<p>Labor historians describe Right to Work (RTW) as among the most consequential pushbacks against the early twentieth-century ascent of labor unions. Yet research on the economic consequences of RTW remains mixed, with nearly all research centered empirically and theoretically on the time surrounding RTW passage. In the current study, I use 41 waves of longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics between 1968 and 2019 to empirically and theoretically extend the mechanisms that link RTW and economic outcomes. First, following the vast majority of research on RTW, I show the demobilizing effects for labor following RTW passage: mean wages decline, wage inequality increases, and the union premium is halved in the middle and lower portion of the wage distribution. Second, I move theoretical focus beyond the time surrounding law enactment, arguing for a second-order effect whereby RTW institutionalizes a logic of polarized economic distributions and low labor power. To test this mechanism, I develop a novel strategy of comparison across respondents who are differentially mobile across state boundaries. I find individuals who cross RTW contexts experience a unique decline in mean wages and increase in wage variance, but this distinct trend can be explained by state-level institutional variation across RTW and non-RTW states. Thus, RTW is not only consequential in the periods around its passage, but also in establishing a long-standing, high-inequality regime. Results reveal multiple mechanisms by which RTW contributes to the long-run processes of union decline and broadly shared inequality growth.</p>

Labor unions might have various effects beyond the workplace. We link data on mothers from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79) to data on their children from the NLSY79 Child Survey to analyze whether a mother's unionization history while a child is growing up affects two childhood outcomes-cognitive skill and behavior-and two adult outcomes-educational attainment and earnings. We similarly use the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) to analyze the effect of the unionization history of the household heads on similar childhood and adult outcomes. As these outcomes are likely the product of cumulative childhood experiences, we emphasize the use of unique, cumulative measures of mother or household head union status. We do not find a strong pattern of results indicative of a significant union influence on these measures of the quality of a child's life course.

The COVID-19 pandemic ushered in a bereavement crisis unparalleled in a generation, with devastating consequences for the mental health of those who lost a loved one to the virus. Using national su...

<p>Considerable evidence demonstrates that perceiving oneself as an object of discrimination has negative consequences for mental health. However, little is known about whether this experience is more or less harmful in distinct phases of the life course, consistent with the life course principle of timing; or whether, in accord with the principle of lifespan development, it has long-term implications. We draw on longitudinal data addressing perceived workplace discrimination based on race/ethnicity and gender from the prospective Youth Development Study, covering early adulthood to midlife. Hierarchical linear modelling of the effects of discrimination on depressed mood indicates that both forms of discrimination have short-term (within life stages) and long-term (across stages) adverse effects on adult mental health. The impacts of perceived discrimination within stages on depressed mood appear to be greatest in the mid-30s and to weaken by midlife. Lingering effects of discrimination are more pronounced early on. These patterns are observed with controls for key time-varying negative experiences at work and personal socio-economic status, as well as invariant background characteristics (gender, race and parental socio-economic status). We consider these findings in relation to the dynamics of personal change in the context of occupational careers.</p>

How does engagement in multiple health behaviors consolidate into health promoting health lifestyles, and how does economic development provide a broadly shared living condition to enable participa...

This research examines how gender and economic development interrelate to predict healthy eating behaviors, and how all three interrelate to predict health outcomes. The consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables has been identified by international NGOS, policymakers, and health advocates as an important way to improve health outcomes. However, attempts to change population diets often take highly individualistic approaches, which may overlook structural factors that influence access to and availability of healthy food options, and systematic differences in the propensity to enact health behaviors among populations with similar levels of access and availability. In response, we examine nationally representative data from 31 middle- and high-income countries from the health module of the 2011 International Social Survey Programme. Following analyses from multilevel gamma and linear regression models, we draw two main conclusions. First, women, but not men, tend to eat fresh fruits and vegetables more frequently in more developed countries. Second, there is substantial heterogeneity in health differences between men and women, depending on individual eating behaviors and national development context. We conclude by discussing the academic and policy implications for health and development of our findings regarding the effect of structural factors on eating behaviors and health outcomes. © 2019 by the Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.

The decline of labor unions in the United States has been central to the rise of wage inequality since the early 1970s. Recently, sociologists have noted that unionization influences inequality through both direct and indirect pathways, reconciled with the concept of the moral economy, broadly shared norms of fairness institutionalized in market rules and customs that can reduce inequality in pay. While the theory of the moral economy has been resonant in the stratification literature, few have held it to empirical scrutiny. The current study assesses how selection bias from unobserved worker-level heterogeneity influences the associations between unionization and wage attainment and dispersion. To do so, I merge data from the Current Population Survey to 33 waves of longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. Using combinations of variance function regression models, fixed-effects regression models, and dynamic panel models, I find that the magnitudes of associations tend to be reduced by around half after accounting for unobserved heterogeneity. Yet, more critically, the pathways linking unions and wage inequality via the moral economy prove to be remarkably robust to all tests cast upon them. Results highlight the fundamental importance of labor power resources for the contemporary rise of inequality. They provide a micro-level foundation for theories linking unionization and stratification. They identify the importance of union decline for rising earnings volatility. And they provide implications for the fallout of economic well-being for workers following antiunion policy change. Additional theoretical and policy implications are discussed.

When do attitudes towards inequality change? Scholars have examined why publics change their attitudes regarding support for redistribution (SFR). Yet almost all studies focus on SFR change from one year to another. We shift focus by conceptualizing SFR change as occurring across birth cohorts socialized into different cultural zeitgeists. We combine data from 21 waves of cross-national survey data using the International Social Survey Program and European Social Survey covering 54 countries, 32 years, and over a century of birth years. In many countries, we reach substantially different conclusions on the nature of SFR change when examining intercohort dynamics. In several cases, we detect rapidly declining SFR belied by year-to-year stability of attitudes, representing an important challenge for proponents of egalitarian politics. Additional findings and implications are discussed.

In this research I assess within-group inequality--earnings inequality occurring among otherwise similar individuals based on observed characteristics--in a cross-national comparative perspective. While scholarly interest in the within-group portion of inequality has grown over the past 25 years, virtually all studies focus on the US case. The current research shifts focus by assessing within-group inequality in a cross-national comparative study. I do so by constructing a unique data set of country-level measures of within- and between-group inequality for annual market earnings using Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) microdata from 1.36 million full-time prime-age male and female workers nested in 143 countryyears, drawn from 28 countries spanning 40 years. I then document and describe basic betweencountry and longitudinal trends in the relationship between total inequality and within-group inequality. I find that in nearly all countries in the LIS, within-group inequality is the primary driver of levels and trends in inequality. As inequality increases, so too does the relative importance of within-group inequality. However, substantial cross-national heterogeneity based in labour market institutions and employment protection legislation is found. Theoretical and substantive implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

© The Southern Sociological Society 2017. Analyzing 40 countries in the 2008–2009 European Values Study (EVS), we test hypotheses that three religion dimensions—religious orthodoxy (believing), involvement in religious services and organizations (behaving), and affiliation with religious traditions (belonging)—are associated with economic communitarianism as opposed to individualism and with extending economic concern universalistically to all social categories. The EVS assesses respondents’ concern for the living conditions of social categories ranging from their immediate family to all humankind, as well as for vulnerable social categories—the elderly, the sick and disabled, poor children, the unemployed, and immigrants. While we find that Protestants are in some respects limited and exclusive in extending economic communitarianism, two of the most important factors in concern for the well-being of others and in universalistically extending this are religious orthodoxy and involvement in religion. Moreover, the orthodox and the religiously involved are more likely to express concern for the well-being of immigrants. We conclude that people of faith are far less exclusive and particularistic than less religious people in their economic concern for others, suggesting they could support welfare state efforts within their countries, bailouts to help weaker economies in Europe, and foreign aid to improve the conditions of those living in poorer countries.

© The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. All rights reserved. Despite sustained attention, scholars disagree about the relationship between country-level affluence and the environmental concern of mass publics. While many studies assume this relationship to be uniform, we argue that it is reasonable to expect meaningful variation in the association between country-level affluence and concern across countries with different levels of wealth. We place this idea at the center of our analyses. To do so, we assess public willingness to pay for environmental protection using five waves of World Values Survey data, examining 101 country-years nested in forty-two countries spanning nineteen years. Results from mixed-effects logistic and linear regression models reveal substantial heterogeneity in the association between environmental concern and country-level affluence. We find that growth in affluence over time associates with higher mass environmental concern, but only among less affluent countries. In contrast, countries that are on average more affluent tend to have lower environmental concern, but again, this relationship is primarily concentrated among less affluent countries. Although a variety of theories can be usefully applied to particular relationships occurring along the range of affluence, we argue that degradation theories go far in explaining the heterogeneous associations uncovered between environmental concern and country-level affluence. That associations are largely concentrated among less affluent countries has implications for the understanding of environmental concern in wealthy countries and the development of policy to address environmental reform. These issues are discussed in the conclusion.

© 2017 by Emerald Publishing Limited. Purpose: Improving the nutritious quality of diets for individuals and populations is a central goal of many public health advocates and intergovernmental organizations. Yet the outcome of healthy eating has been shown to systematically vary across individual-level socioeconomic lines, and across countries in different locations of the food system. We therefore assess variation in the association between eating nutritionally dense fresh fruits and vegetables and both self-rated health (SRH) and body mass index (BMI) across individual income and country locations in the food system. Methodology/approach: We use nationally representative survey data from 31 countries drawn from the International Social Survey Programme's 2011 Health module. We estimate the effect of the frequency of eating fresh fruits and vegetables using random-intercept, random-coefficient multilevel mixed-effects regression models. Findings: We confirm that eating nutritionally dense fresh fruits and vegetables frequently associates with more positive health outcomes. However, this general conclusion masks substantial individual- and country-level heterogeneity. For both SRH and BMI, the largest beneficial associations are concentrated among the most affluent individuals in the most affluent countries. Moving away from either reduces the positive association of healthy eating. Social and practical implications: Our results provide an important wrinkle for policies aimed at changing the nutritional quality of diets. Adjustments to diets without taking into account fundamental causes of socioeconomic status will likely be met with attenuated results. Originality/value: We compare two important health outcomes across a wide variety of types of countries. We demonstrate that our main conclusions are only detectable when employing a flexible multilevel methodological design.

This research examines public views on government responsibility to reduce income inequality, support for redistribution. While individual-level correlates of support for redistribution are relatively well understood, many questions remain at the country-level. Therefore, I examine how country-level characteristics affect aggregate support for redistribution. I test explanations of aggregate support using a unique dataset combining 18 waves of the International Social Survey Programme and European Social Survey. Results from mixed-effects logistic regression and fixed-effects linear regression models show two primary and contrasting effects. States that reduce inequality through bundles of tax and transfer policies are rewarded with more supportive publics. In contrast, economic development has a seemingly equivalent and dampening effect on public support. Importantly, the effect of economic development grows at higher levels of development, potentially overwhelming the amplifying effect of state redistribution. My results therefore suggest a fundamental challenge to proponents of egalitarian politics.

Abstract: Through analyses of World Values Surveys of six predominantly Muslim\n\ncountries (Algeria, Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, and Pakistan), we explore\n\nthe religious, social, and contextual bases of non-electoral activism, ranging from\n\ndiscussing politics, through petitions, boycotts, and lawful demonstrations, up to illegal\n\nstrikes and building or factory occupations. We test social movement theories positing\n\nthat political engagement results from differential recruitment, relative deprivation,\n\nsocial dislocation, embeddedness in pre-existing networks of activists, and open (vs.\n\nclosed or repressive) political systems. We find that the most politically engaged citizens\n\nare male, young or old (vs. middle-aged), have no/few children, are highly educated\n\n(but often with low incomes), are embedded in social networks, have a strong interest\n\nin politics, and live in countries with greater foreign investment and with low or high\n\n(vs. middle levels) of repression. Poverty and inequality do not increase political\n\nengagement. We discuss the implications of our findings for political activism in the\n\nMuslim world today.