Gender differentials in industry wage premia, affirmative action, and employment growth on the industry level

While most previous work has examined the gender wage gap by controlling for productivity-related factors, we focus on gender differences in industry wage premia (efficiency wages) on the detailed industry level and examine industry characteristics that might explain such differences. Using data from the 1988 CPS, we find that the extent to which firms in an industry were likely to be targeted for Affirmation Action compliance review, industry employment growth, and industry profitability have helped narrow the gender gap in industry wage premia. Other characteristics, such as capital intensity, mean education, and sales and payroll growth were much less important.     

Status Roles and Recall of Nonverbal Cues

In two experiments, interpersonal status was experimentally manipulated by assigning one dyad member to be the owner of a mock art gallery and the other to be the owner's assistant. Without forewarning, participants were asked immediately following the interaction to recall their partner's hand gestures, self-touch, gazing, smiling, and nodding. Accuracy of recall was determined by comparing these ratings to their partners' behavior as coded from the videotape. In both experiments, assistants were more accurate at recalling the amount of owners' self-touch than vice versa, but there was little evidence of an accuracy difference in recall of the other nonverbal cues. When accuracy was defined as the correlation between a participant's ratings of the partner's behaviors and the partner's actual behaviors, there was evidence that assistants were more accurate than owners when a combined p-value was calculated across both studies.     

The relationship between faculty diversity and graduation rates in higher education

This study examines the relationship between faculty racial/ethnic diversity and graduation rates of undergraduate students, in particular those from underrepresented racial and ethnic minority populations. Using IPEDS data, the researchers calculated a Diversity Score for each institution. Findings suggest U.S. faculty diversity is lower than in the U.S. national population. Overall graduation rates for underrepresented minority students of all races/ethnicities are positively affected by increased diversity of their faculty.     

Negativismr equivocation,and wobbly assent: public “support” for the prochoice platform on abortion

Although disapproval of all justifications for abortion is rare in the United States, our analysis of numerous surveys taken in the 1960s and 1970s shows that support for the full prochoice platform is also rare. This means that respondents who endorse some justifications for abortion and reject others typically constitute about 50 percent of these samples. If forced to choose politically between polar positions, would these people be more likely to side with a positive or a negative extreme? Using Multiple Classification Analysis as a form of discriminant analysis, we examine whether people who appear to form a “middle” group actually are closer in their characteristics to those who are positive, or to those who are negative. Finally, we test to see whether those respondents who endorse all four justifications for abortion (health, child defect, financial stress, and elective abortion) also endorse additional prochoice positions, such as government payments for abortion, abortion without the husband’s or the parent’s consent, and abortion after the first trimester.     

Can we believe recent data on birth expectations in the United States?

A share of the recent decline in birth expectations of young American wives may be due to the historically unique stimulus of intense public attention to population growth and family size. Data on whites from numerous national surveys provide at least four types of evidence favoring this thesis: a sudden massing of responses in the two-child category (the ZPG formula); a tolerance for the large family; an aversion to childlessness and the one-child family; and an inconsistency between respondents’ evaluations of the family cycle and childspacing, on the one hand, and their personal acceptance of the two-child norm, on the other. The lack of congruence in American reproductive attitudes at present suggests that some conservatism might be wise in accepting current birth expectations as valid indicators of the long-run intentions of youthful cohorts.     

"Who believes most in me and in my recovery": the importance of families for persons with serious mental illness living in structured community housing

In this article, the authors report on qualitative findings on the role of family in supporting recovery for mental health consumers living in structured, community housing in a large Canadian city. Despite living separately from families and relying heavily on formal services, residents identified their families more often than mental health professionals, friends, and residential caregivers as those who most believe in them and their recovery. Families supported recovery by providing affection and belonging, offering emotional and instrumental support, and by staying actively involved with residents. Families are a vital, untapped resource for social workers in promoting independent living.