John C. Belcher

Aftermath of natural disasters: coping through residential mobility

Most studies of population movement have concentrated on the more developed nations and on trends that have not been influenced by man-made or natural disasters. The experience of developing countries in the Caribbean basin, as studied after the Guatemalan earthquake of 1976 and the impact of Hurricane David in the Dominican Republic of 1979, highlights the importance of socio-economic factors in the decision to make permanent migrations after a disaster, regardless of whether the migrant had personally suffered losses. In many cases the opportunities for personal betterment created by the disaster acted as a catalyst and accelerated a previously-existing trend of migration.

Dimensions of disengagement among black and white rural elderly.

This paper delineates the various dimensions of disengagement that have been suggested in the gerontological literature and tests hypotheses derived from three competing theoretical perspectives of aging (role, activity, and disengagement). Data used in the analysis come from a sample of 384 elderly respondents in rural Georgia county. None of the theoretical models successfully explained the relationships analyzed.

Lifestyle and Morale in the Southern Rural Aged

Recent theory and research in social gerontology have placed major emphasis on the relationship between activity and morale. Many dimensions and measures of activity have been employed in this research literature. The present research focuses on the lifestyle dimension, following the Maddox (1975) definition of lifestyle as systematic patterns of activity, and attempts to operationalize this concept in a systematic fashion. First, smallest space analysis is applied to data on the activities of a sample of Southern rural aged, identifying two distinct lifestyles. Next, measures of participation in these lifestyles are included as intervening variables in a multivariate causal analysis of the social determinants of individual morale. The results of this analysis suggest that the impact of activity for morale depends on the social organization of activity in the local setting. If so, this organization of activity, or lifestyle dimension, is critical to analyses of the relationship between activity and morale.

Style of life social class and fertility in the rural Dominican Republic

STYLES OF LIFE were shown to be a major determinant of fertility in Puerto Rico in a recent study by Belcher and Crader (1974). A major finding of their analysis was that within social classes there are significant variations in fertility which were related to life style. Especially noteworthy was that the life style approach differentiated within the large lower class group that appeared to be homogeneous in terms of criteria such as income, education, and occupation. This analysis reports a replication of the Puerto Rican study that was made in the Dominican Republic. Both countries are predominantly Catholic, Spanish speaking, and occupy adjacent islands of the Caribbean. The Domini-