Knowledge that Transforms

Despite a global food surplus, almost half of the world's less developed countries suffer significant problems concerning food. Most social science and policy discussions of food security make the “food availability” assumption that increased food supply is the key to reducing hunger. Critics argue, however, that increased food supply has little impact on hunger and that the primary culprits are entrenched inequality and militarism. A lagged panel analysis of food supply and child hunger rates (1970–1990) shows that the food supply has only modest effects on child hunger rates and that food supply is structurally rooted in development processes (domestic investment, urban bias, foreign capital penetration) while child hunger is politically based in arms imports, internal violence and political democratization. Population pressure, tapped by increased age dependency, undermines both the supply of food and the population's access to it, and cultural dualism magnifies the effects of population pressure on child hunger. The effects of economic growth “trickle down” to affect both food supply and child hunger, and economic growth is also positively correlated with political democratization, suggesting there is no short-term “trade-off” between growth, democratization, and social equity.

Research on racial inequality has become increasingly specialized, often focusing on a single explanation and subgroup of the population. In a diverse society, a broader comparative framework for interpreting the causes of wage inequality for different racial, ethnic, and gender groups is called for. The effects of a range of different factors on the wages of Latinos, Asians, and blacks, relative to whites and separately for women and men, are examined. New sources of racial wage inequality are also considered. Significant differences are found in the sources of wage inequality across race, ethnicity, and gender. Differences are generally greater between racial and ethnic groups than between men and women. Key findings include a large negative effect of immigration on the relative wages of Latinos and Asians and only a small effect on the relative wages of black women (and no effect on black men). In contrast, the relative wages of blacks remain most affected positively by the presence of manufacturing employment and unions. New economy indicators of high-skill services and flexible employment conditions play only a secondary role in explaining metropolitan racial wage inequality.

The social history of film in the United States is examined to illuminate the ideological and organizational foundations of the valuation of art. Attempts to valorize film as art began in film's first decades. Thereafter, a series of key events and actions in the late 1950s and 1960s, both inside and outside the film world, resulted in a shift in audiences’ perception of film—from a form of entertainment to a cultural genre that could properly be appreciated as art. This shift in perception was made possible by the opening of an artistic niche brought about by changes outside the film world, by the institutionalization of resources and practices within the film world, and by the employment of an intellectualizing discourse by film critics.

Previous research has demonstrated associations between exposure to parental divorce and marital discord while growing up and children's psychological distress in adulthood. Few studies, however, have attempted to explain these associations. Three pathways are evaluated through which family disruption and discord may affect offspring's well-being: children's socioeconomic attainment, children's marital and relationship stability, and the quality of children's relations with parents. Using 17-year longitudinal data from two generations, results show that divorce and marital discord predict lower levels of psychological well-being in adulthood. Parent-child relationships mediate most of the associations between parents’ marital discord and divorce and children's subsequent psychological outcomes. Marital discord appears to erode children's emotional bonds with mothers, whereas both divorce and marital discord appear to erode children's emotional bonds with fathers. The results highlight the continuing importance of parent-child ties for children's well-being in early adulthood.

Do recent declines in first marriage rates signal that an increasing proportion of women will remain single their entire lives, or merely that they are postponing marriage to older ages? Our forecasts for cohorts born in the 1950s and 1960s suggest that marriage will remain nearly universal for American women—close to 90 percent of women are predicted to marry. However, separate forecasts by educational attainment reveal a new socioeconomic pattern of first marriage: Whereas in the past, women with more education were less likely to marry, recent college graduates are now forecast to marry at higher levels despite their later entry into first marriage. This educational crossover, which occurs for both black women and white women in recent cohorts, suggests that marriage is increasingly becoming a province of the most educated, a trend that may become a new source of inequality for future generations. Forecasts presented here use data from the 1995 Current Population Survey and compare estimates from the Hemes model with those from the Coale-McNeil model.