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For-profit corporations generate much human misery and environmental destruction. According to many critics of capitalism, corporate law is a major culprit, as the legal model of shareholder supremacy enables corporations to put owners' short-term financial interests before all others. Benefit corporation law, the most significant innovation in state corporate law in decades, aims to undermine that model. This new form of progressive corporate law enables the creation of mission-driven for-profit firms that protect directors from liability for pursuing both a social purpose and private profits. Based on two original datasets on benefit corporations' organizational characteristics and online public discourse, this paper characterizes the organizational implementation of benefit corporation law and advances a sociological understanding of how organizations interact with their legal environments. Using descriptive statistics and content analysis, the paper identifies four major findings. First, with few relatively few firms incorporating as benefit corporations and even fewer purporting to provide any benefits, benefit corporation law is not demonstrably transforming corporate America. Second, some important organizational niches appear to be emerging, most notably an ecosystem of social enterprises that use their benefit corporation legal form to signal a shared moral economy. Third, benefit corporations narrate a neoliberal vision of progressive capitalism as good, green commerce. In this vision, firms' goods and services enhance human health and the environment. Finally, most benefit corporations give no outward indication (at least on their websites) that benefit corporation law matters to them, as either a useful resource, a regulatory threat, or a basis of market differentiation. The context of corporate law in general, and the proliferation of a voluntary progressive reform therein, provides an opportunity to revisit legal endogeneity theory. The findings challenge legal endogeneity theory's presumption that organizations' interactions with their legal environments are motivated in large measure by concerns about compliance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Long a subject of scholarly interest, doctor-patient communication has traditionally occupied a zone of professional discretion largely beyond the reach of formal law. In the United States, this situation changed dramatically in 2003, when the handling of medical information was, for the first time, subjected to explicit Federal regulation under the "administrative simplification provisions" of the 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (IIIPAA). Nonetheless, much as socio-legal scholars have found in other domains, ambiguities in HIPAA's legal mandate spawned divergent constructions of "compliance" within the newly regulated organizational fielded. This paper examines how hospitals across the United States implemented the new regulatory regime, and how organization-level variations in implementation affected the perceived quality of practitioner-patient communication. Using original survey data on IIIPAA-related practices in US hospitals, coupled with public-access data on hospital-patient communication, this paper demonstrates that the quality of provider-patient communication co-varies with IIIPAA implementation, albeit in complex ways: Although many common compliance practices appear to undermine communication, a subset of patient-empowering practices may reduce or even reverse these adverse effects. In addition, hospital culture significantly moderates the impact of several compliance activities, with some activities that improve communication in the least favorable hospitals also impeding communication in hospitals that might otherwise excel. Looking across a large, representative sample of American hospitals, this study reveals the important role of previously invisible legal and organizational constraints. In the process, it also reveals significant organization-level variations in legal implementation, and significant interactions between organizational culture and legal impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically interrogates the role of authoritarianism in the 2012 United States Presidential Election. While recent studies have demonstrated the importance of authoritarianism with respect to the 2016 election, much less is known about if, and how, authoritarianism affected the 2012 election. Beyond simply asking if authoritarianism matters, there is a strong focus throughout this paper on exactly what dimension of authoritarianism matters, and how it matters. Using data from the American National Election Survey, a series of ordinary least squares and logistic regressions are conducted for white respondents. The main finding is that social dominance orientation consistently and powerfully predicts voting behavior, political attitudes, and prejudice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I examine shifts in medical etiologies of gender identity, focusing on the role of medical authorities in defining gender. Drawing from a qualitative analysis of an original, archival dataset, I examine the ways in which medical conceptualizations of transness have shifted over time More specifically, I closely read and code every mention of the term "transgender" and the more dated terms "transsexual" and "transvestite" in four top medical journals published in the United States. Reading references to these terms in top medical journal articles illuminates the ways in which they are understood in medical parlance and how conversations about transgender patients contribute to the medical and social construction of gender. Based on my analysis of medical journal articles, I argue that: (1) There has been a shift in the locus of gender from external genitalia an early socialization to the brain (self-conception), (2) The shift results in an unmooring of gender from sex and a medical institutionalization of Butler's formulation of the relationship between sex and gender (sex was really gender all along); (3) The gendering of facial features and external genitalia paves the way for the marketization of racialized gender essentialism: feminine and masculine features become incorporated in a fee-for-service model. In the quest for being socially affirmed and recognized as one's gender, such a transformation has crucial, life-changing and life-saving possibilities for people whose bodies do not align with their sexes. The shift also empowers medical providers and insurers to define idealized femininity and masculinity and limit access to such services through widely varying insurance coverage. Drawing from both medical and gender studies, this paper offers insights for medical sociologists interested in the medicalization and biomedicalization of society as well as gender and sexuality scholars interested in the complex relationship between gender, sex, and the body. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study explores how household arrangement influences parental engagement on children's education among urban mothers in the United States, using five waves of panel data from the Fragile Families and Child Welling Study (N = 2,982). The study compares the difference in educational engagement between couples (married or cohabiting) and single mothers. Logistic regression models are be utilized to examine the impacts of household arrangement on the possibility of enrolling children in tutoring, initiating a conversation with teachers, and frequent book reading with children. The preliminary results suggest compared to mothers who live with partners, single mothers who consistently live alone (wave 4 & 5) are just as likely as the couples to hire a tutor, but are less likely to initiate conversations with teachers, after controlling for household structure, financial factors, and mother's and children's characteristics. The results also suggest no difference in after-school tutoring enrollment or frequent book reading across household arrangements. This paper will also discuss racial disparity in certain engagement outcomes between racial minorities and white mothers. The findings of this paper will have important implication on understanding the advantages and obstacles single motherhood face in urban areas. The study also suggests new hypotheses for the study of racial gap in educational engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introducing gender perspective into international migration studies has been considered very important since the end of the 20th century. However, there is not much discussion on how the gender structure of home country causes immigrants' international migration. Classical studies on international migration have revealed that economic and political disparity between home country and host country causes international migration. In this paper, the author clarifies that the disparity of gender structure between two countries may motivate women's international migration. This study focuses on women who moved to the United States from postwar Japan. The proportion of women in the Japanese people who immigrate to the United States far exceeds the national average. The characteristic of Japanese female immigrants is that there are few women who migrated to the US with their families. Many have migrated alone. In this paper, the author will analyze the interview data for the Japanese female immigrants who live in single metropolitan areas in the West Coast of the United States. The author analyzes the data of 15 women who have migrated to the United States alone, collected by the interview research held from 2011 to 2014. Many Japanese informants in the study reported resistance to gender structure in Japanese society. In any case, it is clear that "gender structure" difference between the home country and the host country becomes an important factor which cause women's international migration. As classical studies on immigration shows that economic and political gap between the home country and the host country causes international migration, this paper disclosed that the disparity of gender structure between two countries may motivate women's international migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The post-civil rights era was a transformative period for Black organizations. In this period, organizations had to contend with the changing cultural and political terrain of the United States. Typically social movement scholars have examined movements at the level of the state, paying minimal attention to the relationship between movements and organizations. This paper examines Black Greek-letter organization sororities' interactions with the Black feminist movement from 1968-1980 as a case of how mainstream voluntary associations interact with radical movements. Through a comparative historical analysis of two Black sororities, I find that while one sorority engages in racial uplift and respectability politics - frames that the organizations had historically engaged with - the other sorority begins to incorporate Black feminist frames and language into their organization. I conclude the paper by discussing the way that examining the incorporation of Black feminist frames can help to extend upon the concept of interstitial politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The number of women seeking higher education from Muslim countries in the United States is increasing. The pursuit of higher education at American universities also introduces a new sociocultural context wherein cultivation and embrace of newer forms of identity becomes inevitable. This often requires negotiations of previous identities that were cultivated in the course of their earlier lives in their home countries. This paper critically probes the complex entanglements between older and newer forms of identity among international women students. In particular, it will investigate the impact of new pressures of fitting in into the U.S society, while maintaining their identity as Muslims in their everyday lives. This study uses a qualitative approach that includes intensive interviews of twenty Muslim women international students. However, in this working paper, the researcher included data from nine female international Muslim students and intends to add more while also making more clear theoretical grounds for the topic. The research subjects for the study are enrolled in different programs at a university in the US. The results are coded and analysed through a thematic analysis of the data and respondents' responses are presented in quotations. The findings show that students negotiate their identities at the religious/ethnic as well as gendered levels. They prioritize the values without losing their ties with either culture. On the one hand, international female students carry social and cultural expectations within a gendered gaze; they are surveilled by the Muslim and ethnic community members. On the other hand, they negotiate common stereotypes of racial and religious profiling of female Muslim students. Finally, the study provides important recommendation for the support of international female students in the U.S. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The immigrant integration literature frequently focuses on the role of networks during an immigrant's socioeconomic adjustment in the host country, such as setting up initial employment positions. Immigrant networks, however, have been shown to channel migrants into oppressive and hostile work environments, leaving them little room for upward mobility. As networks are decreasing in their value, there is another tool immigrants are increasingly using to integrate into the United States - the internet. The digital divide between immigrants and the native-born population has been effectively erased in recent years, and this paper examines the benefits immigrants can accrue when they rely on the internet for job-seeking information over their in-person networks. Using the Computer and Internet Use Supplement of the Current Population Survey, this paper provides evidence from 2011-2017 to demonstrate the positive income returns experienced by immigrants who go online to seek out job opportunities, and the adverse impacts of relying solely on friends and family. This quantitative analysis lies at the intersection of technology and immigrant integration and provides necessary inroads into updating our theories for how immigrants are integrating into host societies in the 21st century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an increasingly tumultuous political climate, norms of activism in the United States have been uprooted. This paper examines the recent rise in proactive corporate political activism in support of a particular cause. In particular, it focuses on participation in letter campaigns related to legislative proposals regarding climate change, human rights, and immigration. The drive behind organizations' participation in cause-related letter campaigns is analyzed based on three areas of organizational theory. Each area addresses strategic concerns related to a different aspect of the organization: its (1) internal values, (2) reputation, and (3) institutional expectations. Results show mimetic isomorphism to be the strongest predictor of letter-campaign participation. This paper serves to demonstrate shifts in societal expectations and organizations' strategic approaches to address those changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The "illegality" of some family members influences opportunities, limitations, and resources for everyone in a household. While most scholarship on immigrant families has been concerned with intergenerational dynamics, sibling relationships have the potential to reveal so much more about the effect of legal status precisely because they are peers in the same household: there are no generational differences, and the environment in which they are raised in the same. This paper draws on the experiences of 100 mixed-status families, based on five years of ethnographic study in a US-Mexico border county where an estimated 11.7 percent of the general population is undocumented. The study relied on a unique approach: rather than interviewing one person from each family, it sought greater depth by focusing on multiple members of the same family in order to produce novel empirical and theoretical insights. Findings illustrate that jealousy and resentment is frequently experienced between siblings with different statuses. On the flip side, U.S. citizen siblings may feel guilty for having more opportunities and resources than others in the family. Stratification by legal status also often leads to a stratification of social and everyday responsibilities, such as driving, sharing college financial aid, or expectations to provide more internal remittances than others. Undocumented siblings must watch as their citizen brothers and sisters get better health care than they do. While many gladly assist others, sharing is not always a benign or altruistic activity, and strongly impacts power dynamics in the family. This paper, grounded in the tradition of a scholar-activist sociology, concludes that political efforts toward reform must take into account the experiences of mixed-status families, now a primary and enduring feature of the contemporary immigrant experience in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I develop a structural explanation for why 1.5 and second generation Asian Americans have higher academic achievement than white Americans in the United States. In the American job mobility structure, there are two pathways to upward mobility: (1) developing interpersonal skills (socializing) to obtain managerial occupations and (2) developing technical skills (studying) to obtain technical occupations. Asian immigrant parents find that the former pathway is inaccessible because they experience structural disadvantages in the white American social environment due to their foreign cultural background and non-native English skills. Meanwhile, they find the latter pathway accessible because they experience positive treatment and insignificant disadvantages in the white American academic environment (especially in the STEM fields). To maximize their children's likelihood of obtaining upward mobility, Asian immigrant parents encourage their children to develop technical skills and discourage them from developing interpersonal skills. Consequently, 1.5 and 2nd generation Asian Americans have higher academic achievements but lower likelihood to obtain uppermanagerial occupations than white Americans. This paper suggests that to eliminate the Asianwhite academic achievement gap, we should create "culture-neutral environments" in the uppermiddle class education and work institutions in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociologists' study of migration can be traced back to the early 1900's and the establishment of Sociology as a discipline in the U.S. While migration studies have formed an important part of Sociology since its earliest days, little attention has been paid to the ways early sociologists understood and analyzed migration. This paper aims to fill that gap by analyzing how sociologists studied the Great Migration in the United States from the 1890s through the 1930s. This study specifically analyzes how race and race ideology impacted early migration studies. I find that, although both black and white sociologists examined precisely the same event, their interests, methods, treatment, and conclusions about the Great Migration differed significantly. White sociologists approached the Great Migration as a problem, studying southern blacks' integration in the North, and questioning blacks' intellectual capacity to achieve the same socioeconomic level as whites. Black sociologists, on the other hand, studied the Great Migration using empirical data to explain the causes that moved blacks from South to North and demonstrating how racial violence in the South was one of the main factors stimulating their migration. I argue that the difference between these white and black scholars is rooted in the racialized context of America during late 19th Century, when white scholars viewed the Great Migration as part of the so-called "negro problem" and ignored the emergent group of black scholars that were interested in demonstrating the impact of race relations in the movement of black people from South to North. Ultimately, this paper expands on the efforts of scholars to reevaluate the development of sociology, to explain the historical division between race and migration studies, and to highlight the ways that specific areas of study, such as migration, have developed in a racialized context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to examine the formation of lifelong human capital among a group of Mexican immigrant women entrepreneurs and the role it plays in their entrepreneurial trajectories in the United States. The concept of lifelong human capital addresses not only the formal acquisition channels of skills and knowledge but also looks at the "learning and skill development as lifelong processes that begin at early ages in households and home communities, and may include formal schooling and training but also informal learning experiences" (Hagan et al., 2014:10). Thus, drawing on this lifelong human capital concept, this paper examines the biographies of a group of Mexican immigrant women in order to shed light on their pathways to the acquisition of their pre-migratory skills and how these abilities and knowledge serve to pave their entrepreneurial path in the US. Drawing on a multi-sited ethnographic study, the findings of this study highlight the gendered process in the formation of lifelong human capital in the case of these immigrant women. More importantly, the findings shed light on how this lifelong human capital becomes crucial not only at the time of launching their enterprises but also for equipping them with the skills needed to overcome the hurdles of being female, in general, and a Mexican immigrant woman in the US, in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Continuous electronic fetal monitoring (EFM) is the most commonly used obstetrical intervention in the United States. Despite the widespread use of these devices, there is little to no evidence that they improve maternal or fetal health outcomes. Instead, the monitors may lead to an increase in unnecessary and potentially dangerous interventions. This paper, based on interviews with ninety-four birth providers in five cities across the United States, seeks to understand how both physicians and midwives interact with these devices. More generally, how do relationships between experts and technology develop and stabilize? Under which circumstances do technologies reinforce expertise or threaten to replace experts? This paper also challenges a common thread in the sociology of birth that explains current power structures by focusing on the professional struggles of midwives and obstetricians. While these studies of maternity care are helpful, they are often marked by an overreliance on professional and gender rivalries as explanatory variables. I argue that analytical approaches focused on professional jurisdiction should be replaced by studying expertise networks, a broader concept encompassing actors, devices, and institutional and spatial arrangements (Eyal 2013). I show the utility of this approach by demonstrating how devices like electronic fetal monitors are key players in understanding contemporary power structures in American birth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite prominent use of the term gender neutrality in legal and activist discourse in the United States since the 1970s, there has not yet been a systematic effort to track or analyze its meaning and usage. Drawing on quantitative and qualitative analyses of 840 news articles published in four leading news publications that include the terms "gender neutral/neutrality" or "sex neutral/neutrality" anywhere in the text, this paper traces: 1) shifts over time in the political goals associated with the term gender neutrality; 2) the range of issues associated with the term; and 3) how gender neutrality is framed. This study reveals that the press has discussed gender neutrality in reference to women's rights since the 1970s and additionally, in reference to gay and lesbian rights beginning in the late 1980s, and transgender rights beginning in the late 1990s; and that it tends to treat these issues in isolation. It further shows that the press evokes gender neutrality to discuss a wide range of issues, from gender-neutral language to gender-neutral consumer products. Finally, it shows that while most discussions of gender neutrality focus on strategies of reducing the salience of gender or degendering, the majority of the subsample that discuss transgender rights frame gender neutrality as gender inclusivity, or the recognition of multiple gender identities. We discuss the political promises and pitfalls of these different approaches. This paper demonstrates the critical payoff of shifting focus from individual gender performance to gender accountability regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although recent studies have suggested that environmental participation may be a countertrend to decreasing civic engagement in the United States, there are very few empirical studies that test these claims. This paper studies participation in local environmental stewardship as such a countertrend. Using data collected from participants in the Watershed Stewards Academies (WSA) of Maryland to assess how these organizations are successful in mobilizing individuals to be environmentally and civically engaged in their communities. The WSA training programs appeal to citizens who are either already civically engaged or who wish to be more involved in their communities. In doing so, locally embedded organizations like the WSAs represent a countertrend to diminishing rates of civic engagement by offering citizens what a "paper-membership" cannot: the chance to lead their own environmental restoration projects, create tangible change in their communities, and network with other like-minded individuals. Programs like the WSAs often have hybrid structures that combine non-profit and private infrastructures with state and foundation funding. These environmental programs serve as a model for diversifying civic engagement at the local level, a model that can be translated and adapted to different geographies, contexts, and governance arrangements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Natural" is a described applied to phenomenon from childbirth. This paper asks how and why the products of technological intervention come to be described as "natural," through the case of cosmetic surgery. Bringing together the literature on natural beauty norms and nature in science and technology studies, I show how credentialed experts (cosmetic surgeons) draw on the moral tropes of goodness, universality, and genuineness to navigate the public's apprehension about the technological practice of cosmetic surgery. In the process, cosmetic surgeons come to be evaluated based on their ability to produce "natural" outcomes. I trace here what cosmetic surgeons mean by natural, how they conflate natural and good, and how they ultimately evaluate each other's performance in terms of their ability to re-create what they recognize to be a constructed image of a "natural" look. Based on 40 semi-structured interviews with cosmetic surgeons across the U.S. and observations of a surgeons' professional meeting, this paper takes up the question of how to think about the natural and its invocation in a commodified subfield of medicine. This study investigates cosmetic surgery as a medical technology, noting the aesthetic dimension to the construction of natural. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims at understanding the factors that lead to differential support for petition campaigns. Using OLS regression, this paper analyzes if the pattern for signing animal rights petitions is similar to petitions in general. The data shows that the affiliation of a petition campaign to a social movement or -more soto a social movement organization lead to higher amounts of campaign support. Additionally, a petition against a target operating at a state level render less support while petitions against international level targets gather more signatures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2007, the United States adult film industry has experienced a sharp decline in production due to the proliferation of free online pornography. In this paper, I focus on two types of sex workers--adult film performers and escorts--and how these economic and technological shocks shifted the relationship between these two types of sex work. By comparing the impact of free online pornography on the adult film industry to research on the impact of free online music on the music industry, I find that sex workers increasingly rely on live performances (escorting) as their main source of income, while using digital media (adult films) as a loss leader to advertise their live performances. Broadly speaking, sex workers are an example of independent contractors, and this paper builds on research demonstrating the creative methods independent contractors use to promote their work in changing economic conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three bodies of literature most fundamental to a critical assessment of Latina/os in the United States are Racism (Critical Race Theory), international migration, and globalization. These three bodies of literature taken together birth our ability to understand and further conceptualize Latino/as in a way that levels the playing field by simultaneously stripping away racialized bias and refocusing the unit of analysis away from individuals and onto the world-economy wherein everyone, not just Latino/as, plays a role. The premise of this paper suggests that such a combined approach necessitates a rethinking of Latina/os in the United States by requiring a change of focus away from "illegal" or undocumented migration, "English only," and other presumptive and oppressive racializations of Latino/as, by highlighting US involvement in Latin America, thus humanizing Latino/a experiences and shifting the focus onto Human Rights. This paper stems from a larger, primarily ethnographic research project on the Anti-Immigrant Movement wherein over 50 interviews with both anti-and pro-immigrant activists have been conducted. The fusion of the three bodies of literature is demonstrated via an analysis of racism targeting Latina/os and immigrants by the Anti-Immigrant Movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines Korean immigrants' barriers and difficulties in utilizing healthcare in the U.S. and their coping strategies for dealing with these issues. Analyzing survey data with 507 Korean immigrants and in-depth personal interviews with 120 Korean immigrants in the New York-New Jersey area, this paper finds that more than half of Korean immigrants experience difficulties in utilizing healthcare in the United States. The language barrier was the most frequent response, followed by having uninsured status. Language barrier does not simply mean linguistic difficulties in communicating with healthcare professionals in English. Rather, it has interpersonal aspects, such as a power imbalance between patients and non-Korean speaking doctors. Korean immigrants show three distinctive healthcare behaviors as coping strategies for dealing with these barriers: preference for and dependence on co-ethnic doctors in the U.S., seeking Hanbang (traditional Korean/Chinese holistic/herbal medicine) in the U.S., and medical tours to the homeland. The first two healthcare behaviors are not significantly associated with each other. However, they are significantly related to the last behavior, medical tourism. Korean immigrants who prefer to see co-ethnic doctors and to practice Hanbang are more likely to take medical tours to the home country than others. These findings contribute to the literature on immigrants' healthcare behaviors by showing that immigrants are active rather than passive agents who react to barriers to healthcare utilization in the receiving country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines Korean immigrants' movement to promote Korean language education in the New York-New Jersey area. This movement includes the efforts of Korean immigrant community leaders to include the Korean language in the SAT II and to promote it to public schools in the area as a foreign language. This movement entails many activities, including lobbying the College Board, school administrators, and school board members, and collecting donations from Korean immigrants, Samsung, and the Korean government to cover expenses for creating the Korean language test by the College Board and public schools adopting the Korean language. This paper is significant because no previous study has shown a similar example of an immigrant group's efforts to promote its language to American public schools. The U.S. government's multicultural policies, Korean immigrants' strong transnational linkages to their homeland, the Korean government's financial support (which has played a particularly vital role), and their linguistic and ethnic homogeneity have contributed to Korean immigrants' successful movement to promote their ethnic language to American schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide has become an increasingly more common topic in the new cycle as more states have legalized the practice or are set to vote on this practice in the future. This paper outlines the history of euthanasia as a practice and its public perception in the United States. Previous research indicates that support for euthanasia will continue to increase overtime as the practice becomes more common, which causes critics to worry that the practice will lead to unnecessary deaths. This paper will explore how both religiosity and attitudes towards euthanasia have changed since 1990 and whether or not there is any significant correlation between these trends. At time of submission only preliminary analyses have been performed and indicate that there is a decline in religiosity since 1990 and and increase in favorable attitudes toward euthanasia in that same time period. Additionally, preliminary analyses indicate that there is a correlation between these two trends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Foreign-born scientists and engineers who received their doctoral degrees in the U.S. make significant contributions to their fields in the U.S. However, not much research is done on their career outcomes. This paper employs the Survey of Doctorate Recipients (SDR) 2008 from the National Science Foundation to examine the earnings of foreign-born doctoral engineers relative to their U.S.-born counterparts in academia, industry, and government. Regression results reveal the negative effect of foreign nativity in all three sectors, but when background variables (demographic, educational, and employment variables) are added into the models, the nativity effect is no longer significant. More importantly, this paper examines the interaction effects of nativity and the background variables to understand under what circumstances nativity affects earnings. Tests of marginal effects show that uniquely in academia, the foreign-born earn less than their native-born counterparts only among those whose rank is other than assistant, associate, or full professor. Also in academia, the foreign-born earn less than their native-born counterparts in the first 6 years after receiving their doctorates but then more in 28-49 years. The interaction effect of nativity and experience is also found in industry, where the foreign-born earn less only in the first 8 years. In government, foreign-born engineers earn less than their nativeborn counterparts among women but not among men. The findings in this paper provide new insight of the nativity effect, interaction effects of background variables with nativity, and differences in these effects by employment sector among a highly educated and selected group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars of the Second Demographic Transition (SDT) have debated where the United States fits in the trajectory of the SDT. Some have argued that the U.S. is distinct in retaining a stronger commitment to marriage than other high-income countries, due to cultural differences including greater religiosity. Others have argued that the distinct demographic profile of the U.S. is due to a segmented population, with one more advantaged group following the SDT model, and a second, less advantaged, group maintaining higher and earlier fertility than SDT would predict. Our study examines evidence that speaks to these theories, using a classification of young women's worldviews about childbearing. We use a Latent Class Analysis of the attitudes of a sample of young women about topics related to childbearing (e.g., birth control, motherhood, career and education) that identifies six distinct worldviews. In this paper, we describe the three groups that share important features of SDT, as well as notable deviations from the predictions of SDT theory found in some of these groups. We then compare the relative disadvantage of the groups. We discuss the implications of our findings for theories of SDT and disadvantage in the U.S. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Americans are diagnosed with a mental illness at least five times more than citizens in all other industrial and post-industrial countries. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) standards by which the majority of mental disorders in the United States are diagnosed are acknowledged as having varying degrees of subjectivity associated with them in terms of how patients convey their concerns and symptoms to practitioners as well as the degree to which practitioners accurately make such diagnoses. In this presentation paper, I propose two things. First, I propose that we reframe discussions concerning mental illness from the degree to which individuals deviate from standards of "normal mental health" such that they are diagnosed as mentally ill to a measure of social and behavioral health in the form of social acuity. Second, I propose a specific way to measure individuals' level of social acuity which focuses on the quality and quantity of ties that individuals have with others as well as accounting for social and cultural contexts. I conclude by discussing the implications of this approach for the diagnosis and treatment of social and behavioral health in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research examines the effect of U.S. employment privatization on earnings. Prior work on privatization has mostly focused on industry case studies. Instead, this paper presents an analysis of wages across the entire U.S. economy. Using a quantile regression analysis of Current Population Survey and Bureau of Economic Analysis data for years 2002-2016, findings indicate that industry-level employment privatization has different effects for individuals throughout the income distribution. Net of other factors, higher levels of privatization are associated with benefits to workers in the top income decile in 2016, but this effect varies across time. When privatization benefits workers in lower income quantiles, higher earners are always the first to benefit. These findings indicate that, aside from having an impact on public services, privatization has been a driver of income inequality in the United States. Relative to other Western democracies, the United States has a history of low levels of nationalized industrial assets. For this reason, mapping privatization on a national scale has been fairly difficult, as the sale of government assets is not a hallmark feature of U.S. privatization as it is elsewhere. For this reason, I map the defining characteristics of privatization before exploring its overall impact on workers in various points in the wage distribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we examine population-level variability of aging and cohort trends in happiness in the United States. Following the technique outlined by Fosse (2019), we focus on estimating diachronic age and cohort trends, which captures the joint age-period and cohort-period effects in a set of time-series, cross-sectional data. The main advantage of this technique is that it is based on estimates that are not subject to the identification problem. To date the great majority of studies on happiness rely on ad hoc, implicit constraints, which can generate highly misleading temporal estimates. We find that diachronic age and cohort trends are large, negative, and statistically significant. We also examine howthese trends vary across a large number of variables, including ethnicity, fertility, region, gender, and social class. We find substantial population-level heterogeneity in both diachronic age and cohort trends, with the majority of interaction effects large and statistically significant. In general, results indicate that diachronic age and cohort trends tend to amplify the beneficial effects of variables show in previous studies to increase happiness. However, notably we find that having children and getting married incurs diminished benefits for the diachronic cohort trend. We conclude with suggestions for further research on temporal trends in happiness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Genetic ancestry testing is a controversial industry, with scholars questioning the tests legitimacy as well as their potential to increase racial essentialism. Yet despite these controversies, genetic ancestry testing continues to grow in popularity in the United States as a way to either confirm or uncover ethnoracial ancestry. While research is beginning to examine people's interpretations of their ancestry test results, little consideration has been given to realworld outcomes of taking these tests, like their impact on changes in the ethnoracial make-up of social networks. This paper asks whether (1) taking the test, and (2) receiving results of non- European background impacts ethnoracial network diversity for a sample of White Americans. We address these questions using an original randomized controlled trial of White, non-Hispanic Americans, half of whom received genetic ancestry tests. Unexpected findings show that testtakers network diversity shrinks post-test, and especially for those with more diverse networks to begin with. We further explore these patterns, drawing on 57 qualitative follow-up interviews with study participants, and present three potential theoretical explanations for the finding. We discuss how future research can adjudicate between these explanations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conflict, violence, and instability have led to unprecedented numbers of forcibly displaced people throughout the world. Thus, understanding the factors and processes that support the well-being of these populations is essential. Growing evidence documents postmigration stressors related to marginalization and exclusion as key social determinants of refugee mental health. This paper presents results from a randomized controlled trial (RCT) of the Refugee Wellbeing Project (RWP) a community-based, multilevel intervention. The goal of the waitlist RCT of the RWP was to rigorously test an ecological social justice approach to reducing high rates of psychological distress among African and Middle Eastern refugee adults resettled in the United States. The 6-month RWP intervention brought together university students enrolled in a 2-semester course and recently resettled refugee families to engage in mutual learning, cultural exchange, and collaborative efforts to mobilize community resources related to health, housing, employment, education, and legal issues and to improve community and systems responsiveness to refugees. A mixed methods strategy with data collected from 290 refugee participants at four time points over a period of 14 months was used to test the effectiveness of the RWP to reduce emotional distress and increase protective factors (English proficiency, social support, connection to home and American cultures). Multi-level modeling of quantitative data revealed significant intervention effects for all hypothesized outcomes, which provides important evidence to support social justice approaches to improving refugee mental health. These findings have implications not only for the growing numbers of refugees worldwide, but also because the RWP model has the potential to alleviate high rates of psychological distress among other immigrant and marginalized populations who experience inequities in resources and disproportionate exposure to trauma and stress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among the social sciences, economics holds a uniquely powerful position of influence in both local and global affairs. Some scholars have argued that economics is particularly suited to guiding policymakers because the discipline shares high internal consensus around a core theoretical paradigm and methodological framework which produce cumulative and empiricallytestable knowledge. However, a competing strand of scholarship argues that the professional opinions of top economists are shaped by deep ideological commitments, either to free markets on one hand or state regulation on the other, and that these ideological commitments result in deep divisions on major, policy-relevant topics. In this paper we advance our understanding of the role of ideology in economics by examining the relationship between economists' ideological commitments and the certainty with which they express in their expert opinions. To investigate this question, we analyze data from IGM Economic Experts Panel, a unique survey of 51 economists at seven elite universities across the United States. Our results suggest that economists with ideologically-patterned views report higher levels of certainty in their opinions than their non-ideological counterparts. However, this boost in confidence is limited to topics that pertain to the free market vs. regulation debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A long tradition of research in the social sciences has argued that subjective assessments of social standing powerfully predict general health and well-being. For instance, recent research on the relationship between happiness and life satisfaction indicates that relative income effects on subjective well-being dominate absolute income effects. What are the social bases of such comparisons? That is, how do status orientations vary by social location? What sorts of people rate their income as "high" or "low" relative to salient alters? And how do the reference groups for such comparisons vary across the population? In this paper, we bring unique data on the U.S. to bear on these questions, presenting results from national surveys conducted in 2012 and 2016, the Social Status, Consumption, and Happiness I and II surveys. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Racially biased policing has been a central concern to a wide variety of social change organizations in both France and the United States. While French and American organizations have deployed a strikingly similar repertoire of strategies and tactics to combat this social problem, the kinds of organizations that implement specific tactics differs significantly in the two countries This paper argues that analyzing the vast and varied work of social change organizations in terms of organizational fields is uniquely helpful for understanding how organizations are constrained and enabled by their field positions. Organizations vary in their field position according to resources in the form of material and social capital. The comparative model illuminates the significant impact of inter-field and intra-field relations. This study draws on two and a half years of field work in Paris, France and the San Francisco Bay Area, include ethnographic observations, in-depth interviews with 76 individuals representing 52 different social change organizations, and the analysis of hundreds of pages of textual and digital data. In France, where the nonprofit sector is comparatively weak--more dependent upon the state, and less able to engage legal institutions--organizations are required to pool resources. As such, organizations engage in an exchange of resources, particularly economic and social capital, across the organizational field. Additionally, organizations of different forms and in different field clusters engage in overlapping strategies and tactics, signaling looser boundaries between organizational forms. In the United States, where there is a relatively strong nonprofit sector, collaboration and resource exchanges are less imperative. Instead, the more rigid boundaries translate to a division of organizational labor in terms of organizational activities. In addition, the organizations that are best poised to lead the fight against racially biased policing are those that possess significant amounts of both economic and social capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1942, the first digital electronic computer was completed. In the seventy plus years since, computers have changed tremendously and, in the process, what was a prohibitively expensive device requiring a tremendous amount of knowledge to operate and maintain became something most people carry in their pockets. Understanding this transformation requires looking beyond the hardware and following the evolution of ideas people have about what a computer is and means. The author uses network theory and social construction to explain how art, film, and literature helped open a social space in which knowledge about computers could be contested, allowing potential adopters to find images of computers that were truly personal in scope. Thus, when hardware caught up with the multitude of ideas people had about what computers could be, people were ready to participate in the information age. This paper traces how computers became reconstructed as personal items and became taken for granted as part of the commonly shared body of everyday knowledge in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background. This paper examines the association between pregnancy and women's health and well-being by racial/ethnic group among women of childbearing age in the US. In line with the weathering hypothesis and the theory of cumulative advantage/disadvantage, I suggest that health during pregnancy may be worse for non-Hispanic black women compared to those of other races/ethnicities. Methods. This analysis uses data from the 2005-2008 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) and ordinal logistic regression to examine life satisfaction and self-rated health of women, by racial/ethnic group, during pregnancy. Results. Findings reveal that non-Hispanic black women report significantly higher rates of dissatisfaction with their lives and lower levels of health and well-being compared to other racial groups during pregnancy. These results provide further support for the theoretical frameworks. Conclusion. There is need to address the perceived racism and discrimination during pregnancy in understanding racial disparities in self-rated health and well-being among women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The "carceral continuum" framework shows how systems of punishment follow young people across different settings by examining the neighborhoods and schools of urban Black and Latinx youth. In this paper, I extend that frame to one that also includes young people's migration experiences and examining the suburban high school context. Drawing on data from a school ethnography and student interviews in upstate New York, this study shows added layers of exposure to punishment systems in different settings for Latinx youth with vulnerable immigration statuses. In this school case study, the majority of the Latinx students were undocumented and some were applying for asylum. Nearly all these students migrated into the United States as unaccompanied minors. Experiences with school discipline were an extension of already painful migration pathways that included police harassment and incarceration. The school was highly securitized with its many security guards, uniformed police, cameras, metal detectors as well as other security tools and used punitive "zero-tolerance" discipline practices such as suspending students for being tardy to class. Like their peers, these students felt harassed, but they also felt unsafe and unfairly disciplined, attributing this to the school disliking Latinxs and framing them as undesirable "illegals." Placing the migration experiences of youth alongside neighborhood, school experiences illustrates added layers and intensity of the carceral continuum in the lives of many Latinx youth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a ten-year case study involving 55 in-depth qualitative interviews and ethnographic observations from 2009-2018 of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) service members in the United States military, this paper proposes and highlights a theory of collective resistance through mechanisms called "hidden distinctiveness" and "selective invisibility." This occurs when individuals who have a stigmatized secret identity share stronger ties with each other due to the trust and shared emotional experiences built from having to keep their identities covered, while simultaneously selectively keeping their identities invisible to most others. The theory provides additional understanding for how groups that have a strong stigma or sanctionable belief can not only resist challenges to their existence, but have the agency and shared trust to collectively organize in a subversive way to resist oppression, allowing us to better understand the sociological formation, maintenance and organization of underground social movements for such stigmatized groups. This theory is particularly relevant in contemporary times when the Internet and social media have allowed for even greater anonymity and online community building, as in the case of the current resistance of transgender US military service members against their proposed removal from the military by the President. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have documented the prevalence of ageism and ageist language throughout society, but ageism is of particular importance in medical settings because the elderly comprise the fastest growing patient group in the United States. Studies have shown that doctors often have negative attitudes about treating older patients and that they report having difficulty initiating conversations about age-related concerns. Even though old age is a label that is associated with many negative connotations, in this paper I will demonstrate how old age can be used to facilitate difficult discussions about the uncertainty inherent in age-related health problems. Drawing from observations of patient visits in primary care and interviews with geriatricians, I find that old age can be mobilized by both geriatricians and their elderly patients to bridge the communication gap between doctor and patient. In particular, I will show how mentioning old age enables geriatricians and their patients to a) collaboratively achieve holistic medical care that bridges the gap between the voice of medicine and the voice of the lifeworld, and b) personalize decisions about medical care. In turn, this enables geriatricians and their patients to overcome the problematization of age and aging by using it to collaboratively establish a partnership in medical interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we use ten years of survey data collected in Mexico and the United States by the Mexican Migration Project to examine the relationship between integration experiences in the United States and migrant health. We use detailed information on experiences in on the last U.S. trip to define six integration domains that are especially well suited for describing the range of integration experiences of returned, long-term and settled Mexican migrants. These integration domains are linguistic, social, family, employment, financial, and assets. First, we compare the health of male household heads with and with-out U.S. migration experience on six health outcomes (worse health, emotional conditions, heart conditions, hypertension, diabetes, and obesity), and estimate random intercept logistic regression models with five different alternative specifications of U.S. migration experience. Then, we focus only on household heads with U.S. migration experience and estimate the effects of the six integration domains on the same six health outcomes. Our results confirm findings by other studies that U.S. migration experience is associated with a decline in health status and higher rates of return among those with poorer heath. They also indicate that employment and family integration, both of which are strongly associated with a commitment to settlement in the United States, are associated with poorer health. We argue that long-term and settled migrants switch their point of reference from the place of origin to the place of destination. Because Mexican migrants tend to occupy the lowest rungs of the occupational ladder and work in jobs that make it difficult to accumulate assets and establish financial stability, the commitment to make a go-of-it in the United States under places a strain on migrants which leads to worse health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary U.S. health and immigration policies increasingly force Latinx immigrants into dangerous life-and-death decisions. Growing scholarship emphasizes the criminalization of Latinx immigrants and the ways in which citizenship status stratifies health chances in the U.S., but few studies capture the effects of recent policy uncertainty on immigrant health. This paper examines the case of Chapulin County (a pseudonymous "red state" county), where punitive immigration laws and restrictive health policies force Latinx immigrants through injurious obligatory passage points in U.S. medical-legal bureaucracy. I apply elements of Actor-Network Theory (ANT) to observational and interview data with patients, clinic workers, and community partners (n=32) in Chapulin County to illustrate how local and federal immigration policies have interacted synergistically with exclusionary health policies to trigger serious health consequences for immigrant individuals and families. Participants describe the challenges of balancing risks of illness and injury against the risks of detention, deportation, and family separation. I conclude that newly converging U.S. medical-legal bureaucracies have forced immigrant patients in Chapulin County to make agonizing decisions that often destabilize their own health and the wellbeing of their families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the United States braces for the impact of significant demographic change, the topics of immigration and multiraciality have been prevalent in discussions of the potential disruption of the contemporary racial status quo. In particular, there is interest in the impact of these growing populations on racial relations, and whether these changes might prompt a hardening of racial lines, the dissolution of racial boundaries, or a restructuring of the racial hierarchy. While these twin drivers of the new American demographic have been analyzed as part of the same wave of population change, they have largely been treated as two distinct and separate phenomena. However, a greatly underexplored intersection of multiraciality and immigration is the section of the population that is both multiracial and part of a recent immigrant generation. This paper focuses on the experiences of multiracial people who are the children of immigrants. While the trend of increased immigration and intermarriage has been credited for the growth the multiracial population, little attention has been dedicated to the migrants who may be mixed race or intermarried when they come to the United States. Since "multiracial" is a relatively new identity category itself--the 2000 Census was the first to allow respondents to indicate more than one category for race--the conflict of racialization practices between the home country and the emergent racial formations in the U.S. make for a particularly poignant site to study the shifting demographics and relationships in the new American racial landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the widespread feeling that the United States has become dramatically more politically polarized, empirical support for such a pattern has been surprisingly elusive. While reporting little evidence of mass polarization, previous studies implic- itly assume that such polarization occurs through the amplification or heightening of existing political divisions. This paper investigates a different pathway: polarization that occurs through the broadening of social and political divisions to encompass an increasingly diverse array of opinions and attitudes. The study uses 46 years of data from the General Social Survey to represent opinions and attitudes across a wide ar- ray of domains as elements in an evolving belief network. Analyses of this network produce evidence that mass polarization has increased through the collapse of previ- ously cross-cutting divisions to create increasingly broad and encompassing identities organized around political ideology. The structure of American opinion has shifted in measurable and striking ways, with troubling implications for proponents of political and social pluralism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conventional accounts of postindustrial restructuring in the United States trace the decline of the Postwar Accord to the 1970s when globalization, corporate restructuring and new workplace technologies began to undermine the power of labor unions. This paper uses institutional theory to investigate change in the field of postwar industrial relations, but extends the timeline back to the 1940s when a network of conservative businessmen mobilized against the terms of the Accord. Executives at General Electric played a central role in this movement despite their dominant position in the field. Analysis of competing postwar managerial ideologies within the larger field of American political economy helps explain this case of incumbent institutional entrepreneurship, and emphasizes endogenous sources of institutional change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Explanations for issue framing by movements and movement opponents often externalize opportunities for issue framing. In this paper, I draw attention to the endogenous processes through which opportunities for issue framing can unfold. I do this through a case study analysis of counter-movement framing of network neutrality policy in the United States, from 2005 to 2015. Drawing primarily from an original dataset of Congressional hearings concerning network neutrality policy, I argue that network neutrality opponents activated new framing opportunities through non-discursive activity in institutional venues. Specifically, I show how the 'regulatory authority' frame that came to characterize later discussions of network neutrality in Congress became available only after counter-movement opponents challenged early regulatory rules in court, thereby legitimizing - partly through the court's proceedings, and partly by instigating a response from the regulator - an alternative conceptualization of network neutrality policy as a threat to constitutional principles of governance. In doing so, I articulate a view of framing opportunities as (at times) latent within institutional contexts, dependent on non-discursive activity by movement and counter-movement actors to be brought into play. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based in in-depth interviews and ethnographic research conducted in a rural Northwest community, this paper explores the forces behind rural working-class political understandings, with a focus on seeing rural residents as citizens reacting to national trends that impact them on a local scale. I investigate the interplays of deindustrialization, rural gentrification, labor market marginalization, and growing inequality with political beliefs and preferences. I connect political understandings to direct experiences with inequality, capricious government regulations and interventions, changing economic fortunes, and mainstream media messaging. I trace how experiences with loss of status, power, and economic stability are harnessed by right-wing media outlets to resonate with American cultural norms and values. I argue for viewing rural and working-class populations not as ignorant, overly-emotional, or self-defeating, but rather as reacting predictably to national trends including downward mobility and growing inequality, as well as the apathy, privilege, and dismissal of their left-leaning neighbors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Voters in some states are accustomed to lengthy ballots that ask voters to decide on an array of questions, many of which have been placed on the ballot by activists. Many other states rarely ask voters to decide such questions. However, across the United States, activists are increasingly turning to the ballot in an attempt to shape state-level policy. In this paper, we conduct comparative case studies of the political contexts within which labor activists, gun control proponents and opponents, and opponents of same-sex marriage choose to pursue ballot-based strategies. We find that ballot tactics, though they are commonly available and used by a wide variety of movements, are a last resort for activists. Activists typically employ legislative strategies first, turning to the ballot if such strategies are unsuccessful. Ballot tactics are especially attractive when critical or focusing events bring claims to the public's attention and bolster activists' confidence that they can win. These events constitute state- and/or national-level contexts within which activists choose to pursue a state-level ballot strategy. As ballot-based strategies become increasingly common tools within activists' tactical repertoire, we argue that additional scholarly attention must be given to tactics that rely on routine political processes, but that are not quite "politics as usual". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Governments "speak"--often, and loudly. State speech takes many forms, including government-sponsored reports, press releases, websites, billboards, advertisements in magazines and newspapers, television and radio media campaigns, graphic messages in and around commercial establishments (such as restaurants, bars, and gas stations), and, in the age of new media, "tweets." At times, this speech is direct, with messages emanating directly from government agencies. At other times governments compel speech by corporations--such as requiring warning labels on cans and bottles of alcohol and on cigarette packages. This paper examines government speech on alcohol in the United States. Examples include mandated warning labels on alcoholic beverages, the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign, and the Talk. They Hear You campaign. I point out the pronounced limitations of these examples of state speech. In the U.S., alcohol warning labels are relatively inconspicuous (they lack graphic images and are small), and carry constrained messages that do not rotate. Not surprisingly, there is little evidence of these warnings having behavioral effects. The major anti-drug campaign of the past 25 years--the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign--largely avoided the topic of alcohol. Evaluation results suggest that the campaign was relatively ineffective, and may have resulted, in some instances, in higher levels of substance use than otherwise would have been the case. While the new "Talk. They Hear You" Campaign has not yet been evaluated, it seems unlikely that it will have a significant impact at the population level, as it is quite small and relatively unambitious. I explore potential reasons for the weakness of government speech on alcohol in the U.S., as well as over-reliance on speech compared to potentially more effective policy instruments, such as regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Homeschooling has increased in popularity in recent decades, yet researchers have given little attention to understanding why this is the case. Since the 1980s, homeschooling in the United States has largely been associated with the Christian right, but recent national survey data indicate that this is no longer the case: religious education is no longer the primary motivating factor of homeschooling parents in the United States. In the era of school choice, homeschoolers offer a useful window into the growing dissatisfaction of American parents with U.S. public education. Using original survey data from 636 homeschooling parents in Texas, this paper argues that there are key differences among homeschoolers along the axes of political views and religiosity, indicating that the practice of homeschooling is becoming a "solution" to differing, even conflicting, diagnoses of the problems of public education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I outline a theory of obstetric tort regimes as one pillar of reproductive regimes. Many observers both inside and outside the maternity care field view obstetric practices like routine use of continuous electronic fetal monitoring and high rates of cesarean deliveries as indicators of defensive medicine. I use data from interviews with obstetricians, hospital administrators, and malpractice attorneys to outline the impact of tort regimes on American maternity care. Obstetricians view malpractice risk and the high cost of liability insurance as a threat to their profession, although the rate of malpractice lawsuits has declined over time. Then I use data from the National Practitioner Databank (NPDB) to analyze longitudinal multilevel models of the effects of tort reform laws on obstetric malpractice lawsuits from 1995-2015. I find that the rate of malpractice lawsuits has declined more in non-tort reform states than in states that protect providers from liability. Average payments in obstetric malpractice suits are also higher in states with tort reforms than in states that offer more protection to victims of malpractice. The findings present a puzzle because they suggest that defense against tort liability is not a primary cause of obstetric practices that are widely viewed as hallmarks of defensive medicine. (This is adapted from a chapter of my forthcoming book, Reproductive Regimes: Birth, Malpractice, and the Maternity Care Business in the United States). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]