Ideological Positions of Hispanic College Students in the Rio Grande Valley: Using a Two-Dimensional Model to Account for Domestic Policy Preference

While a good amount of research has been conducted regarding the voting behavior of Hispanics in the United States, there is a dearth of analysis of the underlying ideologies of members of this ethnic group, especially in contrast to their partisan self-identifications. This is especially true of one particular sub-category: Hispanics along the Rio Grande Valley of south Texas, of whom a majority consistently vote Democrat, but whose personal values would seem to make them a natural constituency for issue positions associated with the Republican Party (Garrett, 2010). The goal of this study is to analyze the ideological positions of a subset of Hispanics in the Rio Grande Valley who tend to vote overwhelmingly Democrat: Hispanic college students. Building on Feldman and Johnston’s (2014) work (see also Gerber et al. [2010]), where they argue that a unidimensional model of ideology provides an incomplete basis for the study of political ideology, we employ two dimensions — economic and social ideology — as the minimum needed to account for domestic policy preference. The core of the study is a taxonomic analysis of an initial survey of approximately 150 students taking Government courses at South Texas College, a public community college in the Rio Grande Valley (RGV) region of south Texas, with a student population that is over 90% Hispanic. Based on survey results, students are placed on a quadrant-based ideological chart, including Left/Liberal, Right/Conservative, Libertarian, and Communitarian/Statist (along with Centrist, which overlaps portions of all four ideological categories). In addition, using recent American National Election Studies (ANES) datasets, we compare how our samples (RGV college students) are different from the general U.S. population, employing a Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to locate each respondent on the quadratic space (social & economic positions). The impetus for this study was anecdotal evidence in the authors’ classes; we had assumed that, since voters in the Rio Grande Valley tend to heavily favor Democrats, student ideologies would tend towards Liberal/Center-Left. However, we observed that in informal in-class ideological surveys (such as the four-quadrant “Nolan Quiz” published by the Advocates for Self-Government), a surprising number of students tended towards the Libertarian and Left-Libertarian ideologies, along with a significant number in the Center-Right and Conservative quadrants. Our goal was to see if this held true when using a more robust survey and larger samples. It was hypothesized, and the results verified, that Hispanic college students tend to take policy positions that place them more in the Center/Left and Center/Libertarian quadrants

Income Inequality, Social Mobility, and Electoral Participation in the U.S. Counties: Revisiting the Inequality-Participation Nexus

Previous research has provided contested hypotheses about the impact of income inequality on electoral participation. This study reexamines the debate between conflict and relative power theories by focusing on a largely ignored factor: social mobility. We argue that social mobility conditions the inequality-participation nexus by alleviating the frustration, class conflict, and efficacy gaps between the rich and the poor that the prevailing theories assume income inequality to create. By utilizing the Cooperative Congressional Election Survey, we test this argument focusing on US counties. Our analysis confirms that the effects of income inequality on citizens’ likelihood of voting vary depending on mobility, suggesting that social mobility provides a crucial context in which income inequality can play out in substantially different ways. This article implies that more scholarly endeavors should be made to clarify the multifaceted structure of inequality for improving our understanding of the relationship between economic and political inequality

Race, inequality, and social capital in the U.S. counties

This study examines how the interplay between racial diversity and economic inequality affects variations of social capital in the U.S. counties. In general, racial and economic heterogeneity is assumed to provide a negative environment for the growth of social capital. Building on this, we argue the effect of economic inequality is weaker than that of racial diversity because increased economic heterogeneity is felt less visibly and acutely than racial heterogeneity. Moreover, economic inequality can positively condition the adverse impact of racial diversity on social capital when the two interact. Based on the crosscutting cleavages theory, income inequality in a racially fragmented community works as an additional cleavage that crosscuts the different racial groups, mitigating the negative impact of racial diversity on social capital. The data analysis of 3,140 U.S. counties in 2009-2014 provides strong evidence for our arguments. Our findings offer important implications in understanding inequality, race and American democracy

Economic Inequality and Political Participation in East Asian Democracies: The Role of Perceived Income Inequality and Intergenerational Mobility

This study examines how perceptions of economic inequality affect political participation focusing on East Asian democracies. It develops nuanced predictions on how perceptions of income inequality and social mobility and their interplay affect individuals’ engagement in various types of political activities in six East Asian democracies. Using the fourth wave of the Asian Barometer Survey, we examine novel arguments built upon the existing inequality-participation nexus. Our analysis suggests that inequality is a multifaceted concept, and the mechanisms of the inequality-participation nexus could vary depending on the regional, socioeconomic, and political context

Cultural Foundations of Contentious Democracy in South Korea

This study takes a cultural approach to examine the unstable and contentious nature of Korean democracy. Analyzing an original nationwide survey conducted in 2015, we find that the democratic and participatory culture of the Korean people underlies Korean democracy. This finding suggests substantial tension between the participatory orientation of the public and Korean representative democracy

Data on race, inequality, and social capital in the U.S. counties

This article presents data on social capital at the United States’ county-level. Following Rupasingha et al. (2006), the social capital index captures the common factor among density measures of 10 different types of associations, voter turnout rates, U.S. decennial census participation rates, and the number of non-profit organizations. Based on Knack (2003), we create associational densities measures as a proxy for both bridging and bonding social capital. Including data on income inequality, racial diversity, minority group size, average household income, educational attainment, the ratio of a family household, the size of migration population, and female labor market participation rates, the data covers 3,104 U.S. counties for both 2009 and 2014. This paper includes descriptive statistics and figures. This data article is associated with the article “Race, Inequality, and Social Capital in the U.S. Counties.

Experiences of Depression in Low Income Elderly Women

PURPOSE: The purpose of this qualitative research was to understand the meaning of the depression in low income elderly women. METHODS: Participants were 15 elderly women, aged between 60 and 80 who were registered in two senior welfare centers in Seoul. Data were collected from June to December, 2012 after having obtained consent from participants. In-depth interviews were done with open-ended questions about their depression experiences, which were audio-taped and transcribed with verbatim. Data were analyzed using qualitative content analysis to discover the categories considering their relationships and abstractness. RESULTS: Depressions of aged women were a part of the their life throughout their long lived hardship and was implied unhealed wounds within the relationship. Participants did not know how to manage with depression symptoms that they tried to overcome individually but due to decreased activities and interpersonal relationships, their depressions were tended to continue. They have tried to get out from depressive symptoms, but it still remains unseen shadow of mind. CONCLUSION: This results suppose that social support and aged welfare policy included reliving the economical difficulty and improving relationships will be provided to manage the depression for low income elderly women