Society,family, and gender in Santa Fe,New Granada,until the end of the colony

The author examines family structure in Santa Fe, the capital of New Granada, a Spanish colony that included Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, and Venezuela. The focus is on the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He finds that social class structure was closely related to ethnic group and skin color, and that the sex ratio was biased toward women. Women also headed nearly 50% of all households. Data are mainly from the 1801 smallpox census.     

Origins and destinies: Immigration to the United States since World War II

Contemporary immigration to the United States and the formation of new ethnic groups are the complex and unintended social consequences of the expansion of the nation to its post-World War II position of global hegemony. Immigrant communities in the United States today are related to a history of American military, political, economic, and cultural involvement and intervention in the sending countries, especially in Asia and the Caribbean Basin, and to the linkages that are formed in the process that open a variety of legal and illegal migration pathways. The 19.8 million foreign-born persons counted in the 1990 U.S. census formed the largest immigrant population in the world, though in relative terms, only 7.9% of the U.S. population was foreign-born, a lower proportion than earlier in this century. Today's immigrants are extraordinarily diverse, a reflection of polar-opposite types of migrations embedded in very different historical and structural contexts. Also, unlike the expanding economy that absorbed earlier flows from Europe, since the 1970s new immigrants have entered an hourglass economy with reduced opportunities for social mobility, particularly among the less educated, and new waves of refugees have entered a welfare state with expanded opportunities for public assistance. This paper seeks to make sense of the new diversity. A typology of contemporary immigrants is presented, and their patterns of settlement, their distinctive social and economic characteristics compared to major native-born racial-ethnic groups, and their different modes of incorporation in—and consequences for—American society are considered.     

Interrupted stories, interrupted lives

In attempting to manage their practices efficiently, doctors may not allow seriously ill patients enough time to sort out their feelings and raise important questions. What is at stake here is not information about prognosis and treatments but the very survival of the soul.     

Is the American health care delivery system ready for change?

In October 1992, the American College of Physician Executives sponsored a study tour to Berlin, Germany, and Amsterdam, Holland. Meetings were held with government officials, third-party payers, and providers, and on-site visits were made at hospitals, clinics, and academic centers. The purpose was to study the health care delivery system in those countries and to share some insights with the countries' hosts on the U.S. system. In a series of reports that began in the July issue of the journal, 5 of the 10 study tour participants describe their impressions of the tour and of the health care systems in the countries that were visited. In this final report, the implications of the German and Dutch systems for reform of the U.S. health care system are discussed.     

The model of place utility revisited

"The purpose of this paper...is twofold: first, to specify a way of calculating place utility so that potential migrants could move to the place where overall place utility is maximized; and second, which is more important, to reveal how decision-makers in the real world, who are acting within 'bounded rationalities'...,make their decisions on where to migrate. This study is supported by an empirical survey of recent Chinese immigrants to Edmonton [Canada].... The findings reveal that when people evaluate different places, they do not necessarily look for the one that generates the highest overall value or utility across all properties.... The study further indicates that the assumption underlying most microeconomic models (that maximizing utility or benefit is the ultimate rule for choosing one location out of several) has not been verified." (SUMMARY IN FRE AND SPA)     

DO RESPONDENTS REALLY "MARK ALL THAT APPLY" ON SELF-ADMINISTERED QUESTIONS?

An experiment was conducted to assess the effect of using "markall that apply" question instructions on survey reporting aspart of the field test for the Second Follow-up of the NationalEducation Longitudinal Study of 1988 Eighth Graders (NELS:88).Mark-all-that-apply instructions were compared with instructionsasking respondents to indicate "yes" or "no" to each responseoption on responses to three items dispersed throughout thequestionnaire and consisting of different topics and numbersof response options. For the three items, significantly fewerresponse options were selected with the mark-all-that-applyinstructions than with the yes/no instructions, but becauseexternal validity criteria were not available, overreportingto the yes/no instructions cannot be ruled out. Instructiondependentprimacy effects, predicted under the hypothesis that respondentswould engage in more superficial processing when given the mark-all-that-applyinstructions, were not found.     

The impact of migration on gender roles: findings of field research in Turkey

Findings are based on a sample of four types of Turkish women affected by migration: 1) pioneer women who emigrated on their own (33 persons); 2) followers with wage work experience, who joined or left with husbands (44 persons); 3) followers without wage work experience (39 persons); and 4) women left behind when husbands migrated (45 persons). These women are compared to a non-migrant control group (54 persons). Sample surveys were conducted in three sites, which varied in levels of industrial development, economic diversification, and urbanization (Ankara, Kisehir, and eight rural villages in the province of Kisehir). The sample includes returnees registered with the Social Insurance Institute and persons located by the chain inquiry method. Prior research supports the importance of including typologies based on family types, marriage types, levels of education, and experience with wage work. This study confirms that pioneer women were more likely to have romantic marriages, to have nuclear families, to have higher educational levels, and to have prior wage work. Analysis of the 116 women with migration experience shows that 75% migrated during 1968-74. 22% migrated after 1980. 51% were returnees during 1983-85, and many received retirement benefits. Almost 65% spent 10 or more years abroad. 56% were aged under 24 years. 85% were married at the time of emigration. 61% viewed their migration experiences as improving their maturity and ability to handle affairs compared to nonmigrant women. 88% became housewives after returning. 27% of return migrants and 82% of nonmigrants had never had their own bank accounts. 69% of return migrants and only 22% of nonmigrants reported movement outside the home without permission. 63% of migrants and 39% of nonmigrants would cast political votes independently of their husbands. Migrating women exercised more independent behavior but retained traditional responsibility for housework. The greatest differences were between women with wage work and women without or with migrating husbands. Followers without wage work were the most disadvantaged. Migration is viewed as a significant factor in determining gender roles among Turkish women.     

Gambling and the Law®: Endless fields of dreams

This article examines the current trends of proliferation of commercial gaming, especially in the United States, in the context of the third wave of legalization of gambling that has been experienced since the founding of the nation. The author looks at the historic foundations of the spread of casino-style gambling, and notes the types of casino gaming that have led the way in the current expansion. He also points out why it is reasonable to expect that this wave too may come crashing down, as general acceptance of wide-spread casino gaming in America may indeed be short-lived.Gambling and the Law^® is a registered trademark of I. Nelson Rose.     

A model of numbers of births in three countries,with persistent forty-year cycles

This paper describes a model which relates fertility to partner availability, an aspect of relative cohort size. Partner availability is affected by the tendency for males to reproduce at a later age than females. For women born at a time of rising birth rates, there is a shortage of slightly older men as potential partners. Women born when birthrates are falling enjoy a surplus of older men from which to choose. This model is believed to be the first non-linear demographic feedback model involving feedbacks through marriage squeezes in which empirically estimated values of the parameters imply persistent limit cycles. The deterministic model makes births in each five-year period a function of births in previous five-year periods. The form of the function is chosen to model the effect of partner availability upon entry into reproductive relationships, and therefore on age-specific fertility. Marriage rates are not modeled directly. The model was developed from data for more than a century from England and Wales, New Zealand, and the US. The demographic transition is modeled with a logistic function and age-specific fertility rates are estimated using lognormal distributions. The stepwise inclusion of a partner availability estimate in the model showed that it accounts for 29% of otherwise unexplained variance. Projected future births stabilize in sustained or limit cycles with periods a little longer than 40 years, and amplitudes of at least 7% of the mean. The necessary conditions for cycle persistence are outlined on a graph of maximum and minimum fertility parameters.