Sources of state capacity in Latin America: commodity booms and state building motives in Chile

The pursuits of private profit and distributional political advantage can be powerful state building motives. This article describes how each motive can trigger a distinct causal sequence amid commodity booms, which can result in the growth of state capacity. First, when pursuing profit during booms, export-oriented actors regularly seek new state-supplied public goods, the provision of which promotes the expansion of state capacity. Second, when booms enrich rivals to the ruling coalition, coalition members may respond with institution building to preserve their existing political advantages. A case study of Chile (1848–1883) and supplementary evidence from Argentina, Central America, Colombia, and Peru indicate that these causal sequences may have been central to state building in Latin America historically.     

Confidence estimation via the parametric bootstrap in logistic joinpoint regression

We consider asymptotic properties of the maximum likelihood and related estimators in a clustered logistic joinpoint model with an unknown joinpoint. Sufficient conditions are given for the consistency of confidence bounds produced by the parametric bootstrap; one of the conditions required is that the true location of the joinpoint is not at one of the observation times. A simulation study is presented to illustrate the lack of consistency of the bootstrap confidence bounds when the joinpoint is an observation time. A removal algorithm is presented which corrects this problem, but at the price of an increased mean square error. Finally, the methods are applied to data on yearly cancer mortality in the US for individuals age 65 and over.     

Contraceptive use patterns across teens’ sexual relationships: The role of relationships,partners, and sexual histories

By using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we examine how adolescent relationship characteristics, partner attributes, and sexual relationship histories are associated with contraceptive use and consistency, incorporating random effects to control for respondent-level unobserved heterogeneity. Analyses show that teens' contraceptive use patterns vary across relationships. Teens with more-homogamous partners, with more-intimate relationships, and who communicate about contraception before sex have greater odds of contraceptive use and/or consistency. Teens in romantic relationships, and who are older when engaging in sex for the first time, have greater odds of ever using contraceptives but reduced odds of always using contraceptives. Teens continue habits from previous relationships: teens with experience practicing contraceptive consistency and females who previously have used hormonal contraceptive methods are better able to maintain consistency in subsequent relationships. Also, relationship and partner characteristics are less important for females who previously used hormonal methods.     

Called to Medicine: Physicians’ Experiences of Career Calling

Using consensual qualitative research methodology, the authors explored physicians’ (N = 17) career calling experiences through semistructured interviews. Eight domains emerged: definition of calling, development of calling, calling's fit with career, maintenance of calling, emotional well‐being, relationships, recreation, and future. Within these domains, 17 general and 40 typical categories emerged. Results suggest physicians’ callings were influenced by others, met with both support and barriers, and chosen because of fit with interests, prosocial motivation, or religious/spiritual influences. Calling positively and negatively influenced emotional well‐being, relationships, and recreation and was expected to continue after retirement. Counselors are encouraged to use a narrative lens to conceptualize clients’ calling development, use job crafting techniques to support calling maintenance, and prepare clients for postretirement career calling development. Future research might examine when and why a medical calling's strength may change over time.     

Adaptations to Traditional Familial Roles: Examining the Challenges of Grandmothers’ Counterlife Transitions

Grandmothers-raising-grandchildren narratives challenge normative familial preconceptions. Utilizing the life-course theory to examine the turbulence and time-disordered role orientations, this study showcases the familial development punctuated by transitions and highlights the transformations experienced in grandparent relationships. This qualitative phenomenological study investigates six grandmothers’ experiences about their unforeseen life circumstances and their renegotiation of normal age-appropriate transitions that cause them to reconstruct their life plans. Five themes (obligation, desperation, intervention, salvation, and normalization) emerged from their experiences that underscore the transformative generational structures and explore adaptive life-course trajectories.     

Culture and the Confederate flag: Attitudes toward a divisive symbol

The Confederate flag remains a controversial symbol. This article reviews research on attitudes toward the Confederate flag and its public display. In order to better understand the divisiveness of the flag, I outline a historical timeline of the U.S. South and the Confederate flag while emphasizing the association between race and politics within the region. Culture is crucial to this paper because the flag is rooted in cultural constructions of its symbolism, and because opinions toward the flag shed light on the process of cultural change. Overall, this work synthesizes existing research on attitudes and legislative voting patterns focused on the flag and provides a foundation and suggestions for future inquiry into the topic. As a case study analyzing the manner in which “unsettled times” (Swidler, 1986) produce climates conducive to social change, I argue that the Charleston Emanuel AME Church shootings created an opportunity to remove the Confederate flag from the South Carolina capitol grounds. I conclude by viewing the flag debate within a society that has and continues to perpetuate racial inequities. Future research has the task of analyzing implications of Confederate flag support hopefully leading to the elimination of ideologies that spur racial violence.     

Robust estimation of a dynamic spatio-temporal model with structural change

We postulate a dynamic spatio-temporal model with constant covariate effect but with varying spatial effect over time and varying temporal effect across locations. To mitigate the effect of temporary structural change, the model can be estimated using the backfitting algorithm embedded with forward search algorithm and bootstrap. A simulation study is designed to evaluate structural optimality of the model with the estimation procedure. The fitted model exhibit superior predictive ability relative to the linear model. The proposed algorithm also consistently produced lower relative bias and standard errors for the spatial parameter estimates. While additional neighbourhoods do not necessarily improve predictive ability of the model, it trims down relative bias on the parameter estimates, specially for spatial parameter. Location of the temporary structural change along with the degree of structural change contributes to lower relative bias of parameter estimates and in better predictive ability of the model. The estimation procedure is able to produce parameter estimates that are robust to the occurrence of temporary structural change.     

Family transitions and juvenile delinquency

There is a large body of research that shows children from non-intact homes show higher rates of juvenile delinquency than children from intact homes, partially due to weaker parental control and supervision in non-intact homes. What has not been adequately addressed in the research is the influence of changes in family structure among individual adolescents over time on delinquent offending. Using the first and third waves of the National Youth Study, we assess the effect of family structure changes on changes in delinquent offending between waves through the intermediate process of changes in family time and parental attachment. Although prior research has documented adolescents in broken homes are more delinquent than youth in intact homes, the process of family dissolution is not associated with concurrent increases in offending. In contrast, family formation through marriage or cohabitation is associated with simultaneous increases in offending. Changes in family time and parental attachment account for a portion of the family formation effect on delinquency, and prior parental attachment and juvenile offending significantly condition the effect of family formation on offending.