Queer Farmers: Sexuality and the Transition to Sustainable Agriculture

Intimate relationships are foundational to farm viability. They affect how farmers share tasks, earn income, and access land, yet the role of sexuality and heteronormativity in agriculture remains understudied. Furthermore, queer people are largely ignored as potential farmers by the sustainable agriculture and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) movements. I document the lived experiences of queer farmers, an underresearched group, through participant observation and interviews with 30 sustainable farmers of various genders and sexualities in New England. I use a queer perspective to illuminate sexualized and heteronormative patterns in sustainable agriculture. Whereas the perception of rural heterosexism can discourage queer participation in agriculture, queer farmers faced less overt heterosexism than they expected. However, they did experience heterosexism particular to sustainable agriculture, and confronting it might jeopardize relationships important for economic and environmental sustainability and land access. Some farmers were attracted to sustainable agriculture for reasons specific to gender, sexuality, and anticapitalist values. I argue that sexuality and heteronormativity are embedded in farmer recruitment, retention, and land acquisition, which are critical for the transition to sustainable agriculture. I offer the sustainable agriculture movement a lens for envisioning alternatives for farm families, homes, and workplaces.     

Explaining Diversities in Age-Specific Life Expectancies and Values of Life Saving: A Numerical Analysis

To what extent can life protection account for observed diversities in age-specific life expectancies across individuals and over time? We provide answers via calibrated simulations of a life-cycle model where life’s end is stochastic, and age-specific mortality hazards are endogenous outcomes of life protection, set jointly with life insurance and annuities. Our model links mortality hazards and values of life saving (VLS) as “dual variables”, and offers new insights about the measurement of VLS. Life protection is estimated to account for non-trivial portions of observed levels and inequalities in life expectancies and empirical estimates of VLS by age and education, and over time.     

Newcomb's many problems

Newcomb's paradox rests on two arguments one appealing to the principle of maximizing expected utility and one appealing to dominance in order to generate conflicting recommendations in certain kinds of choice situations. In my essay, I argue that the applications of the principle of maximizing expected utility and of the dominance principle are both fallacious and that the specification of the decision problem is too indeterminate to render a verdict between the two options considered. I also show that if Nozick's case for invoking the dominance principle is taken seriously, it leads to contradictions.     

Non-poor Components of Population Growth and Immigration in the U.S., 1990–2010

Traditional measures of poverty are informative in indicating the degree of economic deprivation in a population at a cross-sectional point in time, but they do not consider growth in the size of the non-poverty population. We develop a measure of non-poverty population growth in order to explore whether it constitutes a useful indicator of an important demographic dynamic. We illustrate our approach with an analysis of the U.S. states using Census and American Community Survey data from 1990, 2000, and 2010. The results indicate that the extent to which the non-poor population increased across states is uncorrelated with the initial poverty rate as conventionally measured. Broken down by nativity, the findings further show that some states with official poverty rates above the national average (e.g., Arizona, Georgia, and Texas) nonetheless had some of the highest rates of non-poor population growth among less skilled immigrants. By contrast, other states with official poverty rates below the national average (e.g., Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Vermont) often had low rates of non-poor population growth among less skilled immigrants. These findings suggest that low initial poverty rates do not necessarily contribute substantially to the alleviation of global poverty through the immigration of less skilled persons from less developed nations. However, the rate of non-poor population growth among less skilled immigrants also appears to be uncorrelated with state variation in minimum wages even after taking into account population density and median home value.     

Period effects on race- and parity-specific birth probabilities of American women, 1917–1976: A new measure of fertility

A new measure of fertility—period coefficients in a prediction of the probability of birth by parity and race—for American women during the period 1917–1976 is explained and displayed. The measure estimates the probability that a next birth will be due to annual conditions, net of age, and is specific to race and parity. We controlled effects of age including a parameter based on an explicit theoretical conception about how age and period influences combine. This refined measure promises greater explained variance, more parsimoniously and more realistically, than has been true of earlier analyses of U.S. fertility trends.     

Contraceptive Method Choice Among Young Adults: Influence of Individual and Relationship Factors

Because decisions related to contraceptive behavior are often made by young adults in the context of specific relationships, the relational context likely influences use of contraceptives. Data presented here are from in-person structured interviews with 536 Black, Hispanic, and White young adults from East Los Angeles, California. We collected partner-specific relational and contraceptive data on all sexual partnerships for each individual, on four occasions, over one year. Using three-level multinomial logistic regression models, we examined individual and relationship factors predictive of contraceptive use. Results indicated that both individual and relationship factors predicted contraceptive use, but factors varied by method. Participants reporting greater perceived partner exclusivity and relationship commitment were more likely to use hormonal/long-acting methods only or a less effective method/no method versus condoms only. Those with greater participation in sexual decision making were more likely to use any method over a less effective method/no method and were more likely to use condoms only or dual methods versus a hormonal/long-acting method only. In addition, for women only, those who reported greater relationship commitment were more likely to use hormonal/long-acting methods or a less effective method/no method versus a dual method. In summary, interactive relationship qualities and dynamics (commitment and sexual decision making) significantly predicted contraceptive use.