This study examines how gendered household bargaining occurs in non-nuclear family households. We employ two South African data sets and use linear regression and household fixed effects to investigate the relationship between women's income shares and household expenditures. In married couple households, when women garner larger shares of income,…

Guided by Durkheim's classic theory of suicide, this article examines suicide trends and determinants in Eastern European countries for the period of 1989-2006, with particular attention given to the association between postcommunist social change and suicide mortality. I find that countries characterized by more drastic structural change…

Researchers hypothesize that social capital in the United States is not just declining, but that it is declining across "generations" or birth cohorts. Testing this proposition, we examine changes in social capital using age-period-cohort intrinsic estimator models. Results from analyses of 1972-2010 General Social Survey data show (1)…

The increase in high-skilled immigrants to the United States coincided with the expansion of the high-technology sector, and now a large share of Asian immigrants concentrate in high-tech industries. Despite much research on the relationship between ethnic concentration and labor market outcomes, the association between ethnic niche employment and…

Generalized trust varies across individuals and countries. Past studies on trust have demonstrated that voluntary association membership, inequality and ethnic homogeneity at country level are important. However, those studies examined either individual-level or country-level factors separately. In this paper, we conceptualized the emergence of…

Based on Boyce and Ellis's model on "context" and "biological sensitivity to the context", this article analyzes the interaction between the experience of daily hassles and experimentally induced cardiovascular reactivity as an indicator of stress reactivity, in explaining risk taking and self-esteem. This study found, in a…

Previous research suggests that higher incomes, safe workplaces, job security and healthcare access all contribute to favorable health. Reflecting the interest of economic and political sociologists in power relations and institutions, union membership has been linked with many such influences on health. Nevertheless, the potential relationship…

After 25 years of intense scrutiny, social capital remains an important yet highly debated concept in social science research. This research uses data from youth and mentors in several chapters of Big Brothers/Big Sisters to assess the importance of different mentoring relationship characteristics in creating positive outcomes among youths. The…

Existing cross-national research on educational attainment does not fully address whether the same level of educational attainment generates the same level of literacy skills in different countries. We analyze literacy skills data for young adults from 19 countries in the 1994-1998 International Adult Literacy Survey and find that in all…

This study examined whether the transition into adolescence, proxied by pubertal timing, shaped the transition into adulthood, proxied by union formation behaviors, among contemporary American women. In a sample drawn from Add Health (n = 7,523), early maturing girls reported an accelerated transition to marriage and cohabitation in young…

This article analyzes the effect of three aspects of physical attractiveness (facial attractiveness, Body Mass Index and height) on socio-economic and marital success over the life course. In a sample of high school graduates from Wisconsin followed from their late teens and until their mid-60s, I find that (1. taller men have higher earnings than…

To investigate the role of body size in social networks, this study estimated cross-nested multilevel network models (p2) with longitudinal data from the 16 saturated schools in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. As body mass index increased, the likelihood of being nominated by schoolmates as friends--but not the likelihood of…

Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing study and the Current Population Survey, we find that labor market conditions play a large role in explaining the positive relationship between educational attainment and marriage. Our results suggest that if low-educated parents enjoyed the same, stronger labor market conditions as their…

This study extends research on the consequences of mass imprisonment and the causes of children's behavioral problems by considering the effects of paternal incarceration on children's physical aggression at age 5 using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study. Results suggest that paternal incarceration is associated with…

To test claims that postcolonial civil violence is a common legacy of colonialism, we create a dataset on the colonial heritage of 160 countries and explore whether a history of colonialism is related to indicators of inter-communal conflict, political rebellion and civil war in the years 1960-1999. The analysis provides evidence against sweeping…