Cheryl Elman

The Race Is to the Swift: Socioeconomic Origins, Adult Education, and Wage Attainment

The “winners” in today’s winner‐take‐all labor markets are differentiated by advanced levels of educational attainment, especially higher degrees. This article applies a sociological model of cumulative dis/advantage to the baby‐boom cohort to examine whether life course timing differences in educational attainment help explain wage differentials by midlife. It finds that advantaged social origins lead to early postsecondary completion of degrees, which, in turn, yield higher wages. A pathway of cumulative disadvantage is also evident, where those least advantaged exit schooling early in life, do not return as adults, and earn low wages. In a middle path, advantaged social origins promote adult school attainment primarily for those without degrees but generally without the wage boosts associated with attainment earlier in life.

Geographic morbidity differentials in the late nineteenth-century united states

We use a national cross-sectional database, the 1880 Integrated Public Use Microdata Sample, to examine aggregate patterns and individual-level estimates of chronic-disease morbidity and long-term disability in the United States in the late nineteenth century. Despite higher levels of urban mortality in 1880, morbidity prevalence rates were highest in the rural areas of the country, especially in the western and the southern regions. Equations using microdata show that the estimated risk of chronic disease and impairment was highest for males and females who were older, of lower socioeconomic status, or from rural areas. This era was marked by geographically uneven but significant levels of endemic chronic disease, likely the outcomes of prior episodes of infectious disease and exposure to conditions generated by human action, such as the Civil War and migration.

Midlife Work Pathways and Educational Entry

This study examines how work pathways intersect with the pursuit of education andvocational training at midlife. The authors link two waves of the National Survey ofFamilies and Households (NSFH) to focus on respondents ages 42 to 62 at the secondwave (1992-94; n = 3,417). First, they differentiate work pathways by examiningsequences of employment and nonemployment or unemployment spells. It is foundthat initial inequalities in educational attainment are amplified and increase over thelife course, in a nonlinear manner. Work discontinuity is significantly related to poorhealth, lack of pensions, and life trajectories marked by low socioeconomic status.Gender, race, and life-course events also influence work mobility. In turn, educationalreentry and training at midlife are associated with resources, work pathway type, andearly educational achievement. The interdependence of work pathways and midlifeeducational reentry patterns may further differentiate the trajectories between workand retirement in future older cohorts.

The Economic Resource Receipt of New Mothers

U.S. federal policies do not provide a universal social safety net of economic support for women during pregnancy or the immediate postpartum period but assume that employment and/or marriage will protect families from poverty. Yet even mothers with considerable human and marital capital may experience disruptions in employment, earnings, and family socioeconomic status postbirth. We use the National Survey of Families and Households to examine the economic resources that mothers with children ages 2 and younger receive postbirth, including employment, spouses, extended family and social network support, and public assistance. Results show that many new mothers receive resources postbirth. Marriage or postbirth employment does not protect new mothers and their families from poverty, but education, race, and the receipt of economic supports from social networks do.

Sociohistorical and Demographic Perspectives on U.S. Remarriage in 1910

Many scholars have noted the theoretical importance of remarriage in twentieth-century American life (Burch 1995; Cherlin 1998; Furstenberg 1980; Glick 1980; Thornton 1977; Uhlenberg and Chew 1986), yet few historical studies have examined remarriage in the United States empirically. This gap in the literature is noteworthy for two reasons. First, the turn of the twentieth century seems to have marked a crossover in the remarriage transition of the United States, reflecting changes in the pool of persons eligible to remarry. This transition was characterized by decreases in remarriage resulting from declines in mortality and the probability of widow(er)hood, followed by increases in remarriage resulting from higher divorce rates. The crossover in the transition was likely to have occurred when the pool of eligibles was at or near its nadir. Second, there is ongoing debate about the implications of remarriage for families and individuals (Booth and Dunn 1994), and about the impacts of remarriage on family functions (Cherlin 1978; Cherlin and Furstenberg 1994). In the light of these considerations, we believe it is important to examine remarriage and its consequences in the United States at the turn of the century so that we may better understand the ways that remarriage influences family life and shapes the life course of persons within families (see London and Elman 2001).

Age- and sex-differentials in morbidity at the start of an epidemiological transition: Returns from the 1880 U.S. Census

This paper uses a new data set, the Public Use file of the 1880 U.S. Census of the Population, to examine national point prevalence rates of adult morbidity over the early phase of the United States epidemiologic transition. These historical data report health status at the individual level and allow the analysis of age and sex differentials in morbidity. Point prevalence rates of morbidity by major cause show that males generally had higher rates of morbidity and long-term disability than females, especially at mid-life and in old age. But large sex differences in the distribution of conditions by major cause occurred over two portions of the life course: in early adulthood and in old age. Age and sex differences in the distribution of adult morbidity reflected the health status divide of the communicable and degenerative conditions.

The Influence of Remarriage on the Racial Difference in Mother-Only Families in 1910

Historical demography documents that mother-only families were more common among African Americans than among Euro-Americans early in the twentieth century. We find direct evidence that African American males in both first and higher-order marriages were more likely to have (re)married previously married women and were more likely to have (re)married women with children. This racial difference in (re)marital partner choice reduced the racial difference in the prevalence of mother-only families such that, in the absence of such remarriage choices, the prevalence of mother-only families in the turn-of-the-century African American population would have been even higher than has been reported. Remarriage in this period countered the various demographic, economic, cultural, and social-institutional forces that disproportionately destabilized African American marriages; it must be taken into account more fully by analysts concerned with racial differences in family structure.

Extending Public Health: The Rockefeller Sanitary Commission and Hookworm in the American South

The Rockefeller Sanitary Commission for the Eradication of Hookworm Disease (1909-1914) fielded a philanthropic public health project that had three goals: to estimate hookworm prevalence in the American South, provide treatment, and eradicate the disease. Activities covered 11 Southern states, and Rockefeller teams found that about 40% of the population surveyed was infected. However, the commission met strong resistance and lacked the time and resources to achieve universal county coverage and meet project goals. We explore how these constraints triggered project changes that systematically reshaped project operations and the characteristics of the counties surveyed and treated. We show that county selectivity reduced the projects initial potential to affect hookworm prevalence estimates, treatment, and eradication in the American South.

The Midlife Years: Human Capital and Job Mobility

What does midlife hold for today’s U.S. working adults? Until recently, the modern life course was arranged around three distinct life stages: schooling in youth, work/family responsibilities over the middle adult years, and retirement in the later adult years. This tripartite division of the life course (Kohli 1986) was underpinned by normative expectations about role transitions due to age-grading (Mayer and Schoepflin 1989; Settersten 1998) and cohort socialization (Easterlin 1987). The timing and sequencing of role transitions within each life stage – although often gender-segregated into midlife work careers for men and family careers for women – then constituted, until recently, fairly predictable life course pathways, interwoven as the substance of individual lives (Elder 1975). However, the tripartite division, also rooted in state policies and industrial production methods of the mid-twentieth century, is becoming more blurred, associated with recent economic restructuring (Heinz 2003; Mayer and Schoepflin 1989; Myles 1990). A shift in work regimes, from mass production to flexible production, is reshaping midlife work arrangements and perhaps the conditions of employability itself (Myles 1990; Vallas 1999).

Fundamental resource dis/advantages, youth health and adult educational outcomes

Recent studies find lasting effects of poor youth health on educational attainment but use young samples and narrow life course windows of observation to explore outcomes. We apply a life course framework to three sets of Health and Retirement Study birth cohorts to examine early health status effects on education and skills attainment measured late in life. The older cohorts that we study were the earliest recipients of U.S. policies promoting continuing education through the GI Bill, community college expansions and new credentials such as the GED. We examine a wide range of outcomes but focus on GEDs, postsecondary school entry and adult human capital as job-related training. We find that older U.S. cohorts had considerable exposure to these forms of attainment and that the effects of youth health on them vary by outcome: health selection and ascription group effects are weak or fade, respectively, in outcomes associated with delayed or adult attainment. However, poorer health and social disadvantage in youth and barriers associated with ascription carry forward to limit attainment of key credentials such as diplomas and college degrees. We find that the human capital - health gradient is dynamic and that narrow windows of observation in existing studies miss much of it. National context also matters for studying health-education linkages over the life course.