Acculturation and crime: Protecting the male and female offspring of U.S. immigrants against future arrest and incarceration

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study was to assess the effect of acculturation on future criminality in the children of immigrants. This research question was explored in 3,211 children of immigrants (1,468 boys and 1,743 girls) whose parents had immigrated to the United States. Analyses revealed that longer residence at the time of initial interview (mean age = 14 years) predicted an increased rate of arrest and incarceration five to ten years later. On the other hand, childhood identification as an American predicted decreased risk of arrest and incarceration. Both findings were restricted to boys. These results suggest that the male offspring of U.S. immigrants are affected in both positive and negative ways by the acculturation experience and that while passive domains of assimilation (time spent in the U.S.) may place the offspring of immigrants at increased risk for future criminality, certain active domains (identification as an American) may do just the opposite.     

Multilateral negotiations over climate change policy

Negotiations in the real world have many features which tend to be ignored in policy modeling. They are often multilateral, involving many negotiating parties with preferences over outcomes that can differ substantially. They are also often multidimensional, in the sense that several policies are negotiated over simultaneously. Trade negotiations are a prime example, as are negotiations over environmental policies to abate carbon dioxide (CO₂). We demonstrate how one can formally model this type of negotiation process. We use a policy-oriented computable general equilibrium model to generate preference functions which are then used in a formal multilateral bargaining game. The case is to study climate change policy, but the main contribution is to demonstrate how one can integrate formal economic models of the impacts of policies with formal bargaining models of the negotiations over those policies.     

Motorist use of safety equipment: Expected benefits or risk incompetence?

Seat belts, child safety seats, and motorcycle helmets are not used all the time by all drivers, parents, or riders when they travel. Since the safety advantages of these types of equipment are well established, nonuse could be due to risk incompetence. This article starts instead with risk competence to see to what extent use can be attributed to the net benefits expected by individual motorists. Logit analysis of microdata from the Nationwide Personal Transportation Study shows that use is more likely with larger perceived net benefits for all three types of motorists. They are therefore risk competent enough to respond to changes in net benefits in ways and degrees that are qualitatively and ordinally correct.This research was supported in part by the Urban Institute and the Federal Highway Administration under contract DTFH-61-85-C-00107. Ted Miller, Urban Institute, was instrumental in facilitating the work, and Charles Calhoun, Urban Institute, ran the logits for child safety-seat use and motorcycle helmet use at the Bureau of Census. My colleagues Dan Black and John Garen helped estimate wages. For comments I am grateful to Alan Dillingham, John Graham, Richard Jensen, Kip Viscusi, an anonymous referee, and participants in the Applied Microeconomics Workshop at the University of Kentucky. Appreciation aside, none of the people or organizations mentioned are responsible for the results and views in this article. That responsibility falls on the author.     

Agency in Fertility Decisions in Western Europe During the Demographic Transition: A Comparative Perspective

We use a set of linked reproductive histories taken from Sweden, the Netherlands, and Spain for the period 1871–1960 to address key issues regarding how reproductive change was linked specifically to mortality and survivorship and more generally to individual agency. Using event-history analysis, this study investigates how the propensity to have additional children was influenced by the number of surviving offspring when reproductive decisions were made. The results suggest that couples were continuously regulating their fertility to achieve reproductive goals. Families experiencing child fatalities show significant increases in the hazard of additional births. In addition, the sex composition of the surviving sibset also appears to have influenced reproductive decisions in a significant but changing way. The findings offer strong proof of active decision-making during the demographic transition and provide an important contribution to the literature on the role of mortality for reproductive change.     

Calibrating Hypothetical Willingness to Pay Responses

Experimental data comparing hypothetical and real dichotomous choice responses for two different goods were used to estimate a statistical bias function to calibrate the hypothetical yes responses. The probability that a hypothetical yes response would be a real yes response was estimated as a function of the individual's self-assessed certainty of the hypothetical yes response (assessed on a 0–10 scale) and a variable representing the price level. Without calibration the hypothetical yes responses significantly exceeded the proportion of real yes responses, but after calibration the null hypothesis of no difference between hypothetical and real responses could not be rejected in any of the experiments.