Income Inequality across the Rural-Urban Continuum in the United States, 1970–2016*

The growth in macro-level income inequality in the United States is well established, but less is known about patterns of inequality at subnational scales and how they vary between and within rural and urban localities. Using data from the Decennial Census and American Community Survey, we produce estimates of within-county income inequality from 1970 to 2016 and analyze differences in inequality levels, the persistence of high (low) inequality, and populations' exposure to high (low) inequality across the rural-urban continuum. We find that income inequality has historically been higher in non-metropolitan than metropolitan counties, but inequality levels converged by 2016 due to growing inequality in metropolitan counties. Additionally, levels of inequality were generally persistent within counties over time, except that counties characterized by low inequality in 1970 were unlikely to remain as such in 2016. Third, non-trivial shares of the metropolitan population resided in low-inequality contexts in 1970, but virtually none of the U.S. population resided in such places by 2016. Residence in high-inequality counties is normative in rural and urban America. This statistical analysis provides an updated portrait of income inequality across the rural-urban continuum, and should spur additional research on stratification in rural America during an era of growing inequality.     

Reconciling care and justice in contesting social harm through performance and arts practice with looked after children and care leavers

The proportion of young people taken into the care of the state has increased recently and there is evidence that this social group suffer negative long‐term outcomes that might be conceptualised by the emergent criminological category of ‘social harm’. Debates in social work around an ethics of care and justice offer different ways of thinking about responding to social harm. This paper reports findings from an innovative arts‐based intervention with Looked After Children and young people and concludes that holding these competing value sets in creative tension is central to the success of the programme in helping young people to cope with and contest social harm.     

Parent Psychological Distress: A Moderator of Behavioral Health Intervention Outcomes among Justice‐Involved Adolescents

We examined whether pre‐existing parent psychological distress moderated juvenile offenders’ substance use, sexual risk, and mental health outcomes in a randomized trial. Forty‐seven parent–adolescent dyads received either Family‐based Affect Management Intervention (FAMI) for adolescent substance use and HIV prevention or adolescent‐only Health Promotion Intervention (HPI). Parents’ self‐reported distress at baseline significantly moderated adolescents’ self‐reported marijuana use and alcohol use but not other outcomes at 3 months postintervention, producing crossover interactions. FAMI outperformed HPI when parents reported high‐level distress, whereas HPI outperformed FAMI when parents reported low‐level distress. This finding that the relative efficacy of interventions depends on the severity of parent psychological distress could inform efforts to match substance‐using, justice‐involved adolescents with the intervention most likely to benefit them.     

Extending Bayesian back-calculation to estimate age and time specific HIV incidence

Lifetime Data Analysis - CD4-based multi-state back-calculation methods are key for monitoring the HIV epidemic, providing estimates of HIV incidence and diagnosis rates by disentangling their...     

A reflected feature space for CART

We present an algorithm for learning oblique decision trees, called HHCART(G). Our decision tree combines learning concepts from two classification trees, HHCART and Geometric Decision Tree (GDT). HHCART(G) is a simplified HHCART algorithm that uses linear structure in the training examples, captured by a modified GDT angle bisector, to define splitting directions. At each node, we reflect the training examples with respect to the modified angle bisector to align this linear structure with the coordinate axes. Searching axis parallel splits in this reflected feature space provides an efficient and effective way of finding oblique splits in the original feature space. Our method is much simpler than HHCART because it only considers one reflected feature space for node splitting. HHCART considers multiple reflected feature spaces for node splitting making it more computationally intensive to build. Experimental results show that HHCART(G) is an effective classifier, producing compact trees with similar or better results than several other decision trees, including GDT and HHCART trees.     

Trajectories of Interracial Heterosexual Couples: A Longitudinal Analysis of Relationship Quality and Separation

Minimal research has examined interracial couples’ relationship satisfaction and dissolution patterns over time. Using dyadic data across 8 years, we examined potential differences in relationship quality trajectories through latent growth curve modeling with 1,336 couples as well as differential risks for relationship dissolution through logistic regression between same‐race and interracial relationships using a different subset of 2,370 couples. Results indicated that women in interracial relationships were significantly lower in initial relationship quality than women in same‐race relationships. Further, interracial couples of Black‐Hispanic partnerings were twice as likely to separate across 8 years than same‐race couples. These results suggest that despite interracial relationships not substantively differing from same‐race couples in trajectories of relationship quality, specific Black‐Hispanic interracial couples are at a higher risk of eventual separation.     

Fostering social capital in an international multi-stakeholder issue network

Scholars have theorized that public relations contributes to societies and communities by bringing attention to pressing public issues and fostering social capital in civil society networks. However, the extant research has studied civil society networks of NGOs, donors, and the media in transitional countries. This study extends the public relations model of civil society in two ways. First, it broadens the scope to an international context. Second, it draws from the multi-stakeholder issue network perspective to conceptualize a civil society network as a space where stakeholders of an issue mix their interests as they collectively address a pressing public issue. The literature on international and multi-stakeholder networks suggest that the international scope and the mixing of interests across sectors may restrict the production of social capital. The results from the social network analysis suggests that the mixing of interests across sectoral and geopolitical boundaries did not restrict the production of social capital. Rather, the patterns of the relationships among those on the core and those on the periphery of the network restricted the production of social capital. Such finding demonstrates how public relations’ functions like relationship building can have profound influences on social capital and civil society networks. The implications for public relations theorizing and research are discussed.     

Ecosystem services deficits in cross-boundary landscapes: spatial mismatches between green and grey systems

Urban Ecosystems - Quantitative analyses of the influence of boundary lines on ecosystem services distributions remain rare. Approaches towards integrative assessments of green and grey landscape...     

Effects of demography and urbanization on stress and body condition in urban white-tailed deer

Urban Ecosystems - White-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) are becoming increasingly common in urban environments. How they respond to potential changes (i.e. increased human interactions,...