Financial status—the configuration of a household’s income, assets, and debts—shapes economic security, social position, influence, and opportunities for intergenerational transmission of well-being. Yet prior research typically relies on single, summed indicators of income or wealth, overlooking how distinct income sources, asset types, and debt categories combine to locate households within a multidimensional, nonhierarchical financial space. In this study, we use a case-centered clustering approach that identifies how these components coalesce into distinct financial configurations of households. Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we identify 10 empirically grounded financial groups that represent multiple, intersecting forms of advantage and constraint. Some households appear affluent yet carry substantial leverage, while others have modest resources but remain relatively insulated from financial risk. By analyzing households as integrated financial cases rather than as net sums of income or wealth, we find that financial well-being and vulnerability are organized in diverse, nonhierarchical patterns. The findings demonstrate the value of studying financial status as a multidimensional construct that underscores the complexity of contemporary economic life.

The article investigates African American community views on the development of hog-farm-based biogas production in rural North Carolina. In 2023, five focus groups ( N = 51) were conducted in Sampson County, the site of the first large-scale biogas project in North Carolina. The results suggest a prevalence of a “social gap” in the outlook of the residents, that is, they favored biogas as a source of renewable energy in general but opposed its development for their area. A hierarchical-nested analytical model of the “social gap” is developed and compared with the positions of other biogas supporters and detractors in the state. African American community views were closer to anti-biogas advocates, such as environmentalists, in asserting that biogas capture will do little to alleviate the most hazardous impacts of hog farming associated with large-scale manure discharges in surrounding farm areas. However, residents also considered biogas as having a potential for positive economic and environmental impacts, a position that was more in line with the stance of pro-biogas developers and state regulators.

Well-being outcomes for workers in the United States have worsened in recent years. However, the role that workers’ experiences with digital technologies may play in this trend is underexplored. Thus, using data from 10 focus groups ( n = 67) and an original survey with workers in the United States ( n = 4,898), we explore the impact of technology on workers’ self-assessments of emotional health and burnout levels. Focus groups revealed that workers perceive technology to be making their work lives more challenging, leading to frustration and burnout. In addition, workers attested that suboptimal working conditions relate to diminished confidence around their technological skills. Regarding quantitative findings, logistic regression models constructed for the survey data demonstrate that compared to salaried workers with a positive relationship to technology, both salaried workers with a negative relationship to technology and hourly paid workers (regardless of their relationship to technology) professed elevated levels of burnout at work. Taken together, we theorize that our results suggest the existence of a “digital dignity divide” in which orientation toward technology matters when it comes to whether workers feel valued and respected at work (and vice versa). In turn, feeling a lack of dignity related to digital technologies at work has an impact on overall emotional well-being.

Researchers have documented how parents contribute to socioeconomic inequality, and a separate strand of work has identified how parents transmit gender inequality. This article draws on the concept of the matrix of domination to examine how gender and socioeconomic status combine in the intergenerational transmission of inequality in China. Drawing on 100 interviews with young adults in southwestern China, I find that through the advice and financial support they give their children, parents simultaneously transmit both gender and socioeconomic inequality. Despite broad consensus around “raising daughters rich and sons poor,” specific parental directives varied with gender and socioeconomic background. These findings have implications for understanding the marriage market mismatch hypothesis and the declining marriage rate in contemporary China.

Workers in labor unions have better access to high quality health insurance plans, better pensions, and higher wages leading to increased lifetime earnings likely leading to better health. Additionally, much of the gendered hiring, promotion, and wage discrimination faced by women in the workplace is dependent on social characteristics (marital status and/or their status as a mother). While many of the benefits associated with union membership can potentially buffer the gendered workplace inequalities that lead to poorer health outcomes, unions have been largely ignored in health disparities literature. Using 28 waves of data (N=3,409) from The National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, this study creates a lifetime "union tenure" variable, tests its relationship to midlife physical and mental health, and tests ways in which motherhood and marital status may moderate this relationship. Findings suggest that long-term union membership is associated with better physical health among mothers but does not have a significant benefit for women without children. Further, in fully controlled models, this relationship is not dependent on marital status and both married and unmarried mothers see a union tenure health benefit. This study provides insight into how union membership may play a role in improving the midlife health of working mothers.

Public understanding of violence against women, and appropriate solutions to tackling gender-based violence, have changed enormously over the past 50 years. In this paper, we study how violence against women is practically understood through organizational efforts to frame and combat it in the United States. We use topic modeling and dictionary-based content analysis to explore the missions and programming of 918 service and advocacy nonprofits directly involved in anti-violence work between 1998 and 2016. We find that, in contrast to earlier foci on direct crisis intervention, anti-violence organizations increasingly understand violence against women as a multifaceted problem that must be addressed by comprehensive programming. We also find that nonprofits increasingly use medicalized, criminal-legal, and bureaucratic language to describe their work, underscoring the tensions of institutionalization.

This paper examines the relationship between gender ideology and attitudes toward parental leave. We use data from two original survey experiments with a total analytic sample of 3332 respondents. Using an experimental design where participants evaluate a new parent’s decision about taking parental leave in light of the employer’s leave policies, and answer attitudinal questions about leave and gender ideology, we assess the associations between gender ideology and (a) desired weeks of parental leave for mothers and fathers, as well as (b) perceptions of whether the new parent described in the experiment took too little or too much leave. We find that participants think fathers should receive 10.5 weeks of paid paternity leave, whereas mothers should receive 16 weeks of paid maternity leave. In general, those with egalitarian gender ideals support longer paternity leave and more equal periods of leave for mothers and fathers—and are more likely to think that men workers take too little leave. However, those who support mothers as financial providers are more likely to think that women workers take too much leave, demonstrating the complexities between dimensions of gender ideology, the gender of the parent taking leave, and views of parental leave.

The Idle No More (INM) movement emerged in reaction to Bill C-45, the Canadian Jobs and Growth Act, in November 2012, inspiring a new wave of activism. Central to the movement’s grievances are Indigenous resistance and environmental justice (EJ), positioning INM’s activities against neo-colonialism, exploitation, and environmental degradation. We build upon existing EJ movements, Indigenous Peoples/Indigenous Environmental Justice (IEJ) movements, and social movement spillover, grievance, and claims making literatures to understand the role of shared movement narratives in encouraging mobilization. INM relies on social media to educate members and construct and communicate movement goals and actions. Analyzing 6 months of Facebook comments, reflecting the INM movement’s emergence period, we argue that INM activists employ structural grievances embedded in previous EJ and Indigenous resistance movements, combined with emerging (incidental) grievances to articulate shared claims that address inequality and justice, appealing to a range of potential supporters. We offer an analysis of the emergent INM movement to consider the active intersection of EJ, Indigenous Peoples, and IEJ movements to mobilize and sustain movement activities in spite of Bill C-45’s passage.

When debating the effect of undocumented immigrants on the economy, scholars often presume that undocumented immigrants are wage laborers rather than business owners. This study imputes the legal status of Mexican and Central American immigrants (MCAs) in the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) between 1996 and 2008 to evaluate how legal status affects business ownership patterns. From 1996 to 2008, the SIPP asked a series of questions about business ownership and migration history that make it uniquely suited to an investigation of undocumented MCA business owners. Instrumental variables regressions reveal that undocumented immigrants had a lower likelihood of owning a business than documented immigrants, but undocumented and documented business owners derived similar incomes from their businesses. A lack of legal status may hold back potential entrepreneurs. MCA business owners of both legal statuses clustered into similar low-paying, low-growth industries, however, so regardless of legal status, there are likely limits to how much business ownership can promote economic mobility among MCAs. All told, scholars should do more to acknowledge the existence of undocumented immigrant business owners, measure their impact on the economy, and examine their influence on immigrant incorporation patterns.

Workers in female-dominated occupations earn less, on average, than workers in comparable male-dominated occupations. To explain the gendered occupational wage disparity, com pensating differentials theory focuses on women’s preferences and asserts that women cluster in occupations that pay less in exchange for family-friendly job amenities. On the other hand, the devaluation perspective argues these wage discrepancies are the result of the cultural devaluation of women’s work that leads to both lower wages and a lower likelihood of having job amenities. Using data from the 2017–2018 American Time Use Survey Leave Module, I examine whether workers in female-dominated occupations are indeed more likely to have access to family-friendly job amenities. I focus on workers’ access to three contemporary family-friendly job amenities: paid leave, remote work, and flexible scheduling. I find that workers in female-dominated jobs are no more likely to have access to family-friendly job amenities than workers in male-dominated jobs. Additionally, family-friendly job amenities are associated with higher wages, not the lower wages as compensating differentials posits. These findings suggest that compensating differentials theory cannot explain the clustering of women in lower-paying occupations.