College of Behavioral & Social Sciences
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The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations..
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Item Rethinking marriage metabolism: The declining frequency of marital events in the United States(Population Research and Policy Review, 2023) Cohen, Philip N.Previous research has used the concept of marriage metabolism to represent churning in the marriage system, but the measurements used to date have been inadequate. This paper addresses changes in the incidence of marital events in the United States from 2008 to 2021. I offer a measure, the Total Rate of Marital Events (TRME), of the projected lifetime experience of marital transitions (marriage, divorce, and widowhood) for life table cohorts. I find that the TRME declined steeply over this relatively short period: 22% for men and 19% for women. All three components declined in every age group below 90. The decline in divorce was most pronounced. More accurately than the term "retreat from marriage," I describe the slowing churn of the marriage system as reflecting the diminished social presence of marriage in daily life. Rather than a retreat, this coincides with the increasingly selective status of married life. A higher status marriage system is a smaller, slower, and more stable marriage system.Item The Unique Political Attitudes and Behaviors of Individuals in Aged Communities(2012) Bramlett, Brittany H.; Gimpel, James G; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation examines the political attitudes and behaviors of individuals residing in communities with large proportions of older adults. These types of locations are growing in number in the United States as the Baby Boomer Generation arrives at retirement age. Many scholars and journalists rely on theories of `senior power' and predict that the places with large numbers of senior citizens should be especially politically powerful. However, many studies have provided little evidence to support these claims. I explore the old questions with updated data, methods and approaches--theorizing that older adults living among their elderly peers will, in fact, exhibit unique levels of political knowledge, efficacy, and participation as well as hold distinct attitudes for safety net issues. Using large-scale surveys and multilevel modeling techniques, I find that older adults residing in aged communities display higher levels of political knowledge than their elderly peers living in places without the same aged context. However, they are less politically efficacious and somewhat less likely to vote. Older adults living among their peers are also more likely to support social welfare programs, controlling for party identification. I also examine the contextual effect of the aged context for younger residents. In particular, I find that young people are also quite supportive of the safety net policies, which provide assistance for their elder neighbors. Because of this support from the younger generation, older adults in aged communities may rarely, if ever, face threats to their livelihood, driving them into political action. Taken together, the results from this dissertation show that older adults living amongst their peers are certainly equipped for intense political engagement or senior power--but they choose political retreatism rather than activism.Item Women's Paid Labor Force Participation and Child Immunization: A Multilevel Model(2006-05-07) Strayhorn, Kali-Ahset Amen; DeRose, Laurie F.; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)I estimated the effect of women's cash work on child immunization in 25 countries across Africa, Asia and Latin America using a multi-level fixed-effects model and found support for the hypothesis that all children benefit in areas with higher rates of women's labor force participation. The proportion of women working within a sub-national region (province) has a strong, positive impact on the likelihood of complete child immunization. While all children benefit from increasing levels of women's work, the children of those who work benefit more from living in areas where women's work is at higher rates. Thus, this analysis supports the view that a child's complete immunization is influenced by the larger social context associated with women's work.