At the intersection of self and other: English language ability and immigrant labor market outcomes

New Immigrant Survey 2003 data are used to consider the intersection between self- and other’s assessments of English proficiency. Our findings yield two important results. First, individuals who over- or under-estimate their English proficiency experience worse labor market outcomes than those whose positive self-evaluations coincide with the interviewer’s. Second, our analysis of respondents with a concordant self and interviewer assessment suggests higher returns to English proficiency than when using self-assessment. We argue that, although self-assessed language proficiency dominates the literature on immigrants’ well-being, this measure omits an important additional factor concerning immigrant self-perception and its concordance with the perceptions of others.     

Adjustment of adolescent adoptees: The role of age of adoption and exposure to pre-adoption stressors

This study on 169 adolescents in Israel who were adopted between birth and nine years old examined whether and how their adjustment was affected by their age of adoption and the pre-adoption stressors they had experienced. The study participants reported moderately close relations and open communication with their parents, along with age appropriate peer orientation; high self-esteem; low levels of problem behaviors (as assessed by the Youth Self Report) and very low use of addictive substances and school dropout rates compared to the average in Israel. The findings showed no association between any of the outcomes assessed and either age of adoption or pre-adoption stressors.     

The bilingual school – an educational model for civic equality in a divided society

The current study examines the workings of a bilingual school for Jewish and Palestinian-Israeli students and its contribution towards the goal of educating for equal citizenship in Israel’s multicultural society. The findings indicate that this school succeeds in advancing the notion of equal citizenship, as demonstrated in the fact that the school’s organisational structure and the curricular contents afford equal status to both nationalities. Findings of this study maybe relevant to other multicultural societies.     

Home Equity of New Legal Immigrants in the United States: An Evaluation of Three Key Theoretical Perspectives

Housing in the U.S. is a substantial expenditure, but possessing equity in a home also represents an important source of wealth. This study employs 2003 data from the New Immigrant Survey to examine the home equity of legal immigrants who have come to the U.S. from around the world. We empirically test the relevance of three key theoretical frameworks for predicting immigrants' home equity and evaluate each framework's ability to account for differences in home equity among origin groups. We find strong support for the assimilation and the segmented assimilation frameworks, and little support for the place stratification perspective, net of other factors. Substantial differences in the home equity between origin groups persist even in the presence of multiple controls, with implications for legal immigrants' current economic position and future well‐being in the U.S.     

Patterns of Competence and Adjustment Among Adolescents from Authoritative,Authoritarian, Indulgent,and Neglectful Homes: A Replication in a Sample of Serious Juvenile Offenders

The correlates of authoritative, authoritarian, indulgent, and neglectful parenting were examined within a sample of 1,355 14‐ to 18‐year‐olds adjudicated of serious criminal offenses. The sample is composed primarily of poor, ethnic‐minority youth living in impoverished urban neighborhoods. As has been found in community samples, juvenile offenders who describe their parents as authoritative are more psychosocially mature, more academically competent, less prone to internalized distress, and less prone to externalizing problems than their peers, whereas those who describe their parents as neglectful are less mature, less competent, and more troubled. Juvenile offenders who characterize their parents as either authoritarian or indulgent typically score somewhere between the two extremes, although those from authoritarian homes are consistently better functioning than those from indulgent homes. These patterns did not vary as a function of adolescents' ethnicity or gender.     

Framing effects in the evaluation of multiple risk reduction

We studied how evaluation of changes in low-probability risks are affected by reference points and framing effects. Subjects considered hypothetical situations with one or two low-probability risks. Different frames were used to describe changes in risk levels. In the first experiment, subjects chose between risk-reduction options that achieved the same overall risk reduction: large reduction of one risk vs. equal (smaller) reduction of two risks. When the risks were described as losses relative to the no-risk ideal, more subjects were indifferent between the options than when the same options were described as gains relative to the status quo. In the latter case subjects preferred equal reduction of both risks, unless one risk could be reduced to zero. In a related experiment, subjects were less willing to pay any price for a commodity that carried small increases in two risks than for a commodity carrying a comparable large increase in one risk. In other experiments, subjects evaluated single changes in risks rather than comparing or evaluating pairs of changes. Subjects again placed particularly high value on reducing any risks to zero, and they were even more inclined to do so when some other risk would also be reduced to zero. In a final experiment, elimination of risk was found to be less highly valued if its source was not fully eliminated, and a status-quo effect was found. The findings are interpreted in terms of reference theories of choice.     

“Step Up and Be a Man in a Different Manner”: Unemployed Men Reframing Masculinity

Although the percentage of women working for pay outside the home has steadily increased over time, traditional gender frames still valorize the male breadwinner and the female caregiver, and most households remain organized along gender lines. Recently, however, the global economic crisis significantly altered the structure of work in the United States. Beginning in 2007, “breadwinning” men began to lose jobs in multiple economic sectors. Because work is tied to masculine identities, these men suffered psychologically as well as economically. Using data from 40 semistructured intensive interviews with diverse men, we examine their strategies for coping. These men reframed household labor as work befitting men, even while reiterating traditional gender ideals. They began to adopt gender‐flexible schema in response to structural changes beyond their control.