Building Public Schools in the City: The Role of Neighborhood Context on Voter Support for School Bonds

This article explores individuals’ vote choice on a public good, namely, public school bonds. I argue that during a period of significant citywide demographic change the ethnic or racial context of voters’ neighborhoods affects their perception of community and, therefore, school programs. This will then shape their inferences about who are the beneficiaries. I test both racial threat and social contact theories to understand the varying impacts of neighborhood diversity on willingness to support this public good. Using a unique 1996 dataset from Houston Independent School District (HISD), I find that neighborhood context impacts vote choice and argue that this is due to perceptions about the beneficiaries of public schools. Evidence indicates that fears and insecurities in a neighborhood about the rise in a minority group at the city level can directly undermine support for the provision of public goods.

Longitudinal Mechanisms Linking Perceived Racial Discrimination to Aggressive Delinquency among North American Indigenous Youth

Objectives: Drawing from an integrated general strain theory framework, the purpose of the study is to examine the longitudinal mediating and moderating mechanisms linking perceived racial discrimination with aggressive delinquency among North American Indigenous (i.e., American Indian and Canadian First Nations) youth. Method: Data come from an eight-year longitudinal study of Indigenous youth residing on reservations/reserves in the upper Midwest and Canada ( N = 659). Scales were created for discrimination, depressive symptoms, school bonds, and delinquent peer associations at years 2 and 3, and a count measure of aggression was created at years 2, 3, and 5. Cross-lagged path analysis models were estimated to examine possible mediating effects of depressive symptoms, school bonds, and delinquent peer associations. Separate regression models were examined to test for possible moderating effects of the aforementioned variables. Results: The results of a longitudinal path analysis model showed that discrimination indirectly increased aggression through decreased school bonds and increased delinquent peer associations. Depressive symptoms was the only significant moderator, and contrary to expectations, the effect of discrimination on aggression declined in magnitude as depressive symptoms increased. Conclusions: Discrimination is a key criminogenic stressor among Indigenous youth and is linked with multiple adverse outcomes through the adolescent years.

Investment Expenditures of Local municipalities in Japan in the 2000s

In this paper, I analyzed the investment expenditures of local municipalities in Japan in the 2000s by examining the cases of different municipalities and obtained the following results. First, merged municipalities issued Special Merger Bonds and nonmerged/depopulated municipalities issued Depopulation Bonds most. Second, in nonmerged/nondepopulated municipalities began to focus more on works funded by grants and local bonds rather than on unsubsidized works funded by Road Bonds and other types of local bonds. That is, in the past, the total value of Road Bonds was the largest of all bond totals. However, Road Bonds were replaced by School Bonds issued to supplement School Block Grants established during the decentralization reform in the 2000s. Therefore, this phenomenon is one of the outcomes of the decentralization reform. In Japan, the decentralization can increase public works for schools in cities and some select towns and villages with high financial capability indices. This could widen the gap between rich and poor municipalities. The theory of cumulative causation by Gunnar Myrdal can be attributed to this phenomenon

The Whole of Life

Weil traveled the word but remained a rooted cosmopolitan, a citizen of Goldsboro. There she hosted an intellectual salon featuring a southern-style dinner and intense conversation with a visiting lecturer, journalist, or professor. She worked to keep the Jewish congregation alive as the local Jewish population declined. She involved herself in local efforts to support school bonds and to build a new town library. She declined honorary degrees although she accepted a Sophia Smith Medal from Smith College. Nearing death, she dissipated her wealth with charitable benefactions and bequeathed her home and an endowment to build a new public library. She died in 1971 in the house in which she was born,

Why Don’t More Black Americans Offend? Testing a Theory of African American Offending’s Ethnic-Racial Socialization Hypothesis

Criminology is replete with research on the correlates of African American offending, yet theorizing efforts have lagged. Unnever and Gabbidon recently proposed a Theory of African American Offending, an integrated explanation of African Americans’ risks for and resilience to offending. Many of the theory’s hypotheses remain untested, especially its major claim that positive ethnic-racial socialization is the main reason more Black Americans do not offend. The theory argues that positive ethnic-racial socialization inhibits African American offending by attenuating the criminogenic effect of weak social bonds. Using data from a prospective, longitudinal cohort of African Americans from the Woodlawn Project, we test whether these postulations hold for adolescent delinquency and adult offending and find general support: Positive ethnic-racial socialization buffers the effect of weak school bonds on adolescent substance use and adult offending for males, but not females, across most crime types. Advancing criminological discourse on race, offending, and resilience, this study has implications for broader criminological theorizing and crime-reduction efforts.

The Children of Immigrants’ Bonding to School: Examining the Roles of Assimilation, Gender, Race, Ethnicity, and Social Bonds

Social bonds to school (i.e., attachment, commitment, involvement, and belief) can influence educational progress and success for students; however, the children of immigrants’ bonding to school remain unclear. This study utilizes data from the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 and incorporates multilevel analysis to examine straight-line assimilation, segmented assimilation, and immigrant optimism theories in relationship to the children of immigrants’ school bonds. Findings suggest that bonds to school are moderated by gender, race, ethnicity, and immigrant generation. The implications of the evident disparities in the children of immigrants’ bonds to U.S. public schools are discussed more broadly.