Lingxin Hao

HIV STATUS AND UNION DISSOLUTION IN SUB- SAHARAN AFRICA: THE CASE OF RAKAI, UGANDA*

Little is known about the impact of HIV infection on the disruption of families through separation, divorce, and widowhood. Using life tables and multinomial logistic regression, this research examined the influence of HIV status on the risk of separation or divorce and widowhood among women in Rakai, Uganda. The multivariate results revealed that dissolution is more common among HIV-infected women and that infected women in HIV-discordant couples are especially likely to face separation or divorce than women in other HIV-status couples. These results highlight women’s vulnerability to the social impact of HIV infection and the importance of dyadic studies of the disruption of unions.

Wealth of immigrant and native-born Americans

This study hypothesizes nativity differences in the process of wealth accumulation with regards to accumulation rates, dissaving rates, the role of human capital, saving intention for children, and structural barriers to wealth accumulation. Based on an analysis of the 1992 and 1993 panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), it reports four major findings. First, levels of net worth, life cycle patterns, and wealth components are primarily stratified by national origin and race-ethnicity rather than by nativity. Second, when immigrants’ adult years in the United States are taken into account, the life cycle pattern of wealth of the post-1965 immigrants catches up with that of natives within 22 years of arrival and then overtakes natives. Third, the process of wealth accumulation is similar for immigrants and natives in all but two respects – for immigrants, education is discounted and adult years in the United States matter. Lastly, spatial segregation has a uniform negative effect on wealth for both immigrants and natives.

Games Parents and Adolescents Play: Risky Behaviors, Parental Reputation, and Strategic Transfers

This paper examines parental reputation formation in intra-familial interactions. In a repeated two-stage game, children decide whether to drop out of high school or daughters decide whether to have births as teens and parents then decide whether to provide support to their children beyond age 18. Drawing on Milgrom and Roberts (1982) and Kreps and Wilson (1982), we show that, under certain conditions, parents have the incentive to penalize older children for their adolescent risk-taking behaviours in order to dissuade their younger children from such behaviours when reaching adolescence. We find evidence in favour of this parental reputation model.

Distinct Trajectories in the Transition to Adulthood: Are Children of Immigrants Advantaged?

Studies on children of immigrants have generally ignored distinct developmental trajectories during adolescence and their role in the transition to adulthood. This study identifies distinct trajectories in cognitive, sociobehavioral, and psychological domains and estimates their consequences for young adults. Drawing data from a nationally representative sample of 10,795 adolescents aged 13-17 who were followed up to ages 25-32, the study uses growth mixture modeling to test advantages for children of immigrants. The analysis shows a 1.5-generation advantage in academic achievement and school engagement, as well as a weaker second-generation advantage in academic achievement, but no disadvantage in depression for children of immigrants. In addition, these results hold for children of Hispanic origin. Theoretical and policy implications are discussed.

Poverty, Public Assistance, and Children in Intact and Single-Mother Families

This article examines the effects of poverty, public assistance, and family structure on school-age childrens home environment and developmental outcomes using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. The central question of this study is whether public support negatively affects school-age childrens developmental outcomes, thereby contributing to the intergenerational transmission of welfare dependency. The results show that long duration and late timing of poverty have a detrimental effect on home environment and child developmental outcomes. Long duration of public assistance disturbs reading ability for children of intact families only. Late timing of public assistance actually enhances the cognitive and emotional environment and has a greater effect on the emotional environment for single-mother families. Long duration and late timing of single motherhood are detrimental to the emotional environment. Taken together, the findings suggest that the process of intergenerational transmission of welfare dependency during school-age years is primarily attributable to poverty and single motherhood rather than the duration and timing of public assistance.

Immigrants’ Welfare Use and Opportunity for Contact With Co-Ethnics*

In this article we examine the relationship between immigrants’ welfare use and their social capital, using the 1990 census. We measure community social capital using contact with co-ethnics and coethnics’ economic inactivity, and examine the use of AFDC and SSI in two subpopulations: single-mother families and elderly units. Major findings are that the effects of social capital differ between immigrant single-mother families and elderly units; the effects of social capital differ between the young-at-arrival elderly and the old-at-arrival elderly; and the process of AFDC use is similar for immigrants and for natives, whereas the process of SSI use is more complicated for immigrants than for natives.

Immigration and the American Obesity Epidemic.

Immigration is an important population dynamic at work in the U.S., but we know little about its impact on American obesity. Built on nutrition transition and immigration theories, this paper provides explanations for immigrants’ initial body composition advantage, its partial erosion over time, and the gender difference in the erosion. We find evidence that the American obesity epidemic would be much more severe without the mass immigration that began in 1965. In addition to confirming the erosion in immigrants’ body composition advantage, we further find that this erosion is weaker for men than for women. Once immigrations impact is teased out, racial/ethnic disparities in body composition greatly differ from what we observe. This study provides gender-specific estimates for the differences in obesity by nativity and residence duration and the net level of Hispanic-white and Asian-white disparities at the mean body mass index (BMI) as well as the overweight, Stage-1, and Stage-2 obesity cutoffs. Our findings suggest that immigration must be taken into account when addressing public health concerns.

Cumulative Causation of Rural Migration and Initial Peri-Urbanization in China.

This article posits that rural migration feeds the high demand for cheap labor in peri-urbanization, which is driven by globalization, flows of foreign capital, and entrepreneurial local governments. While the gravity model and push/pull perspective ignore the dynamics of the migratory course, we use the cumulative causation of migration theory to conceptualize social expectations for out-migration and social resources from migrant networks in destinations. Four major findings are drawn from this demographic analysis based on microdata from Chinas 2000 Census. First, as suggested by the cumulative migration theory, greater previous out-migration significantly increases subsequent out-migration, a process that appears to be independent of push factors. Second, foreign direct investment (FDI) contributes to attracting rural labor migrants from other provinces to peri-urban areas as it does to cities. Third, social resources from migrant networks play an important role in attracting rural labor migrants to both city and noncity destinations. Fourth, the importance of wage differentials declines in gravitating rural labor migrants to peri-urban areas. These findings provide tentative evidence that rural labor migration is indispensable during initial peri-urbanization. Infused with flows of FDI and entrepreneurial local governments, rural migration has created a favorable initial condition for peri-urbanization.

Two Aspects of the Rural-Urban Divide and Educational Stratification in China: A Trajectory Analysis.

Contextualized in Chinas social change of the past half-century, this article conceptualizes the two aspects of Chinas rural-urban divide in educational inequality—the household registration system (hukou) assigns people to a hierarchy, and the rural-urban schooling system institutionalizes unequal resource distribution and diverse school mission. To test a Chinese version of the maximally maintained inequality (MMI) hypothesis, we capitalize on the individual educational history data from the 2008 Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) and use growth mixture modeling to estimate the differential effects of the two aspects of rural-urban divide on educational inequality in China. Findings indicate that (1) the hukou system places rural-hukou people at the very bottom of educational stratification, (2) the penalty of attending rural pretertiary school increases with educational stages, and (3) there is a cumulative disadvantage of rural hukou and rural school. Overall, our findings attest to the Chinese-version of MMI and inequality reproduction.

Parental Spending on School-Age Children: Structural Stratification and Parental Expectation

As consumption expenditures are increasingly recognized as direct measures of children’s material well-being, they provide new insights into the process of intergenerational transfers from parents to children. Little is known, however, about how parents allocate financial resources to individual children. To fill this gap, we develop a conceptual framework based on stratification theory, human capital theory, and the child-development perspective; exploit unique child-level expenditure data from Child Supplements of the PSID; and employ quantile regression to model the distribution of parental spending on children. Overall, we find strong evidence supporting our hypotheses regarding the effects of socioeconomic status (SES), race, and parental expectation. Our nuanced estimates suggest that (1) parental education, occupation, and family income have differential effects on parental spending, with education being the most influential determinant; (2) net of SES, race continues to be a significant predictor of parental spending on children; and (3) parental expectation plays a crucial role in determining whether parents place a premium on child development in spending and how parents prioritize different categories of spending.