Sociology Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2804
Browse
20 results
Search Results
Item DOES WOMEN'S CONTINUATION IN THE LABOR FORCE MATTER FOR UNION FORMATION? AN ASSESSMENT OF EVIDENCE FROM THE UNITED STATES AND LATIN AMERICA.(2024) Hurtado, Constanza; Sayer, Liana C.; Caudillo, Mónica L.; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Social scientists have long been interested in the interplay between women’s roles as paid employees, partners and mothers. One of the first puzzles they intended to solve was about the consequences of women’s participation in the labor force for marriage. Currently, evidence about high-income Western countries overwhelming supports that women’s employment does not hinder union formation generally or marriage specifically. This conclusion is consistent when looking at multiple dimensions of employment, including earnings, employment status, economic potential, and job quality. Women’s employment engagement during the transition to adulthood have received scarce attention as a determinant of whether and when women move in with a romantic partner for the first time. In particular, and despite its relevance to understanding family-work dynamics across life, the relationship between continuous employment, the number of years employed without breaks/interruptions, and union formation has been overlooked. Additionally, despite increasing rates of women’s participation in the labor force and drastic sociodemographic changes in the last decades, the association between women’s employment and union formation in Latin American countries has been scarcely examined. To address these two gaps in the existing literature, this dissertation analyzes whether—and how—employment engagement influences women’s transitions into their first unions. Specifically, I measure and compare two dimensions of employment during the transition to adulthood: 1) the number of cumulative years/months of employment, and 2) the number of years/months of continuous employment. For this purpose, I analyze three nationally representative longitudinal and retrospective datasets, and focus on the experiences of women born in the 1970s or later in Mexico, Chile, and the U.S. The results confirm the relevance of women’s employment engagement on decisions toward moving in with a romantic partner for the first time, highlighting differences between the two employment dimensions, as well as between contexts. By contrasting cumulative and continuous employment, the dissertation contributes to our understanding of why and how women’s employment shapes union formation. It also invites us to expand theories about the interplay between women’s economic position and family from a comparative perspective. Given the increasing uncertainty of labor markets, it also motivates further exploration about the role of expectations and experiences of continuous employment on family transitions.Item Understanding Women’s Labor Force Participation in Sub-Saharan Africa Through Migration, Kin Support and Relationship Dynamics(2024) Kim, Seung Wan; Madhavan, Sangeetha; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Family sociologists and demographers have long maintained a profound interest in understanding the determinants and consequences of female labor force participation. Much of this research has predominantly concentrated on the Western contexts, albeit with a handful of remarkable works shedding light on the Global South, where is also witnessing a growing focus. However, our comprehension of the intricate interplay between gender, work, and family in sub-Saharan Africa remains insufficient and restricted. Over the years, there has been a steady increase in women's education and labor force participation in this region. Yet, many women continue to grapple with sociocultural barriers that hinder them from fully harnessing their employment opportunities.Particularly noteworthy is the mounting tension between conforming to traditional gender roles and meeting household needs through women's paid employment, especially in the face of increasingly challenging economic circumstances. This challenge is particularly pronounced among marginalized populations, such as rural and low-income urban population. My doctoral dissertation seeks to address three hitherto understudied issues: 1) examining the relationship between an individual's employment status and that of other household members in South Africa, and how it influences that individual's likelihood of future migration, 2) investigating the role of employment among kin members and the support provided by family members in facilitating women's employment in Nairobi, Kenya, and 3) exploring the dynamics of women's work concerning union formalization, motherhood, and livelihood in Nairobi. The dissertation comprises two quantitative analyses and one qualitative methods study, resulting in three papers that draw from two datasets collected in South Africa and Kenya.Item EPIDEMIOLOGICAL TRANSITION AND SHIFTING MORTALITY INEQUALITY: AN EXTENSION OF FUNDAMENTAL CAUSE THEORY(2023) Ruan, Hangqing; Kahn, Joan JK; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The dissertation addresses two "public health puzzles" in US mortality inequality trends: (1) SES inequalities in mortality have been growing wider despite declines in overall mortality levels and the expansion of social welfare policies; (2) mortality inequalities present diverging trends across age groups, with declines at younger ages but growth at older ages. These puzzles challenge existing theories in explaining the complex dynamics of mortality disparities. The study aims to bridge this gap by proposing an alternative theoretical framework that combines Fundamental Cause Theory with the concept of epidemiological transition.Previous research has focused primarily on socioeconomic factors as the main drivers of widening mortality disparities. However, this dissertation argues that mortality inequalities can evolve independently of socioeconomic factors due to shifts in disease patterns towards non-communicable diseases and advancements in health-beneficial innovations. By analyzing county-level US mortality rates from 1968 to 2020, this study reveals that mortality inequality related to infectious diseases declined in the early 1970s and remained stable over time. On the other hand, mortality inequality related to non-communicable diseases remained at a low level during the 1970s but saw a significant increase since the 1980s. Further, this study found that mortality inequality from non-communicable diseases is more pronounced in middle-aged and older adults, and the age distribution of mortality inequality progressively shifts towards older ages. This study contributes to the existing literature with a new theoretical perspective to understand the developments of mortality inequalities over time. This framework sheds light on the two "public health puzzles” and emphasizes the crucial role of disease patterns prevailing during specific historical periods in understanding the developments of mortality inequality. Furthermore, the study underlines the interplay of disease patterns, prevention/treatment innovations, and social and economic inequalities in collectively shaping the future of mortality and health disparities. It also sheds light on the social-political circumstances of medical innovation as well as behavioral factors over the life course in determining future population health and health inequalities.Item Gender-Specific Significance of Family Transitions on Well-being and Work Attitudes(2022) Hara, Yuko; Chen, Feinian; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Marriage and parenthood are major life events for many individuals. Marriage is linked with improved health partly through spousal influence on health-related behaviors including diet. Previous theoretical and qualitative research suggests a link between family transitions and meal patterns. Yet empirical research using a nationally representative sample to examine the association is scarce. And the issues of whether spousal influence on health-related behaviors can be extended to other types of romantic relationships, such as cohabitation, as well as whether the transition to parenthood is linked with changes in meal patterns, have not been adequately researched. Additionally, research examining whether the health benefits that marriage brings can be universally found for both genders across countries is limited. Family life events carry other consequences, too. Prior research also suggests that family life often has a negative impact on attitudes toward paid work, particularly for women. Past research, however, primarily relied on small sample interview data or cross-sectional data, leaving unclear how work attitudes change during adulthood. This dissertation examines the impact of different family life events such as marriage, cohabitation, and parenthood on changes in subjective well-being, health-related behavior (meal patterns), and attitudes towards work by gender. I focus on adults in their prime work and family life stages in the U.S. and Japan. By using fixed effects models and panel data, I aimed to estimate the average effect of family life events within individuals over time. I found that entering a romantic union reduces meal skipping, but the type of union matters differently for men and women. I also found that the transition to parenthood discourages women’s regular meal patterns, suggesting family ties do not necessarily facilitate healthy behaviors. In the highly gendered social context of Japan, contrary to previous findings from Western industrialized countries, I found no evidence indicating that marriage is associated with self-rated health for women. Additionally, I found that the transition to parenthood is negatively linked with men’s self-rated health. In terms of work attitudes, even when controlling for various job characteristics, I found that both marriage and parenthood are negatively associated with enthusiasm toward work achievement, only for women in Japan. These findings highlight the importance of country context and reveal that entry into marriage triggers shifts in women’s work attitudes even before having children.Item SHAPE OF CARE: PATTERNS OF FAMILY CAREGIVING ACTIVITIES AMONG OLDER ADULTS FROM MIDLIFE TO LATER AGES IN CHINA AND THE U.S.(2022) Duan, Haoshu; Chen, Feinian; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation consists of three papers that investigate the long-term family caregiving patterns among Chinese and American older adults. Family caregiving has long been an essential fabric of long-term care services. Due to the prolonged life expectancy and the declined family size, older adults today are more likely to care for multiple family members for longer years than the previous cohorts. However, studies on caregiving predominately focus on singular care experiences over a short period time. As older adults transition into and out of multiple care roles, the overall caregiving patterns are overlooked. Leveraging two rich longitudinal datasets (the China Health and Retirement Study and the Health and Retirement Study), this dissertation aims to fill this current research gap by developing long-term family caregiving typologies. The first paper develops a care typology for Chinese older adults, and thoroughly assesses how gender, hukou status, living arrangement, and significant life transitions are associated with the long-term caregiving patterns. In the second paper, using linear mixed-effects models, I continue exploring the positive and negative health consequences of each caregiving pattern among Chinese older adults. The third paper focuses on developing a long-term family caregiving pattern for American older adults. In addition to prolonged life expectancies and the decline in family size, the U.S. has experienced complex transitions in family structures over the past few decades, leading to more diverse family networks and international relations in later life. After establishing the long-term care typology, the third paper pays closer attention to the variations of family caregiving patterns across the War Babies cohort, Early Baby Boomer, and the Middle/Late Baby Boomer cohort. Moreover, I explore how gender, race, and socioeconomic status are linked with these patterns. In the context of global aging, this dissertation highlights the heterogeneity in the family caregiving experiences and identifies the most vulnerable demographic groups who shoulder the heaviest care burden over time. In the end, the findings from the dissertation provide guidance for the investment and design of long-term care services in rapidly aging contexts.Item The Socioeconomic Associations with Women's Partnership Formation and Dissolution in Russia, Germany, and the United States(2021) Zvavitch, Polina; Rendall, Michael S; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation consists of three studies that evaluate how women form partnerships, leave partnerships, and the economic outcomes of those partnerships. These demographic transitions and outcomes are evaluated in three country contexts with differing political, welfare regimes, social history. I use longitudinal data from Russia to analyze marital status differences and trends in in poverty risk. Contrary to assumptions that unmarried mothers will have higher risks of poverty over time as welfare policy weakens, unmarried mothers and married mothers’ risks of poverty came close to converging in the late 2000s. Second, I use German data to examine educational assortative mating in East and West Germany. I use the Revealed Preference Model (RPM). First, from bivariate analysis of the SOEP, I find that among the people who are partnering, they are doing so mostly homogamously in the East and the West. Highly educated women in the East are still less likely to partner somebody of a lower education status. The RPM estimated parameters then showed that in West Germany and East Germany alike, educationally hypergamous partnerships were most preferable. Though the availability of higher educated partners in East and West Germany are different, the preference for hypergamy remains. Finally, I move on to the United States to estimate the divorce risk of partners of various education levels. I use the Survey of Income and Program Participation, providing accurate representation of the contemporary U.S. The model estimates divorce risk using women’s own education, men’s own education, and their relative education levels. It reveals several persistent patterns. Women’s divorce risk decreases monotonically as education increases, so highly educated women have the lowest rate of divorce. Men’s education, however, is less of a determinant on the risk of divorce. Relative to hypergamy and homogamy, hypogamous unions (woman marrying a man of a lower education status than herself) were more likely to divorce. This study supports past research that finds the female breadwinner model the most volatile when it comes to likelihood of divorce and continued support for this trend into the 2010’s.Item Diverse Care Networks and Unmet Care Needs of Older Adults in a Changing America(2020) Lin, Zhiyong; Chen, Feinian; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation consists of three papers that examine the complexity, dynamics, and stratification in care networks and unmet care needs of older adults in a changing America. For generations, most older Americans have been cared for by loved ones at home in their time of need. However, with sweeping demographic and family changes during the last several decades, care provision by immediate family (typically spouse and adult children) can no longer be assumed. Despite growing public interests in other alternatives beyond the spouse and adult children, limited research attention has been directed toward the provision of care by increasingly diverse care networks. The first paper develops a care network typology that captures the multidimensionality of care networks with a combination of different types of care, including informal care from the spouse, children, extended kin, and nonkin caregivers, formal caregiving from professional services, and self-care with assistive technologies. At the same time, demographic and family transitions are experienced unevenly across racial and ethnic groups, making minority older adults more vulnerable to structurally restricted care networks than older whites. Also, research on racial/ethnic differences in caregiving often emphasizes the role of cultural values in shaping care networks among specific subgroups of the aging population. Drawing from explanations that focus on both structural and cultural elements, the second paper investigates to what extent, racial/ethnic differences in care networks could be explained by structural and cultural factors separately, and further explores how they jointly shape diverse care networks across different racial and ethnic groups of older adults. The third paper questions whether some compositions of care networks are more effective in serving the needs of older adults, and whether others are more likely to lead to unmet care needs. Moreover, I explore how the perceived association between care networks and unmet care needs is further conditioned by race/ethnicity and gender. In the context of the declining availability of traditional caregivers, this dissertation can contribute to the understanding of which other alternatives are available and provide evidence on whether they can adequately meet the needs of older adults.Item DETERMINANTS OF DIFFERENTIAL REGIONAL FERTILITY RATES IN INDIA: AN EXAMINATION OF FERTILITY INTENTIONS, BEHAVIOR, AND THE UNMET NEED FOR CONTRACEPTION(2020) Chatterjee, Esha; Desai, Sonalde; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation analyzes social, cultural, and structural factors that lead to women’s fertility related decision-making processes, and outcomes, in the Indian context. Although there is a rich literature on fertility in India, my work is the first to use nationally representative panel data from the India Human Development Survey (IHDS) 2005, and 2012, to study the impact of past intentions and actions on subsequent outcomes, and on how intendedness of a birth can affect maternal healthcare utilization. First, I examine the differences between factors that impact regional differences in fertility preferences, and on the ability to crystallize these preferences. Results show that while a substantial portion of regional differentials in fertility preferences are explained by socio-economic traits of individuals and their households, a much smaller proportion of differentials in unintended births across regions is explained by these factors. This suggests that unobserved factors, potentially those associated with regional health systems, have a far greater role in explaining underlying differences in unintended births than in explaining fertility preferences. Second, I evaluate why women who want to limit childbearing in 2005, do not use any contraception (and thus have, an unmet need for contraception); and how this unmet need of contraception translates into subsequent unintended births. Results show that women belonging to poorest households, and residing in neighborhoods with less access to the maternal and child healthcare system, are more likely to have an unmet need for contraception; and women who have an unmet need for contraception in 2005, are more than twice as likely as those without an unmet need to have an unintended birth between 2005 and 2012. Finally, I examine the consequences of having an unwanted birth on maternal healthcare utilization. Results show that women who have unwanted births are less likely to obtain adequate antenatal, and postnatal care to help support their own health and their babies’ health. Results from this study also highlight inequalities in access to maternal healthcare services, based on socio-economic status, caste group, religious group, and area of residence. Overall, the dissertation helps obtain a better understanding of unwanted fertility, contraception use, and sexual and reproductive health disparities in the Indian context.Item GROWING UP IN RURAL MALAWI: GENDERED ASPIRATIONS, TIME USE, AND SOCIALIZATION(2019) Zahra, Fatima; Madhavan, Sangeetha; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)My dissertation focuses on three understudied dimensions of challenges among youth in Malawi, and is structured as three separate papers. The first is, the relationship between aspired and actual timing of transitions out of school, and the extent of the gender gap in this relationship. The second dimension is gender disparity in acquired skills and learning outcomes in primary school, and how demands for labor at the household level help explain differences in dropout and student performance on Math and Chichewa tests. The third dimension focuses on girls’ relationship power, and the gender socialization experiences at school and individual characteristics that are correlated with it. Using the Malawi Schooling and Adolescent Study (MSAS), I find that 1) a higher desired age for marriage is associated with a lower likelihood of school dropout, and marriage related school dropout, with this association significant mainly among girls, 2) a high work burden is associated with a greater likelihood of school dropout in the subsequent year, but is not associated with performance on Math and Chichewa reading comprehension tests, and there is no significant gender difference in these relationships, 3) attitudes form an important dimension of the measurement of girls’ relationship power, and earlier experiences of physical violence in school, and individual characteristics including self-esteem and attitudes against spousal violent predict power in relationships in later adolescence and early adulthood. Together, the three papers in this dissertation provide critical insights into individual mechanisms that allow adolescents to stay in school longer, structural constraints like household labor allocation that limit their educational attainment, and the contribution of early socialization experiences to girls’ power in later relationships.Item INTERGENERATIONAL SUPPORT AND WELL-BEING OF OLDER ADULTS IN CHANGING FAMILY CONTEXTS(2016) Bao, Luoman; Chen, Feinian; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation consists of three papers that examine the complexities in upward intergenerational support and adult children’s influence on older adults’ health in changing family contexts of America and China. The prevalence of “gray divorce/repartnering ” in later life after age 55 is on the rise in the United States, yet little is known about its effect on intergenerational support. The first paper uses the life course perspective to examine whether gray divorce and repartnering affect support from biological and stepchildren differently than early divorce and repartnering, and how patterns differ by parents’ gender. Massive internal migration in China has led to increased geographic distance between adult children and aging parents, which may have consequences for old age support received by parents. This topic has yet to be thoroughly explored in China, as most studies of intergenerational support to older parents have focused on the role of coresident children or have not considered the interdependence of multiple parent-child dyads in the family. The second paper adopts the within-family differences approach to assess the influence of non-coresident children’s relative living proximity to parents compared to that of their siblings on their provision of support to parents in rural and urban Chinese families. The study also examines how patterns of the impact are moderated by parents’ living arrangement, non-coresident children’s gender, and parents’ provision of support to children. Taking a multigenerational network perspective, the third paper questions if and how adult children’s socioeconomic status (SES) influences older parents’ health in China. It further examines whether health benefits brought by adult children’s socioeconomic attainment are larger for older adults with lower SES and whether one of the mechanisms through which adult children’s SES affects older parents’ health is by changing their health behaviors. These questions are highly relevant in contemporary China, where adult children have experienced substantial gains in SES and play a central role in old age support for parents. In sum, these three papers take the life course, the within-family differences, and the multigenerational network perspective to address the complexities in intergenerational support and older adults’ health in diverse family contexts.