Political Activism of Palestinian Youth: Exploring Individual,Parental, and Ecological Factors

The growing literature on youth and political conflict has not included an adequate focus on youth activism. To address this deficit, this study used youth‐ and parent‐reported data (N = 6,718) from the 1994–1995 Palestinian Family Study to test an ecological model of family influence (parents' activism, expectations for their adolescents' activism, support, psychological control), youth characteristics (self‐evaluation), and elements of the broader social ecology (socioeconomic status, religiosity, and region of residence) predicting Palestinian 9th graders' political activism during the first intifada (1987–1993). Parental activism was the strongest predictor of youth activism, both directly and via parental expectations for activism. Classic parenting behaviors were not systematically useful in understanding activism; neither were socioeconomic status or religiosity. The model applied equally well for sons and daughters, with the exception that maternal activism contributed uniquely to daughters' activism beyond the significant effect of fathers' activism.     

Unwanted childbearing, health, and mother-child relationships.

This paper investigates the relationships among unwanted childbearing, health, and mother-child relationships. We hypothesize that unwanted childbearing affects mother-child relationships in part because of the physical and mental health consequences of unwanted childbearing. Impaired mental health hampers women's interaction with their infants, and these poor neonatal relationships translate into poor mother-adult child relationships. Using the Intergenerational Panel Study of Mothers and Children--a 31-year longitudinal survey of a probability sample of 1,113 mother-child pairs begun in 1961--we demonstrate that mothers with unwanted births have lower quality relationships with their children from late adolescence (age 18) throughout early adulthood (ages 23 and 31). Furthermore, these lower quality relationships are not limited to the child born as a result of the unwanted pregnancy; all the children in the family suffer. Using the 1987-88 wave of the National Survey of Families and Households, a survey of a national probability sample of U.S. households, we show that mothers with unwanted births suffer from higher levels of depression and lower levels of happiness. We also demonstrate that they spank their young children more and spend less leisure time with them. We conclude that experiencing unwanted childbearing reduces the time and attention that mothers give their young children and that these early mother-child interactions set the stage for long-term, lower quality relationships.     

Neighborhood Social Change and Perceptions of Environmental Degradation

This paper investigates how changes in neighborhood facilities—new schools, health posts, bus services, mills, dairies, agricultural cooperatives, and other facilities—influence perceptions of environmental degradation. We use three types of data from a rural area in Nepal: (1) data on changing neighborhood facilities from 171 neighborhoods, collected using ethnographic, survey, and archival methods; (2) survey data on household characteristics and environmental perceptions from 1,651 households; and (3) individual-level survey data. We find that new neighborhood facilities are associated with perceptions of environmental degradation. This is important because perceptions may indicate objective environmental degradation, encourage participation in programs to improve the environmental, and influence environmental behavior.     

Adjusting for Time‐Varying Confounding in Survival Analysis

In this paper we illustrate how directly including endogenous time‐varying confounders in the model of the effect of an exposure on a response can lead to bias in discrete time survival analysis. An alternative to this method is Hernán, Brumback, and Robins'(1999) use of sample weights to adjust for endogenous time‐varying confounding. We discuss when this method can be used to provide unbiased estimators, and we illustrate the method by addressing a substantive research question using existing survey data. We also critically examine the robustness of the weighting method to violations of the underlying assumptions via a simulation analysis.     

Strategy-proof voting schemes with continuous preferences

We prove that all nondictatorial voting schemes whose range has more than two alternatives will be manipulable, when their domain is restricted to the set of all continuous preferences over alternatives. Our result neither implies nor is implied by the original Gibbard-Satterthwaite theorem, except if the number of alternatives is finite, when they coincide. A new, direct line of reasoning is used in the proof. It is presented in an introductory section, which may be useful in classroom situations.The work of S. Barberà is partially supported by Research Grant PB 86-0613, from the Dirección General de la Investigación Científica y Técnica, Spanish Ministry of Education.     

GENDER ROLE ATTITUDES AND MARRIAGE AMONG YOUNG WOMEN

Although sociological research on family change has emphasized the importance of gender role attitudes for decades, relatively few empirical studies have demonstrated behavioral consequences of these attitudes. We formulate hypotheses predicting both an impact of gender role attitudes on early marriage behavior and a reciprocal impact of early marriage behavior on changes in gender role attitudes. We also investigate the role of cohabitation in these relationships. While previous research has found that women who believe that wives should be homemakers enter marriage more quickly, we find that under some conditions these attitudes delay marriage. We use multiwave panel data to show that the behavioral impact of gender role attitudes on early marriage depends on plans for attending school. Among young women who expect to complete a four-year college degree or more, believing that wives should be homemakers leads to lower rates of marriage; however, among young women with low educational expectations, believing that wives should be homemakers leads to higher rates of marriage. In addition, we show that experiencing a marriage in early adulthood leads to more agreement that wives should be homemakers.