Toward an index of gender equality

This paper develops a Gender Equality Index (GEI) that is modelled in its thinking and implementation on the Consumer Price Index (CPI). The GEI was computed using annual Ontario data on seven socioeconomic indicators for the years 1975 to 1984. The analysis supports the following conclusions: (1) that it is possible to indentify a subset of indicators that have face validity as measures of relative gender equality; (2) that factor analysis is a useful means for evaluating the construct validity of gender equality; (3) that the resulting GEI reveals a strong upward trend toward gender equality in the latter half of the 1970's and the early 1980's and (4) that this trend has flattened in 1984.     

Demographic Comparison of American Individuals in Polyamorous and Monogamous Relationships

Research on polyamorous relationships has increased substantially over the past decade. This work has documented how polyamory is practiced and why individuals might pursue such arrangements. However, there is a lack of a systematic investigation of who is in polyamorous relationships and how they might differ from individuals in monogamous relationships. The present study is one of the first to address this by comparing the demographic backgrounds of individuals in polyamorous (N = 2,428) and monogamous (N = 539) relationships in the United States. Compared to participants in monogamous relationships, those in polyamorous relationships were more likely to report minority sexual identities. Despite similar age distributions, individuals in polyamorous relationships were more likely to report being in a civil union, being divorced, and earning less than $40,000 per year compared to individuals in monogamous relationships. People in polyamorous relationships were also more likely to select “other” options for most demographic characteristics, suggesting that they tend to choose less traditional response options in general. The current research highlights several demographic differences that need to be considered and potentially controlled for in future comparisons of polyamorous and monogamous relationships.     

Focus on Home: What Time-Use Data Can Tell About Caregiving to Adults

Care by adults to other adults is being increasingly transferred from formal public institutions to the private home. To learn more about the nature and situation of Canadian adults providing care at home to other adults, we analyzed data from Statistics Canada's 1998 social survey of 10,749 persons. Data included time-use and respondents' sociodemographic, cultural, work, and leisure characteristics, as well as outcome factors. We found 212 respondents (about 2%) providing personal, medical, or other care to other household adults on the day studied. We compared them to those not found to provide these services. The article explores time-use trade-offs, feelings of stress, and the ramifications of gender, age, and paid work in this newly reemerging use of household space.     

Dynasty Formation in Eight Imaginary Societies*

De quelle maniere les aspirations populaires et les mecanismes de controle de l'elite permettent-ils l'etablissement de dynasties ? Quelles sont les differences qui existent entre les societes dynastiques et les societes non-dynastiques dans les possibilites reelles de mobilite sociale intergenerationnelle ? Cet article tente d'apporter une reponse a ces questions par une analyse mecanographique simulee de huit societes fictives dont les effectifs demographiques sont modeles a l'image de l'Ontario. Nos analyses revelent que les societes dynastiques possedent les caracteristiques suivantes: (a) une tres forte probabilite d'heriter un statut d'appartenance a l'elite; (b) une faible chance d'entrer dans l'elite en provenance d'une classe inferieure; (c) les individus mobiles se retrouvent dans un nombre limite de classes; (d) une probabilite mediane relativement elevee d'une mobilite ascen-dante moderee (une a deux classes); et (e) un faible risque median d'une mobility descendante. Ces resultats sont expliques et verifies, par apres, en utilisant des donnees provenant de societes contemporaines. On discute, en dernier lieu, a la lumiere de ces resultats, les avantages des societes dynastiques et non-dynastiques. How do popular aspirations and elite controls contribute to the formation of dynasties? How do the opportunities for intergenerational social mobility differ in dynastic and non-dynastic societies? This paper attempts to answer these questions through a computer simulation of eight reasonably realistic “imaginary societies” modelled demographically after that of Ontario. The simulations reveal that dynastic societies are characterized by (a) a high probability of inheritance of elite status; (b) a low probability of entering the elite from below; (c) the restriction of mobile persons to a limited number of classes; (d) a relatively high median probability of moderate (one or two class) upward mobility; and (e) a relatively low median risk of downward mobility. These findings are explained and then verified by data from actual societies. The relative advantages of dynastic and non-dynastic societies are discussed in view of these findings.     

Malthus and the social limits to growth

This paper seeks to demonstrate a tradition of argument that starts with Malthus' writings on population and on the environmental limits to growth, and continues in today's neo-conservative writings on ‘mobilized demand’ and the social limits to growth. The basic Malthusian theorem shows a concern with effective or mobilized demand. In this form, the theorem can readily accommodate changes that so-called neo-conservatives were to introduce in centuries that followed. Today the debate on the perfectibility of man, and the end-point of progress continues; only the terms of reference have changed. A key modification is the switch of concerns from physical to social limits. This switch is exemplified in Fred Hirsch's book, Social Limits to Growth, which introduces the useful concept of ‘positional goods’ to help account for the unsatisfiability of modern wants. The paper concludes with a quote from Keynes, which clearly establishes the line of development from Malthus to the neo-conservatives; and with a question, asked by one of Keynes's critics, that can be addressed to the entire tradition Malthus founded.     

Experimental Coastal Land Reclamation: Qianhai as a Case Interpreted

ABSTRACT

Informed by a Coasian transaction cost paradigm enriched by the concept of Schumpeterian innovations, this paper discusses the advantages of using experimental coastal reclamation of the sea to build new cities with a policy for fostering innovations. A new development area at the margin of Shenzhen in China, Qianhai, is used to demonstrate how urban expansion by urban sprawling in a megacity can be avoided by reclamation of marginal land as analytically less costly than along intra-marginal land and more suitable for experimentation for the type of megacity concept that Qianhai aims to achieve.     

A life satisfaction scale for use with national adult samples from the USA,Canada and Mexico

This paper describes the steps we took to develop a measure of life satisfaction which appears useful for analyses of adult sample survey data from the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Our procedure is factor analysis, and our data are drawn from the 1981–82 and 1991–92 World Values Surveys conducted in the three countries. The result is a six-variable composite measure which meets the following conditions: the constituent items have face validity, the factor structure is similar across countries and also across sub-groups within countries, the factor structure is also similar in 1981–82 and 1991–92, and the factor score based on these structures is highly correlated with variables that are customarily good predictors of life satisfaction and happiness. On the basis of these results, we will be confident in using the life satisfaction measure for future multivariate analyses of the data base aimed at explaining variation in satisfaction. For the same reasons, we would recommend the life satisfaction measure for others' research with the rich World Values Surveys data base.     

"Free- Will Talk" and Sociology

Hardcore positivistic or humanistic sociologies are rare. In the history of sociology the two extremes have tended to converge, producing an awkward hybrid. A watered-down positivism is brought to the rescue of a stalled Verstehen sociology, or vice versa, and a difficulty like the free nature of human action is covered over with a veneer of pragmatism. Here it will be argued that Paul Tibbetts'recent recasting of the positivism-humanism debate in sociology into an arbitrary choice between linguistic grids perpetuates this unsatisfactory practice. Five propositions will be advanced in opposition to Tibbetts'perspective. First, it will be argued that Tibbetts'discussion clouds the real issues at stake through his failure to really transcend the positivist framework of analysis. Second, it will be shown that the humanistic pre-supposition of voluntarism involves an ontological commitment to a model of rational agency which provides a methodological base for the "scientific" treatment of human freedom. Third, this commitment constitutes a necessary presupposition of all sciences of human action. Fourth, this fact means there are good epistemological reasons why a sociologist's choice of a linguistic grid is not arbitrary. Finally, it will be proposed that the most promising pattern of convergence between humanistic sociology and positivism stems from the formulation of a rough spectrum of principles of rationality to undergird a differentiation of "degrees" and not "kind" between what Tibbetts calls "free-will talk" and "causal-deterministic talk."