John R. Reynolds

Social Stratification and Health: Education's Benefit Beyond Economic Status and Social Origins

Stratification research has established educations critical role in the intergenerational transmission of parental socioeconomic status to adult work and economic status. However, almost no research examines the intergenerational processes by which socioeconomic origins affect adult physical and psychological well-being. Furthermore, stratification theories disagree on whether education endows people with meaningful skills, or whether education merely represents a symbolic marker used to pass on socioeconomic advantage from one generation to the next. Using data from the 1987-1988 National Survey of Families and Households and the 1995 Aging, Status, and the Sense of Control Survey, we compare the effects of social origins, education, work, and economicstatus on physical and psychological well-being. Education is one of the strongest predictors of both physical and psychological well-being in both surveys, and its effects are not spuriously due to socioeconomic origins. Education has positive effects on well-being beyond the access it provides to privileged positions in the economy and higher incomes. People from high and low statuses benefit from more years of education. Finally, effects of parental education, fathers occupation, and childhood poverty on adult well-being are largely mediated by respondents education and its consequences for work and economic resources. However, some aspects of social origins, especially the experience of poverty in childhood, continue to affect adult well-being even accounting for ones own socioeconomic status.

Race, Segregation, and the Concentration of Disadvantage: 1980–1990

This article examines variation across cities in the geographic concentration of poverty, male joblessness, and female-headed families for Blacks and Whites. For each racial group, we describe the scope and analyze the sources of concentrated disadvantage along these dimensions for 1980 and 1990, and for changes between these two years. We explore whether patterns found in past research regarding poverty concentration are generalizable to the concentration of other aspects of disadvantage, including joblessness. Analysis of the sources of concentrated disadvantage focus on the differential role of racial residential segregation for explaining variation in concentrated disadvantage between Blacks and Whites. These relationships are evaluated while accounting for other economic and sociodemographic conditions. We find that: between 1980 and 1990 Black and White disadvantage became more geographically concentrated along some dimensions (poverty and female-headed families) but not others (male joblessness); no matter which dimension is explored, African Americans have a substantially higher concentration of disadvantage than Whites; and, racial residential segregation is critical for understanding concentrated disadvantage and especially for explaining why disadvantaged Blacks are so much more geographically concentrated than disadvantaged Whites.

The Job Costs of Family Demands Gender Differences in Negative Family-to-Work Spillover

This article uses the 1992 National Study of the Changing Workforce to examine family and workplace factors contributing to gender differences in negative family-to-work spillover. We focus on spillover as manifested when family demands negatively affect job performance. Among married workers, women were twice as likely as men to report that family demands negatively affect their job performance. This finding is due, in part, to the fact that women made more adjustments to their workloads—such as refusing overtime or turning down assignments—for the sake of family. Ordered probit analysis suggests that job characteristics are more salient than family factors for predicting the likelihood that family demands will detract from job performance and for explaining the gender gap in negative family-to-work spillover. Working in a demanding job or having little job autonomy was associated with more negative family-to-work spillover regardless of gender, while greater scheduling flexibility mitigated the gender gap.

Rising College Expectations among Youth in the United States: A Comparison of the 1979 and 1997 NLSY

We examine the rise in college expectations among 15- and 16-year-olds in the 1979 and 1997 NLSY. Probit models estimate the effects of gender, race/ethnicity, family characteristics, and local economic conditions on the probability of expecting a college degree. Race/ethnic differences and the influences of family resources and county economic conditions declined between 1979 and 1997. In contrast, girls became more likely to expect a college degree than boys, and family structure grew in importance over time. Family resources and structure appear to shape expectations largely through differences in school peers, teacher quality and interest, and past academic performance.

Racial Mismatch in the Classroom: Beyond Black-White Differences.

Previous research demonstrates that students taught by teachers of the same race and ethnicity receive more positive behavioral evaluations than students taught by teachers of a different race/ethnicity. Many researchers view these findings as evidence that teachers, mainly white teachers, are racially biased due to preferences stemming from racial stereotypes that depict some groups as more academically oriented than others. Most of this research has been based on comparisons of only black and white students and teachers and does not directly test if other nonwhite students fare better when taught by nonwhite teachers. Analyses of Asian, black, Hispanic, and white 10th graders in the 2002 Education Longitudinal Study confirm that the effects of mismatch often depend on the racial/ethnic statuses of both the teacher and the student, controlling for a variety of school and student characteristics. Among students with white teachers, Asian students are usually viewed more positively than white students, while black students are perceived more negatively. White teachers’ perceptions of Hispanic students do not typically differ from those of white students. Postestimation comparisons of slopes indicate that Asian students benefit (perceptionwise) from having white teachers, but they reveal surprisingly few instances when black students would benefit (again, perceptionwise) from having more nonwhite teachers.

Age, depression, and attrition in the national survey of families and households

It might seem that following people over time provides the best indication of how people change with age. Sample attrition can undermine that assumption. This study describes the impact of health, impairment, and depression on attrition in the National Survey of Families and Households. It analyzes the impact of that attrition on estimates of the age-specific changes in depression over a six-year period. In doing so, it illustrates methods for assessing and perhaps correcting the effects of attrition. Results show that the cross-sectional relationship of baseline depression to age differs sharply for those who later drop out compared with those who stay in. Much of the difference, but not all, vanishes with adjustment for health and impairment. The probability of dropping out increases with poor health, impairment, and depression at baseline. The impact of impairment and depression on attrition increases with age. Panel models that ignore the attrition imply that depression decreases in old age. Models that adjust for the hazard of attrition imply that depression rises by an amount that increases with age.

Neither a borrower nor a lender be: the relative importance of debt and SES for mental health among older adults.

Objective:This study examines the impact of indebtedness on depressive symptomatology, anxiety, and anger. Method: We use data from a two-wave panel study of adults in Miami-Dade County. The analytic sample consists of 1,463 mostly older respondents with valid data on all study measures, including education, income, occupational status, wealth, and debt. Results: We find that indebtedness is common and is associated with more symptoms of depression, anxiety, and anger. It is weakly associated with other aspects of socioeconomic status (SES), and thus not redundant with them. In fact, in this sample, debtor status is more consistently associated with mental health than any other single traditional indicator of SES, its effect does not vary across income or other aspects of SES, and fears of never paying off debt account for its negative impact on mental health. Discussion: These findings affirm health scholars’ calls for more complete measures of SES.

Is There a Downside to Shooting for the Stars? Unrealized Educational Expectations and Symptoms of Depression.

Despite decades of research on the benefits of educational expectations, researchers have failed to show that unrealized plans are consequential for mental health, as self-discrepancy and other social psychological theories would predict. This article uses two national longitudinal studies of youth to test whether unrealized educational expectations are associated with depression in adulthood. Negative binomial regression analyses show that unmet expectations are associated with a greater risk of depression among young adults who share similar educational expectations. The apparent consequences of aiming high and falling short result, however, from lower attainment, not the gap between plans and attainment. Results indicate almost no long-term emotional costs of ‘‘shooting for the stars’’ rather than planning for the probable, once educational attainment is taken into account. This lack of association also holds after accounting for early mental health, the magnitude of the shortfall, the stability of expectations, and college-related resources, and it is robust across two distinct cohorts of high school students. We develop a theory of ‘‘adaptive resilience’’ to account for these findings and, because aiming high and failing are not consequential for mental health, conclude that society should not dissuade unpromising students from dreams of college.

EMPLOYEE AWARENESS OF FAMILY LEAVE BENEFITS: The Effects of Family, Work, and Gender

The 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) was intended to help employees meet short-term family demands, such as caring for children and elderly parents, without losing their jobs. However, recent evidence suggests that few women and even fewer men employees avail themselves of family leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act. This paper examines the organizational, worker status, and salience/need factors associated with knowledge of family leave benefits. We study employees covered by the FMLA using the 1996 panel of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to ascertain what work and family factors influence knowledge of leave benefits. Overall, 91 percent of employed FMLA-eligible women report they have access to unpaid family leave, compared to 72 percent of men. Logistic regression analyses demonstrate that work situations more than family situations affect knowledge of family leave benefits and that gender shapes the impact of some work and family factors on awareness. Furthermore, work and family situations do not explain away the considerable gender difference in knowledge of family leave.

Major Life Events: Their Personal Meaning, Resolution, and Mental Health Significance*

Researchers have employed varying strategies in an effort to better understand variation in responses to stress. This article argues that crisis theory makes a useful contribution to these efforts, particularly when studying variable response to major life events that are of high threat potential. Regression analyses of depressive symptomatology, mastery, and self-esteem in a community sample of adults (n = 1,542) provide preliminary support for the central tenets of crisis theory that specify the conditions under which experienced events are minimally and maximally hazardous. The results also offer mixed support for the proposition that successfully resolved crises can even yield emotional and coping benefits. Longitudinal models and further development of survey-based measures for distinguishing the occurrence of a crisis and assessing the adequacy of its resolution are needed to more thoroughly test crisis theory.