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Editor:
Tonya Allen
allen@pop.psu.edu
PRInformation
Fall 2007
New External Research Funding
Collaborative Research: A National Survey of Informal Work
Dr. Leif Jensen, professor of rural sociology and demography, with Dr. Timothy Slack (Louisiana State University) and Dr. Ann Tickamyer (Ohio University), received funding from the National Science Foundation for a two-year study focusing on informal work in the United States. The informal economy consists of work activities that generate household income or reduce expenditures that operate outside the scope of state regulation in contexts where these activities otherwise would be regulated. Orthodox modernization theory holds that the informal economy should decline with economic development, yet evidence suggests it remains a key feature of economic life in advanced societies. This study will conduct the first nationally representative household survey of informal work in the United States.
Early Work Experiences and the Transition to Adulthood
Dr. Jeremy Staff, assistant professor of crime, law and justice and sociology, received funding from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development for a five-year project examining teenage employment. Although the vast majority of teenagers work in paid jobs, past research offers contrary evidence as to whether paid work during adolescence is a cause, consequence, or spurious correlate of changes in health and well-being, risk behavior, and achievement during the transition to adulthood. The goal of this study is to better address the controversy surrounding teenage employment.
Latent Growth Curve Models of Cognitive Aging
Dr. Duane Alwin, McCourtney Professor of Sociology and Demography, and Dr. Linda Wray, assistant professor of biobehavioral health, received funding for three years from the National Institute on Aging to investigate the linkage between age-related cognitive change and indicators of health, health behaviors and disability in a set of nationally representative samples of community dwelling respondents in the US population. The study will use data from the 1992-2006 Health and Retirement Study national panel study of men and women in birth cohorts born pre-1900 through 1954. The researchers will examine links between age-related cognitive scores, chronic disease, lifestyle behaviors, and functional disability status, and investigate these issues by sex and race/ethnicity.
Low-Income Women and Marriage Entry: Evidence from Qualitative Data
Dr. Rukmalie Jayakody, associate professor of human development and family studies and demography, received funding for two years from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to study union formation among low-income single mothers. This project combines quantitative data from a panel survey of former welfare recipients, the Women's Employment Study (WES), with qualitative data gathered from a sub-sample of WES respondents. The study will examine how low-income single mothers make union formation decisions, focusing specifically on the role children from current and former unions play in these decisions. The characteristics of these "new" families formed by transitions into marital and cohabiting unions will also be examined, as well as the implications these "new" family types have for family dynamics and child well-being. Particular attention is given to the implications of complex family arrangements resulting from multiple partner fertility.
Race-Ethnicity, Census Places, and Violent Crime: Expanding the Racial Invariance Hypothesis to include White-Latino and Black-Latino Comparisons
Dr. Darrell Steffensmeier, professor of sociology and crime, law and justice, with Dr. Jeffrey Ulmer, associate professor of sociology and crime, law and justice, received funding from the National Science Foundation for two years for a study which addresses two of the most important substantive and theoretical questions facing sociology and criminology. The first is whether, and to what extent, race and ethnicity are related to violent crime. The second involves the racial invariance hypothesis about whether, and to what extent, spatial or community-level characteristics hypothesized to influence violent crime have the same effects on blacks, whites, and Latinos, or any race-ethnic group. These questions are politically important because equality in access to social and economic well-being has long been compromised by inequality in the burden of personal violence. Yet, large gaps exist in the empirical literature on race-ethnic disparities in violence and structural sources of those disparities.
Secondary Analysis of AmeriCorps Data
Dr. Constance Flanagan, professor of agricultural and extension education, received funding from the MacArthur Foundation and the University of Pennsylvania for one year to conduct secondary analyses of the AmeriCorps dataset with special attention to the potential of participation in AmeriCorps programs to facilitate a successful transition to adulthood for vulnerable groups. Three waves of data (baseline, immediately after the one-year AmeriCorps experience, and at eighteen months) will allow researchers to follow the trajectories of those who participated with their peers who did not, and to assess whether participation in the program benefited vulnerable groups by keeping them connected to social institutions, by providing valuable social and leadership experiences, and by providing adult mentors who guided the young adults' educational and professional decisions. The results of the analyses will inform policy discussions about the potential benefits of national service for vulnerable populations.
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