COHABITATION: AN ELUSIVE CONCEPT

Rates of out-of-wedlock births in the US have increased over the past three decades and rates of cohabitation among unwed parents have risen. Consequently, unwed parenthood is decreasingly synonymous with single parenthood. As we focus more attention on unwed parents, their living arrangements, and relationships, it is becoming clear that cohabitation is an ambiguous concept that is difficult to measure. In this study, we use the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing data to document how sensitive cohabitation estimates can be to various sources of information and we demonstrate that relationships among unwed parents fall along a continuum, from marriage-like cohabitation at one extreme to parents who have no contact at all with one another at the other. The results underscore the limitations of using binary measures of cohabitation to characterize parent relationships.

Immigration and low birthweight in the US: The role of time and timing

The literature exploring the health consequences of immigration is largely dominated by efforts to replicate, across outcomes and populations, and explain two widely observed findings: that foreign nativity is protective (yielding the “healthy migrant effect” or “immigrant paradox”) and that the health advantage of immigrants diminishes over time in the host country. In this study, we focus on the second of these patterns and provide evidence that a lifecourse perspective can help to explain the apparent deterioration in health by incorporating attention to immigrants’ timing of arrival. We examine the role of immigrants’ exposure to the US, in terms of both age at immigration and length of residence, in shaping birthweight, a well measured and consequential marker of health, and maternal smoking, an important risk factor for low birthweight.

Mental Illness as a Barrier to Marriage Among Mothers With Out-of-Wedlock Births

This study explores how mental illness shapes transitions to marriage among unwed mothers using augmented data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing study. We estimate proportional hazard models to assess the effects of mental illness on the likelihood of marriage over a five year period following a non-marital birth. Diagnosed mental illness was obtained from the survey respondents' prenatal medical records. We find that mothers with mental illness were about two thirds as likely as mothers without mental illness to marry, even after controlling for demographic characteristics, and that human capital, relationship quality, partner selection, and substance abuse explain only a small proportion of the effect of mental illness on marriage.

Effects of Welfare Participation on Marriage

Despite interest in the potential of the welfare system as a tool to affect marriage behaviors among low-income women, little is known about how welfare participation affects decisions to marry. We employ an event history approach to examine transitions to marriage over a five-year period among mothers who have had a non-marital birth. We find that welfare participation under the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program (TANF) reduces the likelihood of transitioning to marriage (hazard ratio is .67, p

The Role of Welfare in New Parents’ Lives

Welfare caseloads have declined substantially since the landmark PRWORA legislation of 1996, which was designed to shift the burden of supporting needy families from government to families themselves. These caseload declines have been well documented, and characteristics of recipients following the implementation of PRWORA can be gleaned from administrative and agency records. Less readily available is documentation of recent rates of welfare dependency for specific population subgroups. Mothers giving birth in the aftermath of the 1996 legislation are of particular interest since they are more likely than other potential recipients to meet work requirements and hit time limits before their children are in school.

Segregation in social networks based on acquaintanceship and trust

Using newly collected data from the General Social Survey, we compare levels of segregation by race and along other potential dimensions of social cleavage for ties defined in terms of trust and acquaintanceship. We further estimate the size of the trust network and compare its size and structure to recent estimates obtained from the 2004 General Social Survey by McPherson et al. Americans are less disconnected than other recent evidence suggests. However, if racial segregation is the standard, then America is highly segregated across class and values dimensions as well as race and ethnicity. We further find that segregation is insensitive to tie strength. Scholars have long found homophily in close ties, while scholars such as Putnam have looked to weak ties for socially integrative bridging social capital. However, bridging social capital does not appear to be more plentiful for weak ties than it is for strong ties. --

Segregation in social networks based on acquaintanceship and trust

Using recently collected data from the 2006 General Social Survey, we compare levels of segregation by race and along other dimensions of potential social cleavage in the contemporary United States. Americans are not as isolated as other recent evidence suggests. However, hopes that "bridging" social capital is more common in broader acquaintanceship networks than in core networks are not supported by the GSS data. Instead, the entire acquaintanceship network appears to be as segregated as the more restricted and much smaller network based on trust. Social divisions based on religiosity, political ideology, family behaviors and socioeconomic standing are high and in some cases rival racial segregation in their intensity. The major challenge to social integration today comes less from the risk of social isolation--complete isolation is rare--than from the tendency of many Americans to isolate themselves from others who differ on race, political ideology, level of religiosity, and other salient aspects of social identity

Non-monetary poverty and deprivation: A capability approach

Given the continuing interest in multi-dimensional approaches to poverty, the paper considers ways in which Senian capability indicators can be used to assess and understand poverty and deprivation. More specifically, we develop novel capability data on 29 dimensions for adults from the US, UK and Italy to explore three core research questions. Firstly, we show that when poverty is seen as capability deprivation, different individuals are identified as poor compared with approaches based on low income or subjective wellbeing. However, we also observe that what the poor report being able to do or otherwise is, nonetheless, relatively robust to the use of these three different approaches. Secondly, we employ latent class analysis to identify poverty and deprivation profiles for groups within society and suggest that such profiles help to identify groups who are deprived with respect to some but not all areas of life. Thirdly, and finally, we examine the association between individual capability deprivation and local area deprivation in the UK. We find that individual capabilities are associated with local area deprivation in some cases but that the connections vary significantly depending on the dimension under consideration. We discuss the results and conclude by suggesting that capability indicators can provide insights into poverty which do not emerge from a more traditional approach focussing on income alone

Independent Review Of Social And Population Variation In Mental Health Could Improve Diagnosis In DSM Revisions

At stake in the May 2013 publication of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5), are billions of dollars in insurance payments and government resources, as well as the diagnoses and treatment of millions of patients. We argue that the most recent revision process has missed social determinants of mental health disorders and their diagnosis: environmental factors triggering biological responses that manifest themselves in behavior; differing cultural perceptions about what is normal and what is abnormal behavior; and institutional pressures related to such matters as insurance reimbursements, disability benefits, and pharmaceutical marketing. In addition, the experts charged with revising the DSM lack a systematic. way to take population-level variations in diagnoses into account. To address these problems, we propose the creation of an independent research review body that would monitor variations in diagnostic patterns, inform future DSM revisions, identify needed changes in mental health policy and practice, and recommend new avenues of research. Drawing on the best available knowledge, the review body would make possible more precise and equitable psychiatric diagnoses and interventions