For a generation, the political class has heralded increased rates of educational achievement and labor-force participation of women as indicators of social and economic progress. Yet a review of international longitudinal studies by two German sociologists finds that the achievements cheered by feminists are actually drivers of new income disparities between families, especially in Europe […]
Read MoreWhen Mother finds employment outside the home, she is likely to spend part of her paycheck on medical care for her young child. The relationship between a mother’s employment and her child’s illness receives scrutiny in a study by researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago and Baruch College in New York. That relationship […]
Read MoreEarly onset of puberty spells trouble in Montreal, just as it does in Minneapolis. Underscoring the role of family structure in fostering early puberty, a study by scholars at the University of British Columbia and the University of New Brunswick merits attention as “the first Canadian study to have examined the impact of family context […]
Read MoreSomewhere the shade of Patrick Moynihan must be saying, “I told you so!” Moynihan was pilloried as a racist troglodyte when he warned in 1965 that the disintegration of black family life was a portent of catastrophe. But the evidence continues to mount showing that Moynihan’s warning was fully warranted. The latest evidence comes from […]
Read MoreThe myth of the glass ceiling continues to be debunked. Challenging the presumption that women are underrepresented in high-status jobs because of discrimination, economists at Stanford University and the University of Pittsburgh offer empirical evidence for the more plausible explanation that the two sexes respond differently to competitive environments. Muriel Niederle and Lise Versterlund conducted […]
Read MoreResearchers have understood for years that marriage improves mental health. A new study, however, finds that matrimony delivers substantive psychological benefits even to those who enter marriage under the cloud of depression. Conductedby sociologists at the Ohio State University, this study clarifies the favorable psychological effects of marriage. To be sure, the authors began their […]
Read MoreWhat can be done to lower risks of diabetes, cancer, heart attack, and stroke, the leading causes of death and disability in the United States? Health professionals are quick to hound Americans about eating right and exercising regularly. Yet perhaps they should also be calling attention to the conclusions of a study by scholars at […]
Read MoreWhile many factors have contributed to the empowerment of the state and the politicians that oversee it, economist John Lott thinks that women’s suffrage cannot be ignored as a factor that contributed to the massive increase in size of government in the United States between 1920 and 1965. Updating the findings of his 1999 study […]
Read MoreDivorce almost always forces children to be the adults in a family, making them adjust to the often child-like wishes of their parents. Moreover, that reversal of roles remains twenty years after divorce, judging from a clinical study, by Constance Ahrons of the University of Southern California, that found that adult children of divorce still […]
Read MoreSince the early 1970s, legislators have done the bidding of activists arguing that easy divorce will liberate women trapped in bad marriages. But a study by psychologists at the University of Colorado suggests that no matter how liberal the laws, divorce means psychological and emotional havoc. To assess the psychiatric consequences of divorce, the researchers […]
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