The Decline of Barriers to Immigrant Economic and Political Rights in the American States: 1977–20011

State governments exercise significant powers to regulate the economic and social activities of resident aliens. We review the laws of the six leading states of immigrant settlement regulating access of noncitizens to 23 occupations, updating existing studies from 1946–77. Citizenship requirements for these occupations have plummeted, a change we attribute to federal court decisions, advisory opinions of state attorneys general, and state legislative and administrative action. There are numerous additional citizenship requirements in the statutes of the six states, although these appear to be poorly enforced. The authority of states to regulate their political communities is the most important remaining constitutionally valid basis of citizenship requirements. States define their political community broadly, leading to questionable exclusions of noncitizens from important activities.     

Evaluating a private foundation's health program

Public policy decisions in health are increasingly difficult and expensive. Although there will never be enough information available, private foundations can help to bridge the most important gaps in knowledge. Larger foundations may also wish to respond to those who doubt the value of foundation activities. This article reviews the experiences over the past eight years of The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in employing evaluation and related social research procedures in the planning and implementation of a major philanthropic effort to improve the health and medical care of Americans. Discussed are the still evolving Foundation evaluation framework, the unanticipated problems in undertaking specific evaluations, and the substantive findings of some of the studies.     

Prosody and the Acquisition of Hierarchical Structure in Toddlers and Adults

Though language manifests linearly, one word at a time, children must learn that words are embedded in constituents, which are in turn embedded in larger constituents. That is, they must learn that syntax is hierarchically structured. Prosody—speech melody and rhythm—is likewise hierarchically organized, with smaller prosodic constituents embedded in larger ones. This paper presents results showing that 20‐month‐olds (N = 40) can use modifier + clause prosody to learn constituents at multiple levels in a hierarchically structured artificial grammar, but that they fail to learn from clause + modifier prosody. We consider several explanations for this asymmetry, and suggest that it may be due to the frequency of the two constructions in the input. Two parallel experiments with adults suggest that older learners may not be able to learn the prosodically marked constituents. Instead, adult responses are likely based on perceptually prominent boundary words.     

Sexual Minorities,Social Context,and Union Formation

Population Research and Policy Review - The current study examines the association between social context and the formation of same-sex coresidential unions, with a particular focus on sexual...     

Factors influencing Soay sheep survival

We present a survival analysis of Soay sheep mark recapture and recovery data. Unlike previous conditional analyses, it is not necessary to assume equality of recovery and recapture probabilities; instead these are estimated by maximum likelihood. Male and female sheep are treated separately, with the higher numbers and survival probabilities of the females resulting in a more complex model than that used for the males. In both cases, however, age and time aspects need to be included and there is a strong indication of a reduction in survival for sheep aged 7 years or more. Time variation in survival is related to the size of the population and selected weather variables, by using logistic regression. The size of the population significantly affects the survival probabilities of male and female lambs, and of female sheep aged 7 or more years. March rainfall and a measure of the North Atlantic oscillation are found to influence survival significantly for all age groups considered, for both males and females. Either of these weather variables can be used in a model. Several phenotypic and genotypic individual covariates are also fitted. The only covariate which is found to influence survival significantly is the type of horn of first-year female sheep. There is a substantial variation in the recovery probabilities over time, reflecting in part the increased effort when a population crash was expected. The goodness of fit of the model is checked by using graphical procedures.     

“I am a fat baby,who moved to a fat child,who moved to a fat teenager,who moved to a fat adult”: Women’s reflections of a lifetime of body and weight concern

The present study explored how women aged 50–65 years reflect and make meaning of a lifetime of body and weight struggles. Seven purposefully selected women with longstanding body image challenges participated in interviews and reflected on their perceptions, thoughts, and emotions around their body and weight since childhood. Findings revealed consistent and consuming concerns about the body; prevalent body-related self-conscious emotions; influential social experiences that impact physical self-perceptions; and enduring impacts of weight bias, stigma, and discrimination. Collectively, these findings provide support for the stability of body disturbances and highlight the need to explore the unique body-related narratives of women in midlife.     

Family Diversity and Child Health: Where Do Same‐Sex Couple Families Fit?

Increasing family diversity during the past half century has focused national attention on how children are faring in nontraditional family structures. Much of the limited evidence on children in same‐sex couple families suffers from several shortcomings, including a lack of representative data. We use the National Health Interview Survey (2004–2012) and the National Survey of Children's Health (2011–2012) to identify children in different‐sex married and cohabiting families, never and previously married single‐parent families, and same‐sex couple families. Considering important characteristics such as the child's race or ethnicity and adoption status, household socioeconomic standing, family stability, and parent health, we examine the relationship between family type and parent‐rated overall child health. The results suggest that poorer health among children in same‐sex couple as well as different‐sex cohabiting couple and single‐parent families appears to be largely the product of demographic and socioeconomic differences rather than exposure to nontraditional family forms.