Research on immigrant earnings

As the first in a trio of pieces devoted to incorporating immigration into policy models, this review of research on immigrant earnings trajectories brings to light several findings. Controlling for demographic and human capital characteristics, immigrants often start their U.S. lives at substantially lower earnings, but experience faster earnings growth than natives with comparable years of education and experience. The extent to which the earnings trajectories of immigrants and natives differ varies by country of origin, with the source-country's level of economic development being a key determinant of the size of the U.S.-born/ foreign-born difference. The earnings profiles of immigrants from economically developed countries such as Japan, Canada, or Western Europe resemble those of U.S. natives who are of the same age and education level. In contrast, the earnings of immigrants from developing nations tend to start well below those of U.S. natives with comparable education levels and experience, but rise more rapidly than their U.S. counterparts. Comparing the earnings profiles of immigrants of similar age, sex, and years of schooling, over time and across groups, a strong inverse relationship emerges between their initial earnings and their subsequent U.S. earnings growth. In other words, the lower (higher) the initial earnings are, the higher (lower) the earnings growth. These and other research results have important implications for the projection of immigrant earnings and emigration in microsimulation models, as discussed in the two articles following this one: (1) "Adding Immigrants to Microsimulation Models" and (2) "Incorporating Immigrant Flows into Microsimulation Models".     

When Did Health Care Become a Campaign Issue?

Most people mistakenly assume that health care first became a major political issue in 1945 because President Harry S. Truman’s special address to Congress on Nov. 19 of that year marked the first time a sitting president publicly endorsed a national health-care program. But the question of whether—or to what extent—it is the responsibility of government to subsidize health care for its citizens has been around for a much longer amount of time. Now that health care has become a major focus of domestic political debate, especially in light of the impending presidential election, this article, modified from an entry in the forthcoming Encyclopedia of Campaigns, Elections, & Electoral Behavior (Sage Publications), serves to inform the reader of the origins and history of health care as a campaign issue.

The Interstate Sprawl System

The Interstate Sprawl System is an article about the role of automobile transportation in the culture and civilization of the USA. After demonstrating that all previous civilizations in history have gathered around trading ports, where land values rise as the proximity to the port increases, it analyses the changes wrought by the grid system of transportation brought on by the automobile in the USA, where land values remain fairly constant and no core trading centers can be found. These changes include the decimation of the old port cities as well as the urbanization of rural lands. The article concludes with an appeal to encourage inter-city rapid rail as the obvious antidote to the problem.

Why Do Experienced Challengers Do Better than Amateurs?

Politically experienced challengers are more successful in seeking political office than amateurs. The relationship is found so regularly that political experience has become the standard ex ante indicator of challenger quality in studies of American elections. Despite this, little work has investigated why experienced challengers are so successful. Many scholars attribute the relationship to inherent differences between experienced challengers and amateurs: experienced challengers have stronger electoral skills and greater access to material resources. I argue that these differences play a role, but an indirect one. Rather, experienced challengers are lead by both their resource advantage and the high amount of risk they are exposed to in seeking office to run in races in which their party has a good chance of winning. Thus, the direct cause of the experienced challengers’ success is self-selection into winnable races. Empirical analysis supports the self-selection model over a model in which resources directly lead to success.

Testing the Reciprocal Effects of Campaign Participation

Questions persist regarding the robustness of cross-sectional estimates of effects of variables that are themselves endogenous to the participation process. On one hand, the consequences of working on a campaign have interesting implications for democratic society. Less benign, however, is the possibility that failure to control for reciprocal processes leads to biased estimates of the causes of campaign participation. I use a panel of Democratic and Republican contributors interviewed following each of the past three presidential elections (1996, 2000, and 2004) to explore the relationships between campaign participation and three variables typically parameterized as predictors of participation: receiving a contact, ideological extremism, and strength of party identification. The effect of strength of party identification on campaign participation proves robust; however, I find that nearly all of the associations between contacts and participation and ideological extremism and participation appear to extend from, not into, participation and past participation.

Why Is the Estate Tax so Controversial?

There are some social issues whose significance for society nobody would seriously question but which nevertheless receive only scarce attention in sociological research. One of these is the bequest of private wealth from one generation to the next. It is currently estimated that about 550 billion dollars are transferred annually in the United States, amounting to more than 4% of the American gross national product (Havens and Schervish 1999). Not only is this a huge amount of wealth that changes ownership, but the bequest of wealth speaks to some of the core questions of sociological scholarship.

Does Workplace Experience Enhance Political Participation? A Critical Test of a Venerable Hypothesis

Several schools of thought claim that citizens can develop their democratic skills at the workplace. Here I focus on the hypothesis put forward by Carole Pateman and by Sidney Verba and colleagues that state that by practicing civic skills and democratic decision-making at the workplace, citizens become more active in politics. I test the hypothesis with a nationally representative panel survey of the Swedish population. My findings contradict previous empirical research as no impact on political participation was discovered. I argue that the effects may have been overestimated in prior studies because the tests were based on cross-sectional data: insufficient care was taken with a number of significant methodological problems. The study points to the importance of using panel models when investigating the causes of political participation.

Lessons of Russian in Afghanistan

The experience of Soviet involvement in Afghanistan (1979–1989) is considered through the prism of institutional transfers. Afghanistan has a long history of attempts to implement Muslim, Soviet and Anglo-Saxon institutional designs. Most of them have failed. This failure can be attributed to the lack of ‘elective affinity’ between traditional and new institutions imported from more developed countries. It is argued that a careful examination of the degree of elective affinity must precede any attempt of institutional transfers. An analysis of Ph.D. dissertations defended by Afghan students at Soviet and Russian universities complements logical arguments and references to historical facts.

Comparing Putin’s and Brezhnev’s Policies toward the Middle East

This article compares Moscow’s and Washington’s foreign policies toward the Middle East in 1982 and 2008. In 1982, Moscow and Washington each had a distinct set of friends and foes. In 2008, Washington still has a distinct set of friends and foes, but Moscow has relatively good relations with all governments and most major opposition movements in the region—the only exceptions being Al Qaeda and its affiliates. It is argued that Putin’s policy toward the Middle East is not really aimed at displacing the U.S. in the region, but protecting Russia and Russian interests from Al Qaeda and its allies. Indeed, a continued American presence in the region serves to protect Russian interests in the region.

Close But Not Close Enough

The authors comment on an earlier aritice in Society by Eugene Goodheart and offer a novel hypothesis about the origins of religion.