Checkbooks in the Heartland: Change over Time in Voluntary Association Membership

Numerous scholars documented declines in America's social capital through the mid‐1990s but we do not know whether the trend has continued. Further, despite warnings by Robert Putnam and Theda Skocpol that the quality of Americans' voluntary association memberships has also deteriorated—moving from active, “face‐to‐face” memberships to passive, “checkbook” memberships—data have not been available to test this claim. In this article, we use both the Iowa Community Survey and the General Social Survey to explore the changing nature of voluntary association membership between 1994 and 2004. We demonstrate that not only are declines in voluntary association memberships continuing in the new century but there has been a shift in the intensity of voluntary association participation over time. We observe a decline in active membership over time and an increase in checkbook membership over time. These findings provide support for Putnam's claim that checkbook membership is increasing at the expense of more active types of memberships.     

The International Child Poverty Gap: Does Demography Matter?

According to the Luxembourg Income Study data, the U.S. child poverty rate is the second highest among 15 high-income nations. The present work reveals that 55% of all American children living in a household headed by a single female with no other adult present live in poverty-the highest rate for any of the five living arrangements in the 15 countries examined in this study. While previous analyses have focused on market forces and governmental redistribution across households, we question the contribution of demographic factors that place children in family structures with different poverty risks relative to other factors such as differential market opportunities and governmental benefits for adults caring for children in various living arrangements. Applying a classic demographic decomposition technique to the overall poverty gap, we find that the distributional effect of demographic behavior contributes little to the U.S. poverty gap with other nations (and none with respect to the United Kingdom). Overall differences in labor markets and welfare schemes best explain the U.S. child poverty gap, although for some countries, the gap is accentuated by the gradient of governmental transfers, and for most countries, by the gradient of market earnings across living arrangements.     

Health care issues among lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) populations in the United States: Introduction

This supplemental issue of the Journal of Homosexuality presents research that explores a variety of health care issues encountered by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) population groups in the United States over the 10-year period from 1993 to 2002. Topics include access to health care, utilization of care, training of medical and mental health providers, and the appropriate preparation of clinical offices and waiting areas. Authors used a variety of community-based public health research methods, including participant and provider surveys and retrospective chart reviews of patients, to develop this body of research, providing a recent-historical perspective on the complex health care and health-related needs of sexual and gender minorities. Particularly for transgender and intersex populations, the state of research describing their health care needs is in its infancy, and much remains to be done to design effective medical and mental health programs and interventions.     

Low‐Income Mothers’ Private Safety Nets and Children’s Socioemotional Well‐Being

Using longitudinal data from the Fragile Families and Child Well‐being Study (N = 1,162) and the National Evaluation of Welfare‐to‐Work Strategies (N = 1,308), we estimate associations between material and instrumental support available to low‐income mothers and young children’s socioemotional well‐being. In multivariate OLS models, we find mothers’ available support is negatively associated with children’s behavior problems and positively associated with prosocial behavior in both data sets; associations between available support and children’s internalizing and prosocial behaviors attenuate but remain robust in residualized change models. Overall, results support the hypothesis that the availability of a private safety net is positively associated with children’s socioemotional adjustment.     

Who cares and how much: exploring the determinants of co-residential informal care

The importance of informal care provided inside the household (co-residential care) is widely acknowledged in policy circles. However, the factors that determine the likelihood and scale of provision are not fully understood. A two-part model (2PM) is used to investigate both participation and levels of provision. Random effects dynamic panel specifications are employed. Results show that co-residential informal care competes with other time demanding activities, such as childcare and employment. Wealthier individuals are less likely to be caregivers, whereas wealthier households have a higher tendency towards caregiving. Evidence of both substitution and complementarity is found between formal and informal care. Informal care and health status are significantly related, with carers more likely to report worse General Health Questionnaire scores than non-carers. Finally, significant dynamic effects are observed with the continuance of the provision of informal care being more likely than the initiation of such activity, while heavy commitment in the past increases the hours provided in the current period.

Gender Stratification and Publication in American Science: Turning the Tools of Science Inward

Gender stratification continues to pervade the American workplace, and academic science as a vocation is hardly exempt. In this article, I review prior work on why and how gender inequality affects scientific careers. I focus specifically on scientific publication, an important determinant of scientific success. The research indicates that processes of gender stratification operate through formal and informal relationships contributing to the inequality we continue to find in academic science. Following Bourdieu (2004) , I argue that sociology's unique reflexivity – that is, our ability to turn the tools of science inward – offers an important vantage point and contribution to our understanding of stratification in science specifically, in workplaces more generally, and in society at large.     

Estimating the effectiveness of a misdemeanor drug diversion program using propensity score matching and survival analyses

This study analyzes three years of data on misdemeanor drug offenders in Winnebago County, Wisconsin. A portion of these offenders opted into a Misdemeanor Drug Diversion Program (MDDP) offered instead of traditional adjudication. Recidivism in the treatment and comparison groups is estimated using standard binary response techniques augmented with propensity score matching to address selection bias. Results show that the MDDP reduces the probability of re-offense by 16%, after adjusting for possible selection bias. Cox proportional hazard modeling is also used to assess time-to-re-offense differentials between the treatment and comparison groups. The survival analysis indicates that the hazard rate of re-offense is 60% lower per day among those treated with the MDDP program than those who did not complete the program. The average number of days to re-offense among those that do re-offend is 297 days in the treatment group and 203 days in the comparison group.