Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper is part of a larger study that focuses on how today’s community college students are paying for their education. Analysis of the data collected for this study shows that students who cohabit display distinctly different characteristics than single, divorced and married students. These include such things as being more likely to have no immediate family with a college degree, and being more likely to work more than 20 hours per week while studying than other unmarried students. This paper brings the particular difficulties with funding and academics faced by cohabiting students at a large urban community college in the south into sharper focus by contrasting their situations with married, divorced, and single students.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: That married men earn more than single men is well established in the literature. What remains unclear, though, is the cause of this wage gap. I use fixed effects to examine how U.S. wages vary for two groups of married Mexican migrant men in the U.S.: those who are residing with their wives, and those who are not. Results will shed light on the importance of household specialization and employer discrimination in explaining the male wage premium to marriage.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Although purchases of household services are widely regarded as an adaptation to the rise in women’s paid employment, little is known about how working women and their partners allocate money to outsource domestic tasks. Drawing on the U.S. Consumer Expenditure Survey 1998, this study tests hypotheses based on theorizing that recognizes gender inequality between partners, the gender-typing of household tasks, and the differences between cohabiting and married unions. Although women’s earned income contributes to expenditures on “male” tasks like home repairs and gardening, it is significantly more important for “female” chores like cleaning, laundry and meal preparation. For male earnings, there are no differences by the gender-type of tasks, but the paychecks of cohabiting men, as compared to married men, translate into significantly greater spending on male chores and less spending on female ones.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This study examined wives and husbands’ subjective class identification between 1972 and 2002, and the role of individual gender ideologies in couples’ shifting status-evaluation models. We used nationally representative panel data gathered as part of the General Social Surveys. Consistent with previous theoretical predictions, results indicated that overall, husbands rely more on their own socioeconomic characteristics for their subjective class evaluation, but wives tended to use their own as well as their husbands’ when identifying their subjective class location. Interestingly, however, in the late 1990s and early 2000s women have started shifting towards a status-borrowing model of status-evaluation. Results also suggest that gender ideologies only partially explained why couples tended to take into account wives’ characteristics more over time. We concluded that, in support of the “homogeneity hypotheses” that gender ideology is unrelated to meanings people give themselves and others.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Despite decades of research on the individual-level correlates of vote choice, sociologists still know rather little about how political behaviors are shaped by group membership. This paper investigates the patterns of vote choice in one type of group, namely dual-earner families, where one's own political interests (as indexed by class, income, education, gender, and race) may differ markedly from the political interests of the family unit. To what extent do married women and men weight their own class interests relative to their spouses' class interests in deciding for whom to vote? Does the weighting of own and spouse's interest differ according to relative economic position in the family or marital history? Has the weighting changed as gender ideologies shift, sex segregation in the labor force declines, and political parties themselves shift their electoral strategies in response to changing demographic patterns? Addressing these questions yields insights not only into the changing dynamics of the American family, but also the changing nature of American political behavior.