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Black-White disparities in low birth weight (LBW) rise with maternal age. Why? The "weathering hypothesis" holds that the increasing disparity is due to the accumulation of adverse exposures leading to accelerated aging among Black compared to White mothers. Using US birth certificate data covering millions of births to successive cohorts of US women, this paper finds two sets of results that complicate this theory. Descriptively, I find that Black-White LBW disparities increase with age for some cohorts but not others. More causally, analyses exploiting a plausibly exogenous policy shock show that the effects of reducing adverse exposures were larger for older compared to younger mothers. This evidence points toward an alternative or complementary hypothesis: that LBW risks are more responsive to adverse exposures at older maternal ages than at younger ages. Emphasizing this pathway -- what I call "responsiveness" -- as opposed to accumulation has important implications for both research and policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This paper develops a unified framework for studying justice and impartiality – identifying six opportunities for impartiality, four for observers and two for allocators; generating the person-specific impartiality profile, including separate subprofiles for observer and allocator activities; and characterizing groups and societies by the impartiality profiles of their members. The immediate challenge is to measure the six kinds of impartiality. This paper takes a first step, focusing on three kinds of observer impartiality – the classic just-reward impartiality and the two new kinds identified by justice theory, framing impartiality and expressiveness impartiality. Understanding the two new forms of impartiality is important because their absence could destroy the good effects of impartiality in other justice elements. The paper reports the results of three factorial surveys carried out among college students in the United States, assessing the students' just-reward, framing, and expressiveness impartiality with respect to the earnings of fictitious workers. The paper makes three main contributions. Theoretically, it illuminates the marriage of justice and impartiality, leading to new insights and new research avenues. Methodologically, the paper develops new analytic and graphical tools for assessing observer impartiality. Substantively, the paper shows that (1) while just gender gaps in aggregate analyses of college students are almost nil (contrary to the just gaps found among adults), closer respondent-specific analyses indicate an intricate mix of subsets of respondents favoring one or the other gender; (2) framing impartiality by gender is almost universal; and (3) expressiveness impartiality ranges from 28 to 57 percent, with an intriguing mix of results by sample and respondent gender. Overall these results suggest that there may be "little cultures" of justice and impartiality on U.S. college campuses. If that is so -- and pending future research on all six kinds of impartiality in a variety of samples across countries and over time and as well with respect to rewards other than earnings, such as grades, bequests, and prison sentences – we have offered a way to measure those cultures and understand them theoretically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can international nongovernmental organizations (INGO) mitigate human rights violations when armed conflict ensues? There is a reason to believe that the harsh conditions of war, which destabilize society and incite nationalist and militarist notions, would prevent the work of INGO from being effective. However, world polity scholarship suggests that regardless of these conditions INGOs can improve human rights standards. INGOs are one of the principal and most effective vehicles for the diffusion of international human rights norms. In this paper, we highlight the part INGOs play in monitoring human rights violations and its potential effect on states' human rights violations during war. Examining a global sample of countries that experienced war on their soil between 1977 and 2003, this paper studies the association between INGOs count per country per year with four human rights indexes. Results show an association between the presence of INGOs and improvement of human rights conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, researchers have begun to explore the extent to which the impact of switching firms (inter-firm mobility) on wages varies between men and women. Using data from the NLSY79 from 1979 to 2012, this paper extends existing research by exploring how occupational segregation and individual level factors contribute to gender differences in the impact of voluntary inter-firm mobility on wages. The paper also examines how patterns vary depending on education level. Findings suggest that men without a college education receive greater wage gains from voluntary inter-firm mobility than similarly educated women although there is no overall gender difference for individuals with a bachelor's degree. The wage returns to voluntary inter-firm mobility for both men and women increase as a function of the male representation in the occupation. For individuals without a college education, the male premium to voluntary inter-firm mobility is largest in highly male dominated occupations. However, women with a bachelor's degree employed in highly male dominated occupations use voluntary inter-firm mobility to narrow the gender wage gap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the effect of political regimes on healthcare outcomes with a novel approach. Instead of focusing on cross-country comparisons, like most studies do, we utilize the within-country variation of political regimes across individual regions. We use the case of the Russian Federation, where large sub-national differences exist in both health outcomes and political regimes in different provinces. General differences in sub-national politics in Russia have been subject of investigation of a large literature our paper adds to. The paper shows that the effect of political regimes on health is heterogeneous and depends on the type of health problems more salient for the region. More pluralist and competitive regimes are able to produce better results than the less competitive ones in rich regions, while in poor regions political pluralism and competition have an adverse impact on health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For over 30 years, researchers have examined social influence using status characteristics theory (Berger and Conner, 1974). While research has investigated beauty and attractiveness as status characteristics (e.g., Webster and Driskell, 1983), there is a dearth of research that examines whether obesity has status value using status characteristics theory. The current paper reviews the literature on, demonstrating how they are related to status characteristics. Next, this paper demonstrates how the effects of both gender and obesity can be explained by considering them as status characteristics, which have the potential to create subsequent status beliefs and stigma. Finally, this study reports empirical findings that support obesity as a status characteristic. We find an effect for obesity on ratings of diffuse status, and effects for both obesity and gender on ratings of influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attitudinal scholarship on values related to merit often identifies three key dimensions that include: attitudes towards hard work, attitudes towards skill, and attitudes towards social connections. In this paper, we examine how individuals evaluate the importance of these three dimensions simultaneously and from a multidimensional framework. We apply Latent Class Analysis (LCAs) on data from round 9 of the European Social Survey (ESS). We find three distinct clusters with the largest, exhibiting multidimensionality in beliefs, specifically on the dimension related to the importance of social connections. Individuals in this cluster identify the importance of hard work and skill, but also the importance of social connections in employment. Moreover, cluster membership is also related to class status with individuals from higher class backgrounds more likely to be associated with clusters that adhere to standard meritocratic values on all three dimensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the interrelation between birth order and emigration adopting a family fixed-effects approach. We use register data on all persons in full-siblings groups born 1970–2002 in the entire Finnish-born population, and observe their first move abroad since age 18 in the period 1987–2020. The total number of siblings is 1,352,908, the total number of sibling groups 549,842, and the total number of first moves abroad 31,192. By comparing siblings in the same family, we effectively adjust for all time-invariant confounding from unobserved or unmeasured time-invariant variables. Emigration is found to be positively associated with birth order. The hazard of emigration for second-born siblings is 1.05 that of first borns, that of third borns 1.07, and that of fourth borns 1.11. The pattern is particularly marked for emigration to countries where there is free mobility, and the association is similar for both genders. Potential explanations to the birth order pattern may be variation in personality traits, risk-taking behaviours and aspirations between siblings, or differential allocation of resources and opportunities within families. The results highlight the importance of considering birth order within the context of family dynamics and individual mobility patterns, and they need to be extended to broader settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gig platforms promise attractive, flexible ways to earn supplemental income. Academics, however, often describe gig work as low-quality work, suggesting that it is less satisfying than conventional work. In this paper, we present a novel comparison of satisfaction with gig microtask work and conventional work among MTurk workers doing both. We also examine how satisfaction with gig and conventional work relate to life satisfaction. On average, respondents report less satisfaction with microtasks than with conventional work. Nevertheless, roughly one-third of respondents are more satisfied with microtask work. Furthermore, microtask work lowers overall life satisfaction, but only among "platform dependent" respondents (those who rely on platform income). Specifically, structural equation modeling reveals a case of moderated mediation: "platform dependence" reduces life satisfaction by lowering satisfaction with microtask work while also strengthening the latter's connection to life satisfaction. Taken together, our findings support and extend the theory of platform dependence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates how gender attitudes relate to the new cultural divide between cosmopolitans and communitarians in Europe, defined by immigration and EU attitudes. We examine how gender attitudes vary across this divide, how large and diverse the ideological groups are, and differences between Western Europe and Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Using data from the European Values Study 2017, we conduct a latent profile analysis to investigate the most common of nine possible combinations of attitudes regarding gender, immigration, and the EU. In Western Europe, we find substantial divisions over gender attitudes across profiles, but not over immigration and EU attitudes. In CEE, we find disagreement over immigration attitudes coupled with centrist EU attitudes and ambivalent gender attitudes. In both regions, gender attitudes appear to cross-cut attitudes relating to the new cultural divide. These findings have implications for understanding how socio-cultural values shape political behavior and preferences in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines whether exposure to spatially proximate homicide affects norms, attitudes, and the adaptive strategies adolescents take to insulate themselves from violent victimization. Drawing on survey data from a large sample of urban youth (n = 3195), we assess the impact of homicides occurring within a one-mile radius of respondents' homes on a variety of psychosocial outcomes. We exploit random variation in the timing of survey administration to compare the survey responses of youths who were exposed to a homicide in the immediate vicinity of their homes in the one-month period leading up the administration of the survey with students who did not experience a homicide near their homes during that period but would the following month. This strategic comparison approach minimizes the confounding influence of endogenous processes that funnel children and families into places where homicides tend to concentrate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on data from a survey of 1043 ex-combatants who took part in the civil war in Sierra Leone (1991–2002) this paper explores the conditions that predict a key outcome in the conflict literature: defection, or side-switching between the various organizations at war. This paper advances arguments drawn from the organizational ecology school and works to extend key theories related to “Blau Space” to the study of civil war. Using a series of logistic regression procedures, this paper tests various competing hypotheses against key contributions of the organizational ecology school. Key findings of this work suggest support for major hypotheses in this literature as net of important theoretical conditions, defections are most likely when individuals are either demographically atypical of their organization (niche edge) or most susceptible to competition for their services by other groups (niche overlap). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates how much the geographic shapes of school attendance zones within urban school districts are associated with levels of attendance zone racial segregation (while holding constant levels of residential segregation). Based on an analysis of 304 school districts, findings show that more irregularly-shaped school attendance zones are correlated with lower levels of racial segregation in attendance zones after accounting for residential segregation. In fact, not one school district contains both highly irregularly-shaped attendance zones and unusually high levels of attendance zone racial segregation—although there are several school districts with irregularly-shaped zones and unusually high levels of racial integration. These findings undermine recent claims that irregularly-shaped attendance zones generally serve to segregate students by race. In addition to these empirical findings, this paper introduces a variation of the spatial information theory segregation index H ˜ that is useful for predicting segregation in school attendance zones and other types of geographic boundaries containing roughly equal populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study draws upon a sample of men and women from Waves I and IV of Add Health to examine the linkages between the adolescent family environment and cohabitation behavior across the transition to adulthood. Using event history modeling the current paper considers the association between a variety of family factors and both the timing of first cohabiting unions and their outcomes (marriage, break up, still cohabiting). This paper also considers whether the impact of predictors for cohabitation timing and outcomes varies depending on the age of individuals. Results indicate that exposure during adolescence to family instability, parental cohabitation, lower parental SES, and low family belonging were associated with an elevated likelihood of entering into cohabiting unions, but primarily during adolescence and early adulthood. Family factors, including family belonging and parental relationship history, were also associated with the outcomes of first cohabitations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes using contextual models to disentangle the effects of dyad characteristics from the effects of characteristics of the networks in which they reside. Multilevel models that nest dyads in personal networks can be coded for contextual analysis by entering both the dyad value of a predictor and the network mean of that predictor into the prediction equation. These models can then be used to measure a within-network effect for dyads and a network contextual effect. This paper conducts an example analysis of how dyad redundancy, and the network's average dyad redundancy, impact discussions of job opportunities. The findings suggest that the dyad and network effects of redundancy are in opposite directions: redundancy has a positive effect at the dyad level and a negative effect at the network level when predicting number of jobs discussed. These results support the major social capital tenets of closure and brokerage, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a new method to distinguish structural from exchange mobility in status attainment models with interval endogenous variables. In order to measure structural mobility, the paper proposes to trace occupational and educational changes across generations using information provided by children about their fathers. The validity of the method is assessed by comparing the effects of father’s socio-economic status and education on son’s status and educational attainments, net of occupational upgrading and educational expansion, in five European countries: Britain, Denmark, Germany, Norway, and Spain, using data from the 2005 EU-SILC survey. The results show that the effect of father’s on son’s ISEI weakens greatly in all countries after considering occupational upgrading, and that much of father’s influence over sons occurs by directing them towards occupations with good economic prospects. Useful extensions to the method are discussed in the conclusions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]