Crossing Generations
The Role of Child Perception and Motivation in Political Socialization
Peter Hatemi & Christopher Ojeda
British Journal of Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Most of what is known regarding political socialization treats parent-child concordance as evidence of transmission. This direct-transmission approach remains agnostic regarding how socialization occurs, whether traits have a role in a child's ability to identify and understand their parent's values or their motivation to adopt their parents' values. This article advances a perception-adoption approach to unpack these microprocesses of socialization. The authors test their model using three independent studies in the United States that together comprise 4,852 parent-child dyads. They find that the transmission of partisan orientations from parent to child occurs less than half the time, which is qualitatively different from the generally held view. More importantly, the findings provide a greater understanding of how key predictors facilitate the political socialization process. Specifically, politicization improves child perception, but has no role in the child's motivation to adopt parental values. Closeness and parental value strength influence children to want to be like their parents, but do nothing to improve children's ability to recognize their parents' values. And education, previously thought to have little role in transmission, does not influence a child's ability to understand their parent's affiliation, but appears to make children more likely to reject whatever they believe it to be.
Vulnerable Boys: Short-Term and Long-Term Gender Differences in the Impacts of Adolescent Disadvantage
Ziteng Lei & Shelly Lundberg
University of California Working Paper, January 2020
Abstract:
The growing gender gap in educational attainment between men and women has raised concerns that the skill development of boys may be more sensitive to family disadvantage than that of girls. Using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) data we find, as do previous studies, that boys are more likely to experience increased problems in school relative to girls, including suspensions and reduced educational aspirations, when they are in poor quality schools, less-educated neighborhoods, and father-absent households. Following these cohorts into young adulthood, however, we find no evidence that adolescent disadvantage has stronger negative impacts on long-run economic outcomes such as college graduation, employment, or income for men, relative to women. We do find that father absence is more strongly associated with men's marriage and childbearing and weak support for greater male vulnerability to disadvantage in rates of high school graduation. An investigation of adult outcomes for another recent cohort from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1997 produces a similar pattern of results. We conclude that focusing on gender differences in behavior in school may not lead to valid inferences about the effects of disadvantage on adult skills.
Hope for the Family: The Effects of College Costs on Maternal Labor Supply
Breno Braga & Olga Malkova
University of Kentucky Working Paper, February 2020
Abstract:
We examine the effects of college costs on the labor supply of mothers. Exploiting changes in college costs after the roll-out of nine generous state merit aid programs from 1993 to 2004, we analyze the difference in the labor supply of mothers before and after these programs were implemented. Mothers of college-age children decreased their annual hours of work after the start of a generous merit aid program, while fathers did not adjust their labor supply. There is no strong evidence that mothers changed their employment status, as most of the decrease in hours of work happened among employed mothers. Mothers of college-going children are entirely responsible for the decline in hours of work, where mothers of children who did not go to college experienced no change in hours of work. A 10 percent increase in spending on merit aid programs per undergraduate student leads to a 1.3 percent decline in hours of work among mothers of college-going children. The decline in labor supply is mainly due to adjustments among married, highly educated, and white mothers.
The Economic Impact of Education Spending: Evidence from Self-Employed Households
Olivia Kim
MIT Working Paper, January 2020
Abstract:
I examine the consumption and labor decisions of self-employed households when a child goes to college using unique financial transactions data from the linked accounts of small businesses and their owners. Households respond to the increase in education spending by downsizing business production and exiting self-employment. They increase medical and restaurant expenditures and cut back on mortgage payments. While education spending hampers business survival, self-employed parents become wage-earners or enter the gig economy after exiting to meet the financial obligations of sending kids to college.
Medication Abortion Use among Low-income and Rural Texans Before and During State-Imposed Restrictions and After FDA-updated Labeling
Vinita Goyal et al.
American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, forthcoming
Background: In 2013, the Texas legislature passed House Bill 2 (HB2) restricting use of medication abortion to comply with FDA labeling from 2000. The FDA updated its labeling for medication abortion in 2016, alleviating some of the burdens imposed by HB2.
Study Design: In this retrospective study, we collected patient zip code, county of residence, type of abortion, family size, and income data on all patients who received an abortion (medication or aspiration) from seven Texas abortion clinics in three time periods: pre-HB2 (July 1, 2012-June 30, 2013), during HB2 (April 1, 2015-March 30, 2016), and post-FDA labeling update (April 1, 2016-March 30, 2017). Patient driving distance to the clinic where care was obtained was categorized as 1-24, 25-49, 50-99, or 100+ miles. Patient's county of residence was categorized by availability of a clinic during HB2 (open clinic), county with an HB2-related clinic closure (closed clinic), or no clinic any time period. Patient income was categorized as ?110% federal poverty level (low-income) and >110% federal poverty level. Change in medication abortion use in the three time periods by patient driving distance, residence in a county with an open clinic, and income status were evaluated using chi-squared tests and logistic regression. We used geospatial mapping to depict the spatial distribution of patients who obtained medication abortion in each time period.
Results: Among 70,578 abortion procedures, medication abortion comprised 26%, 7%, and 29% of cases pre-HB2, during HB2, and post-FDA labeling update, respectively. During HB2, patients traveling 100+ miles compared to 1-24 miles were less likely to use medication abortion (OR 0.21, 95% CI 0.15, 0.30), as were low compared to higher-income patients, (OR 0.76, 95% CI 0.68, 0.85), and low-income, distant patients (aOR 0.14, 95% CI 0.08, 0.25). Similarly, post-FDA labeling update, rebound in medication abortion use was less pronounced for patients traveling 100+ miles compared to 1-24 miles (OR 0.82, CI 0.74, 0.91), lower compared to higher income patients (OR 0.77, 95% CI 0.72, 0.81), and low-income, distant patients (aOR 0.80, 95%CI 0.68, 0.94). Post-FDA labeling update, patients residing in counties with HB2-related clinic closures were less likely to receive medication abortion as driving distance increased (52% traveling 25-49 miles, 41% traveling 50-99 miles, and 26% traveling 100+ miles, p<0.05). Geospatial mapping demonstrated that patients traveled from all over the state to receive medication abortion pre-HB2 and post-FDA labeling update, whereas during HB2, only those living in or near a county with an open clinic obtained medication abortion.
No genetic contribution to variation in human offspring sex ratio: A total population study of 4.7 million births
Brendan Zietsch et al.
Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences, 19 February 2020
Abstract:
The ratio of males to females among an individual's offspring at birth (offspring sex ratio) has long been of great interest to evolutionary biologists. The human offspring sex ratio is around 1 : 1 and is understood primarily in terms of Fisher's principle (R. A. Fisher, The genetical theory of natural selection, 1930), which is based on the insight that in a population with an unequal sex ratio, each individual of the rarer sex will on average have greater reproductive value than each individual of the more common sex. Accordingly, individuals genetically predisposed to produce the rarer sex will tend to have greater fitness and thus genes predisposing to bearing that sex will increase in frequency until the population sex ratio approaches 1 : 1. An assumption of this perspective is that individuals' offspring sex ratio is heritable. However, the heritability in humans remains remarkably uncertain, with inconsistent findings and important power limitations of existing studies. To address this persistent uncertainty, we used data from the entire Swedish-born population born 1932 or later, including 3 543 243 individuals and their 4 753 269 children. To investigate whether offspring sex ratio is influenced by genetic variation, we tested the association between individuals' offspring's sex and their siblings' offspring's sex (n pairs = 14 015 421). We estimated that the heritability for offspring sex ratio was zero, with an upper 95% confidence interval of 0.002, rendering Fisher's principle and several other existing hypotheses untenable as frameworks for understanding human offspring sex ratio.