Theorizing the US Racial State: Sociology Since Racial Formation

This article reviews theoretical developments in the sociology of the US racial state since the publication of Michael Omi and Howard Winant's groundbreaking Racial Formation in the United States. After briefly outlining their theory, it surveys the still diminutive literature and concludes by pointing to promising future directions, drawing on insights from other disciplines and incipient stirrings from within sociology. Destabilizing the unquestioned assumption that the United States is and has been a nation‐state, the article reconceptualizes it as an empire‐state. This turn establishes a firmer footing for the claim that the United States is intrinsically a racial state and yields a generative framework for reconsidering and stimulating scholarship toward more effective analysis and critique.     

International migration of Koreans and the Korean community in China

"This paper examines the background and trends of the overseas migration of Koreans, which started in the late 19th century because of economic, political, and social conditions in the Korean peninsula. Major characteristics and problems of Korean communities overseas are also discussed using China as an example."     

Rural-urban migration and the social mobility of individuals in the Republic of Korea: an analysis of life history data

The paper explores the impact of rural-to-urban migration on the social mobility of individuals, comparing rural-to-urban migrants with rural and urban natives. Using life history data from the 1983 Korean National Migration Survey, the authors examined the pattern of migrant adjustment by estimating the 1st difference form of the autoregressive equation. They found a disruptive effect of rural-to-urban migration that disappears gradually after migration. This study provides strong evidence that most rural-to-urban migrants successfully adapt to urban life through upward occupational mobility relative to both rural and urban natives. This finding sharply contrasts with previous studies on the urban informal sector, which emphasize selective rural-to-urban migration or the inability of migrating individuals to adapt to city life. Moreover, this study showed that a principle cause of the rapid expansion of Seoul is that migrants are more likely to be upwardly mobile when they are destined for Seoul rather than other cities.     

Adaptive Sequential Preventive Maintenance Policy and Bayesian Consideration

This article proposes an adaptive sequential preventive maintenance (PM) policy for which an improvement factor is newly introduced to measure the PM effect at each PM. For this model, the PM actions are conducted at different time intervals so that an adaptive method needs to be utilized to determine the optimal PM times minimizing the expected cost rate per unit time. At each PM, the hazard rate is reduced by an amount affected by the improvement factor which depends on the number of PM's preceding the current one. We derive mathematical formulas to evaluate the expected cost rate per unit time by incorporating the PM cost, repair cost, and replacement cost. Assuming that the failure times follow a Weibull distribution, we propose an optimal sequential PM policy by minimizing the expected cost rate. Furthermore, we consider Bayesian aspects for the sequential PM policy to discuss its optimality. The effect of some parameters and the functional forms of improvement factor on the optimal PM policy is measured numerically by sensibility analysis and some numerical examples are presented for illustrative purposes.     

Inadequate Policy or Operational Failure? The Potential Crisis of the Korean National Pension Programme

The Korean National Pension Programme is one of the main pillars of the Korean welfare state. From its introduction in 1988, the Programme had come to include 26.8 per cent of the economically active population and had accumulated a pension fund equal to 24 per cent of government expenditure by 1994. Behind such a promising facade, the Korean National Pension Programme is likely to face financial crisis without a major reform. This paper seeks to answer the question as to whether the crisis will arise due to inadequate policy design or to operational failure. The latter cause may require privatizing the Pension Fund in order to operate more efficiently, while the former one would demand rectifying the defects of policy design. This study argues that the crisis is strongly related to inadequate policy design, which promises generous pensions and at the same time requires only a small amount in contributions; although there have also been operational inefficiencies in running the programme. It also argues that inadequacy in policy design stemmed from developmentalism embedded in the Korean welfare state, which regards the National Pension Programme mainly as a measure for mobilizing cheap capital. In conclusion, this paper argues that the Korean welfare state, created in the era of economic development, is transient in nature and that it needs a major reform not only to contain the cost but also to meet the growing demand for social welfare.     

The logic of social policy expansion in a neoliberal context: health insurance reform in Korea after the 1997 economic crisis

In the aftermath of the economic crisis of the late 1990s, the Korean government reformed health insurance system to enhance social equity and solidarity. This article identifies the institutional features and political dynamics involved in completing the reform. The Korean case suggests a model of counter-movement that differs from the historical experiences of both democratic corporatist and liberal welfare states. Two institutional conditions within the politics of crisis contributed to the reform. A legacy of limited state welfare was critical in providing the impetus for reforming health insurance system. More importantly, the crisis maximized the state’s coordination capacity by mobilizing a coherent bureaucracy under the presidential authority, and by limiting interest politics. The Korean experience has important implications for the study of economic crisis and social policy response. The way in which a crisis provides new contexts for welfare and policy making institutions, rather than the institutions themselves, should be the main focus in analyzing policy responses. The focus on the political dynamics of an economic crisis helps us acknowledge the limit of ideological forces of a crisis in facilitating a particular policy response.     

Disparities in Human Papillomavirus Vaccine Literacy and Vaccine Completion Among Asian American Pacific Islander Undergraduates: Implications for Cancer Health Equity

Abstract

Purpose: Low rates of human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination among young Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) women need to be addressed, particularly given the high incidence of cervical cancer in this population. The current study aims to investigate predictors of HPV vaccination in young AAPI and non-Latina white (NLW) women. Methods: A secondary data analysis was conducted of a health survey administered to college-aged women (N = 2,270) at a large public university in the Midwest. Andersen's behavioral model of health services utilization guided the study theoretically, and hierarchical logistic regression analysis was conducted to investigate research aim. Results: NLW women had a significantly higher rate of vaccine completion than AAPI women (NLW = 60.7%; AAPI = 38.6%). NLW women also scored higher on all 5 measures of HPV vaccine literacy than AAPI women. Both groups of undergraduate women reported that increasing age, knowledge about HPV, greater use of gynecological services, and knowing someone who had cancer were significant factors related to HPV vaccination completion. In the NLW group, father's income was also found to be a predictor of HPV vaccination completion. Conclusions: Rate and predictors of HPV vaccination completion vary between NLW and AAPI women. Greater promotion of HPV literacy and gynecological service use should be made to young AAPI women to increase their HPV uptake. Further research should examine sociocultural factors that could hinder or promote HPV vaccination in young AAPI women.     

Factor demands, effective discount rates, and liquidity constraints in the retail trade firm

This is a firm-level empirical study of the impact of credit market frictions on firm factor demands. It extends previous work in two ways: it studies the impact of liquidity constraints on both fixed investment and employment and examines data on retail firms. Using the Euler equation approach, it finds strong evidence for the impact of financial constraints on factor demands. Estimated relationships in turn induce striking countercyclical movements in effective discount rates of firms with limited access to credit. The article concludes that the results found in previous work regarding excess sensitivities of investment to liquidity are indeed due to liquidity constraints.