How Does Occupational Access for Older Workers Differ by Education?

To assess the employment opportunities of older job-changers in the years prior to retirement, this study examines the how the breadth of occupations in which they find employment narrows as they age past their prime working years and how this differs by gender and educational attainment. The results indicate that workers who change jobs in their early 50s find employment in a reasonably similar set of occupations as prime-age workers, with opportunities narrowing at older ages. They also indicate that job opportunities broadened significantly for better-educated older workers since the late 1990s. While job opportunities now narrow significantly for less-educated men in their late 50s, this narrowing primarily occurs in the early 60s for women and better-educated men. In contrast to previous research, the study finds that employer policies that emphasize hiring from within are less important barriers to the hiring of older job-seekers. The study also finds that the narrowing of job opportunities is associated with a general decline in job quality as measured by median occupational earnings, a decline associated with differences in occupational skill requirements and the underlying economic environment. These results suggest that older hiring is not as limited to a select few occupations as it had been in previous decades, and that policy reforms aimed at increasing opportunities and improving labor market fluidity might best be served if they focused on less-educated men.     

Concealed Ownership: Americans’ Perceived Comfort Sharing Gun Ownership Status with Others

While much is known about how Americans feel about guns and gun control policy, less is known about how Americans perceive gun owners, or how gun owners and nonowners view themselves. The present study examines how comfortable individuals feel disclosing their gun ownership status with family, friends, coworkers, employers, doctors, teachers, police, and strangers. This article uses stigma theory as a guiding framework. Data were obtained from a nationwide survey conducted in February 2016 of more than 250 current gun owners and more than 250 nonowners. Analyses utilize ordered logistic regression. Findings show that whites, older Americans, and those with more pro-gun attitudes express more comfort sharing whether they own a gun. Respondents also indicate that familiarity with the individual requesting gun ownership information and concern over how that person might react are key factors that affect comfort with disclosure. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.     

Blood ties and strong ties: a two-way linkage? Some non-trivial implications of the care workers market in a Mediterranean region

Taking their cue from a seeming dissonance between the theory of commodification and exploitation of migrant care workers and the case study of the outsourced self proposed by Hochschild, the author speculates whether or not the family–caregiver relationship may be equal and inclusive. The argument is unraveled by posing another question en route: what specific ‘catalysts’ can trigger ‘high-intensity affective relationships’? Elster defines 'essentially byproduct' the result of a process lacking any direct and conscious link between outcome and intention, and requiring the relaxation of the control of reason in order to be fulfilled. The author mixes significant theoretical results coming both from the relational Palo Alto School and from history of families studies, concluding that an equal and inclusive relationship may be like an Elster’s ‘essentially byproduct’ of a market relationship , when a high-intensity affective relation acts as a ‘catalyst’. The frame suggested in this article seems consistent with recent constructionist reinterpretations of the idea of kinship, which take shape and evolve through ‘everyday experiences’. Kinship thus shifts towards a more complex undefined category, that of Karsten’s relatedness. Speaking of which, the author argues some logical reasons suggesting a generalized adoption of the term only with great care and caution.     

Thinking politics and fashion in 1960s Cuba: How not to judge a book by its cover

Theory and Society - This article presents fashion as a mechanism of domination and political legitimacy, focusing on Soviet-type state socialist regimes. In particular, it documents some dynamics...     

Cigarette Smoking and All-Cause and Cause-Specific Adult Mortality in the United States

This study illuminates the association between cigarette smoking and adult mortality in the contemporary United States. Recent studies have estimated smoking-attributable mortality using indirect approaches or with sample data that are not nationally representative and that lack key confounders. We use the 1990–2011 National Health Interview Survey Linked Mortality Files to estimate relative risks of all-cause and cause-specific mortality for current and former smokers compared with never smokers. We examine causes of death established as attributable to smoking as well as additional causes that appear to be linked to smoking but have not yet been declared by the U.S. Surgeon General to be caused by smoking. Mortality risk is substantially elevated among smokers for established causes and moderately elevated for additional causes. We also decompose the mortality disadvantage among smokers by cause of death and estimate the number of smoking-attributable deaths for the U.S. adult population ages 35+, net of sociodemographic and behavioral confounders. The elevated risks translate to 481,887 excess deaths per year among current and former smokers compared with never smokers, 14 % to 15 % of which are due to the additional causes. The additional causes of death contribute to the health burden of smoking and should be considered in future studies of smoking-attributable mortality. This study demonstrates that smoking-attributable mortality must remain a top population health priority in the United States and makes several contributions to further underscore the human costs of this tragedy that has ravaged American society for more than a century.     

Conducive Characteristics or Anti-Racist Context? Decomposing the Reasons for Veterans’ High Likelihood of Interracial Marriage

Over the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, veterans have been more likely to enter into race/ethnic intermarriages than non-veterans. Theories of race/ethnic intermarriage variously point to how minority race/ethnicity, race/ethnically diverse social settings, progressive racial attitudes, and high socioeconomic status increase individuals’ likelihood of intermarrying. Veterans’ unique racial and socioeconomic characteristics may contribute to their greater likelihood of intermarrying relative to non-veterans: larger percentages of veterans than non-veterans are members of racial and ethnic minority groups, while military service increases individual service members’ long-term economic and educational prospects. At the same time, veterans share in common their exposure to the unique military environment, which may increase their likelihood of intermarriage by diversifying their social circles, and subjecting their attitudes and behavior to group norms that are more explicitly egalitarian than those of society at large. The present study considers these two possible explanations for veterans’ greater likelihood of intermarriage. We use data on seven cohorts of men over six decades in the Current Population Survey, representing a total of 1,456,742 observations, to decompose the difference in likelihood of racial intermarriage between veterans and non-veterans among married men aged 18–65. We find that across cohorts and decades, veterans’ greater likelihood of intermarrying is not fully explained by their race/ethnic and socioeconomic composition. We argue that veterans’ greater likelihood of intermarrying may therefore be driven by their exposure to the military environment.     

Estimating Recent Local Impacts of Sea-Level Rise on Current Real-Estate Losses: A Housing Market Case Study in Miami-Dade,Florida

Sea-Level Rise (SLR) Projections from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers (USACE) indicate increasing, and imminent, risk to coastal communities from tidal flooding and hurricane storm surge. Building on recent research related to the potential demographic impacts of such changes (Hauer et al. 2016, in Nat Clim Chang 3:802–806, 2017; Neumann et al. 2015; Curtis and Schneider in Popul Environ 33:28–54, 2011), localized flooding projections in the Miami Beach area (Wdowinski et al. in Ocean Coast Manag 126:1–8, 2016) and projected economic losses associated with this rise in projected SLR (Fu et al. Ocean Coast Manag 133:11–17, 2016); this research investigates the accrued current cost, in terms of real-estate dollars lost, due to recurrent tidal flooding and projected increases of flooding in Miami-Dade County. Most directly related to this line of research, Keenan et al. (2018) have recently produced results indicating that Climate Gentrification is taking place in Miami, FL with higher elevations in flood prone areas appreciating at a higher rate. In that vein of thinking, we seek to answer a question posed by such research: What is the actual accrued loss to sea-level rise over the recent past? To answer this question, we replicate well-documented estimation methods by combining publicly available sea-level rise projections, tide gauge trends, and property lot elevation data to identify areas regularly at risk of flooding. Combining recent patterns of flooding inundation with future forecasts, we find that properties projected to be inundated with tidal flooding in 2032 have lost $3.08 each year on each square foot of living area, and properties near roads that will be inundated with tidal flooding in 2032 have lost $3.71 each year on each square foot of living area. These effects total over $465 million in lost real-estate market value between 2005 and 2016 in the Miami-Dade area.