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Recent PRI Faculty Books

Below is a listing of recent books by faculty affiliates of the Population Research Institute. Please click on the cover images for more information.

2009

Crouter, A.C. and A. Booth (Eds.) Work-Life Policies. Urban Institute Press (From the publisher) - Workplace policies that provide flexible scheduling, leave for caregiving, and assistance with child care likely benefit employers in recruitment, retention, productivity, and health care costs. Their benefits to employees seem obvious. Researchers, however, are just beginning to move beyond correlational, descriptive studies into rigorous intervention research. These new investigations examine not only the effects of formal policies—whether federal law or company HR initiatives—but also changes in workplace culture. Work-Life Policies assembles a diverse group of commentators—industrial psychologists, labor organizers, policy analysts, management scholars, organizational psychologists, and others—to offer fresh ideas and new insight.

Iceland, J. Where We Live Now: Immigration and Race in the United States. University of California Press (From the publisher) - Where We Live Now explores the ways in which immigration is reshaping American neighborhoods. In his examination of residential segregation patterns, John Iceland addresses these questions: What evidence suggests that immigrants are assimilating residentially? Does the assimilation process change for immigrants of different racial and ethnic backgrounds? How has immigration affected the residential patterns of native-born blacks and whites? Drawing on census data and information from other ethnographic and quantitative studies, Iceland affirms that immigrants are becoming residentially assimilated in American metropolitan areas. While the future remains uncertain, the evidence provided in the book suggests that America's metropolitan areas are not splintering irrevocably into hostile, homogeneous, and ethnically based neighborhoods. Instead, Iceland's findings suggest a blurring of the American color line in the coming years and indicate that as we become more diverse, we may in some important respects become less segregated.

Schafft, K.A. and A.Y. Jackson Rural Education for the Twenty-first Century: Identity, Place, and Community in a Globalizing World. Penn State Press

2008

Booth, A. , A.C. Crouter , S. Bianchi and J. Seltzer (Eds.) Intergenerational Caregiving. Urban Institute Press (From the publisher) - Dramatic changes in the American family have transformed the way we care for its oldest and youngest members. Nuclear families have become smaller as childbearing has declined, but extended families have become larger as life expectancy grows. Divorce, extramarital childbearing, cohabitation, and remarriage, have increased our number of kin but often complicate relationships and diffuse responsibility for care. In Intergenerational Caregiving, an interdisciplinary group of scholars considers our changing family relationships and their effect on social policies. Caregiving and its effects on families’ relationships and resources are examined from economic, sociological, anthropological and psychological perspectives, and chapters on both elders and children with disabilities are included.

Firebaugh, G. Seven Rules for Social Research. Princeton University Press (From the publisher) - Seven Rules for Social Research teaches social scientists how to get the most out of their technical skills and tools, providing a resource that fully describes the strategies and concepts no researcher or student of human behavior can do without.

Hofer, S.M. and D.F. Alwin (Eds.) Handbook of Cognitive Aging: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Sage Publications (From the publisher) - The Handbook of Cognitive Aging: Interdisciplinary Perspectives clarifies the differences in patterns and processes of cognitive aging. Along with a comprehensive review of current research, editors Scott M. Hofer and Duane F. Alwin provide a solid foundation for building a multidisciplinary agenda that will stimulate further rigorous research into these complex factors.

Jayakody, R. , A. Thornton and W.G. Axinn (Eds.) International Family Change: Ideational Perspectives. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates (From the publisher) - Featuring contributions from an international group of scholars, this new book emphasizes the ideational and motivational underpinnings of family life and the ways that attitudinal and value changes have influenced family behavior and relationships. International Family Change examines family attitudes, beliefs, and relationships in virtually every region of the globe, with an emphasis on the theoretical models for examining family changes. In particular, it argues that family life in the Western world is not the sole product of social and economic trends and that family change outside the West is not destined to follow the same trajectory. Chapters focusing on Iran and Vietnam help demonstrate that, rather than following a Western model, some global family change has resulted from rejecting it. The chapters on Nepal and Africa llustrate how the introduction of new ideas through the media and religion can reshape family beliefs. The chapters on Japan and Argentina demonstrate how unique cultural circumstances can influence family change. Intended for researchers and advanced students in human development, family studies, social psychology, sociology, geography, anthropology, economics, and history, this book also serves as a resource for advanced courses on the family and its history, family development, and social change taught in those departments.

Kramer, J.H. and J.T. Ulmer Sentencing Guidelines: Lessons from Pennsylvania. Lynne Rienner Publishers (From the publisher) - Sentencing guidelines, adopted by many states in recent decades, are intended to eliminate the impact of bias based on factors ranging from a criminal's ethnicity or gender to the county in which he or she was convicted. But have these guidelines achieved their goal of "fair punishment"? And how do the concerns of local courts shape sentencing under guidelines? In this comprehensive examination of the development, reform, and application of sentencing guidelines in one of the first states to employ them, John Kramer and Jeffery Ulmer offer a nuanced analysis of the complexities involved in administering justice.This is a comprehensive examination of sentencing guidelines that illuminates the complexities involved in administering justice.

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