage, and length of relationship for mid-life lesbian and gay individuals. Third, we explore ambivalence at the level of the relationship, not just as an individual experience. This study provides new insight into how sexuality shapes both intimate relationship dynamics as well as the effect of same-sex marriage on LGBT communities and identities.     

Do children stabilize relationships in Denmark?

In this paper, we study the relationship between fertility behavior and the process of relationship duration. The potential endogeneity of fertility on dissolution risk is taken into account by modeling fertility and dissolution jointly. We apply the timing-of-event method (Abbring and van den Berg, Econometrica 71(5):1491–1517, 2003) to identify the causal effect of births on the dissolution hazard. We show that couples who are less prone to split up are more prone to invest in children, and therefore, one might (mistakenly) conclude that children stabilize relationships. However, when correcting for the selectivity bias arising from the fertility decision, we conclude that children themselves have a negative effect on relationship duration.      

If My Blood Pressure Is High,Do I Take It to Heart? Behavioral Effects of Biomarker Collection in the Health and Retirement Study

Starting in 2006, respondents in the biennial U.S. Health and Retirement Study were asked to submit biomarkers every other wave and were notified of several results. Rates of undiagnosed high blood pressure and diabetes according to these biomarkers were 1.5 % and 0.7 %, respectively. An intent-to-treat analysis suggests that collection and notification had small effects on the average respondent and may have reduced health care utilization. Among respondents who received notification of potentially dangerous biomarker levels, subsequent rates of new diagnosis and associated pharmaceutical usage increased by 20 to 40 percentage points, an order of magnitude above baseline. High blood glucose A1C was associated with a 2.2 % drop in weight and an increase in exercise among respondents without a previous diagnosis of diabetes. Notifications appear also to have altered health behaviors by spouses, suggesting household responses to health maintenance. Biomarker collection seems to have altered circumstances for an interesting minority of HRS respondents.     

Do family planning programs enhance children's health?

The findings of the 1993 National Demographic Survey (NDS) in the Philippines provide implications for child health of family size and whether a child was wanted at the time of conception. About 15% of the more than 8000 births considered in the NDS were classified as unwanted. In 1995, the East-West Center's Program on Population has helped research centers in the Philippines to conduct an extended analysis of NDS results. Children under age 5 who had been unwanted at the time of conception (unwanted children) were almost 25% and 15% more likely to have had diarrhea or respiratory infections, respectively, in the last two weeks than those who were wanted at the time of conception (wanted children). Unwantedness had little effect on the likelihood of treatment once the child was ill, however. When the researchers controlled all other variables, including unwantedness, family size did not have a direct influence on the likelihood that a child would become ill, but it did have a significant influence on whether or not an ill child would receive treatment. Each additional sibling reduced the likelihood that an ill child would receive treatment by about 5% for diarrhea and by about 4% for respiratory infection. Another factor that influenced disease incidence was age (at 18 months, most likely to be ill with respiratory infection or diarrhea). Older children were more likely to receive treatment than younger children. Other factors influencing treatment and disease incidence were socioeconomic status and maternal educational status. These findings further justify family planning programs based on child health. They demonstrate that children suffer when they are born into a household where they are not wanted. Since about 33% of all child deaths are caused by diarrhea or respiratory infections in the Philippines, unwantedness affects the incidence of these infections, and family size has a direct effect on the likelihood an ill child will receive treatment. A policy intervention that would greatly reduce child mortality would be extremely beneficial.     

How Do Classes Make Use of Their Incomes?

Against the backdrop of occasional claims by social scientists that class analysis is no longer relevant this article will study the consumption patterns of different classes. Two hypotheses are derived and tested. These are to assume that classes' consumption differences are due to processes of social closure, or are of a cultural kind. This is investigated using a Swedish family expenditure data-set from 1992. The focus is on classes' different uses of their incomes regarding basic expenditures, expenditures on non-durables and ownership of durables. The most striking result is that 'higher' classes tend to spend a great deal of money on activities outside the home, 'appearance' and information, while other classes' consumption resembles the 'higher' classes, to different degrees. Moreover, the class hierarchy, constructed theoretically from employment factors, resembles a hierarchy constructed from similarities in patterns of consumption. The main conclusion is that class matters, in interesting ways, for consumption, though there are also other powerful factors. The closure hypothesis receives support, even though a combination of the two hypotheses seems sound.     

How Do Tougher Immigration Measures Affect Unauthorized Immigrants?

The recent impetus of tougher immigration-related measures passed at the state level raises concerns about the impact of such measures on the migration experience, trajectory, and future plans of unauthorized immigrants. In a recent and unique survey of Mexican unauthorized immigrants interviewed upon their voluntary return or deportation to Mexico, almost a third reported experiencing difficulties in obtaining social or government services, finding legal assistance, or obtaining health care services. Additionally, half of these unauthorized immigrants reported fearing deportation. When we assess how the enactment of punitive measures against unauthorized immigrants, such as E-Verify mandates, has affected their migration experience, we find no evidence of a statistically significant association between these measures and the difficulties reported by unauthorized immigrants in accessing a variety of services. However, the enactment of these mandates infuses deportation fear, reduces interstate mobility among voluntary returnees during their last migration spell, and helps curb deportees’ intent to return to the United States in the near future.     

Do children from welfare families obtain less education?

In this study, we analyzed whether parents' receipt of welfare affects children's educational attainment in early adulthood, independent of its effect through changing family income. We used data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics with information on parents' welfare receipt over the first 15 years of childhood. Cross-sectional results show that greater exposure to welfare is significantly associated with children's poorer educational attainment. Family fixed-effect regressions also indicate a negative effect of exposure to welfare, but its overall pattern is less consistent. Although exposure to welfare in early childhood has no effect, in adolescence and, to a lesser degree, in middle childhood, its effect is often negative.     

Do Siblings’ Fertility Decisions Influence Each Other?

Individuals’ fertility decisions are shaped not only by their own characteristics and life course paths but also by social interaction with others. However, in practice, it is difficult to disentangle the role of social interaction from other factors, such as individual and family background variables. We measure social interaction through the cross-sibling influences on fertility. Continuous-time hazard models are estimated separately for women’s first and second births. In addition to individual socioeconomic variables, demographic variables, and an unobserved factor specific to each sibling pair, siblings’ birth events and their timing enter as time-varying covariates. We use data from longitudinal population-wide Norwegian administrative registers. The data cover more than 110,000 sibling pairs and include the siblings’ fertility, education, income, and marital histories. Our results indicate that cross-sibling influences are relatively strong for the respondents’ first births but weak for the second parity transition.     

Do Cultural Values Affect Quality of Life Evaluation?

Schwartz defines cultural values as motivational types, where each value reflects goals and objectives to be achieved. According to Schwartz, cultural values are related to an orientation that is individualistic (values referred to as power, achievement, hedonism, stimulation and self-direction), collectivistic (benevolence, tradition and conformity) or mixed (security and universalism). Today, there is a theoretical consensus that cultural values are mediators in the evaluation of quality of life (QOL); nonetheless, there are few published studies to date relating them to QOL. To determine whether a significant relationship exits between cultural values and QOL in three Spanish-speaking countries. A total of 821 persons participated: 321 from Chile, 200 from Spain and 300 from Cuba. The Schwartz Cultural Values Survey and the WHOQOL-BREF Quality of Life Scale were used. Analysis of variance, and correlation and regression analyses were preformed after collecting data. Only hedonism was significantly correlated with the global evaluation of QOL in Spain and Chile. Few correlations were found in all three countries between cultural values and the QOL domains evaluated, with the exceptions of the value of self-direction, which was related to physical well-being, and the value stimulation, which was correlated with psychological as well as social well-being in all three countries. Certain values may be associated with a better perception of QOL, depending on the particular culture of the population evaluated.     

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.     

Do the elderly reduce housing equity? An international comparison

We explore the pattern of elderly homeownership using 60 microeconomic surveys on about 300,000 individuals residing in 15 OECD countries. In all countries, the survey is repeated over time, permitting construction of an international dataset of repeated cross-sectional data. We find that ownership rates decline considerably after age 60. However, a large part of the decline depends on cohort effects. Adjusting for them, we find that ownership rates start falling after age 70 and reach a percentage point per year decline after age 75. We find that differences across country ownership trajectories are correlated with indicators measuring market regulation degree.     

Do some authoritarian governments foster physical quality of life?

A recent claim that the populations of populist authoritarian governments have relatively high physical quality of life is tested empirically and found to be true. Analysis of life expectancy in 103 countries shows that although political rights contribute to the prediction of life expectancy, net of GNP per capita, one category of authoritarian governments, here called the constrained authoritarians, has higher than expected physical quality of life. Of interest is the additional finding that location in sub-Saharan Africa has a strong negative impact on life expectancy, net of GNP and political rights.I appreciate the contributions to this paper of Linda Bush, Rebecca Miles Doan, Eugene Erickson, Joe Francis, Donald Freebairn, Victor Nee and Linda Jacobsen.     

How Do Education and Family Planning Accelerate Fertility Decline?

Education and family planning can both be influenced by policy and are thought to accelerate fertility decline. However, questions remain about the nature of these effects. Does the effect of education operate through increasing educational attainment of women or educational enrollment of children? At which educational level is the effect strongest? Does the effect of family planning operate through increasing contraceptive prevalence or reducing unmet need? Is education or family planning more important? We assessed the quantitative impact of education and family planning in high-fertility settings using a regression framework inspired by Granger causality. We found that women's attainment of lower secondary education is key to accelerating fertility decline and found an accelerating effect of contraceptive prevalence for modern methods. We found the impact of contraceptive prevalence to be substantially larger than that of education. These accelerating effects hold in sub-Saharan Africa, but with smaller effect sizes there than elsewhere.     

Do youth nonmarital childbearing choices reflect income and relationship expectations?

We hypothesize that teen nonmarital birth events are influenced by adolescent girls’ perceptions of the consequences of their choices. Two such consequences are explored: (1) a teen’s expected future marriage and cohabitation relationships and (2) the present value of expected future income. We also measure the effects of the characteristics of the teen, her prior choices, her family, her neighborhood, and the social and economic environment in which she lives. The results, based on the Michigan Panel Study of Income Dynamics, suggest that teens place greater weight on the relationship consequences than the income consequences, but that both consequences influence their nonmarital birth choices.

Preferences or Patriarchy: Why Do Religious Women Work Less?

Social Indicators Research - Religious women work less than their non-religious counterparts. Is this because they want to work less or because patriarchal social norms limit...     

Do You Prefer Having Much More or Slightly More than Others?

Several studies found that people have a positive utility when they have more than others do. These papers claim that individuals are willing to sacrifice part of their absolute income or products in order to have more than others. As far as we know, the current paper is the first to show that positionality is bounded, so that individuals enjoy having more than others only when the gap between them and the others is not too large. Using the results from a survey-based experiment conducted in Israel that included 924 participants, we show that when individuals were asked to forgive some of their income in order to have a higher income compared to others, most of them chose to forgive their absolute income in order to have more than others. However, when individuals were asked to forgive the same amount of income in order to a have a much higher income compared to others, the attractiveness of having more than others significantly decreased. These results may indicate that individuals suffer from a disutility when extreme gaps exist in society, even if they are the ones with the high income.     

Twenty-Five Years of Materialism: Do the US and Europe Diverge?

Using data from the World Values Survey and the European Values Study, we compare the trends of materialism over the last quarter of century among the US and six major European countries: France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Great Britain and Sweden. We use the definition of materialism adopted by positive psychologists. We find that the trends in Europe and in the US diverged. In the US materialism increased, while in Europe it decreased. However, some mixed patterns arise. In particular, Great Britain, Spain and Sweden showed some symptoms of an increase of materialistic values, although they were far less pronounced compared to the American ones. As far as the levels of materialism are concerned, it is interesting that, according to most of our measures, Americans were relatively less materialistic at the beginning of our period of observation. Yet, towards the end of the period they scored very high in the ranking of materialism in our sample of countries.