The Association Between Natural Amenities, Rural Population Growth, and Long-Term Residents' Economic Well-Being

Population growth in rural areas characterized by high levels of natural amenities has recently received substantial research attention. A noted concern with amenity-driven rural population growth is its potential to raise local costs-of-living while yielding only low-wage service sector employment for long-term residents. The work presented here empirically models long-term rural residents' economic well-being, making use of longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. In general, the results suggest that long-term rural families residing in high-growth amenity and recreation areas tend to have higher annual incomes than do their counterparts in non-growth amenity/recreation areas, regardless of the sex, race, or age of the family head. However, higher costs-of-living in these areas supplant any relative gains in income. As such, these analyses provide empirical evidence of patterns inferred by earlier anecdotal evidence and case studies.     

Understanding pre-service teachers' construct of disability: a metacognitive process

This study identified pre-service teachers' understanding of disability as it relates to students they might teach and people they might meet in public, and determined the development of their understanding. Participants' voices were elicited through semi-structured interviews. Themes uncovered included: (a) many people with disabilities were 'hidden away'; (b) participants were afraid of people with disabilities; (c) participants lacked self-efficacy in teaching people with disabilities; (d) participants believed that people with disabilities lacked the ability to learn the same syllabus as typical students; and (e) participants also felt people with disabilities belonged and had rights in society. Conclusions drawn include the fact that in this Asian context, having a close relative with a disability did not presume that the participants would have a positive outlook on people with disabilities. Furthermore, there is a need for acceptance of people with disabilities in daily life activities, including in schools and other recreational activities.     

The Association Between Environmental Risk and Internal Migration Flows

Over the past several decades, the environmental awareness and concern of the American public has greatly increased. This concern is reflected, for example, in public opinion polls, participation in curbside recycling programs and community mobilization against the siting of environmentally-hazardous facilities. This study examines the possibility that such concern is also reflected by internal migration patterns. More specifically, this research considers the relationship between county-level environmental characteristics and in- and outmigration streams. The results suggest that counties with environmental hazards such as air and water pollution, hazardous waste and Superfund sites do not lose residents at greater rates than areas without such hazards. However, areas with such risks gain relatively fewer new residents.     

Stimulus-Stimulus Pairing to Increase Vocalizations in Children with Language Delays: a Review

Stimulus-stimulus pairing (SSP) is a procedure used to increase vocalizations in children with significant language delays. However, results from studies that have examined the effectiveness of SSP have been discrepant. The following review of the literature summarizes the results from 13 experiments published between 1996 and 2014 that used this procedure with children with language delays. Studies were analyzed across various participant and procedural variables, and an effect size estimate (nonoverlap of all pairs) was calculated for a portion of the participants in the studies reviewed. Results indicated an overall moderate intervention effect for SSP of speech sounds. Recommendations are provided for future researchers about information to report and potential avenues for future studies.     

Employment Exits and the Race Gap in Young Women's Employment*

Objective. A race gap in employment that disadvantages young African‐American women has emerged for the first time in U.S. history. This article addresses the extent to which race differences in employment entry, exits, or both are responsible for the gap. Methods. The article relies on event‐history analysis using NLSY data. Results. Analyses show that differences in rates of exit, not entry, explain the race gap. Factors encouraging higher exit rates among African‐American than white women include lower AFQT scores and greater numbers of children. Conclusion. These findings raise questions about the utility of focusing on employment processes at the point of employment entry, at least for processes involving young women. The importance of exits in understanding race differences in women's employment calls attention to processes within firms that present barriers to African‐American women.     

Racial Differences in Sexual and Fertility Attitudes in an Urban Setting

Using data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (neighborhood N= 77; individual N= 951), we consider the extent to which African American youth maintain sexual and fertility‐related norms that support early sexual activity and childbearing and examine the robustness of racial differences in sexual attitudes to controls for neighborhood, family, and individual characteristics. At a minimum, neighborhood economic disadvantage accounts for 26% of the baseline increased likelihood of holding attitudes that encourage early sexual activity among African American youth when compared with Whites. Neighborhood‐, family‐, and individual‐level factors account for 67% of the race difference in sexual attitudes. Implications for contextual and race‐based theories of sexual and fertility norms are discussed.     

Rural Migration,Rapid Growth,and Fear of Crime*

Abstract Although much research on rural “boomtowns” explores differences between rapid‐growth communities and more stable communities, it is logical to consider that residents within rural boomtowns experience community transitions in different ways. We examine a specific outcome, fear of crime, across three categories of community residents with different migration histories: lifetime residents, migrants who joined the boomtown community during its period of rapid growth, and post‐boom period migrants. This perspective is particularly interesting, given the likelihood that these three different categories of residents have had substantially different community experiences. Making use of survey data from two intermountain West communities that represent resource‐dependent transitions during the 1970s and 1980s (Evanston, Wyoming and Delta, Utah), we find that boom migrants express greater fear of crime than longer‐term residents or post‐boom migrants. The findings suggest that the longer‐term decline in fear of crime in “post‐boom” periods is not equal among residents.     

The effect of the sex composition of jobs on starting wages in an organization: Findings from the NLSY

We show that individuals in a job with a higher percentage of females earn lower starting wages with an employing organization. This holds true with controls for individuals’ human capital, job demands for skill or difficult working conditions, and detailed industry. We use a measure of sex composition that applies to detailed jobs: cells in a three-digit census occupation by three-digit census industry matrix. We use pooled panel data from the 19791987 waves of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. The unit of analysis is the spell-the time in which a person worked for one organization. The dependent variable is the first wage in the spell. We use models with fixed-effects to control for unmeasured, unchanging individual characteristics; we also show results from OLS and weighted models for comparison. The negative effect on wages of the percentage female in one’s job is robust across procedures for black women, white women, and white men. For black men the sign is always negative but the coefficient is often nonsignificant.