Operationalizing hunger in rural America: A reexamination of McMurry

The Harvard Physician Task Force report Hunger Counties 1986 evoked several critical responses, including Dan McMurry's (1991) in this journal. McMurry maintained that the Harvard report incorrectly identifies hunger counties in the United States: It is an invalid study that measures economic dependence rather than hunger and malnutrition. In this reexamination of McMurry, it is argued that his field observations lack ethnographic validity and thus draw erroneous conclusions from the data. McMurry, in addition, made false assumptions about the voting behavior of rural residents, which further weakens his arguments against the Harvard Physician Task Force. Finally, it is suggested that researchers find a more inclusive method of measuring rural hunger in America.     

Supreme Court Auditing of the US Courts of Appeals: An Organizational Perspective

Using an aggregate-level model of Supreme Court–circuitcourt interactions, this study assesses the extent to whichthe Court's auditing process of circuit court outputs is shapedby organizational dynamics such as structural capacity, institutionalization,and demographic characteristics. Principals in organizationalhierarchies must audit the behavior of their agents to ensurethat the agents are faithfully complying with the principals'preferences. In the case of the Supreme Court, such auditingactivities must take place in the face of very limited institutionalcapacity on the Court's part. We propose that the Court considerscertain broad organizational and institutional characteristicsat the circuit level when performing this task. In particular,we find that the Court strategically allocates its limited institutionalresources to audit decisions to respond to its recent interactionswith individual circuits in past terms, the circuits' internaldecision-making dynamics (including dissent and reversal rates),and goal conflict between the circuit and the Supreme Court.     

Group living decisions as youths transition to adulthood

This study follows teens through young adulthood as they transition to independent living. We focus on a little studied issue: why some youths live in groups rather than alone or with parents. This choice is important because the size of the group has a substantial impact on the demand for dwelling units; the more youths per dwelling the lower is aggregate demand and the greater is population density. Our study also adds to the knowledge of which factors influence youths' choice of destination as they leave the parental home. The empirical testing uses a discrete hazard model within a multinomial logit framework to allow for more than one possible state transition. We find that economic variables have little impact on the decision of whether to exit to a large versus a small group, while socio-demographic variables matter. We also test a new push-pull hypothesis and find that the pull of economic variables on the probability of exiting the parental home increases as youths reach their mid to late twenties. Received: 15 July 1999/Accepted: 15 May 2000     

环境史的三个维度

历史学家间或会受到不重视理论的指责,环境史家未曾避免这种责难,有时理应如此.环境史家应当多多考察其学科的理论蕴涵,并鼓励多种观点之间更普遍的理性对话.本文并非提出一种理论结构,而是探讨会有助于设计此结构的三个维度.第一个维度关乎这一领域的主题,是文化-自然统一体.第二个维度与方法有关,将沿着历史和科学之间的统一体展开.第三个维度涉及范围,认为时间和空间在定义中相得益彰.显然还有其他可以探讨的维度.这里尝试性地进行这些思考,以期其只言片语可以在同行中开启兴味盎然的讨论.     

Gender wage differences and human capital in the early twentieth century: the case of the paper box industry in New York

Women employed in the New York paper box industry in 1913–1914 earned about 60% of what men did. This paper employs the human capital framework to analyze the wage differential due to productivity related factors versus discriminatory nepotism towards men. Years of schooling, years of experience in the paper box trade, and legislative restrictions on working hours of women account for virtually all of the observed wage differential, both for all men and women in the paper box industry, and between the skilled occupations of cutters and strippers.

Problems of concept and measurement in the comparative study of occupational mobility

This paper argues that, despite a great deal of research on the topic, we have almost no firm knowledge about societal differences in the rates, patterns, and processes of occupational mobility. Insufficient attention has been paid by previous researchers to the problem of standardizing the measurement of occupational status. As a result, the paper demonstrates, existing cross-national comparisons of mobility are virtually invalid. A Standard International Occupational Prestige Scale developed by the author is proposed as a basis for valid cross-national comparison. Properties of the scale are discussed and results achieved with the scale are compared to those based on other occupational scaling procedures.     

Immigrant access in the Affordable Care Act: legacies of the Confederacy

ABSTRACT

During its first five years, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) built upon previous categorical distinctions among immigrants to solidify some inequalities and partially redress others. To analyse these changes, we build upon Tilly’s theory of durable inequalities by adding the concepts of redress and retrenchment, reflecting the dynamics of change among countervailing powers in a policy field. We employ this theoretical framework to investigate the ways the ACA has selectively reduced barriers for certain categories of immigrants, but not others. Some of these strategies date back to the ways the white power elite in Confederate states set out to regain control as Congress acted after 1865 to grant freed slaves full citizen’s rights. These barriers became blueprints for political strategies to block or subvert federal reforms. Additionally, we describe the ACA effort to reduce the legacy of de facto barriers for immigrants. We also detail how the federalist nature of the Act continued to allow wide-ranging forms of retrenchment and redress at state and local levels. Through this theoretical and historical analysis, we show how the ACA sought to redress certain historical inequalities of immigrant health care access but also solidified others, particularly in the case of undocumented immigrants.     

Statistical methods for continuous outcomes in partially clustered designs

We address statistical issues involved in the partially clustered design where clusters are only employed in the intervention arm, but not in the control arm. We develop a cluster adjusted t-test to compare group treatment effects with individual treatment effects for continuous outcomes in which the individual level data are used as the unit of the analysis in both arms, we develop an approach for determining sample sizes using this cluster adjusted t-test, and use simulation to demonstrate the consistent accuracy of the proposed cluster adjusted t-test and power estimation procedures. Two real examples illustrate how to use the proposed methods.