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This paper examines the role of developmental thinking in the making of family values. We analyze survey data collected from Gansu Province in China with regular and multilevel logit models. The results show that individuals' endorsement of neolocal residence, self-choice marriage, gender egalitarianism, late marriage for women, and low fertility depends on the conjunction of preference for development and beliefs in its association with those family attributes, which we term developmental idealism associational evaluation. Furthermore, such impact of developmental thinking on family values holds robust in the presence of indigenous ideational forces, in this case Islamic religion. Although Islam influences family values in the opposite direction than developmental ideas do, the effect of Developmental Idealism associational evaluation does not differ significantly between Muslims and non-Muslims., (Published by Elsevier Inc.)

Overshoot of the earth's carrying capacity is an acute concern for sustainability initiatives that seek to equalize access to the natural resources that are requisite to meet the basic needs of humanity. Demands on nature that exceed ecological capacities compromise critical ecosystem functions that provision the inputs necessary for life. This paper draws on concepts and analytical frameworks from the natural, physical, and social sciences to assess the drivers of sustainability at the global and national level. Integrative theoretical predictions are tested in a structural equation model that advances empirical research on overshoot and outflows of foreign investments that is relatively lacking in the literature. Findings highlight the differential impacts of key aspects of economic globalization on both development and overshoot across nations., (Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Kelley and Evans (2017) found that income inequality (measured at the societal level) did not affect individual well-being in advanced societies but increased individual well-being in developing societies. This paper discusses how this empirical patterning of the inequality-well-being relationship may arise from mechanisms related to the relationship of inequality with economic development (at the macro-sociological level) and to the evolution of emotional reactions to inequality (at the individual-psychological level). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper empirically assesses how immigration affects international inequality by testing the relationship between immigration and national economic development across countries in different world income groups. A series of cross-national, longitudinal analyses demonstrate that, on average, immigration has a rather small, but positive long-term effect on development levels. However, the findings also indicate that immigration has a Matthew Effect (Merton, 1968) in the world-economy: immigration disproportionately benefits higher-income countries. Moreover, the wealthiest countries reap the largest gains from immigration. Thus, from the perspective of destination countries, immigration does not appear to be a panacea for international inequality. Instead, the results indicate that immigration actually reproduces, and even exacerbates, international inequality. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper analyzes temporal variations in two gender attitudes in China: beliefs about gender equality and perspectives on women’s combined work and family roles. It uses the most currently available population series from the 1995, 2001 and 2007 World Value Surveys of 4500 respondents and a series of multilevel cross-classified models to properly estimate period and cohort effects. Attitudes toward women’s dual roles manifest neither period nor cohort effects; the population displays a universal high level of acceptance of women’s paid employment. Orientations toward gender equality manifest both cohort and period effects: members of the youngest cohort of both sexes hold the most liberal attitudes; the positive effect of college education has increased over time. Attitude toward gender equality in China displays neither a shift toward conservatism nor an over-time trend toward egalitarianism in 1995–2007, a time of rapid economic growth. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper provides new estimates of Hispanic–white residential segregation in new destinations and established Hispanic places. New Hispanic destinations are defined broadly to include metropolitan cities, suburban places, and rural communities with unusually rapid Hispanic growth rates. The analysis is framed with the spatial assimilation and place stratification perspectives and is based on block data from the 1990 and 2000 decennial censuses. The analysis confirms our basic hypothesis – that Hispanics are highly segregated in new Hispanic destinations, often at levels greatly exceeding those in established places. Hispanic suburbanization or exurbanization into new destinations is no marker of spatial assimilation. Consistent with the place stratification perspective, differences in Hispanic–white segregation between new destinations and established Hispanic areas cannot be explained by place-to-place differences in ecological location, population composition, economic growth, employment, or Hispanic–white income inequality. Hispanic segregation in new destinations is especially sensitive to the size of the foreign-born population and to preexisting “minority threats” in communities with large black populations. Segregation levels in new destinations also are less responsive to income disparities between Hispanics and whites; economic assimilation does not insure Hispanic spatial assimilation. Understanding how newcomers are spatially incorporated in new destinations will be a continuing challenge for scholars concerned about the spatial diffusion and apparent geographic balkanization of America’s growing Hispanic population. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper addresses the debate concerning the influence of cultural and economic contexts on the adoption of modern values by individual members of society. We have applied for this purpose a multilevel analysis (HLM), using the World Value Survey (WVS) and European Value Survey (EVS) data bank for 36 of the countries included in the 2000 wave. The cultural and economic higher-level variables are represented by religious zones (Protestant, Catholic, Ex-Socialist Catholic and Islamic) and level of economic development (Real Gross Domestic Product per Capita). The individual-level variables include age, gender, schooling and religiousness (N =51792). The dependent variables consist of two measures: political liberal values (PLV) and social liberal values (SLV). The results of the HLM analysis indicate that although most of the variance in both measures derives from differences in individual characteristics across countries, there is also strong evidence for contextual effects of religious zones and economic development, when each factor is examined by itself. Yet because of multi-colinearity, we cannot estimate the effects of the two higher-level variables independently of each other. We end by discussing the theoretical and methodological implications of our findings. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]