Familial Influences on Poverty Among Young Children in Black Immigrant,U.S.-born Black,and Nonblack Immigrant Families

This study examines how familial contexts affect poverty disparities between the children of immigrant and U.S.-born blacks, and among black and nonblack children of immigrants. Despite lower gross child poverty rates in immigrant than in U.S.-born black families, accounting for differences in family structure reveals that child poverty risks among blacks are highest in single-parent black immigrant families. In addition, within two-parent immigrant families, child poverty declines associated with increasing assimilation are greater than the respective declines in single-parent families. The heads of black immigrant households have more schooling than those of native-black households. However, increased schooling has a weaker negative association with child poverty among the former than among the latter. In terms of racial disparities among the children of immigrants, poverty rates are higher among black than nonblack children. This black disadvantage is, however, driven by the outcomes of first-generation children of African and Hispanic-black immigrants. The results also show that although children in refugee families face elevated poverty risks, these risks are higher among black than among nonblack children of refugees. In addition, the poverty-reducing impact associated with having an English-proficient household head is about three times lower among black children of immigrants than among non-Hispanic white children of immigrants.     

Moderate Alcohol Consumption and the Risk of Mortality

There has been a growing consensus that moderate consumption of alcohol is associated with a lower risk of mortality and that this association is probably causal. However, a recent review article has raised a serious challenge to this consensus. In short, it determined that most prior research in this area committed serious misclassification errors; furthermore, among those studies that were free of these misclassification errors, no support for a protective role of alcohol consumption was found. This article reexamines the issue using prospective data for more than 124,000 persons interviewed in the U.S. National Health Interview Surveys of 1997 through 2000 with mortality follow-up through 2002 using the Linked Mortality File. The study involves about 488,000 person-years. Controlling for a variety of covariates, this study finds that compared with nondrinkers, those who consume a moderate amount of alcohol have lower all-cause and CHD mortality. The fact that the current study has taken care to avoid the pitfalls of some earlier studies and still finds that those who consume a moderate amount of alcohol have lower all-cause mortality and CHD mortality lends credence to the argument that the relationship is causal.     

Does Multiracial Matter? A Study of Racial Disparities in Self-Rated Health

How do self-identified multiracial adults fit into documented patterns of racial health disparities? We assess whether the health status of adults who view themselves as multiracial is distinctive from that of adults who maintain a single-race identity, by using a seven-year (2001–2007) pooled sample of the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS). We explore racial differences in self-rated health between whites and several single and multiracial adults with binary logistic regression analyses and investigate whether placing these groups into a self-reported “best race” category alters patterns of health disparities. We propose four hypotheses that predict how the self-rated health status of specific multiracial groups compares with their respective component single-race counterparts, and we find substantial complexity in that no one explanatory model applies to all multiracial combinations. We also find that placing multiracial groups into a single “best race” category likely obscures the pattern of health disparities for selected groups because some multiracial adults (e.g., American Indians) tend to identify with single-race groups whose health experience they do not share.     

A Longitudinal Analysis of the Relationship Between Fertility Timing and Schooling

This article quantifies the contribution of pre-treatment dynamic selection to the relationship between fertility timing and postsecondary attainment, after controlling for a rich set of predetermined characteristics. Eventual mothers and nonmothers are matched using their predicted birth hazard rate, which shares the desirable properties of a propensity score but in a multivalued treatment setting. I find that eventual mothers and matched nonmothers enter college at the same rate, but their educational paths diverge well before the former become pregnant. This pre-pregnancy divergence creates substantial differences in ultimate educational attainment that cannot possibly be due to the childbirth itself. Controls for predetermined characteristics and fixed effects do not address this form of dynamic selection bias. A dynamic model of the simultaneous childbirth-education sequencing decision is necessary to address it.     

Subjective Well-Being and Social Capital in Belgian Communities. The Impact of Community Characteristics on Subjective Well-Being Indicators in Belgium

In this article, we investigate the effect of individual and community level characteristics on subjective well-being in Belgium. Various indicators for subjective well-being are being used in a multilevel analysis of the 2009 SCIF survey (n = 2,080) and the 2006 Belgian ESS sample (n = 1,798). On the individual level, most hypotheses on the determinants of subjective well-being were confirmed. Living with a partner and age were shown to have strong effects, but also social capital indicators had a significant positive effect on subjective well-being. All these effects remained significant controlling for optimism. On the community level, especially unemployment rate had a negative impact on subjective well-being. The analysis further demonstrates that in homogeneous regions, community characteristics have a far weaker impact on subjective well-being indicators than in economically more heterogeneous regions.     

The Impact of School Violence on Self-Esteem and Depression Among Taiwanese Junior High School Students

The majority of research on the outcome of school violence has been conducted in Western countries. Empirical studies on how school violence impacts student psychological well-being in a Chinese cultural context are relatively limited. The aim of this study was to address this gap by exploring how student maltreatment by teachers, student perpetration against students, and student victimization by other students affected the self-esteem and depression of 1,376 junior high school students in Taiwan. The current study also explored how gender, family socioeconomic status (SES), student–teacher relationships and peer support moderate the impact of school violence. Structural equation analyses showed that student victimization by students and student perpetration of violence against students successfully predicted depression, but not self-esteem. Student maltreatment by teachers was associated with neither depression nor self-esteem. Multigroup analyses showed that relationships among the variables were similar across gender, family socioeconomic status, or student–teacher relationships. However, the impact of student victimization on depression was stronger for subgroups with a low level of peer support than for those with a high level of peer support. The overall findings suggest that depression is the major consequence of school violence in Taiwan and that the impact of student victimization by fellow students on depression is buffered by positive peer support. Implications for theory, intervention and recommendations for future research are discussed.     

Adolescent Depression and Time Spent with Parents and Siblings

This study examines adolescent depressive symptoms and the quantity and quality of time spent by adolescents with their parents and siblings. We use measures of the quality of relationships with parents and siblings as proxy indicators for the quality of time spent with these social partners. The study emphasizes the salience of parent relationships to adolescent depression. The structural equation models suggest that time spent with parents is indirectly linked with the severity of depressive symptoms via adolescents’ perceptions of how accepting their parents are of them, and the extent to which parents avoid exerting psychological control. We discuss these findings in relation to clinical practice.     

Dissolution of Associational Life? Testing the Individualization and Informalization Hypotheses on Leisure Activities in The Netherlands Between 1975 and 2005

In this paper we examine whether individualization and informalization processes have occurred in the field of leisure in The Netherlands, by analyzing the social context of a wide range of activities between 1975 and 2005. We find that the choice of a particular leisure context is dependent on education, gender, year of birth, age and time pressure. We find evidence for informalization, but—contrary to popular belief—not for individualization. The informalization trend follows a pattern of cohort replacement, and is also caused by a rise in the average education level in the population. Our findings imply that research on civil society, community and social capital should not only be concerned with membership rates, but also with participation in alternative social contexts.     

Geography of European Life Satisfaction

The vast majority of studies analyze life satisfaction at individual and/or country level. This study contributes with analysis of life satisfaction at the (sub-national) province level across multiple countries. The purpose of this study is to call attention to spatial aspects of life satisfaction. Literature does not discuss the fact that life satisfaction in one province may be related to life satisfaction in other provinces. This study shows that there are well-defined happiness clusters in Europe, but also some outliers.     

Assessing the Use of the Family Affluence Scale as Socioeconomic Indicators for Researching Health Inequalities in Taiwan Adolescents

This study examined the reliability and validity of the Family Affluence Scale (FAS) and explored the relationship between FAS and health in a general adolescent population of Taiwan. Our data was obtained from a 2009 school-based survey. In total, 3,368 students (1,741 boys, 1,627 girls) in grades 6–10 in Kinmen County, Taiwan completed a modified WHO Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children (HBSC) questionnaire. Indicators of the family’s social position were their parents’ occupation and education. Indicators of material affluence were number of cars, number of holiday travel, whether the participant had his or her own room and number of computers (FAS items). A higher proportion of the participants completed the four family affluence items than their parents’ occupation and education items (≧98% vs. 90% and 88%; respectively). Analysis of the FAS showed a moderate internal reliability (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.35). The associations between the FAS scores and parental occupation and education were moderate (P < .001). Consistent gradients were found for the association between FAS and positive health and health promoting behaviours. In conclusion, the Taiwan version of the FAS had a high completion rate and moderate internal reliability and external validity. The clear associations between the FAS and health indicators confirm the findings of previous studies and suggest that the FAS can be used as an additional measure of socioeconomic status among Taiwan adolescents.