Lawrence E. Hazelrigg

Older Adult Migration to the Sunbelt Assessing Income and Related Characteristics of Recent Migrants

Previous research has documented that, in the aggregate, older adult migrants to the Sunbelt tend to have higher average incomes than age-peer native residents. Using individual-level data on older Florida residents, the present study examines the extent to which this difference is due to compositional differences in factors that correlate with income, rather than to differences in income, per se. To compare specifically the income characteristics of the in-migrant and native portions of a places older population, it is necessary to standardize the two groups on other relevant characteristics. The analyses suggest that the income advantage of migrants occurs principally among those older adults who migrate in conjunction with the retirement decision, and that it results mainly from a self-selection process.

A Multilevel Model of Early Retirement Decisions among Autoworkers in Plants with Different Futures

During the period of their 1986-1989 General Motors (GM)-United Auto Workers (UAW) contract, about 17% of all GM autoworkers who were eligible to elect early retirement did so. Those who did were distinctive in theoretically expected ways, with expectations defined by individual characteristics such as age, physical health, and pension wealth. But some of the workers were employed in plants that GM had decided to abandon. Did that difference in organizational context make a difference in individual workers’ decisions about early retirement? Would workers who chose to take early retirement and who were employed in plants scheduled to close have made the same decision had their plants not been selected for closure? If the rate of early retirement was higher in plants scheduled to close, and it was, how did that difference relate to the process by which individual workers reached their decisions? These are some of the questions asked and answered through multilevel analyses of data from a probability sample of GM’s autoworkers. These analyses generate findings not detected in single-level analyses of the same data.

Is There a Choice Between “Constructionism” and “Objectivism”?

Recent debate concerning constructionist approaches to social problems theory has focused on the claim that constructionism offers a distinctive alternative to objectivism. Critics and, to some extent, proponents of constructionismseem to be in agreement that constructionism is flawed—that it labors in inconsistency with regard to the very question on which it claims to offer a distinctive alternative. But a reconsideration of the issues leads to the conclusion that both constructionism and the critique of constructionism are confounded in a common inconsistency of argument that includes objectivism as well. The task, then, is to move beyond not only both constructionist and objectivist approaches but also some of the terms in which the debate between them has been conducted. Accordingly, I consider some conditions of moving “beyond.”

Gender, race/ethnicity, and poverty in later life

Abstract A feminization of poverty among the elderly, as among the general population, of the United States has been documented both with aggregate and with individual-level data. Several scholars have recently argued that this feminization is not homogeneous by race/ethnicity. Using individual-level data from a survey representative of the resident population aged 55 or older in Florida, we examine the intersections of gender and race/ethnicity in the distribution of poverty risk at older ages. While the analyses offer some detailed specification of the conditions of poverty, they offer no evidence of gender-race/ethnic interactions in the likelihood of poverty.

Industrialization and the Circulatory Rate of Occupational Mobility: Further Tests of Some Cross-Sectional Hypotheses

Abstract Previous research has shown that an energy-consumption measure of industrial economy correlates moderately strongly with cross-national variation in the rate of father-to-son occupational mobility when the latter is measured as total or observed mobility but not when only the circulation component of status change is considered. In this paper we extend that line of research by examining the hypothesized relationships of six other measures or correlates of industrial development and growth: population distribution of educational attainments, extent of mass communications, urbanization, rate of geographic mobility, current and capital investments in education, and ethnic-linguistic diversity of population. Results of the analysis reproduce the earlier conclusion.

Reading Goffman's framing as provocation of a discipline *

This book is about the organization of experience something that an individual actor can take into his mind and not the organization of society. I make no claim whatsoever to be talking about the core matters of sociology social organization and social structure. Those matters have been and can continue to be quite nicely studied without reference to frame at all. I am not addressing the structure of social life but the structure of experience individuals have at any moment of their social lives. I personally hold society to be first in every way and any in? dividuals current involvements to be second; this report deals only with matters that are second. This book will have weaknesses enough in the areas it claims to deal with; there is no need to find limitations in regard to what it does not set about to cover. Of course, it can be argued that to focus on the nature of personal experiencing with the implication this can have for giving equally serious consideration to all matters that might momentarily concern the individual is itself a standpoint with marked political implications, and that these are conservative ones. The analysis developed does not catch at the differences between the advan? taged and disadvantaged classes and can be said to direct attention away from such matters. I think that is true. I can only suggest that he who would combat false consciousness and awaken people to their true interests has much to do, because the sleep is very deep. And I do not intend here to provide a lullaby but merely to sneak in and watch the way the people snore.

Labour Market Transitions and the Erosion of the Fordist Lifecycle: Discarding Older Workers in the Automobile Manufacturing and Banking Industries in the United States

The automobile manufacturing and banking industries provide ideal contrasting cases for analysing the changing nature of the employment contract and the resultant effect on older workers. In the auto industry the main thrust of firm activity has been to discard older workers who are viewed as dispensable because of their higher wages and health care costs compared to younger workers. The primary tactics employed have been to offer early retirement incentives and to extend overtime to older workers during periods of production increases instead of hiring younger workers. The prospect of a lengthy working week provides an additional incentive for older workers to retire. In the banking industry, older workers are viewed as costly and untrainable, and bank managers have taken every opportunity to discard them. In different ways, both industries illustrate a more general lack of concern with older workers as evidenced by the absence of worker retraining programmes and government efforts to encourage older worker retention in the U.S.

On theorizing the dynamics of process: A propaedeutic introduction

One crucial but sometimes overlooked fact regarding the difference between observation in the cross-section and observation over time must be stated before proceeding further. Tempting though it is to draw conclusions about the dynamics of a process from cross-sectional observations taken as a snapshot of that process, it is a fallacious practice except under a very precise condition that is highly unlikely to obtain in processes of interest to the social scientist. That condition is known as ergodicity.

The Sensitivity of Labor-Supply Decisions to Plant Closures and Labor-Market Characteristics During Corporate Downsizing

Using individual-level data from personnel records and interviews, company-level data on plant conditions and closures, and labor-market area data, this paper undertakes a multi-level analysis of the effects of clustered factors, keyed to production plants, on individual decisions of continued labor supply among production and skilled-trades workers in General Motors plants during the period of the late 1980s as GM was struggling to avoid bankruptcy by (among other tactics) trying to induce workers in targeted plants who were at or near retirement age to accept an incentive-to-retire package.