Like mother, (not) like daughter: The social construction of menopause and aging

In recent American history, the definition of menopause has shifted from a natural, developmental transition to an increasingly more medicalized perspective that emphasizes biological deficits of the aging female body. Using qualitative data from two generations of women, this essay explores how and why this redefinition has occurred and what effect it has had on women's attitudes toward health and aging. The physical experiences of menopause were remarkably similar across mother-daughter pairs; however, daughters (who represented a slice of the baby boom cohort) differed from their mothers in how they talked about menopause, how they defined and treated menopause, and how willingly they accepted or fought the changes associated with menopause. Major social institutions, including the media and pharmaceutical industry, have played a significant role in reshaping the cultural lens through which women experience issues of health, body, and aging. This essay emphasizes the baby boomers' desire to maintain control over their bodies and considers how this cohort of women, as a result, may experience late-life issues of body and health.     

“She was buried in her purple dress and her red hat and all of our members wore full ‘Red Hat Regalia’ to celebrate her life”: Dress, embodiment and older women's leisure: Reconfiguring the ageing process

There is a significant literature on women's dress and clothing, women's dress and identity, and women's dress and body image. However, the way that dress shapes the self, gives public meaning to the body, and situates it within culture—its embodiment—is understudied. Older women's voices on how dress-up in leisure contexts is linked to embodiment are absent. Using data from an online survey of the Red Hat Society®, a leisure-based social group with over 1 million members, we examined the relationship between older women's dress and embodiment. Data analysis revealed three themes: 1) Dress and embodiment, doing “dress-up”; 2) Dress and embodied subjectivity, linking the personal with the social; and, 3) Dress and perceptions of ageing, fashioning to freedom. We extend the embodiment and leisure literatures by: (a) including older women's viewpoints on dress; (b) understanding linkages between embodiment and older women's leisure; and, (c) illustrating how public displays of dress contribute to older women's development.     

The Relationship Between Wife’s Education and Husband’s Earnings: Evidence from 1960 to 2000

Previous research finds a positive relationship between a wife’s education and her husband’s earnings using data from the 1960s. Earlier theories suggest that benefits accrue from informational sharing between partners in a marriage. This paper tests the hypothesis that a wife’s education is positively associated with her husband’s earnings, using data from the 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990, and 2000 Censuses. Between 1960 and 2000, the educational attainment and labor-force participation of married women has increased dramatically. As women have embarked upon their own careers, has their education continued to be positively associated with their husbands’ earnings? Yes. The coefficient of the wife’s education remains positive and significant for all the years under study. The size of the coefficient decreases, however, from 1960 to 2000.     

“The Motherhood Wage Gap for Women in the United States: The Importance of College and Fertility Delay”

One of the stylized facts from the past 30 years has been the declining rate of first births before age 30 for all women and the increase rate of first births after age 30 among women with four-year college degrees (Steven P. Martin, Demography, 37(4), 523–533, 2000). What are some of the factors behind womens decision to postpone their childbearing? We hypothesize that the wage difference often observed between like-educated mothers and non-mothers (Jane Waldfogel, Journal of Labor Economics, 16, 505–545, 1998a; Journal of Economic Perspectives 12(1) 137–156, 1998b) may be affected by the postponement of childbearing until after careers are fully established. Hence, we focus on college-educated women because they are typically more career-oriented than their non-college educated counterparts and also the group most often observed postponing maternity. We use individual-level data on women from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79) in order to control for individual-level unobserved heterogeneity as well as human capital characteristics, such as actual work experience, in our empirical analysis. We estimate wage equations, first producing base-line results to compare to the existing literature. Then, we expand the basic wage equation model to address fundamental econometric issues and the education/fertility issue at hand. Our empirical findings are two-fold. First, we find that college-educated mothers do not experience a motherhood wage penalty at all. In fact, they enjoy a wage boost when compared to college-educated childless women. Second, fertility delay enhances this wage boost even further. Our results provide an explanation for the observed postponement of maternity for educated women. We argue that the wage boost experienced by college-educated mothers may be the result of their search for family–friendly work environments, which, in turn, yields job matches with more female-friendly firms offering greater opportunities for advancement.JEL Codes: J13 and J3     

An operative extension of the likelihood ratio test from fuzzy data

In the present paper we are going to extend the likelihood ratio test to the case in which the available experimental information involves fuzzy imprecision (more precisely, the observable events associated with the random experiment concerning the test may be characterized as fuzzy subsets of the sample space, as intended by Zadeh, 1965). In addition, we will approximate the immediate intractable extension, which is based on Zadeh’s probabilistic definition, by using the minimum inaccuracy principle of estimation from fuzzy data, that has been introduced in previous papers as an operative extension of the maximum likelihood method.     

《契嵩年表》考补

释契嵩是北宋时期佛教界的代表人物,其著书辅教及上书朝廷活动,对中国佛教的伦理化进程有重要影响。郭尚武所编《契嵩年表》,对契嵩的有关活动作了细致勾勒,为国内研究提供了极大便利。本文主要针对其失实与疏漏之处,略作考补。     

Fitting competing risks data to bivariate Pareto models

This paper revisits two bivariate Pareto models for fitting competing risks data. The first model is the Frank copula model, and the second one is a bivariate Pareto model introduced by Sankaran and Nair (1993 Sankaran, P. G., and N. U. Nair. 1993. A bivariate Pareto model and its applications to reliability. Naval Research Logistics 40 (7):1013–1020. doi:10.1002/1520-6750(199312)40:7%3c1013::AID-NAV3220400711%3e3.0.CO;2-7.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). We discuss the identifiability issues of these models and develop the maximum likelihood estimation procedures including their computational algorithms and model-diagnostic procedures. Simulations are conducted to examine the performance of the maximum likelihood estimation. Real data are analyzed for illustration.     

青岛市企业慈善捐赠现状、特点及发展对策研究

作为社会经济活动的主体,企业在承担社会责任、构建和谐社会中发挥着重要作用,慈善捐赠是企业履行社会责任的重要方式。根据对青岛市企业慈善捐赠现状及特点的调查和分析,应在选择捐赠合理运行模式、发挥政府主导作用、增强捐赠主体能力三大方面采取相关对策,以促进青岛市企业慈善捐赠事业的发展。     

自首的本质及“余罪自首”相关问题探讨

对有关自首本质的诸观点进行了评析,认为自首的本质应当是＂自告自受＂,并对自首的内涵、界定标准、自首的基本特征及其构成要件等方面进行了较为详细地阐述,还就＂余罪自首＂的基本要件及其与＂普通自首＂的本质区别、＂余罪自首＂的主体扩大、＂其他罪行＂的理解等问题进行了探讨。     

“异化劳动”与“以人为本”——重读马克思《1844年经济学哲学手稿》

马克思《1844年经济学哲学手稿》为什么在前苏联和中国会发生争论？一个原因就是研究者未能从工业化、现代化的视角进行阅读,而只是从阶级斗争的视角去阅读;另一个原因,就是研究者把它与列宁的《唯物主义与经验批判主义》和斯大林的《联共（布）党史简明教程》四章二节“辩证唯物主义与历史唯物主义”对立起来阅读,所以研究者们长期以来把马克思的这一手稿看作是早期的不成熟的著作,从而贬损了手稿的科学价值和现代意义。现在看来这是完全不对的。我们从资本主义工业化、现代化的视觉来看,却能体会到另一番新意。马克思是从生产方式的变革上来揭示人类社会发展的,资本主义现代化,把劳动、资本和土地作为生产力的要素和生产关系的实现形式,资本创造利润,土地创造地租,工人劳动获得工资,资本家通过资本、土地不断地使资本增值,而工人通过劳动所得的工资,只能勉强维持其劳动力的再生产。资本家越来越富,工人越来越贫穷,两极对立贫富悬殊扩大,出现了工人运动。工人运动带领无产阶级展开对资产阶级的斗争。而要进行斗争必须要研究工人劳动现状,研究劳动异化;承认劳动异化就必须研究改变异化劳动这个经济事实;要改变异化劳动这个经济事实,就必须把工人当成社会的人;要把工人当成社会的人,而不是物,就必须坚持以人为本。这是马克思主义的根本问题,不仅不能否认,而且很值得我们认真研究,并努力解决这个根本问题。