Parental characteristics and the schooling progress of the children of immigrant and U.S.-born blacks

In this study, I examine disparities in schooling progress among children born to immigrant and U.S.-born blacks. I find that in one- and two-parent families, children born to black immigrants are less likely to fall behind in school than those born to U.S.-born blacks. In two-parent immigrant families, children born to two immigrant parents have a significant schooling advantage over children born to one immigrant parent. While children born to two immigrant parents in the wealthiest black immigrant families do better in the second generation than in the first, the reverse is observed among children in less wealthy families. These findings contribute in two ways to our understanding of the assimilation processes of children born to black immigrant parents. First, they show that there is a positive association between the number of immigrant parents in a family and children’s schooling performance. Second, they suggest that disparities in the assimilation patterns of the children of black immigrants are a likely product of the interaction between their parental characteristics and the socioeconomic circumstances of their families.     

Childlessness and Psychological Well-Being in Midlife and Old Age: An Examination of Parental Status Effects Across a Range of Outcomes

The study explores and distinguishes links between parental status (childless persons, parents with residential children, and empty nest parents) and a range of psychological well-being outcomes in midlife and old age. Data are from the first wave of the Norwegian Life Course, Ageing and Generation (NorLAG) study (n = 5,189). We separate outcomes into cognitive (life satisfaction and self-esteem) and affective (positive and negative affect, depression, loneliness) components. Parental status has a net effect on cognitive well-being among women, as childless women report significantly lower life satisfaction and self-esteem than both mothers with residential children and empty nest mothers. However, motherhood is inconsequential for affective well-being. Among men, parental status is unrelated to any of the well-being aspects. Parental status effects are not modified by age, marital status, and education. The results demonstrate the importance of investigating the effect of parental status and other objective circumstances on a range of psychological well-being outcomes. Furthermore, the results reviewed and presented indicate somewhat more positive effects of parenthood in the Nordic countries than in the US, highlighting the role of social policies in shaping the impact of parental status on well-being.     

Social Representational Communities and the Imagined Antebellum South

Tourists come to museums with varied expectations and leave appreciating different aspects of their presentations. Thus, tourists/audiences are primed to see, hear, and experience certain representations and narratives when they enter museums. This is particularly so with plantation museums. Most Americans possess at the very least a vague sense of the antebellum South. They have a vague sense of a time and of a place populated by wealthy and esteemed plantation owners and their Black enslaved labor. We use, as our raw material, visitors’ responses to the question: “What is your level of interest in ...,” ten topics related to plantations’ presentations. This question was asked of visitors returning from tours at three plantation museums. Specifically, all three differ in their presentation of enslavement and as so, have been selected to represent the spectrum of plantation museums in regards to presentation of slavery and enslaved labor. It is expected that the differences in presentations at the three sites reflect differences in plantation audiences. To this effect, plantation audiences are mapped and viewed through the framework of social representation theory in an attempt to discern social representation communities using visitors’ levels of interest in topics/items presented on plantation tours at sites. Disregarding incidental cultural tourists, we found there to be basically two social representations that visitors to these three plantation museums hold: a nostalgic social representation and a Janus social representation.     

The additive hazards model with high-dimensional regressors

This paper considers estimation and prediction in the Aalen additive hazards model in the case where the covariate vector is high-dimensional such as gene expression measurements. Some form of dimension reduction of the covariate space is needed to obtain useful statistical analyses. We study the partial least squares regression method. It turns out that it is naturally adapted to this setting via the so-called Krylov sequence. The resulting PLS estimator is shown to be consistent provided that the number of terms included is taken to be equal to the number of relevant components in the regression model. A standard PLS algorithm can also be constructed, but it turns out that the resulting predictor can only be related to the original covariates via time-dependent coefficients. The methods are applied to a breast cancer data set with gene expression recordings and to the well known primary biliary cirrhosis clinical data.     

Demography and housing demand—what can we learn from residential construction data?

There are obvious reasons why residential construction should depend on the population’s age structure. We estimate this relation on Swedish time series data and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development panel data. Large groups of young adults are associated with higher rates of residential construction, but there is also a significant negative effect from those above 75. Age effects on residential investment are robust and forecast well out-of-sample in contrast to the corresponding house price results. This may explain why the debate around house prices and demography has been rather inconclusive. Rapidly aging populations in the industrialized world makes the future look bleak for the construction industry.

Does parents’ valuation of children’s health mimic their valuation of own health?

A single latent variable model of health status and therapeutic health care utilization is estimated for parents and own children of 6,557 US households. The equation system that identifies latent health status simultaneously determines a number of indicators of general health, including presence of morbidity symptoms, mobility limitations, medication needs, and utilization of therapeutic health care services. The main goal of the paper was to obtain an unbiased estimate of parents’ marginal substitution rate between own and child health. Results indicate that parents’ valuation of their children’s health exceeds their valuation of own health by almost twofold on average.

Editors' Introduction

Population Research and Policy Review -