Does perceived discrimination affect health? Longitudinal relationships between work discrimination and women's physical and emotional health

This study uses longitudinal data to examine the causal relationships between perceived work discrimination and women's physical and emotional health. Using data on 1,778 employed women in the National Longitudinal Survey of Mature Women, we investigate the structural and individual characteristics that predict later perceptions of discrimination and the effects of those perceptions on subsequent health. We find that perceptions of discrimination are influenced by job attitudes, prior experiences of discrimination, and work contexts, but prior health is not related to later perceptions. However, perceptions of discrimination do impact subsequent health, and these effects remain significant after controlling for prior emotional health, physical health limitations, discrimination, and job characteristics. Overall, the results provide even stronger support for the health impact of workplace discrimination and suggest a need for further longitudinal analyses of causes and consequences of perceived discrimination.     

Peer Influences on the College Plans of Canadian High School Students*

Comment les projets des amis des étudiants du secondaire affectent-ils la décision de ceuxci de poursuivre des études au niveau collegial? L'auteur a étudiAeA cette question parmi 889 étudiants de 12e année AaG Port-Arthur et Fort-William. Les étudiants et les étudiantes dont les amis se proposent d'entrer au collège considèrent davantage de le faire que ceux et celles dont les amis ne se le proposent pas. Quand on tient compte du quotient d'intelligence et du milieu socio-économique, cette association persiste sauf dans le cas des jeunes filles de statut économique faible. Parmi ces dernières, les projets de leurs amis ne sont pas assoctés à leurs projets de poursuivre des études universitaires, quel que soit le quotient d'intelligence. L'auteur établit des liens entre ses observations et les conséquences de celles-ci et la notion que les jeunes forment un sousgroupe culturel.     

Alternative measures of the marginal cost of funds

This article reconciles the use of two different marginal cost-of-funds (MCF) measures by resorting to alternative marginal benefit measures. It demonstrates how the alternative MCF measures can be properly applied to two classic problems in expenditure analysis: local cost-benefit project evaluation and the second-best public good level question. Relative strengths of the two MCF approaches in addressing the two problems are identified.     

Explaining the Decline in Women's Household Labor: Individual Change and Cohort Differences

Women's hours of housework have declined, but does this change represent shifts in the behavior of individuals or differences across cohorts? Using data from the National Longitudinal Surveys, individual and cohort change in housework are examined over a 13‐year period. Responsibility for household tasks declined 10% from 1974–75 to 1987–88. For individual women, changes in housework are associated with life course shifts in time availability as well as with changes in gender attitudes and marital status, but are not related to changes in relative earnings. Cohort differences exist in responsibility for housework in the mid‐1970s and they persist over the 13‐year period. Overall, these findings suggest that aggregate changes in women's household labor reflect both individual change and cohort differences.     

Socio-economic Background, Ability, and the Allocation of Students

Postulant que l'école secon-daire effectue l'allocation de divers rôles sociaux, l'auteur met en rapport, au sein d'un groupe d'étudiants de 12e année, leurs antécédents socio-économiques et l'éventualité de leur persévérance scolaire ou de leur abandon de l'école lors du passage à la 13e année. Le quotient intellectuel de l'etudiant sert de variable-contrôle et l'analyse est faite séparément pour les garçons et les jeunes filles. Compte tenu du quotient intellectuel et du genre, plus les élèves sont de milieu soeio-éeonomique élevé, plus élevée est la probabilité qu'ils poursuivent leurs études en 13e. Plus l'élève est d'un milieu moins f avorisé, par ailleurs, moins élevée est la probabilité qu'il fréquente une école quelconque l'année suivante. Malgré l'existence en milieu éducatif d'une idéologie égalitaire s'appuyant sur le mérite personnel, les antécédents socio-économiques affectent de façon importante les chances d'aceès a l'éducation supérieure.     

The Long‐Term Effects of Caregiving on Women's Health and Mortality

Caregivers experience numerous mental and physical health effects from the stress of providing care, but we know little about whether these problems persist in the long term and whether long‐term effects differ across caregiving contexts. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Mature Women, we examined the relationship between caregiving and long‐term patterns of depressive symptoms, functional limitations, and mortality. We also explored the health effects of caregiving in‐home versus out‐of‐home and by caregiver/care‐recipient relationship. Analyses show that in‐home spousal and parental caregiving predict increased depressive symptoms and functional limitations in the long term but are unassociated with mortality, whereas caregiving outside the home is unassociated with later depression and functional limitations but predicts a lower risk of mortality. This study highlights the usefulness of approaching stressful experiences such as caregiving from the life course perspective, viewing them as processes that unfold over time within specific contexts that may carry delayed or cumulative consequences.     

Reconfiguring ‘post‐socialist’ regions: cross‐border networks and regional competition in the Slovak and Ukrainian clothing industry

The global garment industry is currently being reshaped in dramatic ways through processes of trade liberalization, delocalization and interfirm and interregional competition. There has been much speculation about the increasing importance of factor (especially labour) costs in fuelling further rounds of de‐localization of garment production towards low‐cost production locations, such as China and India. However, the extent to which these processes mean the end to garment production in higher factor‐cost locations, including those neighbouring the major clothing markets of the USA and the EU, is open to question. In this article we interrogate the interregional shifts in garment sourcing taking place in Europe and its surrounding regions. While factor costs (including labour) are important determinants of the geography of sourcing, a range of other costs (logistical and policy costs) are important in structuring the geographies of global and regional production. Firms in the Slovak Republic are responding to increasing competitive pressures and we assess how trans‐border sourcing, subcontracting and FDI are being integrated into strategies to sustain European production networks. We highlight the emergence of cross‐border production relocation to Ukraine as one specific strategy. We examine the product specificity of these changes and the ways in which they are embedded within already existing production networks, forms of cross‐border contracting and central European trade regimes. In other words, we explore some of the forces that shape the somewhat tentative continuation of garment production for export to EU markets in central Europe despite the ‘spectre of China’.