This study uses national survey data in federal election years from 1996 through 2004 to examine voter registration and voting. It shows that racial/ethnic disparities in socio-economic resources and rootedness in the community do not explain overall group differences in electoral participation. It contradicts the expectation from an assimilation…

Though it has produced a high-quality body of research, the study of substance use has remained highly individualized in its focus. This paper adds further sociological understanding to that research. Using hierarchical models, the following explores how institutional and criminological theories can be incorporated into substance use research by…

In the article "Cohort Effects on Non-marital Fertility," in this issue of "Social Forces," Jean Stockard employs a novel strategy for disentangling cohort, period, and age effects on the non-marital fertility ratio. In a model with fixed-effect controls for age and for time period, the author documents evidence for three cohort-specific factors…

To what extent did the increase in wage inequality among men in the United States over the past three decades result from job loss and/or employment instability? We propose a simple method for decomposing the change in wage inequality into components due to upward and downward between-employer mobility and within-employer wage changes using data…

Pooling National Health Interview Survey 1972-1996 data, this study examines whether the threshold of health is rising, such that individuals are more likely to report poor health based on weaker symptoms. The results suggest that those with some form of disability report poor health more often today than they did in the past. Yet the results also…

I designed an experiment to test predictions, derived from expectation states theories, that the unequal allocation of social rewards among collective task-focused actors will affect the actors' rates of power and prestige behavior. Past research shows that allocations of exchangeable resources can have these effects. The prediction, however, is…

This study revisits the Wisconsin model of status attainment from a life course developmental perspective. Fixed-effects regression analyses lend strong support to the Wisconsin framework's core proposition that academic performance and significant others' influence shape educational expectations. However, investigating the process of expectation…

Several recent studies across the social sciences show that the spatial agglomeration of employment in a local labor market benefits both firms and workers in terms of better firm performance and higher wages. Drawing from the organizational ecology perspective, we argue that workers receive higher wages in large industrial clusters and urban…

Existing research rarely examines the social consequences of poor childhood health from a longitudinal perspective. Using data from the British National Child Development Study, I follow a cohort from before birth through middle age to examine whether children's health limitations before and during the educational process predict occupational…

Previous research into the social distribution of early life depression has yielded inconsistent results regarding the causes and course of subgroup depression disparities. This study examines the topic by analyzing National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health data, modeling gender and racial/ethnic differences in early life depression…

Most prior research testing the hypothesis of the social disorganization theory that residential instability increases crime has used cross-sectional data. Using a unique dataset linking home sales address matched to census tracts with crime data in Los Angeles, we test the direction of this relationship using a six-year panel data design. We also…

The sociology of aging draws on a broad array of theoretical perspectives and social theories from several disciplines, but rarely has it developed its own theories or theoretical perspectives. We build on past work to further advance and empirically test a model of mental health framed in terms of structural theorizing and situated within the…

This research examines the influence of types of protest activities, Congressional hearings and political characteristics on environmental legislation enacted from 1961-1990. We find that rates of environmental protest rise with increases in the amount of previous institutional activities, but extra-institutional activities do not raise the…

The theory of relative deprivation emphasizes that social comparisons contextualize how people experience impoverishment. An important application of this theory argues that relative deprivation that stems from unfavorable social comparisons can result in anger, normlessness and an increased likelihood of deviant behavior. We test this theory in a…

It is widely argued that globalization and economic development are associated with international migration. However, these relationships have not been tested empirically. We use a cross-national empirical analysis to assess the impact of global and national factors on international migration from less-developed countries. An interdisciplinary…