Female Labor Force Participation in Urban and Rural China1

Abstract The objective of this study is to examine female labor force participation and its determinants in rural and urban China. The sociological literature has demonstrated that participation tends to increase in urban and industrialized places where women have higher levels of education and fewer children, where more workers are engaged in service pursuits, and where family structure is less traditional. With the use of data on counties and cities (N = 2,377) from the I-percent sample of the 1982 census of the People's Republic of China, it was found that female labor force participation is likely to rise in areas with increased agricultural employment, educational levels, proportion of female-headed households, and higher male-to-female sex ratios. Both the size of the service sector and the fertility rate had negligible effects on female labor force participation. Although, on average, rural places have slightly higher levels of female labor force participation, when other variables are controlled, urban places have a higher rate of female participation. In addition, the findings suggest that market factors (i.e., education) are more likely to determine the rate of female labor force participation in urban areas; whereas demographic and social factors (i.e., sex ratio and household structure) play a more important role in explaining the female labor force participation in rural counties.     

Domains of convergence for the EM algorithm: a cautionary tale in a location estimation problem

The EM algorithm is a popular method for maximizing a likelihood in the presence of incomplete data. When the likelihood has multiple local maxima, the parameter space can be partitioned into domains of convergence, one for each local maximum. In this paper we investigate these domains for the location family generated by the t-distribution. We show that, perhaps somewhat surprisingly, these domains need not be connected sets. As an extreme case we give an example of a domain which consists of an infinite union of disjoint open intervals. Thus the convergence behaviour of the EM algorithm can be quite sensitive to the starting point.     

DO DRINKERS KNOW WHEN TO SAY WHEN? AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF DRUNK DRIVING

This paper presents empirical evidence that an individual's decision to drive while drunk is negatively affected by the expected full price of driving drunk. The analysis uses a unique data set containing information on self-reported drunk driving matched to state-level drunk driving policies as well as to state excise taxes on beer. These are hypothesized and found to affect drunk driving. Further, we find interesting racial differences but surprisingly small differences by gender in the effect of socioeconomic and policy variables on drunk driving propensities.     

The nature of gender

I explain a biosocial model of women’s gendered behavior (behavior on which the sexes differ). This model integrates a macro sociological theory with a biological theory derived from primate behavior. The sociological model is designed to explain changes in the relationship between sex and behavior over time or between groups. The biological model is designed to explain individual within-sex variance and between-sex variance in gendered behavior in a cohort. Results from an original study are presented to demonstrate that within-sex variance in women’s gendered behavior is explained well by the primate model. I conclude that human nature is gendered. The implications of this conclusion are explored for demographic and other social science research.     

The Meaning of Work and Love: Career Issues and Interventions

Examining concepts about work and love can help people increase their career success and life satisfaction. Career counselors may initiate this examination by eliciting clients' concepts about work and love. After hearing a client's ideas about work and love, counselors can compare this personal meaning to the social meaning of work and love. When this comparison reveals dysfunctional beliefs about work and love, counselors can link these beliefs to their client's career concerns. Such a linkage typically provokes a cognitive dissonance that motivates clients to modify their beliefs. Counselors can facilitate meaning modification by using client-centered and social influence techniques.