The American Experience

Author(s):  
Russell J. Dalton

This chapter tracks the evolution of the economic and cultural cleavages in the United States from the early 1970s to the 2016 election. Institutionally, the United States is an exceptional case because of its institutional structure as well as its economic and cultural history. Yet the same forces of social and economic change observed in Europe also occurred in the United States. The chapter tracks citizen perceptions of party issue positions over time. The analyses then show a persisting economic cleavage in voting patterns, and a growing importance of the cultural cleavage over time. The final analytic section concentrates on the impact of the economic and cultural cleavages on voting in 2016, showing how various candidates in the primaries affect the importance of both cleavages. The analyses are based on the American National Election Studies from 1972 to 2016.

2017 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 241-260 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert N. Lupton ◽  
Steven M. Smallpage ◽  
Adam M. Enders

The correlation between ideology and partisanship in the mass public has increased in recent decades amid a climate of persistent and growing elite polarization. Given that core values shape subsequent political predispositions, as well as the demonstrated asymmetry of elite polarization, this article hypothesizes that egalitarianism and moral traditionalism moderate the relationship between ideology and partisanship in that the latter relationship will have increased over time only among individuals who maintain conservative value orientations. An analysis of pooled American National Election Studies surveys from 1988 to 2012 supports this hypothesis. The results enhance scholarly understanding of the role of core values in shaping mass belief systems and testify to the asymmetric nature and mass public reception of elite cues among liberals and conservatives.


2013 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 3-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Facundo Alvaredo ◽  
Anthony B Atkinson ◽  
Thomas Piketty ◽  
Emmanuel Saez

The top 1 percent income share has more than doubled in the United States over the last 30 years, drawing much public attention in recent years. While other English-speaking countries have also experienced sharp increases in the top 1 percent income share, many high-income countries such as Japan, France, or Germany have seen much less increase in top income shares. Hence, the explanation cannot rely solely on forces common to advanced countries, such as the impact of new technologies and globalization on the supply and demand for skills. Moreover, the explanations have to accommodate the falls in top income shares earlier in the twentieth century experienced in virtually all high-income countries. We highlight four main factors. The first is the impact of tax policy, which has varied over time and differs across countries. Top tax rates have moved in the opposite direction from top income shares. The effects of top rate cuts can operate in conjunction with other mechanisms. The second factor is a richer view of the labor market, where we contrast the standard supply-side model with one where pay is determined by bargaining and the reactions to top rate cuts may lead simply to a redistribution of surplus. Indeed, top rate cuts may lead managerial energies to be diverted to increasing their remuneration at the expense of enterprise growth and employment. The third factor is capital income. Overall, private wealth (relative to income) has followed a U-shaped path over time, particularly in Europe, where inherited wealth is, in Europe if not in the United States, making a return. The fourth, little investigated, element is the correlation between earned income and capital income, which has substantially increased in recent decades in the United States.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Taylor Chin ◽  
Dennis M. Feehan ◽  
Caroline O. Buckee ◽  
Ayesha S. Mahmud

SARS-CoV-2 is spread primarily through person-to-person contacts. Quantifying population contact rates is important for understanding the impact of physical distancing policies and for modeling COVID-19, but contact patterns have changed substantially over time due to shifting policies and behaviors. There are surprisingly few empirical estimates of age-structured contact rates in the United States both before and throughout the COVID-19 pandemic that capture these changes. Here, we use data from six waves of the Berkeley Interpersonal Contact Survey (BICS), which collected detailed contact data between March 22, 2020 and February 15, 2021 across six metropolitan designated market areas (DMA) in the United States. Contact rates were low across all six DMAs at the start of the pandemic. We find steady increases in the mean and median number of contacts across these localities over time, as well as a greater proportion of respondents reporting a high number of contacts. We also find that young adults between ages 18 and 34 reported more contacts on average compared to other age groups. The 65 and older age group consistently reported low levels of contact throughout the study period. To understand the impact of these changing contact patterns, we simulate COVID-19 dynamics in each DMA using an age-structured mechanistic model. We compare results from models that use BICS contact rate estimates versus commonly used alternative contact rate sources. We find that simulations parameterized with BICS estimates give insight into time-varying changes in relative incidence by age group that are not captured in the absence of these frequently updated estimates. We also find that simulation results based on BICS estimates closely match observed data on the age distribution of cases, and changes in these distributions over time. Together these findings highlight the role of different age groups in driving and sustaining SARS-CoV-2 transmission in the U.S. We also show the utility of repeated contact surveys in revealing heterogeneities in the epidemiology of COVID-19 across localities in the United States.


2006 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 382-408 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy von Heyking

History, civics, and social studies courses in Canadian schools have always represented some official understanding of Canadian citizenship, even Canadian identity. They have prepared children for citizenship and the exercise of their adult duties in the community. As historian Ken Osborne argues, citizenship remains a “flexibly protean” term, changing over time according to setting, and always resisted or undermined by those who disagree with the official understanding imposed upon them. While it may be difficult to assess the impact of the school's messages on students, we can identify the official ideas about English-Canadian citizenship and identity transmitted by schools.


1983 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 368-392 ◽  
Author(s):  
James N. Rosenau ◽  
Ole R. Holsti

The adaptation of the United States to its declining role as a superpower is examined through an inquiry into the belief systems of the society's leaders. Three sets of mutually exclusive domestic policy belief systems are identified, along with three sets of mutually exclusive foreign policy belief systems. The degree to which they are linked to each other is explored, and the connections are found to be tenuous—suggesting that the cleavages at work in American society are more enduring and less subject to change than may be readily apparent. The last section of the paper uses more recent data from a sample of American leaders to examine the degree to which foreign policy belief systems are susceptible to change over time, allowing for an analysis of the extent to which the hostage crisis in Iran and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan affected pre-existing belief systems. The overall finding is that the impact was negligible, and that foreign policy belief systems are largely resistant to change.


Author(s):  
Jaqueline C Avila ◽  
Silvia Mejia-Arangom ◽  
Daniel Jupiter ◽  
Brian Downer ◽  
Rebeca Wong

Abstract Objectives To study the impact of diabetes on the long-term cognitive trajectories of older adults in 2 countries with different socioeconomic and health settings, and to determine whether this relationship differs by cognitive domains. This study uses Mexico and the United States to confirm if patterns hold in both populations, as these countries have similar diabetes prevalence but different socioeconomic conditions and diabetes-related mortality. Methods Two nationally representative cohorts of adults aged 50 years or older are used: the Mexican Health and Aging Study for Mexico and the Health and Retirement Study for the United States, with sample sizes of 18,810 and 26,244 individuals, respectively, followed up for a period of 14 years. The outcome is cognition measured as a total composite score and by domain (memory and nonmemory). Mixed-effect linear models are used to test the effect of diabetes on cognition at 65 years old and over time in each country. Results Diabetes is associated with lower cognition and nonmemory scores at baseline and over time in both countries. In Mexico, diabetes only predicts lower memory scores over time, whereas in the United States it only predicts lower memory scores at baseline. Women have higher total cognition and memory scores than men in both studies. The magnitude of the effect of diabetes on cognition is similar in both countries. Discussion Despite the overall lower cognition in Mexico and different socioeconomic characteristics, the impact of diabetes on cognitive decline and the main risk and protective factors for poor cognition are similar in both countries.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Neelon ◽  
Fedelis Mutiso ◽  
Noel T Mueller ◽  
John L Pearce ◽  
Sara E Benjamin-Neelon

Background: Emerging evidence suggests that socially vulnerable communities are at higher risk for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreaks in the United States. However, no prior studies have examined temporal trends and differential effects of social vulnerability on COVID-19 incidence and death rates. The purpose of this study was to examine temporal trends among counties with high and low social vulnerability and to quantify disparities in these trends over time. We hypothesized that highly vulnerable counties would have higher incidence and death rates compared to less vulnerable counties and that this disparity would widen as the pandemic progressed. Methods: We conducted a retrospective longitudinal analysis examining COVID-19 incidence and death rates from March 1 to August 31, 2020 for each county in the US. We obtained daily COVID-19 incident case and death data from USAFacts and the Johns Hopkins Center for Systems Science and Engineering. We classified counties using the Social Vulnerability Index (SVI), a percentile-based measure from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in which higher scores represent more vulnerability. Using a Bayesian hierarchical negative binomial model, we estimated daily risk ratios (RRs) comparing counties in the first (lower) and fourth (upper) SVI quartiles. We adjusted for percentage of the county designated as rural, percentage in poor or fair health, percentage of adult smokers, county average daily fine particulate matter (PM2.5), percentage of primary care physicians per 100,000 residents, and the proportion tested for COVID-19 in the state. Results: In unadjusted analyses, we found that for most of March 2020, counties in the upper SVI quartile had significantly fewer cases per 100,000 than lower SVI quartile counties. However, on March 30, we observed a crossover effect in which the RR became significantly greater than 1.00 (RR = 1.10, 95% PI: 1.03, 1.18), indicating that the most vulnerable counties had, on average, higher COVID-19 incidence rates compared to least vulnerable counties. Upper SVI quartile counties had higher death rates on average starting on March 30 (RR = 1.17, 95% PI: 1.01,1.36). The death rate RR achieved a maximum value on July 29 (RR = 3.22, 95% PI: 2.91, 3.58), indicating that most vulnerable counties had, on average, 3.22 times more deaths per million than the least vulnerable counties. However, by late August, the lower quartile started to catch up to the upper quartile. In adjusted models, the RRs were attenuated for both incidence cases and deaths, indicating that the adjustment variables partially explained the associations. We also found positive associations between COVID-19 cases and deaths and percentage of the county designated as rural, percentage of resident in fair or poor health, and average daily PM2.5. Conclusions: Results indicate that the impact of COVID-19 is not static but can migrate from less vulnerable counties to more vulnerable counties over time. This highlights the importance of protecting vulnerable populations as the pandemic unfolds.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 900-900
Author(s):  
Anna Thompson ◽  
Britney Wardecker

Abstract Research suggests that mental health and well-being improve as we age, and this trend is dubbed “the paradox of aging” (Charles & Carstensen, 2010). However, little is known about whether this trend happens for individuals who may experience lifelong disadvantage, such as those who identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual. We used data from the Midlife in the United States Study (MIDUS) to examine lesbian/gay, bisexual, and heterosexual adults’ changes in depression from 1995 to 2014. Participants identified as lesbian/gay (n = 46), bisexual (n = 37), and heterosexual (n = 3030) and 45.1% identified as female. Participants’ ages ranged from 20-74 years (M = 45.61, SD = 11.41) in 1995 and 39-93 years (M = 63.64, SD = 11.35) in 2014. We analyzed our data using a repeated measures ANOVA and our results indicate that depression decreased on average from 1995 to 2014 for heterosexual [Wilk’s Lamda = .996, F (1, 3029) = 12.23, p < .001] and lesbian/gay adults [Wilk’s Lamda = .848, F (1, 45) = 8.08, p = .007]. However, bisexual adults did not experience this decrease in depression [Wilk’s Lamda = .990, F (1, 36) = 0.36, p = .550] and their depression remained relatively stable. Our results are consistent with previous studies that indicate bisexuals experience poorer mental health when compared to lesbian/gay and heterosexual adults (Bostwick, Hughes, & Everett, 2015). The current research highlights depression as a condition that may not decrease universally over time. We discuss implications for bisexuals’ health and well-being.


1992 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 673-704 ◽  
Author(s):  
John M. Liu

This paper examines the nature of Asian professional, technical, and kindred (PTK) immigration to the United States since 1965. While many recent studies have noted the significant increase of Asian PTK immigration since 1965, analyses of who these PTKs are have been lacking. To address this omission, this paper focuses on three aspects of Asian PTK immigration: (1) the conditions underlying emigration from Asia; (2) the occupational composition of Asian PTKs; and (3) the impact of this immigration on understanding Asian American communities. The paper examines the patterns of PTK immigration from the Philippines, three Chinese-speaking regions, India, and Korea. The published reports and public-use data of the United States Naturalization and Immigration Service (1972–1986) are the primary source for this examination. Analysis of specific immigration patterns show the similarities and contrasts embedded in the Asian American experience.


2021 ◽  
Vol Volume II (December 2021) ◽  
pp. 103-127
Author(s):  
Sergio Paez

Education is an investment in improving the quality of life for individuals, and therefore benefiting society in general. Education in the United States of America exemplifies a correlation between the level of an individual's education, their salary level due to those academic qualifications, and the impact they generate within themselves, their families, society, and within the nation. This contemporary study of education in the U.S. shows how a community in an urban center of Massachusetts made fundamental changes to transform the education of its students who historically experienced school failure. This exceptional case of leadership and altruism was accomplished with intensive influence from the State Government. This case can be the basis for educational initiatives that can have relevance and social impact anywhere in the world. At a global level, we can see that a society with high levels of education, based on knowledge and academic training, stands out for the multiple opportunities that arise to obtain a higher quality of life. The outcomes of a good education are beneficial to the growth of an entire society. Societies benefit from advances in technological and economic fields, health systems, construction and accessible housing, industry, commerce, and even social security.


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