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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]

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]

In this paper, we propose a set-analytic approach to the study of intersectionality. Our approach builds on the intersectional view that combinations of attributes, such as black females , should be understood as qualitatively distinct states, not reducible to their component attributes. We show that interaction-based, quantitative approaches are not only inconsistent with the core assumptions of intersectionality but also may underestimate the presence of penalties linked to multi-category memberships. In contrast, we show that truth table analysis, a core feature of Qualitative Comparative Analysis, directly implements several of the core methodological concerns of the intersectionality perspective. The truth table approach offers two important advantages. (1) It provides a foundation for the comparison of logically 'adjacent' configurations—combinations of case characteristics that differ by only a single attribute. (2) It can accommodate case attributes that vary by level or degree in a set-theoretic, intersectional framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Subjective well-being (SWB) describes an individual's life evaluation. Direct elicitation methods for SWB via rating scales do not force individuals to trade-off among life domains, whilst best-worst scaling (BWS) approaches only provide relative measures. This paper instead offers a dual-response BWS task, where respondents nominate areas of most and least importance and satisfaction with respect to 11 SWB domains, whilst also eliciting anchoring points to obtain an absolute measure of domain satisfaction. Combining domain satisfaction and importance produces a robust measure of individual SWB, but statistically unique relative to other life satisfaction measures utilizing single- and multi-item ratings, including global satisfaction and those aggregated over SWB domains, as well as eudemonia. Surveying 2500 Australians reveals anchored-BWS improves discrimination amongst domains in terms of importance and satisfaction, illustrating its value as a diagnostic tool for SWB measurement to focus services, policy, and initiatives in areas to most impact wellbeing. This includes highlighting a major discrepancy between health satisfaction and importance, whilst also reporting that SWB is significantly lower for Indigenous, unemployed, middle-aged, males and lower income groups. • Subjective well-being (SWB) is measured using anchored best-worst scaling. • Respondents nominate most/least important and satisfactory well-being domains. • Individual absolute satisfaction anchors are determined by separate ratings task. • Domain importance varies considerably, with health and personal relationships most important. • SWB is lower for Indigenous, unemployed, middle-aged, males and lower income groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the existence and mechanisms of segmentation in the welfare assimilation process of first-generation immigrants in the Netherlands. Using longitudinal administrative data (2007–2015) from Statistics Netherlands (CBS), we estimate the welfare utilization trajectories of migrants over the working-age life course vis-à-vis two reference groups representing different economic segments from the population, namely: average Dutch natives and Dutch natives with low education level. Empirical evidence shows a predominant trend of mainstream assimilation; however, two findings with more concerning implications should be highlighted. Welfare assimilation into the economically disadvantaged segment is found to concentrate among first-generation immigrants characterized by structural and human capital disadvantages, despite the notable extent of upward intragenerational mobility observed. In the worst-case scenario, there seems to be a lack of welfare assimilation to the comparison segments, raising concerns over the prospective emergence of marginalized ethnic groups at the bottom of the economic ladder. The implications of this finding are twofold. Firstly, automatic closing of the migrant-native gap over time should not be presumed in the absence of a level playing field for all regardless of their migration backgrounds. Secondly, systematic discrepancies observed between refugees and other types of migrants in terms of welfare assimilation patterns and determinants point to the need to have a clear distinction between immigration policy and refugee policy, which explicitly avoids bundling all migrants as one homogenous group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This review summarizes the current state of the art of statistical and (survey) methodological research on measurement (non)invariance, which is considered a core challenge for the comparative social sciences. After outlining the historical roots, conceptual details, and standard procedures for measurement invariance testing, the paper focuses in particular on the statistical developments that have been achieved in the last 10 years. These include Bayesian approximate measurement invariance, the alignment method, measurement invariance testing within the multilevel modeling framework, mixture multigroup factor analysis, the measurement invariance explorer, and the response shift-true change decomposition approach. Furthermore, the contribution of survey methodological research to the construction of invariant measurement instruments is explicitly addressed and highlighted, including the issues of design decisions, pretesting, scale adoption, and translation. The paper ends with an outlook on future research perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children's developmental processes are not always linear. During the childhood period, children usually experience ups and downs in their skills, and how parents respond to these changes can crucially condition the subsequent process of child development. This paper examines (1) how children's developmental declines impact the level of cognitive stimulation implemented by the mothers, and (2) whether these effects vary by socioeconomic groups. Using longitudinal NLSY79-CYA data from the US, I implement a series of two-way fixed effects and fixed effects counterfactual models. Findings show that mothers respond negatively to the declines in their children's mathematical skills by decreasing their levels of cognitive stimulation, although the effects are relatively small, approximately one-tenth of a standard deviation. This effect is concentrated among mothers with low levels of education or those at the bottom part of the income distribution. Additionally, it's observed that mothers in the sample do not modify their behaviours in response to declines in their children's reading skills. All in all, this evidence suggests that mothers might be reinforcing existing disadvantages by decreasing their cognitive stimulation when their children show developmental declines and that this mechanism could be responsible for broadening the developmental gap between children from low- and high-socioeconomic backgrounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do economically disadvantaged people often regard inequality as fair? The literature on deliberative justice suggests that people regard inequality as fair when it is proportional to inequality in effort or other inputs – i.e. when it is meritocratic. But in the real-world there is substantial uncertainty over the distribution of income and merit – so what compels disadvantaged people to legitimate their own disadvantage? This paper suggests it is a reaction to cognitive dissonance. When inequality is high, and when people lack control, their only way to reduce dissonance is to convince themselves the distribution is fair. I implement an online experiment to test this theory. Results do not support a cognitive dissonance mechanism behind meritocracy. But they do indicate that disadvantaged individuals are more likely to regard inequality as fair when they lack control. Analysis of qualitative data indicates that deprivation of control engenders a fatalistic response to inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prominent theoretical positions in sociology and labor economics disagree whether educational expansion has outstripped the demand for qualified labor (overexpansion), or whether economies face a skill shortage despite increases in education (underexpansion). Focusing on the United Kingdom and West Germany, two countries with dissimilar skill formation institutions, patterns of expansion, and labor markets, this paper asks to what degree expansion of education has been absorbed. I point out shortcomings of wage-centered analyses and develop an approach that focuses on trends in self-assessed over- and underqualification. Using repeated surveys among workers and official labor market statistics, I estimate regression models that link the cohort-level expansion of education to the cohort-level prevalence of mismatch. Results suggest overexpansion in the United Kingdom, with overqualification increasing and underqualification decreasing over historical times and cohorts. West Germany, on the other hand, shows signs of underexpansion. While dominant theoretical accounts focus on the under-/overexpansion of tertiary education, my results show that mismatch-dynamics in both contexts are strongest for workers without university degrees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports a first look at the founding of Social Science Research , providing a few key signposts but keenly aware that a full history must await recovery of many additional documentary materials. The journal was founded by James S. Coleman and Peter H. Rossi, who had trained at Columbia, taught at Chicago, and founded the interdisciplinary Department of Social Relations at Johns Hopkins. The Coleman-Rossi vision statement embeds three key ideas: (1) quantitative theoretical work and quantitative empirical work are close and constant partners; (2) quantitative theoretical work and quantitative empirical work each require special methods; and (3) crossing disciplinary lines spurs the growth of knowledge. The first issue of Social Science Research appeared in 1972. Then as now, SSR welcomed papers that may be too innovative or too technical (or too long or too short) for other journals, inclusive of papers that cross traditional disciplinary lines. Examination of the first four volumes (1972–1975) reveals a beautiful realization of the founders' vision — a collection of rigorous quantitative papers from across the social sciences, pushing frontiers in both theory and empirics and in both substance and methods. There is innovation and creativity – and a touch of the playfulness that accelerates the growth of knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article marks the occasion of Social Science Research 's 50th anniversary by reflecting on the progress of sequence analysis (SA) since its introduction into the social sciences four decades ago, with focuses on the developments of SA thus far in the social sciences and on its potential future directions. The application of SA in the social sciences, especially in life course research, has mushroomed in the last decade and a half. Using a life course analogy, we examined the birth of SA in the social sciences and its childhood (the first wave), its adolescence and young adulthood (the second wave), and its future mature adulthood in the paper. The paper provides a summary of (1) the important SA research and the historical contexts in which SA was developed by Andrew Abbott, (2) a thorough review of the many methodological developments in visualization, complexity measures, dissimilarity measures, group analysis of dissimilarities, cluster analysis of dissimilarities, multidomain/multichannel SA, dyadic/polyadic SA, Markov chain SA, sequence life course analysis, sequence network analysis, SA in other social science research, and software for SA, and (3) reflections on some future directions of SA including how SA can benefit and inform theory-making in the social sciences, the methods currently being developed, and some remaining challenges facing SA for which we do not yet have any solutions. It is our hope that the reader will take up the challenges and help us improve and grow SA into maturity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the link between residential segregation and political engagement among Asian American voters in New York City. Despite frequently being perceived as apolitical and concentrated in ethnic enclaves, Asian Americans constitute a diverse group. This paper investigates how multifaceted spatial isolation based on race, class, and partisan affiliation was associated with the likelihood of Asian American voters participating in the 2020 general election. We demonstrate that a monolithic view of Asian Americans perpetuates stereotypes of political passivity, but a closer examination of distinct ethnic groups reveals varied patterns of political engagement. For instance, Japanese Americans showed a high level of political engagement comparable to that of non-Hispanic whites. Our findings further indicate that spatial isolation across race, class, and partisan dimensions had varying impacts on political engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Internal political efficacy (IPE) is an important yet unequally distributed driver of political action. Following cultural sociological explanations for political disengagement, we study how students' political home environment reproduces inequalities in IPE and how citizenship education moderates this. We test whether citizenship education compensates, reproduces, or accelerates inequalities in IPE due to differences in one's political home environment. These moderating effects are tested for three components of citizenship education; the number of civic learning experiences, open classroom climate for discussion, and active student participation at school. We consider the school a potential equalizer and a segregated breeding ground for democracy. Based on multilevel analyses employing cross-sectional data (3838 students across 147 schools) gathered to test the attainment targets in citizenship education among Flemish senior high school students (Belgium), we show that privileged students receive more citizenship education. However, each citizenship education component increases IPE and has a small yet significant compensation effect. This paper makes theoretical and empirical contributions to the literature on inequalities in political socialization processes while critically investigating the school's functioning as a democratic equalizer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines drivers of prejudicial attitudes among adults in the UK, focusing on the interaction between ethnic out-group size and personality traits. Leveraging data from the National Child Development Study (NCDS), we use two survey waves carried out in 2000 and 2008, just before and after the EU enlargement policy that drove a wave of immigration in the UK. We test the extent to which personality traits moderate the relationship between both absolute levels and changes in ethnic diversity at the local level, respectively, and prejudice. Key findings suggest that personality traits, in particular one's agreeableness, are important for conditioning how the proportion of non-white British in one's neighbourhood affects out-group attitudes. We observe a tendency towards polarisation in prejudicial attitudes between low-/high-agreeableness residents as their neighbourhoods become more diverse. These findings have important implications for theorising how contextual and individual characteristics jointly affect intergroup relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital platforms that enable and foster associations and sharing among entrepreneurs and knowledge workers have become a vital part of the new knowledge economy, yet we know little about the new form of social organization of knowledge. This paper seeks to explore and evaluate two microscopic social mechanisms, namely network effect of recruitment and cultural affinity, that may produce knowledge clustering and differentiation within these communities. To understand the relative effect of mechanisms, we develop a novel estimation procedure that matches individual users based on their historical behavioral patterns. We collected and analyzed a large-scale event dataset from a digital platform for offline in-person meetups in two major U.S. cities, New York City and San Francisco Bay Area. We found that previous methods overestimate network effect in membership adoption decisions by 176%. Our findings show that the network effect is further amplified by varied levels of cultural affinity between individuals and groups, implying a clustering effect whereby individuals tend to gravitate towards groups that are culturally proximate. Implications for understanding social differentiation and the knowledge economy are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With more countries entering an era of low fertility, factors that may shape individuals' childbearing desires have been extensively explored. One's intergenerational social mobility experience, however, remains under-discussed. This paper examines this issue against the backdrop of China, in which the total fertility rate has rapidly declined to the lowest-low level in recent decades. Using pooled five-wave data from the Chinese General Social Survey from 2010 to 2017, we found a checkmark-shaped relationship between social class and fertility desire. Chinese farmers have the greatest desired number of children, manual workers have the lowest, and the two upper classes lie in the middle. In general, one's origin class and destination class play a similar role in shaping fertility desire, demonstrating the coexistence of socialization and acculturation processes. The gender-specific examination further suggests that, compared to women, men are more reluctant to change the fertility attitude learned from the origin class. Based on these findings, our study proposes a novel explanation of the decline in fertility desire in China and contributes to the literature on how social mobility experiences and gender ideology jointly construct fertility desire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Legislative action on issues of immigration emerged prominently across and within US states throughout the 2000s. The emerging literature on this topic demonstrates the political motivations driving anti-immigrant laws that negatively impact the mobility of Hispanic/Latino and Foreign-born populations across US states. Considerable research identifies the political mechanisms driving restrictive state-level immigration policies. Despite the growth of this scholarly work, the impact of these laws within states requires further study. This paper broadens the approach to the study of restrictive state-level omnibus immigration laws (OILs) using a rich dataset to uncover the effects of these laws on compositional change for undocumented, foreign-born, and Hispanic/Latino populations from 2005 to 2017. Using a quasi-experimental design, I show that by passing omnibus immigration laws, states shape demographic patterns of Foreign-born populations. Specifically, I find that states that pass omnibus immigration laws experience a decrease in undocumented and Foreign-born populations relative to states that did not pass similar laws. Effects are estimated each year after the passage of OILs, providing additional insight into the temporal impact of omnibus immigration laws on the settlement patterns of these groups. I conclude by discussing the theoretical implications of the multiple interior immigration law and policies, specifically at the state level, and their salience in shaping population dynamics across the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While research shows that cohabitation has increased significantly among highly educated individuals in Latin America, much less is known about how the relationship between educational attainment and first union formation has changed over time and across the region's countries. Accordingly, this paper describes the changes across cohorts in the type of first union (marriage or cohabitation) entered by women from seven Latin American countries. It also analyzes trends in the relationship between women's education and the type of first union within and between these countries. Using Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) data, life tables, discrete-time event history models, and predicted probabilities were estimated to analyze the changing determinants of first-union formation. The results pointed to an overall increase in first-union cohabitation over time, with some important differences across countries. The multivariate analysis suggested that women's education influences the type and sequencing of the first union, with socioeconomically disadvantaged women increasingly likely to transition to early unions and enter cohabitation rather than marriage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The U.S. mainland Puerto Rican population has experienced dramatic growth and geographic dispersion in recent decades. Once overwhelmingly concentrated in the Northeast, especially New York City, Puerto Rican populations have grown dramatically in newer destinations such as Orlando, Florida. While the implications of dispersion for status attainment have received significant scholarly attention for Latinos as a whole, variation across national origin groups are less well understood. Owing to their unique racial and socioeconomic composition and historical settlement patterns, the impact of dispersion on dimensions such as homeownership could be particularly important for Puerto Ricans, since it implies a dramatic change in housing and economic context. This paper draws on U.S. Census data to examine the impact of metropolitan context, including a typology of destination types that reflects dispersion patterns, on Puerto Rican homeownership. A central objective is evaluating how location shapes racial inequality within the group, as well as the homeownership gaps between Puerto Ricans and non-Latino White, non-Latino Black, and other Latino Americans. Results show that metropolitan context, including housing conditions, residential segregation, and type of co-ethnic community, helps explain inequality among Puerto Ricans and relative to other groups. Thus, dispersion not only boosts Puerto Rican homeownership overall, it also contributes to narrowing inequality between Puerto Ricans and others, and racial inequality among Puerto Ricans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Who takes to the streets to protest matters. Protest sends signals to decision-makers and biased participation leads to biased signals. This paper examines one driver of biased participation, namely protest recruiters behaving as rational prospectors by only inviting others who they believe are likely to agree to the participation request. Extant evidence on rational prospecting is indirect as it draws on data collected among recruits. In contrast, this study employs a direct and dyadic data approach whereby potential recruiters for a labor movement demonstration in Belgium are asked, before the protest takes place, about the political viewpoints of specific others (alters) in their network, and then which alters they have invited to participate. After the event, the same respondents are asked for each alter whether they actually participated. We find that the perceived likelihood that an alter would participate in the event exerts a consistent effect on the actual recruitment effort towards that person. Moreover, recruiters' perception that an individual is recruitable is mostly accurate; those perceived to have a high propensity to participate are more likely to take part, regardless of being recruited. Most importantly, our findings show that in the case of a labor union demonstration, prospectors evaluate alters who are co-workers differently compared to other types of social ties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper tests the party capability theory of Galanter (1974) using the universe of legal entities and their 9.8 million commercial disputes in Russia in 2012–2019. We find that repetitiveness is negatively associated with litigation success in general. We explain this by selection into litigation. Entities engaged in unfair business practices are repeatedly selected into disputes as respondents becoming repeat players in spite of themselves. We argue that repetitiveness should be decoupled from party capability and urge for conceptual revision of the notion of a repeat player in court. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports results from a laboratory experiment that investigates the prevalence of median voter dynamics in the Meltzer-Richard redistribution mechanism. I focus on the model's microfoundations and analyze how individuals translate material incentives into proposed tax rates and how these individual proposals get aggregated into a collective group choice under two different voting rules; majority rule and voting by veto. My experimental results show that material incentives do not fully determine individual proposals. In addition, personal characteristics and justice attitudes constitute additional facets of individual motivations. Median voter dynamics are prevalent under both voting rules at least when looking at aggregate behavior. Both decision rules thus lead to an un-biased aggregation of voters' preferences. Moreover, the experimental results show only minor behavioral differences between decisions employing majority rule and collective choices using voting by veto. • I experimentally investigate median voter dynamics in a Meltzer-Richard redistribution mechanism. • Groups make collective decisions over the level of redistribution either by majority rule or by voting by veto. • Subjects' proposed tax rates are influenced by a combination of their material self-interest, political preferences and justice attitudes. • Median voter dynamics are prevalent under both majority rule and voting by veto. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Compliance with international treaties is the bedrock of the international order. When it comes to international humanitarian treaties, which regulate war-making, the issue of compliance gains urgency as people's lives are on the line. At the same time, measuring states' actions during an armed conflict is known to be exceedingly challenging. Current measures for states' compliance with their international obligations during armed conflict has been incomplete, offering a broad generalization that does not necessarily capture reality on the ground or alternatively based on proxy measurements, which produce a distorted portray of events in relation to obligations. This study suggests geospatial analysis as a gauging tool for states' compliance with international treaties during armed conflict. Examining the 2014 Gaza War as an instrumental case study, this paper underscores the efficacy of this measure and informs current debates on the success of humanitarian treaties and variation in compliance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates how the specificity of the field of study is related to the quality of school-to-work transitions, and whether this relation is moderated by the level of education and the cyclical sensitivity of the field of study. We apply a processual approach and produce a typology of school-to-work transitions based on labor market position and income. This is done with multichannel sequence analysis on register data on school-leavers in the Netherland for the 2009–2010 cohort (N = 182,057). The results confirm that specificity is positively related to the quality of school-to-work transitions in terms of employment and income security. This however mostly holds for the highest levels of upper-secondary vocational education (ISCED 354), and much less for the lower levels of upper-secondary vocational education and tertiary education. In contrast to our expectations, specificity was more often related to positive career outcomes for cyclically sensitive fields of study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper investigates the assumed ideological divide between cosmopolitans and communitarians as part of a new globalisation-related cleavage in Europe. First, the central values and attitudes that form the foundation of the ideological divide are identified. Then, a new methodological approach is proposed, in order to identify the ideological divide using two different classification approaches. Based on data of the European Social Survey 2016, latent-profile-analysis is used to identify societal groups, with similar attitudes regarding six globalisation-related items. The results show, that on the one hand, there are indications of a new ideological divide along attitudes towards globalisation, which also coincide with structural traits. On the other hand, there is a clear distinction between people with very strong positive/negative globalisation-related attitudes, and those with more moderate opinions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Internships are a common way for firms to hire college-educated workers, prompting concerns about how internship hiring affects various forms of inequality in the transition from school to work. Some of these concerns center on whether internships might be less accessible for workers from non-white racial groups. In this paper, I examine racial disparities in internship hiring and argue that, relative to full-time hiring, in internship hiring firms have less information about candidates' qualifications and are also less motivated to screen candidates intensely. Therefore, group-based status beliefs play a larger role in the screening of intern candidates than in the screening of full-time candidates, leading to larger disadvantages for low-status workers (i.e., non-white workers). I examine these claims using data from a Silicon Valley software firm recruiting for both software engineering internships and entry-level software engineering positions. I find evidence consistent with such "cursory screening" of intern candidates leading to non-white (i.e., Asian, Hispanic, Black) job candidates being more strongly disadvantaged relative to white candidates in competing for internships as compared with full-time positions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The alt-right is a white supremacist social movement that operates primarily online. Its broader constituency has not been studied systematically. Participants in white supremacist movements tend to join in response to threats to their social and economic status. Quantitative work suggests they come primarily from working- and lower-middle class backgrounds. Alt-right leadership, however, argues their movement successfully mobilizes a more affluent population of college-educated professionals. In this paper, we examine predictors of county-level Internet search volume for alt-right content. Results indicate that counties with larger percentages of college graduates, of highly educated non-white and immigrant groups, and higher poverty levels for college graduates tend to have a higher search volume for alt-right content. We interpret this as evidence that the alt-right appeals to college-educated whites experiencing real or perceived threats to their economic and social status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unequal access to homeownership is central to ethno-racial stratification. Ample research demonstrates large ethno-racial disparities that exist in access and outcomes throughout the mortgage process at both the individual and neighborhood levels. The underlying assumption in most of these studies is that the couples applying for a mortgage are ethno-racially homogenous. However, the ethno-racial stratification structure is unclear when examining interracial couples in the mortgage market. This paper draws on annual data from the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) from 2010 to 2017 to assess variation in ethno-racial disparities in loan outcomes associated with different ethno-racial couplings. I show that ethno-racial disparities in loan outcomes vary tremendously when factoring the ethno-racial identity of the co-applicant. Interracial couples involving a black or Latino co-applicant are more likely to experience a high-cost loan or be denied a mortgage than mono-racial white couples. The results for Asian co-applicants vary, depending on the adverse loan outcome. When comparing interracial couples to mono-racial couples, the observed lending pattern provides evidence of a tri-racial hierarchy in the mortgage market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates whether associations between birth weights and prenatal ambient environmental conditions—pollution and extreme temperatures—differ by 1) maternal education; 2) children's innate health; and 3) interactions between these two. We link birth records from Guangzhou, China, during a period of high pollution, to ambient air pollution (PM 10 and a composite measure) and extreme temperature data. We first use mean regressions to test whether, overall, maternal education is an "effect modifier" in the relationships between ambient air pollution, extreme temperature, and birth weight. We then use conditional quantile regressions to test for effect heterogeneity according to the unobserved innate vulnerability of babies after conditioning on other confounders. Results show that 1) the negative association between ambient exposures and birth weight is twice as large at lower conditional quantiles of birth weights as at the median; 2) the protection associated with college-educated mothers with respect to pollution and extreme heat is heterogeneous and potentially substantial: between 0.02 and 0.34 standard deviations of birth weights, depending on the conditional quantiles; 3) this protection is amplified under more extreme ambient conditions and for infants with greater unobserved innate vulnerabilities. • We test maternal education as an effect modifier in associations between air pollution/extreme temperature and birth weight. • We link birth records to environmental data from Guangzhou, China during a period of high and variable air pollution. • Infants with unobserved vulnerabilities—at lower conditional quantiles of birth weight—face more risk from ambient exposures. • The protection associated with college-educated mothers with respect to pollution and extreme heat is substantial. • Protection is amplified under more extreme ambient conditions and for infants with greater unobserved innate vulnerability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]