A New Marriage Squeeze for Black Women: The Role of Racial Intermarriage by Black Men

Recent declines in the rate of marriage among Black women have been accompanied by substantial increases in rates of interracial marriage, especially between Black men and non‐Black women. Explanations for the retreat from marriage among Black women have focused on deficits in the quantity and quality of available partners, and the role of racial intermarriage largely has been ignored. This study examines the impact of interracial marriage by Black men on the marriage prospects of Black women. First, our analysis of data from the 1990 Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) reveals that intermarried Black men are selective of those with the highest levels of education, income, and occupational prestige. Second, multilevel analyses, using both the IPUMS and Panel Study of Income Dynamics, show that the level of intermarriage in metropolitan areas is significantly related to the marital behaviors of Black women. Local rates of intermarriage among Black men reduce the likelihood that Black women currently will be married and that they will make the transition to marriage. These effects are especially acute for highly educated Black women whose marriage markets are defined by those Black men who are most likely to intermarry. Finally, our analyses indicate that intermarriage affects the marital prospects of Black women by negatively affecting the pool of economically attractive marriage partners in the metropolitan area.     

The Perishability of Online Grocers*

In this article we explore the profitability of different operations models used by online grocers and develop a linear demand model in a competitive setting to better understand the trade‐offs made by two competing online grocers in choices for distribution strategy (leverage or direct) and product focus (perishable or nonperishable). We find that the results derived in the duopoly setting are different from those in a monopolistic setting. Specifically, we determine that there is a threshold value for the secondary competitive effects in the demand function that determines how the prices and profitability of an online grocer will be affected by the supply chain length of its competitor. There is also a threshold value for the ratio of supply chain lengths of the two competitors that determines whether product perishability increases or decreases profits. We demonstrate that the existence of this threshold is robust when considering capacity constraints. Further, we show, assuming that supply chain length can be optimized, how the relative size of the infrastructure change cost (when compared with that of the competitor) coupled with the perishability of the product determines the profitability of an investment leading to a shorter supply chain.     

The Natsal-SF Measure of Sexual Function: Comparison of Three Scoring Methods

The Natsal-SF is a psychometrically validated measure of sexual function for use in community health surveys, derived from 17 questions reflecting three components of sexual function. Scoring requires knowledge of complex statistical modeling and, given the methodological complexities, we assessed the validity of two simplified scoring methods calculated using the factor loadings produced when originally modeling the Natsal-SF items. Method 1 uses these factor loadings to three decimal places, while method 2 assigns whole numbers to each item based on the factor loadings. Scores from these simplified methods are compared to the original score using correlation coefficients, by comparing the distributions and the scores of each method in a linear regression model with key variables. We found scores from the simplified methods both correlate highly with the original score, and the distributions of scores closely match. The simplified methods result in different regression coefficients for gender and relationship context but estimate the coefficients of all other variables similarly to the original method. While the Natsal-SF should ideally be scored using latent variable modeling, the simplified methods perform well so can be used in similar contexts, increasing the utility of the Natsal-SF and enabling future studies to measure sexual function more comprehensively.     

Spatial distribution and the value of green spaces for urban red-tailed hawks

Raptors increasingly live and nest successfully in urban areas. In the urban landscape of Hartford, CT, red-tailed hawks established home ranges in large green spaces such as parks, golf courses, and cemeteries but also nested successfully in the commercial district of downtown and in densely built urban and suburban neighborhoods. Data collected from 11 radio-tagged breeding adult hawks indicated that year-round home ranges averaged 107.7 ha, much smaller than home ranges reported for hawks inhabiting rural areas. Most hawk home ranges had multiple core areas that were usually associated with favored perches or larger patches of ‘usable’ green space, defined as patches ≥0.25 ha in size, and home range size was positively associated with larger usable green space patches in core areas. Most nests were located in the largest core area and were within a larger patch of green space within the largest core area. Rather than just the amount or size of green space patches, the value of urban green spaces for these hawks likely also varies with the number and proximity of suitable perches such as buildings or tall trees, types and density of prey, and amount of human activity in and adjacent to these spaces. Territoriality and intraspecific competition may also influence home range size and dispersion of red-tailed hawks nesting in Hartford. In this urban area, mortality due to ingestion of rodenticides and collisions with vehicles affected hawk reproductive success.

     

Residential mobility between cities and suburbs: race, suburbanization, and back-to-the-city moves

Information from the 1979 to 1985 waves of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics is merged with data on respondents’ tract and metropolitan area of residence to examine patterns and determinants of residential mobility between central cities and suburbs. Consistent with the life-cycle model of residential mobility, mobility in both directions declines with age, but on balance the presence of young children deters moving to the suburbs. Among blacks, education increases the probability of moving from cities to suburbs, while high income retains blacks and whites in suburbs. Consistent with the place stratification model. blacks are substantially less likely than whites to move from cities to suburbs, and substantially more likely to move from suburbs to cities, even after standardizing for racial differences in sociodemographic characteristics. High levels of violent crime and unemployment in cities relative to suburbs also tend to spur city-to-suburb mobility or inhibit suburb-to-city moves.     

Indigenous mobility traditions,colonialism, and the anthropocene

ABSTRACT

The anthropocene is often discussed as an era of ‘new’ environmental changes that require unprecedented forms of societal adaptation, one example being climate-induced resettlement. Yet discussions of the anthropocene can also be better contextualized in terms of their featuring certain phenomena as ‘new’ that are really much more longstanding phenomena. For example, many Indigenous peoples have ancient traditions of environmental ‘mobility.’ This essay reviews some of the history of Indigenous philosophies, especially Anishinaabe, of mobility, migration, and resettlement. Often these philosophies focus on fluid and transformative relationships as constituting the fabric of resilient societies. Indigenous traditions of mobility are critically relevant for climate justice. They put into relief how colonial power can operate as a containment strategy that works to curtail mobility. In this way, looking at Indigenous mobility in the anthropocene involves unraveling layers of colonialism where containment has been widely imposed. This claim can be used to signal some of the dangers of centering the causal role of climate change in certain cases societal movement. To further support our claims, the essay concludes with a brief analysis of some of the literature and testimonies on resettlement in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska.     

Is There a Right Way to Nudge? The Practice and Ethics of Choice Architecture

Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler’s Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness presents an influential account of why ‘choice architecture’ should be used to ‘nudge’ people into making better decisions than they would otherwise make. In this essay we: (1) explain the main concepts that Thaler and Sunstein rely upon to defend their project; (2) clarify the main conceptual problems that have arisen in discussions about nudges; (3) clarify practical difficulties that can arise during nudge practice; (4) review the main ethical and political objections that have been raised against nudging; and (5) clarify why issues related to meaning can pose methodological problems for creating effective choice architecture.     

Shelf Loathing: Cross Docking at an Online Retailer

Online customers expect to wait, sometimes for a delay of many days. At the fulfillment center, there might be an opportunity to fill customer orders earlier than the due date through a cross‐docking transaction: rather than picking the item from inventory, the item moves directly from the receiving to the shipping dock, saving shelving and picking transactions. While cross docking reduces shelving and picking costs, it risks changing customer expectations for how soon a product will be delivered. Given customer order arrivals random in quantity and due dates, random replenishment arrivals, and costs (or benefits) for shipping a product early, we characterize the optimal decision as to whether to cross dock a replenishment item to fulfill demand that is not immediately due or to wait to (hopefully) cross dock in later periods. With multiple demands and due dates, the cross‐docking decision depends on the number of unfulfilled demands in each period across the horizon, the number of units that have just arrived (available for cross docking), picking and shelving costs, and the delay cost (or benefit). We formulate the problem as a Markov decision process, determine the structure of the optimal policy, and propose a well‐performing heuristic.     

Opening the "Black Box' of Software The micro-foundations of informational technologies, practices and environments

The technical and production structures of informational development, the mechanisms that translate information into new products and power, remain opaque. Without defining these micro-foundational patterns, simple questions - what is information, how is it produced, is this production structure significantly unique - remain unanswered, limiting analysis of informational development generally, and evaluation of higher-level "information' theories specifically. Opening the "black box' of software outlines these production practices in one of the central industries of the coming decades, helping explain its social and economic impact and locating its evolution within broader global economic patterns. Software is a unique informational practice that draws on socially structured domain-knowledge as its central resource. This clarifies the importance of information and design in an informational environment, as well as signalling the impact of digital architectures in structuring new patterns of social interaction. These informational patterns are embedded in software both technically and through the development process, resulting in a strong cohesion between production, product and industry structures. The expansion of software process and products throughout society raises the impact of these unique patterns in shaping future economic and social structures in multiple industries, locations and institutions. Detailing the informational patterns in software opens a path to consider an ideal-typology of informational production. Such an ideal type helps define terms and hypotheses that capture both unique differences and general patterns in an informational environment, opening more rigorous analysis of the broader social transformations in the global environment. Failing to recognize these processes limits the space for social debate, policy and action around the establishment and evolution of new digital architectures at the locus of their development.