Fall 2007 TABLE OF CONTENTS
Professor Roger Betancourt and graduate student Ariel Benyishay are doing research on the link between human rights and economic growth. They found a particularly strong association between a subset of human rights and economic growth and between this same subset of human rights and the ratio of investment to gross domestic product. The subset of human rights involved are usually referred to as second generation human rights and include economic and social rights such as the right to work, travel, live or pursue higher education where an individual chooses.
It is often quite difficult to know if respondents to surveys about corruption or other sensitive topics are likely to be honest in their responses. Department Chair Peter Murrell and Omar Azfar from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York were able to identify reticent respondents in corruption surveys through a clever survey design. Each survey respondent was asked to read a sensitive question and toss a coin, using a randomized response method. The interviewer said: “I will now read the question. Please toss the coin and then say yes if the coin came up heads or you have ever done this behavior. Please do not let me see the coin. The question is ‘Have you ever paid less in personal taxes than you should have under the law.’” The procedure was repeated another six times with a different coin toss and a different sensitive question. None of these seven sensitive questions were about corruption. If the respondent said no seven times in a row, he was classified as reticent because it is very unlikely that s/he would have tossed seven tails in a row. More information can be found at http://www.transparency.org/publications/gcr/download_gcr#22.
Department of Government and Politics
In Professor Eric Uslaner’s forthcoming book, The Bulging Pocket and the Rule of Law: Corruption, Inequality, and Trust (Cambridge University Press), he reveals his discovery that corruption does not stem from poor institutions, but rather from an inequality trap. High inequality leads to low trust, which in turn makes people more willing to engage in corrupt behavior, since others are ready to deceive them. High levels of corruption lead to lower spending on social services and thus more inequality, encompassing a vicious cycle that persists over long periods of time.
Professors Suzanne Bianchi (top left), John Robinson (right) and Melissa Milkie (bottom), in their book Changing Rhythms of American Family Life, show that parents increased the time they spend with their children despite increased paid workloads. Their research finds that this increased time with children comes at the expense of core housework, leisure time and time with one's spouse. Married mothers cut core housework by an average of 15 hours each week. And, while married mothers find more time to spend with their children, single mothers' time spent with children has decreased in the past decades.
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In a forthcoming paper that investigates immigrant residential patterns, Professor John Iceland and graduate student Melissa Scopilliti report that immigrants are by-and-large spatially assimilating in U.S. metropolitan areas. For example, immigrants who have been in the U.S. for a longer period of time generally live in more integrated neighborhoods than new arrivals. However, patterns also vary across immigrant groups. Levels of segregation are much higher for black immigrants than Asian, Hispanic and white immigrants in the United States. |  |
Professor Harriet Presser, with Janet C. Gornick from Baruch College, City University of New York, and graduate student Sangeeta Parashar, in a study titled “Nonstandard Work Schedules in Twelve European Countries: A Gender Perspective,” found high levels of evening, night time and weekend employment in many of the European countries studied. They found that the levels within countries differ for men and women, with the level for men usually higher, and having children appears to have little influence on nonstandard work times for employed mothers and fathers.
Professor Harriet Presser and Hsiao-ye Yi (Ph.D. 1994), in a study titled “Women's Gender-Type Occupational Mobility in Puerto Rico: 1950-1980,” investigated the patterns and determinants of women's mobility into and out of male-dominated occupations in Puerto Rico during its rapid development from the 1950s to the early 1980s. They found an increase into male-dominated occupations over these years for women's entry into first jobs and modest support for a "revolving door" into and out of gender-type occupations for subsequent job changes. Increased educational attainment was a primary factor facilitating women's moves into male-dominated occupations.
Despite various claims that Americans are becoming either more or less religious, attendance at weekly religious services in the United States has been essentially constant since 1990, according to a recent study by Professor Stanley Presser and his colleague Mark Chaves, a Duke University professor of sociology, religion and divinity. In a study published in the September issue of the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, they said, “However one reads the evidence about trends between World War II and 1990, we currently live in a time of stability.” Thus the short-term increases in attendance at religious services following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks were not sustained, and the proliferation of mega-churches has not led to overall gains in attendance. Presser and Chaves say evidence from previous studies suggests that attendance declined from 1950 to 1990, but was stable for some time before 1950. Their results suggest that the main pattern of religious change may be periods of stability punctuated by times of transition, not steady trends in one direction or the other.
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Professors Mady W. Segal and David R. Segal, with alumna Meridith Hill Thanner (Ph.D., 2006), conducting research on changes in the racial, ethnic and gender composition of the American military during the Iraq War, found that enlistment among black men and women continued a general decline that began over ten years ago, although black male enlistment has begun to increase in the Navy. Enlistment among Hispanic men and women by contrast has increased, particularly in the Marine Corps. The data suggest that labor market dynamics provide better explanations of enlistment patterns than do cultural factors. |  |
Center for Substance Abuse Research The Center for Substance Abuse Research was awarded $250,000 from the Alcohol and Drug Abuse Administration in the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene to complete a treatment and prevention needs assessment. |
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Department of Geography
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Professor Stacey Daughters, director of the Addictions Division of the Center for Addictions, Personality and Emotions Research, was awarded $395,000 from the National Institutes of Health for a project titled “Distress Tolerance and Adolescent Substance Use.” The goal of this study is to begin to determine if distress tolerance is a risk factor for adolescent engagement in substance use and associated HIV risk behavior.
The National Science Foundation’s Science of Science and Innovation Policy Program awarded Jerald Hage $450,000 to examine 72 research and development projects in three large national laboratories and three small national laboratories. Professor Hage will measure the behavior and attitudes of the team members in the research projects and relate these to the degree of technical progress that is achieved, building knowledge about how to manage research and development.
The National Institute for Child and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health awarded Rebeca Wong and colleagues from UCLA and Princeton $295,000 to study "Social Disparities in Health Among Latinos." The project examines the relationship between socioeconomic status, health behavior and health outcomes for Latino adults and teens in Los Angeles County.
Center for International Development and Conflict Management
Department of Government and Politics
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Joint Program in Survey Methodology
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Psychology Professor 
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Psychology Professor
The College welcomed five new assistant professors (pictured left to right): from the Department of Government and Politics, Michael J. Hanmer; and from the Department of Economics, Sanjay K. Chugh, Anton Korinek, Emel Filiz Ozbay and Erkut Y. Ozbay.
Meet them!
 Women's Labor in the Global Economy: Speaking in Multiple Voices (Rutgers University Press, 2007), edited by Sharon Harley, chair of the African American Studies Department, won the 2007 Association of Black Women Historians award for best anthology. |
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The Segregated Scholars: Black Social Scientists and the Creation of Black Labor Studies, 1890-1950 (University of Virginia), by  Patricia Hill Collins, Distinguished University Professor of sociology, has been elected president of the American Sociological Association. |
 Sally Simpson, chair of the Department of the Criminology and Criminal Justice, has been elected chair of the American Sociological Association’s Section on Crime, Law and Deviance. |
Psychology student Elizabeth Reynolds was awarded a fellowship from the National Institute on Drug Abuse to study “Risk Factors in the Relationship Between Gender and Crack Cocaine.”
