Legalization of lotteries in the 1980s

The decade of the 1980s has witnessed an explosion in legalized gambling. Most dramatic has been the growth of state-sponsored lotteries. The spread of these state-operated lotteries is the result of pressure for more revenues for state operating costs. Lotteries are viewed as a means of raising these revenues: In 1987, state-operated lotteries grossed over $12 billion in sales. Eight states had sales exceeding $1 billion (New York Times, 1988). Clearly, state lotteries have become big business. The purpose of this article is to describe the spread of lotteries in the 1980s and to note the minimal attention given to compulsive gambling in debates on lotteries.Mr. Braidfoot is General Counsel for the Christian Life Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. He is the author ofGambling: The Deadly Game.     

Sensitive parameters

Notions such as robustness and resistance of an estimator are well known and useful. These ideas have not been fully extended to functional parameters, although it seems natural to do so. In this paper we define a sensitive parameter as one for which small changes in the underlying distribution cause large changes in the parameter value. It is demonstrated that no nontrivial, nonparametric confidence procedure can exist for such a parameter. This extends a result of Bahadur and Savage ( 1956 ). The relationship between this definition and some standard concepts in robustness theory are explored, and implications for parametric inference are studied.     

An Alternative Approach to Dietary Exposure Assessment

The method of dietary exposure assessment currently used by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Dietary Residue Evaluation System (DRES), combines a consumption distribution derived from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) 1977-1978 Nationwide Food Consumption Survey (NFCS) with a single estimate of residue level. The National Academy of Sciences'¹' recommended that EPA incorporate both the distribution of residues and the distribution of consumption into their exposure assessment methodology and proposed using a Monte Carlo approach. This paper presents an alternative method, the Joint Distributional Analysis (JDA), that combines the consumption and residue distributions, without relying on random sampling or fitting theoretical distributions like the Monte Carlo method. This method permits simultaneous analysis of the entire diet, including assessing exposure from residues in different foods.     

National variation in the context of struggle: postwar class conflict and market distribution in the capitalist democracies

Comment et pourqui la dynamique des classes varie-t-elle d'un pays capitaliste démocratique à l'autre, alors que I'on s'attendrait à découvrir un scénario commun? On ne trouve que peu d'évaluations d'ensemble de cette question qui soient d'inspiration marxiste. Ce manque a pour effet d'invalider diverses conceptions marxistes de l'organisation de classe et de la lutte de classe, en leur donnant souvent une allure exagérément mécaniste. Les approches utilisées jusqu'à maintenant pour étudier la variabilité nationale de ces processus souffrent de graves handicaps, dont le caractère a-historique de modèles trans-nationaux quantitatifs et l'incapacitéà généraliser qui accompagne les analyses historiques comparatives traditionnelles d'un petit nombre d'Etat-nations. A partir d'un point-de-vue marxiste ‘genéral’ sur l'établissement des taux de croissance de la syndicalisation et des salaires, nous estimons un ensemble de séries chronologiques pour 18 démocracies capitalistes avancées et stables; ces modèles reflètent bien l'histoire entre 1959 et 1980 de certains de ces pays, mais pas celle de certains autres. Nous suggérons alors que ces relations historiques infra-nationales sont elles-mêmes fonction d'autres differences trans-nationales, temporellement invariantes, qui différencient les pays capitalistes les uns des autres. D'une démocracie capitaliste à l'autre, les degrés différents de contrôle du gouvernement qu'ont eu les sociaux-démocrates semblent partiellement responsables de la variabilité des relations historiques entre prolétarianisation, syndicalisation, niveau de grèves et croissance des salaires. Les mouvements syndicaux de nations dont la représentation social-démocrate a été soutenue ou cumulative, semblent connaître plus de succès dans la conversion de travailleurs/euses indépendants/es en syndicalistes que les mouvements d'autres pays; ils sont moins capables, par ailleurs, d'obtenir des hausses de salaire au moyen de la grève. Nous débattons quatre implications théoriques et méthodologiques de cette recherche, dont les effets contradictoires de la social-démocracie sur la dynamique des classes. Comprehensive assessments of how and why theoretically ‘general’ class dynamics differ across the capitalist democracies are infrequent in research inspired by the Marxist problematic. This has tended to vitiate the potential explanatory power of Marxist conceptualizations of class organization and class struggle, often giving them an overly mechanistic flavor. Existing research approaches to the study of national variability in these processes suffer from several severe limitations, including the ahistoricism of static quantitative cross-national designs and the lack of generality accompanying traditional comparative/historical analyses of a small number of nation-states. Using ‘general’ Marxist understandings of the determination of unionization and wage growth, we estimate a series of time-series models for 18 advanced, stable capitalist democracies, finding that our expectations are consistent with the 1959-80 histories of some of these nations and not of others. We then posit that these within-nation historical relationships are themselves a function of other temporally invariant, cross-national differences distinguishing one capitalist country from another. Differences in social democratic control of government across the capitalist democracies, in particular, appear partially responsible for some important country-to-country differences in the historical relationships among proletarianization, unionization, strike activity, and wage growth. Labor movements in nations with sustained or cumulative social democratic representation appear more successful in converting dependent workers into trade unionists than do other countries, but are less successful in using strikes to extract wage gains. We discuss four theoretical and methodological implications of this research, including the contradictory effects of social democracy on class dynamics.     

The use of the CES-D for measuring symptoms of depression in three rural Russian villages

This paper reports the use of a standardized depression scale (CES-D) in a sample survey of three Russian villages (N=263) in the summer of 1993. The analysis shows a good response rate on all items, except for two. The internal consistency of the scale is good (alpha reliability is 0.79), and the factor loadings are sensible and relatively high. There is a greater percentage of the respondents in rural Russia who showed symptoms of depression compared to the percentage of respondents who showed symptoms of depression in other studies. Greater levels of depression were found among respondents who were elderly, in poor health, who were women, divorced or separated, and had little social support.     

The Impact of Religious Homogeneity on the Rate of Divorce in the United States

This study extends the understanding of the relationship between religious homogeneity, that is, the extent to which formal religious groups are concentrated at the county level, and the rate of persons currently divorced in those counties. Linking the research question to Durkheimian precepts of religion as an integrative force in social life, the essential question is, “At the county level, does the rate of currently divorced vary inversely with more concentrated affiliation with formal religious organizations?” We investigate this relationship using data from the 1990 U.S. Census and from the Glenmary Research Center that encompasses 621 counties in the U.S., that is, a 20 percent random sample of counties from each state. As hypothesized, the divorced rate is inversely related to religious homogeneity, even after controlling for a series of factors that have been shown to be correlated with divorce in other studies.     

MORAL MESSAGES: THE RELATIVE INFLUENCE OF DENOMINATION ON THE RELIGIOSITY-ALCOHOL RELATIONSHIP

This article examines the use and misuse of alcohol across religious denominations. After controlling for standard sociodemographic variables, we find that the impact of religiosity on alcohol use is greatest among those denominations taking a strong stand against its consumption, mainly because religion constitutes a significant reference group for members. We also find that religiosity fails to influence misuse, and discuss the possible reasons for this result.     

The prediction of fertility among catholics: A longitudinal analysis

A longitudinal analysis of the reproductive behavior of a sample of Catholics who were participants in the 1965 NFS and reinterviewed in 1969 is reported in this paper. Fertility over the period studied varied systematically with the additional number of children intended in 1965. In addition, this study has documented a predictive role for method of contraception and the experience of premarital pregnancy. Women using less effective methods and those premaritally pregnant had higher fertility over the interval net of controls for other variables in the analysis, including life-cycle stage and 1965 intentions. Surprisingly, the planning status of the last pregnancy before 1965 was not found to have any independent association with subsequent fertility.     

Trends in return migration to the south

Demography - The rate of return migration to the South rose by nearly 19 percent between the late 1950’s and the late 1960’s and was an important factor in changing the South’s...     

Alaska Native fertility trends, 1950–1978

Fertility rates for Alaska Natives based on officially registered births have shown considerable change since 1950, reflecting the increasing incorporation of this group into the dominant American culture. Their fertility experience has in many regards been similar to that of developing countries during the process of modernization. A gradual rise in fertility prior to 1962 was most likely the result of increased fecundity due to declining breast feeding. The rapid decline after that time is seen as a response to increasing incentives for fertility control. The decline was facilitated by the beginning of family planning programs in 1965.