Scott J. South’s research while affiliated with State University of New York and other places

Using data from the 2013 through 2021 waves of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics Transition into Adulthood Supplement (PSID-TAS), this study examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on sexual activity among young adults. Particular attention is given to the mechanisms that might explain the decline in sexual activity during the pandemic. We find that fewer young adults report having had recent sexual intercourse during the COVID-19 pandemic relative to what would have been expected in the absence of a pandemic. However, we do not find a significant decline in the frequency of sexual intercourse among young adults who did have sex. A pandemic-induced decline in the likelihood of being in a romantic relationship, a decrease in the frequency of alcohol consumption, and an increase in parental coresidence explain the bulk of the decline in young adult sexual activity during the pandemic. In contrast, changes in young adults’ employment and college attendance, self-rated health, and psychological distress do not explain the reduced sexual activity during the pandemic.

Migration from Mexico to the United States results in numerical imbalances between men and women in the communities left behind, but little is known about how these imbalanced sex ratios in Mexican communities affect family formation behavior. Using two waves of data from the Mexican Family Life Survey (MxFLS) and 2000 Mexican census data, we examine how the sex composition of the municipality population is associated with the likelihood that Mexican women and men marry. Consistent with demographic-opportunity theory, but not sociocultural theory, results from logistic regression analyses show that men’s probability of marrying is positively associated with the numerical availability of eligible women in the municipality population. Consistent with the argument that many Mexican migrant men, but not migrant women, remain eligible partners for those who remain in Mexico, the sex composition of the municipal population is significantly associated with men’s but not women’s likelihood of marrying.

Longitudinal data from the Mexican Family Life Survey, in conjunction with aggregated vital statistics and census data, are used to examine how Mexican adults’ experiences of violent victimization and perceptions of personal safety, as well as the homicide rate in their local community, are associated with the likelihood that they migrate to the USA. Multilevel logistic regression analyses provide suggestive evidence that Mexicans who report being recent victims of violence and who perceive a recent deterioration in their personal safety are more likely than others to migrate to the USA. The association between perceived deterioration in personal safety and the probability of migrating to the USA is particularly strong among residents of urban areas. We find no evidence that a generalized fear of crime or exposure to a high municipality-level homicide rate is associated with USA-bound migration.

We use longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, in conjunction with decennial census data, to examine the impact of neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage on young women's risk of premarital childbearing and the timing of their transition to first marriage. Discrete-time event-history models reveal that, among black women, neighborhood disadvantage has little impact on the risk of premarital childbearing, but has a significant nonlinear effect on the probability of marriage prior to first birth. Among white women, as neighborhood disadvantage increases, premarital childbearing rates rise nonlinearly, and marriage rates rise linearly. The nonlinear effects of neighborhood disadvantage on white women's premarital childbearing and black women's first prebirth marriage are generally consistent with arguments regarding the detrimental consequences of concentrated poverty, as opposed to merely high poverty. We find no evidence that the effects of individual socioeconomic status on these dimensions of family formation vary by neighborhood quality. And although white women's estimated rates of premarital childbearing may approach those of blacks in the most disadvantaged neighborhoods, socioeconomic differences between the neighborhoods inhabited by black women and white women explain only a modest proportion of the pronounced racial differences in premarital child-bearing and the timing of first marriage.

The specialization and trading model—the dominant theoretical perspective on marital stability—posits a positive effect of wives’ economic independence on the risk of divorce. Prior evidence for this association is mixed, however. This analysis explores the possibility that the effect of wives’ labor force supply and educational attainment on marital dissolution varies across historical periods and across the marital life course. Event-history analyses of data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics for 3,523 married couples observed between 1969 and 1993 reveal that the impact of wives’ employment on marital dissolution has become increasingly positive. Moreover, as marriages age, the positive effect of wives’ employment on divorce becomes stronger and the negative impact of wives’ education becomes weaker. Possible explanations for these varying effects include the development of institutional supports for unmarried working mothers, the increasing adoption of nontraditional gender-role ideologies, and trends in workplace sex segregation.

The migration of young men from Mexico to the United States generates a deficit of men and a relative abundance of women in many Mexican communities, but the implications of this imbalanced sex ratio for Mexicans’ risks of criminal victimization has received little attention. We merge individual-level data from 19,551 inhabitants of 136 municipalities covered in the 2002 Mexican Family Life Survey with aggregated data from the 2000 Mexico population census to examine the association between the municipality-level percentage of men at ages 15 to 39 and self-reports of recent violent victimization. Multilevel logistic regression modeling reveals a curvilinear relationship between percent male and the likelihood of experiencing a violent victimization, with victimization risks lowest in municipalities characterized by either unusually low or unusually high numbers of men. Respondents residing in municipalities having a more balanced sex composition experience the highest risk of victimization. The risk of experiencing a violent victimization also varies sharply by age, gender, socioeconomic status, and community characteristics.

The growth in residential segregation by income implies an increase over time in the neighborhood income gap between rich and poor households. This analysis uses data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, in concert with tract-level decennial U.S. census data, to quantify the relative contribution of two proximate sources of this increase: change in the income-class-selectivity of inter-neighborhood migrants and change in the class difference in neighborhood income among non-migrants, or in situ change. Change in the income-class-selectivity of migrants is likely to be particularly important for explaining the increase in the neighborhood income gap among blacks to the extent that declining housing discrimination enables middle-class blacks to access higher-income neighborhoods. Decomposition of the change between 1980 and 1990 in the class difference in neighborhood income shows that, among blacks, the increase in the neighborhood income gap between rich and poor persons is attributable in large measure to a change in migrant selectivity. An increase in the class difference in average income among the destination neighborhoods of short-distance migrants is a particularly important source of the growth in the class difference in neighborhood income among blacks. In contrast, among whites, the bulk of the increase in the class difference in neighborhood income is attributable to a divergence in neighborhood income between rich and poor non-migrants.

Drawing on the life-course perspective, this study examines the effect of residential histories spent living in poor neighborhoods on the contemporaneous likelihood of moving between poor and non-poor neighborhoods. We use individual-level data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics from 1970 to 2013 in conjunction with neighborhood-level data derived from four U.S. censuses. Results from logistic regression analyses show that a longer residential history spent in poor neighborhoods both reduces the likelihood of moving from a poor to a non-poor neighborhood and increases the likelihood of moving from a non-poor to a poor neighborhood. A decomposition analysis reveals that a sizeable portion of the racial differences in the likelihood of moving between poor and non-poor neighborhoods is attributable to differences between blacks and whites in the duration of time they have spent living in a poor neighborhood. Our study highlights the salient role of residential histories in perpetuating racial inequality in neighborhood poverty over the life course and across generations.

Fewer young adults are engaging in casual sexual intercourse now than in the past, but the reasons for this decline are unknown. The authors use data from the 2007 through 2017 waves of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics Transition into Adulthood Supplement to quantify some of the proximate sources of the decline in the likelihood that unpartnered young adults ages 18 to 23 have recently had sexual intercourse. Among young women, the decline in the frequency of drinking alcohol explains about one quarter of the drop in the propensity to have casual sex. Among young men, declines in drinking frequency, an increase in computer gaming, and the growing percentage who coreside with their parents all contribute significantly to the decline in casual sex. The authors find no evidence that trends in young adults’ economic circumstances, internet use, or television watching explain the recent decline in casual sexual activity.