The Continuing Significance of Race in the Occupational Attainment of Whites and Blacks: A Segmented Labor Market Analysis*

In this article we posit that racial discrimination is not uniform across the U.S. labor market. While it is likely that patterns of racial discrimination occur in some types of jobs more than others, little empirical research has examined the effect of race across segmented labor markets. Incorporating two decades of comparable General Social Survey data, this article revisits William J. Wilson's hypothesis that the significance of race in determining labor market outcomes is declining. We examine the effect of race within two dissimilar labor segments over time, dividing the labor market into technique‐versus social‐skills‐oriented segments. Using this theoretically useful dichotomy, we examine if the net effect of race (African American and white men) on occupational prestige has declined from the 1970s to the 1990s. Our multivariate analysis shows that the net effect of race is different in each labor market. This suggests that racial discrimination against African Americans is not uniform across the entire labor market, but instead is differentiately manifested within various labor market segments. Overall, our findings partially support Wilson's thesis indicating that while the effect of race is no longer a significant indicator of occupational prestige by the 1990s in a technique‐oriented job segment, it remains a significant predictive variable within a social‐skills‐oriented job segment, even when controlling for a range of social class and structural variables.     

The humorous construction of disability: 'stand-up' comedians in the United States

We examine how stand-up [sic] comedy constructs, circulates, perpetuates and/or disrupts stereotypical images of disabled persons in the United States. We use disabled people, rather than people-first language, to remind readers that disability is an ill-defined, culturally imposed attribute. Although humor is culturally specific, we draw on works of an international cadre of humanities scholars and social scientists to ground our analyses. We conclude that disability humor constitutes an emerging, liberatory art form. Disabled and non-disabled comedians elicit thought-provoking laughter and present disability as an interesting way to live. However, disabling humor still perpetuates stereotyping and isolation.     

A measure of slope-rotatability for second order response surface experimental designs

In the design of experiments for estimating the slope of a response surface, slope-rotatability is a desirable property. In this paper, a measure is introduced that enables us to assess the degree of slope-rotatability for a given response surface design. The measure takes the value zero if and only if the design is slope-rotatable, and becomes larger as the design deviates from a slope-rotatable design. Examples of applying this measure to some response surface designs are also given.     

敦煌民间词之文人词化过程

中唐以后,除了民间广为流行的长短句外,还出现了文人亲自创作的长短句。文人的长短句到底起源于哪里?假定文人的词是受民间词的影响而产生的,那么什么原因使文人对长短句保持持续不变的关心,并给予了词的地位?民间词的内容和风格是以怎样的方式传达到文人那里?解决了这些问题可以帮助我们更好地理解民间词文人化过程中文人词的形成原因,同时可以对定论词的性质提供参照。     

Expected sample moments of concomitants of selected order statistics

In this paper, the task of determining expected values of sample moments, where the sample members have been selected based on noisy information, is considered. This task is a recurring problem in the theory of evolution strategies. Exact expressions for expected values of sums of products of concomitants of selected order statistics are derived. Then, using Edgeworth and Cornish-Fisher approximations, explicit results that depend on coefficients that can be determined numerically are obtained. While the results are exact only for normal populations, it is shown experimentally that including skewness and kurtosis in the calculations can yield greatly improved results for other distributions.     

Individual irrationality and social welfare

Individual preferences inconsistent with personal welfare caused neither by ignorance nor by a positive consideration for the welfare of others are defined as (welfare) irrational. Sources of irrationality (rigid adherence to moral principles, excessive fear of danger, excessive tempetation of pleasure, revenge, inertia, faulty telescopic faculty, the fallacy of diminishing marginal utility of utility, etc.) are discussed. An evolutionary explanation of irrationality is suggested and some implications for individual decision and social policy indicated.I am grateful to two anonymous referees for comments.     

Cohort shifts in the timing of births in Ghana

A comparison of cohorts of ever-married Chanaian women suggests evidence of a fertility transition beginning among younger women and select subgroups. Ghana's crude birth rate declined from a high of 50/1000 population in 1970 to 38.8/1000 in 1985. To ascertain whether marital fertility is now being controlled through conscious attempts to lengthen birth intervals, World Fertility Survey data from 1979-80 on the timing of births among different birth cohorts were analyzed. It was hypothesized that, as a result of the influence of Western values that stress independence from parents and the introduction of compulsory education, cohorts of the mid-1950s and 1960s would be more likely to postpone childbearing, more active in the modern sector of the economy, and more accepting of modern contraceptive usage for birth spacing than women in the 1930-39, 1940-49, and 1950-59 cohorts. For the 1940-49 cohort, it took 10.8 months for 25% to have a birth following 1st marriage, 18.7 months for 50% to have a 1st birth, and 27.4 months for 75% to complete this step. By comparison, these figures for the 1955-64 birth cohort were 9.9, 16.7, and 20.5 months, respectively. The significantly shorter (p 0.01) interval between marriage and 1st birth found among younger women in part reflects rising age at marriage; mean age at 1st marriage was 17.9 years for the 1940 cohort and 21.6 years for the most recent cohort. After the birth of the 1st child, recent cohorts were more likely to wait longer for the 2nd birth. For women born in 1950-64, it took 21.8, 36.7, and 44.6 months for 25%, 50%, and 75%, respectively, to reach parity 2. This pattern of lengthened birth interval beyond the 1st birth was apparent at all parities in the youngest cohort and indicates increasing acceptance of contraception among those who have come of age during a period of rapid social change.     

Family roles and female mortality differentials across cultures: an inquiry of cultural adaptation in industrialization

The relationship between family support systems and female mortality in Chinese and American cultures is studied using 1980 official data from Taiwan and the United States. The differences in female mortality by marital status support the hypotheses that Chinese families provide greater support for older than younger females, and that the emphasis on filial piety in Chinese society provides more support for the elderly by Chinese than American children.     

An analytical paradigm for the analysis of national inmigration patterns

This study proposes and demonstrates an analytic paradigm based upon a substantive categorization of a set of inmigration correlates. It exemplifies the notion of categorizing, analyzing according to the categorization, and subsequently discussing the phenomenon in more depth. The paradigm has 2 steps: 1) the variables are categorized according to the cells resulting from the intersection of a preferably small number of nominal dimensions and 2) the data are analyzed, directly anchored in the prior categorization. The data used is Israel's 1983 census macro-data gathered from the Central Bureau of Statistics for the Israeli towns with populations of at least 5000. The authors defined 6 variables as push variables and 4 as pull variables. Results of the regression employing push variables show that 4 variables accounting for 72% of inmigration were found to significantly predict inmigration: 1) unemployment, 2) percentage of Asians-Africans, 3) town size, and 4) religiosity. Within the pull classification, the regression analysis reveals that 2 of the 4 variables explain 31% of the inmigration variance: 1) educational level (26%) and 2) income (5%). The 1st regression analysis on the 2nd dimension shows that the percentage of Asian-African origin and town population size account for 32% of the immigration variance. In the 2nd regression analysis, unemployment explains 48% of the inmigration variance and educational level explains 8%. In the 3rd regression, only home crowding explains a significant amount of the immigration variance (19%). Results of a multiple regression analysis show that unemployment level, percentage of Asian-Africans, population size, and level of religiosity account for 72% of the inmigration variance. Thus, the characteristics of a town inmigrating (push variables) are demographic, economic, and social. However, the attractive features of a town are only economic. Among all economic factors, unemployment is primary. In addition, not only are both percentage of Asians-Africans and population size significantly deflective of inmigration, but each also plays a separate and independent role.     

The accuracy of population censuses in the United States

Methods that have been used or suggested to improve the accuracy of the U.S. census are reviewed. The author notes that self-completed questionnaires yield better results than those completed by census enumerators. The use of sample surveys carried out as part of the census process is described.