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Editor:
Tonya Allen
allen@pop.psu.edu
PRInformation Fall 1999 - Focus on Economic Inequality
Contents
- Note from the Director
- Faculty Focus
- Staff News
- Student News
- Articles of Interest
- New External Research Funding at PRI
- Selected Publications
Even as national and global levels of wealth continue to grow, disparities in income and wealth levels, with concomitant inequities in quality employment and in access to education and health care, continue to create sharp socioeconomic divides within and between nations. Economic inequality can be viewed as the primary root from which major social disparities spring. Its far-reaching, cyclical, and synergistic effects impact all aspects of an individual's life, from birth to death, and can be passed down through the generations. Because of its all-pervasive influence, economic inequality has long been a concern to researchers in all branches of the social sciences, and to demographers in particular.
Researchers at PRI are studying economic inequality in its many manifestations across the social science disciplines. Dr. Martina Morris (Sociology and Statistics) is currently investigating inequality in earnings trajectories, using the National Longitudinal Surveys to compare the first 16 years of work experience for two cohorts of young adults and track their experiences in the changing labor market. In a similar vein, Dr. Leif Jensen (Rural Sociology) and Dr. Jill Findeis (Agricultural Economics) are comparing employment opportunities for recent cohorts of young adults with those of preceding generations in their project "Coming of Age in America: A Cohort Analysis of Underemployment." Polarization of household income in the United States is the topic of "Industrial Restructuring and Income Inequality in U.S. Counties," a three-year project led by Dr. Diane McLaughlin (Rural Sociology).
Dr. Michael Rendall (Sociology) was recently profiled in a New York Times article for his research on the intergenerational transfer of wealth as a perpetuator of inequality. In the largest such intergenerational transfer in history currently underway and predicted to last 30 years, one percent of the baby boom generation is projected to receive 30% of the wealth, thus transferring income inequalities to the next generation.
Just as wealth tends to remain in the hands of the wealthy, poverty is a many-stranded web from which it is difficult to escape. The capacity of poverty and its psychological sequelae to lock individuals into transgenerational cycles of substance abuse and welfare dependency is an integral aspect of such research projects as Dr. Rukmalie Jayakody's (Human Development & Family Studies) "Mental Health Problems and Welfare Dependence: How Strong are the Links" and "Substance Abuse and Welfare Reform ." Income and wealth disparities in one part of the life course also have consequences later in life for numerous facets of wellbeing. Childhood poverty's effects on early adult outcomes are being examined by Dr. Daniel Lichter (Sociology, Ohio St ate University) and Dr. Michael J. Shanahan (Human Development & Family Studies) in the NSF-funded "Entering Adulthood: Poor, Socially Disadvantaged and Resilient." Dr. Mark Hayward (Sociology) is investigating the ways in which socioeconomic disparities over the life course lead to disparities in chronic disease-based morbidity and mortality in his NIA-funded project "Active Life Expectancy in the Older Population."
Taking the question of economic inequality to the global level, Dr. Glenn Firebaugh (Sociology) is embarking on a project which extends earlier research on income inequality between nations, a little-studied but vital question which becomes more significant as the world moves toward a global economy (see article in this issue).
Growing economic inequality is both a national and a global issue, affecting individuals and families, cities and nations. This edition of PRInformation focuses on the many PRI researchers whose work centers on the demography of inequality.
Mark D. Hayward
Director
Firebaugh Studies Intercountry Inequality
Dr. Glenn Firebaugh, professor of sociology and demography, is currently engaged in a project entitled "Intercountry Income Inequality: New Analytic Directions," funded by the National Science Foundation. While world inequality in the distribution of incomes is extreme, with average incomes in the richest nations 30 times those in the poorest nations, intercountry inequality is rarely studied by sociologists. This project is an extension of earlier research which sought to provide the tools for t he sociological study of intercountry inequality by developing a common formula for the conventional inequality measures (the coefficient of variation, the Gini, the Theil index, and the variance of the logarithms) and then applying that formula to trends in intercountry inequality in order to determine precisely the nature of those trends. The new project seeks to expand analysis to include a social welfare component, utilizing a family of inequality indexes proposed by Atkinson to compare trends in intercountry inequality based on different assumptions about the relative welfare impact of income transfers.
Morris Investigates Inequality in Economic Mobility
Dr. Martina Morris, professor of sociology, demography and statistics, is investigating inequality in economic mobility. Entitled "Divergent Paths: Economic Mobility in the New American Labor Market" and funded by a two-year grant from the Russell Sage foundation, the study compares the first 16 years of work experience for two cohorts of young adults from the National Longitudinal Surveys. One cohort entered the labor market during the late 1960s and the 1970s, the other during the 1980s and early 1990s, affording a rare look at trends over time in career development and mobility. The aim of the study is to clarify the impact of workplace reorganization on the experiences of young adults entering the labor market, acquiring skills and establishing their careers, and their eventual opportunities for upward mobility.
New Faculty
Dr. Paul Amato (Ph.D., 1983, Social Psychology, James Cook University, Australia), professor of sociology and demography. Research interests: Marital quality, divorce, single-parent families, parent-child relationships, fatherhood, family relations and psychological well-being, families and gender, cross-cultural family research.
Dr. David Baker (Ph.D., 1982, Sociology, The Johns Hopkins University), professor of education and sociology. Research interests: Sociology of education; social policy applied to children, family and youth; organizations and institutions; social stratification.
Dr. Robert Drago (Ph.D., 1983, Economics, University of Massachusetts at Amherst), professor of labor studies and industrial relations. Research interests: Labor economics, compensation, employee involvement, work and family.
Dr. Constance Flanagan (Ph.D., 1987, Developmental Psychology, The University of Michigan), associate professor of agricultural and extension education. Research interests: Adolescents' interpretation of the rights and responsibilities of citizen ship across countries and for different racial, ethnic, and social class groups within countries.
Les Gallay (Ph.D., 1998, Urban, Technological and Environmental Planning, The University of Michigan), Research Associate, Institute for Policy Research.
Dr. Jana Pressler (Ph.D., 1986, Nursing, Case Western Reserve University), assistant professor of nursing. Research interests: Neonatal growth, behavior, and development, infant attachment and emotional expression.
Dr. Stacy Rogers (Ph.D., 1993, Sociology, The Ohio State University), assistant professor of sociology. Research interests: Differential in marital quality across birth cohorts; ways in which women's employment, remarriage, and social change affect marital quality, parent-child relationships, the well-being of adults and children, mothers' work and poverty and child outcomes. Dr. Rogers is co-investigator with Dr. Alan Booth, Dr. Paul Amato, and researchers at the University of Nebraska on the newly funded extension of the NIA-supported project "Marital Instability over the Life Course."
Dr. Robert Schoen (Ph.D., 1972, Demography, University of California at Berkeley), Hoffman Professor of Sociology and professor of demography. Research interests: Mathematical demography, population aging, marital life course, fertility and active life expectancy.
Dr. Mark Shriver (Ph.D., 1993, Genetics, University of Texas Health Science Center/Houston), assistant professor of anthropology. Research interests: Applications of population genetics to questions of human origins and human evolution.
Dr. Eric Silver (Ph.D., 1999, Sociology, State University of New York at Albany), assistant professor of crime, law and justice. Research interests: Influence of community environmental conditions and institutions on individuals' psychiatric and emotional health.
Dr. Joseph Terza (Ph.D., 1981, Economics, University of Pittsburgh), associate professor of economics. Research interests: Econometrics, health economics.
Invited Speakers
Dr. David Abler, professor of agricultural economics and demography, presented "Climate Change, Agriculture, and the Environment" on August 7, 1999, at the American Agricultural Economics Association Pre-Conference Meeting on Climate Change in Nashville.
Dr. Paul Amato, professor of sociology and demography, presented "Long-Term Consequences of Parental Divorce and Marital Conflict for Children's Well-Being" at the Department of Human Development and Social Ecology, University of Texas at Austin.
Dr. Linda Burton, professor of human development and sociology, presented the North Carolina Central University Inaugural Distinguished Lecture on "Stigma and Welfare Reform" in March, 1999.
Dr. Gordon De Jong, Distinguished Professor of Sociology, professor of demography, and director, Graduate Program in Demography, presented a paper as part of the Academic Workplace Workshop on Graduate Research Education at the American Sociological Association annual meeting on August 8, 1999, entitled "Interdisciplinary Graduate Research Education: A Dual-Degree Model;" and a paper entitled "Political Change, Ideology and Migration in Romania" at the European Population Conference, The Hague, Netherlands.
Dr. Glenn Firebaugh, professor of sociology and demography, presented "Trends in World Income Inequality" at the University of Wisconsin Center for Demography and Ecology in September, 1999.
Dr. Constance Flanagan, associate professor of agricultural and extension education, presented "Human Development, the Social Contract, and Social Change" in May, 1999, at the conference on Childhood and Adolescence in Germany before and after Unification at the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, University of Jena, Germany; was invited panelist for the international conference on Creating Citizenship: Youth Development for Free and Democratic Societies, Stanford University, in June, 1999; and with co-author Dr. Leslie Gallay presented "What Does It Mean To Be American? Views on Tolerance, Opportunity, and Justice from Youth in Different Cultures and Communities" at the international conference on Right-Wing Extremism, Nationalism, and Xenophobia: Hazards to Democracy and Life Course Development in Germany and North America held at the University of Toronto Institute for Human Development, Life Course, and Aging in March, 1999.
Dr. Mark Hayward, professor of sociology and demography and director, Population Research Institute, conducted a workshop on measuring population health for UNFPA in Tokyo in August, 1999.
Dr. Darryl Holman, NICHD postdoctoral fellow and research associate, presented his paper "Age-Dependent Decline in Fecundity is Due to Early Fetal Loss" at the Female Reproductive Ageing: 10th Reinier de Graff Symposium in Zeist, the Netherlands, in September, 1999; and a paper co-authored with Dr. James Wood, professor of anthropology and demography, and Dr. Kathleen O'Connor, research associate, entitled "Estimating Age-at-Death Distributions from Skeletal Samples: A Multivariate Latent Trait Approach" at the Workshop on Mathematical Modeling for Palaeodemography: Coming to Consensus held at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, June 9-11, 1999.
Dr. William Kandel, Mellon postdoctoral trainee, was invited to present "The Impact of U.S. Migration on Mexican Children's Educational Attainment" at the Educational Strategies, Families, and Population Dynamics conference in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, in November, 1999. The conference was organized by the Paris-based Committee for International Cooperation in National Research in Demography (CICRED).
Dr. Maria Krysan, assistant professor of sociology, presented "Community Undesirability in Black and White: Racial Differences in Cognitive Maps and their Role in Residential Segregation" at the Survey Research Center Research Seminar Series, May 18, 1999, at the Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; and "Motown in the '70s and '90s: Have Blacks and Whites Changed Their Minds About Living Together?" at the conference on Labor Market Participation, Racial Inequality and Political Attitudes: Major Findings from the MCSUI Study on October 1, 1999, at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Cambridge.
Dr. Phyllis Mansfield, professor of women's studies and health education, was part of an invited plenary panel, "Reflections on Two Decades of Women's Health Research from a Menstrual Cycle Perspective," at the biannual meetings of the Society for Menstrual Cycle Research in Tucson in June, 1999. At the same meeting, Dr. Mansfield was moderator of a session, "Three Faces of Menopause," and presented a paper entitled "What Perimenopausal Women Think about Taking Hormones during Menopause." Additionally, Dr. Mansfield spoke on "Menopausal Hormones at Midlife: What DES Daughters Need to Know" at the national meeting of DES Action on October 16, 1999, in New York City.
Dr. Stephen Matthews, assistant professor of geography and demography and director, Geographic Information Analysis Core, presented "What Demographers Should Know about GIS but are Afraid to Ask" at the Center for Demography and Ecology, University of Wisconsin, in October, 1999.
Dr. Martina Morris, professor of sociology, demography and statistics, presented "Lifetime Wage Mobility after Economic Restructuring" at the MacArthur Research Network on Inequality and Economic Performance, Boston, in October, 1999; "Changes in Long-Term Wage Mobility Over the Last 40 Years" at a meeting of the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics in Madison, Wisconsin, in July, 1999; "Sexual Networks and the Transmission of HIV" at the Population Council, in March, 1999; and "Sexual Networks and HIV" at the National Center for HIV, STD and TB prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in Atlanta in March, 1999.
Dr. Kathleen O'Connor, research associate, presented a paper co-authored with Dr. James Wood, professor of anthropology, and Dr. Darryl Holman, NICHD postdoctoral fellow and research associate, entitled "Biodemographic Models of Menopause" at the Human Biology Association annual meeting, Columbus, Ohio, April 26-28, 1999.
Dr. Jana Pressler, assistant professor of nursing, presented her paper "Developmental Caregiving with Hospitalized Neonates: Beyond Lip Service and a Decorator's Showcase" at the Susquehanna Valley Nurses' Association Annual Meeting in Danville, Pennsylvania, on June 2, 1999; a poster entitled "Gender and Race Effects on Very Preterm Neonates' Autonomic, Motor, and State Behavior" at the Society for Research in Child Development Biennial Meeting, Albuquerque, on April 16, 1999; and "NIDCAP(r) Behaviors Manifested by Very Preterm, NICU Neonates" at the Sigma Theta Tau International Annual Meeting, in London, UK, on June 26, 1999.
Dr. David Shapiro, professor of economics, demography and women's studies, presented "Family Influences on Women's Educational Attainment in Kinshasa" at a CICRED (Committee for International Cooperation in National Resources in Demography) seminar on Educational Strategies, Families, and Population Dynamics in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, November 15-19, 1999; and with Dr. B. Oleko Tambashe, Research Associate Professor, Tulane University, presented "Fertility Transition in Urban and Rural Areas of Sub-Saharan Africa" at the Chaire Quetelet Symposium in Demography on Populations et défis urbains [Populations and Urban Challenges], Catholic University of Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, October 26-29, 1999.
Awards and Recognition
Dr. Linda Burton, professor of human development and sociology, has been named a member of the Committee on Building Bridges in the Brain, Behavioral and Clinical Sciences, Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences; the Committee on Future Research Directions for Behavioral and Social Sciences Research, National Institutes of Health; SNEM-3 Study Section (formerly Social Sciences and Population Study Section, NICHD), National Institutes of Health; and the Board on Behavioral, Cognitive, and Sensory Sciences, National Research Council Commission on Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education, National Academy of Sciences.
Dr. Karen Carver, assistant professor of sociology and demography, was the recipient of the Roy C. Buck Award for her article with Dr. Nancy E. Moss entitled "The Effect of WIC and Medicaid on Infant Mortality in the United States" (American Journal of Public Health 88(9):1354-1361). The award, presented by the Pennsylvania State University College of Liberal Arts, recognizes the best paper in the social sciences by an untenured faculty member.
Dr. Mark Handcock, associate professor of statistics, has been named Statistics Core Director at the Population Research Institute.
Dr. Martina Morris, professor of sociology, demography and statistics, was elected to the Sociological Research Association, a society composed of members of the American Sociological Association who have made significant contributions to sociological research and maintain an active interest in the advancement of sociological knowledge. Dr. Morris was also invited to join the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Inequality and Economic Performance.
Dr. Suet-ling Pong, associate professor of education, received the Willard Waller award for the best paper of 1996-1998, Sociology of Education Section, American Sociological Association. The paper is entitled "The School Compositional Effect of Single-Parenthood on Tenth-Grade Achievement" and was published in Sociology of Education 71(Jan): 24-43.
Dr. Pamela Farley Short, with Dr. Vicki Freedman of RAND, received the 1999 Article of the Year Award from the Association for Health Services Research for an article entitled "Single Women and the Dynamics of Medicaid," published in the December, 1998 issue of Health Services Research.
Dr. Elizabeth Susman, Shibley Professor of Biobehavorial Health and professor of human development and nursing, was chosen as the recipient of the Penn State Chapter of the Golden Key National Honor Society Outstanding Faculty Award. The Chapter invites one faculty member to receive the award each year.
Promotions
Dr. David G. Abler, agricultural economics, to professor
New Staff
Julia Belanger (Ph.D. student in Statistics), Statistics Core, Statistical Consultant.
Jim Detwiler (M.S., Geography, University of Delaware), GIA Core, GIS Analyst.
Valarie Foust, Administrative Core, Staff Assistant.
Karen Hayslett-McCall (graduate student in Crime, Law and Justice), GIA Core, GIA Consultant.
Steve Maczuga, Computer Core, Research Analyst/Programmer.
Other News
Tonya Allen, Information Core director, was part of a panel at a November 1 forum entitled "Demographics in a World of Six Billion: What Do the Numbers Mean?" The forum was one of a series organized by the College of Agricultural Sciences to recognize the Day of 6 Billion.
Lisa Broniszewski attended the ICPSR meetings in Ann Arbor, Michigan, October 14-17; and the APDU meetings in Washington, D.C., October 25-27, where she made a presentation aimed at raising awareness of current issues in restricted data.
Diane Mattern, administrative assistant, and Sherry Yocum, coordinator, research and administrative services, attended the Northeast section meeting of the Society of Research Administrators, May 2-5, 1999 in Baltimore; and the Annual Society of Research Administrators meeting in Denver, October 16-20.
Jeanne Spicer, manager of programming services, and Cindy Mitchell, research programmer/analyst, attended the North East SAS User's Group (NESUG) meeting in Washington, DC, October 3-5.
On May 19-20, 1999, the Computer Core sponsored a SAS class led by Linda Jolley and entitled "Advanced SAS Programming Techniques & Efficiencies."
Recent Appointments
James Cameron, National Institute of Justice, Crime Mapping Center, Research Fellow
Deborah Graefe, Penn State University, NIMH Family Research Consortium, Postdoctoral Fellow
Woo-Choel Jeong, U.S. Forest Service, Postdoctoral Fellow
Anne Jordan, Center for Health Policy Research, Denver
Alexander Kofitse, Georgetown University, Assistant Professor
Susan Singley, University of Waikato, New Zealand, National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow
Tasha Snyder, Penn State University, ELECT Research Program, Project Director
Festus Ukwuani, University of North Carolina, Postdoctoral Fellow
New Students in the Graduate Program in Demography
Yen Hue Chau, B.A., University of Houston, human development & family studies and demography
Zhen Chen, China, rural sociology and demography
Dickyi Dolkar, Tibet, rural sociology and demography
Pamela M. Klein, B.A., Penn State, sociology and demography
Azizur Rahman Molla, M.A., University of Dhaka (Bangladesh), anthropology and demography
Rachael L. Ritz, B.A., La Salle University, agricultural economics and demography
Timothy Slack, B.A., University of Wisconsin-Madison, rural sociology and demography
David Warner, B.S., Cornell University, sociology and demography
Student Awards
Yu-hua Chen has been selected by the Feminism and Family Studies Section of the National Council on Family Relations as the recipient of the 1999 Outstanding Research Proposal Award for her proposal, "The Impact of Socioeconomic Development on Women's Status in The Family: Similarities and Differences between China and Taiwan." The award was presented at the Awards Ceremony at the 1999 NCFR Annual Conference in Irvine, California.
Meejung Chin has been awarded the sociology/ICPSR Clogg Scholarship to participate in the ICPSR Summer Program at the University of Michigan. The award was established in 1995 by the ICPSR Council to commemorate the late Clifford C. Clogg, a prominent sociologist and social methodologist. Highly competitive, this award indicates outstanding potential to be a successful social science research professional.
Bridget Gorman received a one-year Minority Health Statistics Dissertation Research award from the Centers for Disease Control for her project entitled "Infant Development among Mainland and Island Puerto Rico."
Florence Nyangara, with Patreese Ingram, assistant professor of agricultural and extension education, were first runners-up for Author of the Year in the Journal of Agricultural Education, an award presented by the American Association for Agricultural Education.
Students Present Research at ASA Meetings
Meejung Chin (with Dr. Rukmalie Jayakody), "Single Mothers as Providers of Assistance to Family and Friends" (poster)
Deborah Graefe (with Dr. Gordon F. De Jong), "Internal Migration, Motivations for U.S. Residence, and Adolescent Behaviors among Immigrants"
Anastasia Snyder, "Living Arrangements at First Birth Among Never Married Single Mothers"
Students Sponsor 6th Annual Summer Methodology Workshop on Dyad Modeling
The Statistics Core and graduate students in Demography hosted the sixth annual summer methodology workshop on July 21st. The topic of the workshop was "Dyad Modeling." Speakers included Dr. Karen Carver, assistant professor of sociology and demography, on "Sibling Methods in Behavior Genetics;" Sanders Korenman (CUNY School of Public Affairs, Baruch College) on "The Value of the Family: Some Examples;" and Daphne Kuo (University of Washington) on "Two Approaches of Pair Data Analysis in Sociology and Social Demography."
Burton Heads New Center
Dr. Linda Burton, professor of human development and sociology, is director of a new center in Penn State's College of Health & Human Development. Named the Center for Human Development & Family Research in Diverse Contexts, the center's goal is to promote excellence in training, interdisciplinary research and scholarship in the area of human development and families in diverse populations.
1999 Clifford Clogg Memorial Lecture
The 1999 Clifford Clogg Memorial Lecture was presented September 27 by Adrian E. Raftery, professor of statistics and sociology at the University of Washington, on "Statistical Inference for Deterministic Simulation Models: The Bayesian Modeling Approach ." Dr. Raftery has edited three volumes of Sociological Methodology, and has published more than one hundred articles and chapters. The Clogg Memorial Lecture honors the late Clifford Clogg, who was distinguished professor of sociology and professor of statistics at Penn State until 1995.
Fall 1999 Family Symposium on Couples in Conflict
The Fall 1999 Family Symposium, Couples in Conflict, was held November 1-2 at the Nittany Lion Inn, Penn State University. Organized by Dr. Alan Booth, professor of sociology and human development, Ann C. Crouter, and Mari Clements, the symposium focused on conditions that give rise to conflict; implications of conflict for couples themselves and for their children; and state-of-the-art approaches to preventing couple conflict and reducing its impact on family members. Speakers included Martin Daly and Margo Wilson (McMaster University); Thomas Bradbury (UCLA); Mark Cummings (Notre Dame); and Matthew Sanders (University of Queensland).
GIA Workshops
During the 1999 summer semester, the GIA Core organized a three-day workshop on "GIS Applications in Poverty Research" for postdoctoral attendees of the Family Research Consortium as part of their eight-week training program. The Family Research Consortium is coordinated by Dr. Linda Burton, professor of human development and sociology. Similarly, following up on a workshop offered in April through the Children, Youth and Families Consortium, Dr. Stephen Matthews, assistant professor of geography and demography and director, Geographic Information Analysis Core, and Chris Calienes made multiple presentations to a CYF-related research team at Penn State University (Lynne Vernon-Feagans) and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Martha Cox) in preparation for a study of child well-being in rural Pennsylvania and North Carolina.
New Course: Biosocial Perspectives on the Family
Dr. Alan Booth, professor of sociology and human development, will offer a new course in the spring 2000 semester. Entitled "Biosocial Perspectives on the Family," the course will examine current research on family processes and relationships which integrates knowledge from the fields of behavioral endocrinology, behavior genetics, evolutionary psychology, behavioral pharmacology, and immunology. Each topic concludes with notes on next steps in biosocial research and on how family scholars can become involved.
Southern African Penn State Interest Consortium (SAPSIC)
With the support of Penn State's Children, Youth and Families Consortium and International Programs, researchers at Penn State are organizing a network of faculty to promote research and intervention collaborations in Southern Africa. Members of this net work who are PRI associates include Dr. Eric Durbrow, assistant professor of human development & family studies; Dr. David Baker, professor of education and sociology; Dr. Gary King, associate professor of biobehavioral health; and Dr. Constance Flanagan, associate professor of agricultural and extension education. Several speakers have been invited to present in December, 1999 on child development research and interventions, including Christine Liddell, University of Ulster, Northern Ireland; and Linda Richter, University of Natal, South Africa.
Belanger Surveys Kosovar Refugees
Julia Belanger, statistical consultant, traveled to Tirana, Albania, in the summer of 1999 to conduct a survey of Kosovar refugees. Her work there consisted mainly of developing sampling techniques which would be technically sound as well as practical in the less-than-ideal conditions of the Albanian refugee camps. Faced with a language barrier, Belanger also had to devise ways to communicate statistical and sampling concepts to the locally-recruited interview teams and data checking/data entry staff. The project was sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences; Human Rights Watch; and the Institute for Policy and Legal Studies, a Tirana-based organization. The two goals of the project were to provide instruction in sampling and survey research skills to the local organizations, and to collect information for the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in a systematic and scientific manner.
NEW EXTERNAL RESEARCH FUNDING AT PRI
Marital Change Over the Life Course
Dr. Alan Booth, professor of sociology and human development, received funding from NIA for three years for his project "Marital Change over the Life Course." Dr. Paul Amato, professor of sociology and demography, Dr. Stacy Rogers, assistant professor of sociology, and Dave Johnson (University of Nebraska) are co-investigators in this project building on the Marital Instability Over the Life Course Study, which began in 1980 as a cross-sectional national survey of 2,033 married people under age 55 who were re-interviewed four times between 1983 and 1997. The original 1980 survey will be replicated and a sixth interview with the respondents originally interviewed in 1980 conducted. The new data collected will facilitate an assessment of how marital quality has shifted between 1980 and 2000, how marital and family history affect health among the middle-aged and elderly, and how sample attrition affects the results of longitudinal family research.
Family Issues Symposium
Dr. Alan Booth, professor of sociology and human development, received a five-year grant from NICHD to fund the Penn State National Family Issues Symposium. This symposium is an annual interdisciplinary conference designed to focus attention on understudied issues that are important in terms of understanding family structure and functioning and their impact on the development of children and youth.
Welfare Reform & Well-being of Children
Dr. Linda Burton, professor of human development and sociology, received funding from the MacArthur Foundation in partial support of her project on welfare reform and child well-being.
Interdisciplinary Training in Demography
Dr. Gordon De Jong, Distinguished Professor of Sociology, professor of demography, and director, Dual-Title Program in Demography, and Dr. Gretchen Cornwell, assistant professor of rural sociology and demography, have received funding from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to continue international demography training and research. The period covered by the funding, 1999-2002, will mark twenty years of the program's existence at Penn State, one of only sixteen universities in the nation supported by the foundation's population program. The award provides stipend and tuition grants for predoctoral developing-country students in the graduate program in demography, and supports collaborative international demographic research projects of PRI faculty members.
Parental Marital Transitions and Family Relationships
Dr. David Eggebeen, associate professor of human development and sociology, with Adam Davey (University of Georgia), received funding from NIA to assess the consequences of parental marital transitions for intergenerational family relationships of middle-aged parents and their adult children. The two objectives of the study will be to determine the effects of marital transitions on intergenerational assistance between aging parents and adult children; and whether parent's past marital history moderates children's responses to parental needs. The study will also take into account racial and gender differences, and the role of a biological tie between parent and child.
Living Arrangements and Family Functioning In Low-Income, Young-Mother Families
Dr. Rukmalie Jayakody, assistant professor of human development/family studies and demography, has received funding from Radcliffe College, the Murray Center, for a one-year project using longitudinal data from a sample of 290 young mothers and their children in the New Chance Observational Study. The analysis will focus on the association between living arrangements and family functioning in low-income young-mother families to analyze the factors that differentiate young mothers who live with their parents from those in other living arrangements, and investigate how living arrangements affect parenting practices, interactions with young children, and child behaviors.
Using Virtual Interviewers to Explore Race of Interviewer Effects
Dr. Maria Krysan, assistant professor of sociology, has received funding for two years from NSF to develop and test a new method for studying race-of-interviewer effects under controlled conditions. The core of the project will be to develop a computer assisted self-interviewing system which uses videotape of an interviewer reading survey questions. This method will allow interviewer race to be varied systematically while other interviewer attributes are held constant. Besides evaluation of a potentially powerful new tool for studying race-of-interviewer effects, other project goals are to explore how attitudes and opinions are shaped by the social context in which they are articulated, and the extent to which the "virtual social presence" of a computer may resemble that of a live person.
HIV & STIs in Young Adults: A Network Approach
Dr. Martina Morris, professor of sociology, demography and statistics, has received funding from NICHD for a five-year study to conduct analyses of biomarkers for sexually transmitted infections (STIs) using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). The project will focus on four interrelated STI topics: STI prevalence; multiple imputation strategies for missing behavioral and biomarker data; the measurement and analysis of epidemiologically relevant aspects of network location and structure; and multivariate analyses of individual STI risk that explicitly integrate measures of network exposure. The goal of these analyses will be to identify the relative contribution of individual attributes and network exposure to the risk of infection, and to establish the implications for prevention.
Seasonality of Fertility in Laguna de Inamaic, Venezuela
Dr. James Wood, professor of anthropology and demography, and Dr. Susan Barsom, NIA postdoctoral trainee, have received funding from the National Science Foundation for a one-year study analyzing seasonal fertility patterns in the Añú of northwestern Venezuela. The study will describe seasonal variation in proximate determinants of fertility, including characteristics of ovarian cycles, spouse absence, and fetal loss. These data will be used in models of fecundability and fetal loss that tog ether describe seasonality of fertility. The study will also take into account seasonal variation in factors more remotely related to fertility, such as diet, nutritional status, and workload.
Abler, D.G., A.G. Rodríguez, and J. S. Shortle (1999). "Parameter Uncertainty in CGE Modeling of the Environmental Impacts of Economic Policies." Environmental and Resource Economics 14:75-94.
Abler, D.G., A.G. Rodríguez, and J.S. Shortle (1999). "Trade Liberalization and the Environment in Costa Rica." Environment and Development Economics 4:357-373.
Abler, D.G. and J.S. Shortle (1999). "Decomposing the Effects of Trade on the Environment." In Antle, J.M. and J.N. Lekakis (Eds.), Agriculture, Trade and the Environment: The Impact of Liberalization on Sustainable Development. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar.
Allison, K.W., I. Crawford, P.E. Leone, E. Trickett, A. Perez-Febles, L.M. Burton, et al. 1999 "Adolescent Substance Use: Preliminary Examinations of School and Neighborhood Context." American Journal of Community Psychology 27 (2):111-141.
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PRInformation is published twice yearly by the Population Research Institute, Penn State. Please address correspondence to the editor, Tonya Allen, 601 Oswald Tower, Penn State, University Park, PA 16802-49 00.
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