Childbearing and family in remarriage

Proportional hazards models are used to test hypotheses about the effect of women’s prior childbearing on the probability of having a birth in remarriage and to analyze the effects of other factors. Results indicate that the number of children at the time of remarriage has no effect on childbearing probabilities, but the age of the youngest child has a significant effect. These findings support the view that having a child is important to confirm the marriage, but that individual and family life course factors also affect the decision to have a child in a remarriage.     

The Cultural Context of Nondisclosure of Alcohol-Involved Acquaintance Rape Among Asian American College Women: A Qualitative Study

With high college enrollment and increasing alcohol use, Asian American (AA) college women may be at particular risk for experiencing alcohol-involved acquaintance rape. Although AA women have expressed the weakest intentions to report rape when compared to other ethnic groups, cultural factors influencing these intentions remain unexamined. Guided by grounded theory, 17 self-identified AA college women were interviewed about how the average AA college woman would respond to an alcohol-involved acquaintance rape. Despite awareness of benefits of disclosing rape, participants emphasized that nondisclosure would be the normative response. Three themes emerged from participants: institutional, sociocultural, and psychological contexts of nondisclosure. At an institutional level, nondisclosure referenced mental health and police services, which included Asian stereotypes and mistrust of police. Within a sociocultural context, rape nondisclosure focused on negative consequences on relationships with parents and, to a lesser extent, on friendships. Emotional avoidance and not labeling an acquaintance rape as rape were psychological strategies for rape nondisclosure. Participant's conceptualizations of mental and physical health concerns, specifically post-rape concerns, were framed within sociocultural/macrostructural contexts and may not match that of the more individualistic U.S. mainstream conceptualizations of health. Culturally sensitive rape education may be more effective in increasing rape prevention and support.     

Middle classes,democratization, and class formation

Conclusions This analysis of the South Korean case demonstrates the importance of the historical context for understanding the political role of the middle classes. In late industrialization, as occurred in South Korea and other East Asian countries, the new middle class has emerged as a significant social class, before the capitalist class established its ideological hegemony and before industrial workers developed into an organized class. Neither of these two major classes was able to offer an ideological or organizational leadership to the middle classes. In this context, the middle class can act as more than merely a dependent variable. In South Korea, the minjung movement led by an intellectual segment of the middle class played a critical role in the formation of the working class, by providing an opposition ideology, new politicized languages, organizational networks, and other resources.The Korean experience also highlights the significant role of the state in class formation. The predominant role of the state in economic and social development puts it at the center of major social conflicts. Social tensions and conflicts that emerge in rapid industrialization are directly and indirectly related to the character of the state and the economic policies it implements. A high level of politicization among Korean middle-class members, not only among intellectuals but also among a large number of white-collar workers, is the product of the authoritarian regimes of Park and Chun and their repressive control of civil society. Both the nature of Korean middle-class politics and its relationship with the working-class formation have been shaped by the nature of state politics.The role of the middle class in the South Korean democratization process has been complex and variable, in part because of its internal heterogeneity and in part because of shifting political conjunctures in the transition to democracy. It would not make much sense, therefore, to characterize the Korean middle class as progressive or conservative, because different segments of it were inserted into the shifting conjunctures of political transition differently. At the same time, it would be also unsatisfactory to characterize middle-class politics as simply inconsistent or incoherent, because there exists some definite pattern in their behaviors.This analysis suggests that political behaviors of different segments of the middle class can be explained in terms of their locations within the broad spectrum of middle-class positions between capital and labor and by the changing balance of power between the two major classes. This is to acknowledge the fact that capital-labor relations constitute the primary axis of conflict and that middle-class politics must be understood ultimately in terms of this principal mechanism of class struggle. This is, however, not to assume that middle-class politics is simply a terrain of struggle between the capitalist and the working classes, as many Marxist theorists do. To repeat, in certain historical contexts middle-class politics can have an independent effect on the formation of the two major classes and the outcomes of struggles between the two.     

Logspline Density Estimation under Censoring and Truncation

ABSTRACT. In this paper we consider logspline density estimation for data that may be left-truncated or right-censored. For randomly left-truncated and right-censored data the product-limit estimator is known to be a consistent estimator of the survivor function, having a faster rate of convergence than many density estimators. The product-limit estimator and B-splines are used to construct the logspline density estimate for possibly censored or truncated data. Rates of convergence are established when the log-density function is assumed to be in a Besov space. An algorithm involving a procedure similar to maximum likelihood, stepwise knot addition, and stepwise knot deletion is proposed for the estimation of the density function based upon sample data. Numerical examples are used to show the finite-sample performance of inference based on the logspline density estimation.     

MRP system performance under lumpy demand environments

Material requirements planning (MRP) systems are deemed to deal with master schedules with lumpy demand patterns better than any other production scheduling system. Past studies have advocated important advantages of using MRP systems. The objective of this paper is to look into the impact of patterns of demand lumpiness on the performance of MRP systems by a simulation study. Results show that there is an important threshold point in terms of degree of lumpiness at which MRP system performance starts to deteriorate in the operating conditions considered. If master production schedules (MPS) can be controlled by manufacturers, MRP users should exercise caution to introduce demand lumpiness in MPS to improve system performance. If not, MRP users should then examine the given lumpiness and choose an appropriate lot-sizing rule that has been shown to take advantage of the effect of demand lumpiness.     

The multistate life table method: An application to contraceptive switching behavior

In many demographic behaviors (e.g., those relating to marriage, contraception, migration, and health), people change among multiple statuses through time, sometimes leaving and then returning to the same status. Data on such behaviors are often collected in surveys as censored event histories. The multistate life table (MSLT) can be used to properly describe, in a single analysis, these complex transitions among multiple states measured in such data, but MSLT is rarely applied in the demographic literature because practical guidance is lacking on how to compute MSLTs with such data. We provide methods for computing MSLT quantities using censored event-history data: namely, transition intensities and probabilities, "state occupancy" probabilities and standard errors, average time spent in specified states, and average number of visits to specified states. Applying these methods to contraceptive use, we find high levels of switching back and forth, particularly between barrier methods and non-use, resulting in high rates of unintended pregnancy.     

The Global Middle Class: How Is It Made,What Does It Represent?

One important phenomenon to be observed in the world today is the rapid growth of the middle classes in emerging economies, especially in Asia. This development called for a new concept, the global middle class. The purpose of this paper is twofold: one is to examine the ways this term is currently used and clarify its meaning, and the other is to examine one empirical case of South Korea and highlight important processes involved in the making of a global middle class. The term global middle class has 2 meanings: (1) all the middle classes that exist in the world or (2) the affluent and globally oriented segments of the middle classes in developing countries. These 2 different conceptions serve different purposes and address different aspects of globalization's effect on the affected economy and society. While the expansion of the middle classes around the world is an unquestionably welcome phenomenon, the rise of the affluent global middle classes in developing countries represents a more complex and problematic phenomenon. The Korean case demonstrates that the emergence of the global middle class is associated with growing internal division within the middle class and intense processes of class distinction and educational pursuits in the global education market.     

Socio-Environmental and Behavioral Correlates of Having Ever Had Sexual Intercourse Among Adolescents in Peru: A School-Based Cross-Sectional Study

Objective: We assessed the socio-environmental and behavioral correlates of having ever had sexual intercourse among Peruvian adolescents aged 12–18 years in Lima. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted in 2014. Result: Of 950 participants, 26.5% of males and 13.0% of females had ever had sexual intercourse. Early adolescents who ever had sexual intercourse had higher odds of being insulted, being involved in a fight, and smoking; whereas late adolescents having sexual experiences were more likely to be male and to report smoking, alcohol consumption, involvment in a fight, and having no/low parental understanding. Conclusion: An integrated approach is useful in addressing risk behaviors in adolescents.     

Generalized Reduced‐Form Auctions: A Network‐Flow Approach

We develop a network‐flow approach for characterizing interim‐allocation rules that can be implemented by ex post allocations. Our method can be used to characterize feasible interim allocations in general multi‐unit auctions where agents face capacity constraints, both ceilings and floors. Applications include a variety of settings of practical interest, ranging from individual and group‐specific capacity constraints, set‐aside sale, partnership dissolution, and government license reallocation.     

The Effects of Post-marital Childbearing on Divorce and Remarriage: An Application of Hazards Models with Time-dependent Covariates

In this paper we examine the effects of having a baby during a period of separation on the probability of divorce, and the impact of bearing a child while divorced on the likelihood of remarriage in the United States. Among whites, neither a first nor a second birth during separation had any significant effect on the probability of divorce. Among blacks, either a first or second birth significantly increased the chance of divorce. The function of post-marital childbearing among black women as an incentive to obtaining divorces (presumably to allow them to establish new unions formally) is important, because a large proportion remain separated indefinitely. Whereas the occurrence of both first and second births during divorce significantly increased the probability of remarriage among whites, only a second birth did so among blacks. Further analysis suggests that while the legitimization of births was an important factor among whites, there was little evidence of a comparable effect among blacks.