Wages and Fertility in Australia

This paper applies a simple economic model to explain short run movements in Australian fertility, abstracting from social and cultural conditions. It shows that Australian fertility can be modelled with some success using only wages and employment data, once we allow for the different effects of changes in men’s and women’s wages for the period 1966–90. The elasticity of the total fertility rate over this period is found to be negative with respect to women’s wages and positive with respect to men’s wages. As well as having the expected sign, the estimated elasticities are similar in magnitude to those for the United States over the period 1948–75.     

Creating a Consensus: Psychologists, the Supreme Court, and School Desegregation, 1952–1955

SPSSI psychologists' involvement in the early civil rights movement in the postwar United States was epitomized by their involvement in the case of Brown v. Board of Education. This article examines how social scientists sought to maintain the persona of objective, scientific expert when asked to prepare briefs for the U.S. Supreme Court for the Brown case. The social scientists believed that only by collapsing what they saw as an artificial distinction between objectivity and advocacy could the social scientist become a social activist. This article is based on extensive research in numerous archives, including the papers of Gordon W. Allport, Kenneth B. Clark, Stuart W. Cook, David Krech, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Theodore M. Newcomb, Robert Redfield, and the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues.     

Broadening Career Horizons for Students in At-Risk Environments

Researchers and practitioners embarked on a collaborative venture to develop, implement, and evaluate a career intervention program for 7th grade students who were at-risk for vocational underachievement. Students participating in the Career Horizons Program demonstrated enhanced confidence in performing tasks related to investigating, selecting, and implementing a career choice. They also considered a greater number of careers and selected those that were congruent with their interests. No change was found in confidence regarding degree of self-knowledge. Suggestions are provided for improving on the development and evaluation of career exploration programs to enhance career self-efficacy and broaden the career horizons of students in at-risk environments.     

Foreign-born health integration during the transition to adulthood: The case of weight

Nativity differences in youths’ health in the United States are striking—the children of foreign-born parents often have healthier outcomes than those of native-born parents. However, very little is known about how immigrant-native differences evolve within the same individuals over time, or about life cycle aspects of the health-related integration of youth with migration backgrounds. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, I examine nativity differences in trajectories of weight gain during adolescence and early adulthood, as well as the degree to which temporal patterns are stratified by race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status. I examine whether nativity differences converge, diverge or remain stable over time, and whether patterns are socially stratified within and across nativity groups. I find that first-generation adolescents begin at a lower weight than their third generation peers and gain weight at a significantly slower pace, resulting in meaningful differences by early adulthood. More complex examination of the relationship between nativity and weight gain reveals additional differences by ethnicity: the foreign-born advantage over time does not extend as strongly to Hispanic adolescents. The findings demonstrate how the health-related integration of foreign-born youth is tied to race/ethnicity and socioeconomic circumstances, and suggest the need to examine the ways in which social circumstances and health change together.