Revisiting das gupta: Refinement and extension of standardization and decomposition

Standardization and decomposition are established and widely used demographic techniques for comparing rates and means between groups with differences in composition. The difference in rates and means has heretofore been resolved in terms of the contribution of variables to compositional effects for each variable and an overall rate effect. This study demonstrates that the resolution of differences is attainable at the categorical level for both compositional effects and rate effects. Refinements to Das Gupta’s equations yield a complete decomposition because of the additivity of categorical compositional and rate effects. Other refinements allow the decomposition of polytomous variables. Extensions to the method provide for the decomposition of the standard deviation and the multivariate index of dissimilarity.     

Growth in family income inequality, 1970–1990: Industrial restructuring and demographic change

Industrial restructuring and changing population composition frequently have been treated as competing explanations of growing U.S. income inequality. Using the Gini coefficient, we employ a model of conditional change to explore the relative effects of each on changes of family income distribution between 1970 and 1990, across 784 metropolitan areas and public use microdata areas (PUMAs). Changes in both industrial structure and population characteristics are found to have significant and opposite effects on family income distribution, although there are sharp differences by decade in the dynamics that underlie increasing inequality. Our central conclusion is that it is too soon to eliminate deindustrialization as a significant cause of increased earnings inequality.     

Living arrangements of widows in the United States and Israel, 1960 and 1961

One of the neglected areas in the study of the social structure of the family is that of widowhood, the last stage in the family life cycle. A study of living arrangements of the widowed provides an opportunity to examine the kinship solidarity of a society and to point up in bold relief the influence of a variety of factors that contribute to the residential patterns of the widowed. The data in this study were drawn from the 1960 Census of the United States and the 1961 Census of Israel, the latest which offer comparable data. Five ethnic-religious groups are examined in Israel and eight in the United States. Goode and others have stated that family modernization is a universal trend, and this is borne out by the results of this study. The small family system shows that age and children ever born are the most important predictors of living alone among the widowed in both countries. Otherwise, among the 13 ethnic-religious and ethnic-racial groups there is a general similarity of the importance of the variables in the total prediction scheme.     

Family growth,household density,and moving

Residential and family histories collected from a sample of 4,027 couples in their first marriage and living in the Philadelphia-Trenton metropolitan area in 1960 are analyzed to determine the effects of marriage duration and childbearing on moving within the “local area.” Rates of moving decline sharply during the early years of marriage and more slowly after the tenth year. At any given marriage duration, the birth of children is associated with higher rates of moving. If the persons-per-room ratio of non-movers represents an acceptable household density, moving can be shown to be an adjustment mechanism whereby housing space is brought in balance with family needs. When couples who moved during a given three-year period defined in terms of marriage duration are compared with couples who did not move during that period, the movers are found to have had higher initial densities, would have had substantially higher densities had they not moved, but have similar terminal (after move) densities.     

The Growth of Home Ownership: 1940-1980

Housing went through a major transition between 1940 and 1980 as the proportion of home owners nearly doubled. This article examines how that change took place. Compositional changes in the population and process changes led by post--World War II housing policies and programs are tested as explanations for the growth of home ownership. A process analysis and a decomposition of the change in home ownership between cohorts are used to evaluate each interpretation of change. A combination of both explanations accounts for the change in home ownership.