Classification of Poverty Condition Using Natural Language Processing

Social Indicators Research - This work introduces a methodology to classify between poor and extremely poor people through Natural Language Processing. The approach serves as a baseline to...     

Intertwining Gender Inequalities and Gender‐neutral Legitimacy in Job Evaluation and Performance‐related Pay

This article analyses the intertwining inequalities in wage determination and the gender‐neutral legitimacy that pay systems provide by masking these inequalities. Job evaluation and performance‐related pay were originally designed for purposes other than promoting equal pay, namely as managerial tools for determining wage levels. Typically, the main objective of a pay system is not to promote equal pay. Still, as a tool for assessing the value of work, job evaluation is regarded as a central method in promoting equal pay. The use of job evaluation is recommended by the European Commission and the International Labour Organization, and often features in gender‐equality policy and legislation. In contrast with the status of job evaluation, little research exists on performance‐related pay and gender pay equity. The findings show that the wages determined by pay systems reflect gendered cultural valuations of jobs and occupations. Pay systems provide gender‐neutral legitimacy for gender‐based wage disparities.     

Measuring fertility norms

We argue that social norms must be measured at the group level of analysis, allow for a range of acceptable behaviors, and be linked to the individual level of analysis to explain social behavior. From a survey of young adults in Wisconsin (1973), we generated measures of family size norms from sibship experience and friends' expected family size. These measures satisfied our primary criterion for a social norm: Those with non-normative family size desires tended to shift expectations toward the norm. The analyses demonstrate the difficulty of estimating normative effects when by its very definition a norm is expected to restrict variation in human behavior.Revision of a paper presented at the annual meetings of the American Sociological Association, New York, New York, August 30–September 3, 1986. This research was supported by Grant 1-R01-HD-17190 and by Center Grant HD05876 from the Center for Population Research, NICHHD. Paula Goldman's work was supported by Training Grant 5732HD07014 from the same source.     

Welfare, work, and changes in mothers’ living arrangements in low-income families

Data from a two-wave survey of low-income families in Boston, Chicago, and San Antonio are used to replicate recent reports of a modest increase in the number of low-income children living in two-adult families and to analyze the increase. We find that most of the increase occurred through the addition of a man other than the biological father to the household and that more of it occurred through cohabitation than through marriage. Moreover, across the two waves, cohabiting and marital unions were highly unstable. We review research on stepfamilies and on instability in children’s living arrangements, and we conclude that the kinds of two-adult families being formed in these low-income central-city neighborhoods may not benefit children as much as policy-makers hope. In addition, we investigate the associations between marital and cohabiting transitions, on the one hand, and transitions into and out of Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) receipt, employment, and Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) usage between the two waves on the other. We find that marital transitions are related to TANF and employment transitions but that cohabiting transitions are not. We suggest that low-income mothers may view marriage as more of an economic partnership than cohabitation and may expect more of an economic contribution from a husband than from a cohabiting partner.     

Cohabitation and Children's Externalizing Behavior in Low-Income Latino Families

We consider the association of cohabitation experience with externalizing behavior among children of Latina mothers whose ethnic origin is in Mexico, Puerto Rico, or the Dominican Republic. Data were drawn from three waves of the Three-City Study (N=656 mother-child pairs). Children of Mexican-origin mothers had higher externalizing problems in childhood and adolescence when their mothers were born in the United States or immigrated as minors. For children of Caribbean-origin mothers, being born to a cohabiting or married mother had a statistically equivalent association with externalizing behavior when mothers were born outside the mainland United States (Dominican and island-born Puerto Rican mothers). Children of mainland-born Puerto Rican mothers had more behavior problems when their mothers cohabited at birth.     

The social ecology of the Columbine High School shootings

The Columbine High School shooting in 1999 prompted school officials and policy-makers to create and implement programs and policies that would prevent violence in school and ensure school safety. Ten years have passed since the Columbine shooting; however, debates concerning risk factors for the shootings continue to ensue. The focus of this article is to examine the Columbine school shootings within the context of Bronfenbrenner's (1994) ecological systems analysis. We examine the most commonly identified risk factors, which operate within five systems levels: chrono-, macro-, exo-, meso-, and microsystems, and draw implications for school-based practice and policy.     

Childhood Predictors of an At-Risk Transition into Early Adulthood Among African American and Caucasian Males

Early adulthood represents a period of transition that is marked by change and exploration. For some, this transition is uncomplicated, yet for others, it is problematic. While many studies have explored factors that predict adjustment in childhood and adolescence, substantially less is known about childhood factors that predict adjustment during the transition into adulthood. Furthermore, it remains unclear whether childhood factors that predict adult adjustment differ between African American and Caucasian males. Accordingly, the current study examined childhood predictors of early adult (age 19–20) adjustment in a community sample of 397 African American and Caucasian males. Findings indicated that African American and Caucasian males who experienced high levels of peer delinquency, depressive symptoms, and conflicted parent–child communication in childhood were more likely to experience adjustment issues in early adulthood. For African American males, low academic achievement was important for predicting adult adjustment, while low organization involvement uniquely predicted adult adjustment for Caucasian males.     

Union organizing expenditures: Determinants and their implications for union growth

This paper explores some implications of the economics of union organizing. Following the literature, it is argued that the economic costs and benefits of organizing are systematically related to the proportion of the union’s jurisdiction already organized. Evidence is presented that unions do allocate a smaller proportion of their budgets to organizing when a greater proportion of their jurisdiction is already organized. Total union organizing expenditures, however, are found to increase over a broad range as the percentage organized increases. The supply of union-organizing services to unorganized workers apparently only declines at relatively high levels of union penetration. These critical levels of unionization have been attained only by a few U.S. labor organizations.     

Genetically Engineered Plants, Endangered Species, and Risk: A Temporal and Spatial Exposure Assessment for Karner Blue Butterfly Larvae and Bt Maize Pollen

Genetically engineered maize (Zea mays) containing insecticidal endotoxin proteins from Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) delta-endotoxin proteins has been adopted widely in the Midwestern United States. The proteins are toxic to several lepidopteran species and because a variety of maize tissues, including pollen, may express the endotoxins, the probability of exposure to nontarget species, including endangered species, needs to be understood. The objective of this study was to assess the potential temporal and spatial exposure of endangered Karner blue butterfly larvae (Lycaeides melissa samuelis) to Bt maize pollen in Wisconsin using probabilistic exposure techniques and geographic information systems analysis. Based on degree-day modeling of butterfly phenology and maize pollen shed, there is some potential for temporal exposure of larvae to maize pollen. However, in the majority of years and locations, maize pollen shed most likely will occur after the majority of larval feeding on wild lupine (Lupinus perennis). The spatial analysis indicates that some Karner blue butterfly populations occur in close proximity to maize fields, but in the vast majority of cases the butterfly's host plant and maize fields are separated by more than 500 m. A small number of potential or existing Karner blue butterfly sites are located near maize fields, including sites in two of the four counties where temporal overlap is most likely. The exposure assessment indicates that these two counties should receive the highest priority to determine if Karner blue butterfly larvae are actually at risk and then, if needed, to reduce or prevent exposure.