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November 2000
Welcome to Research Notes, a summary of
Princeton University research, events and experts
of interest to the media and general public. This
issue includes news on housing vouchers,
parenting styles, religion, art conservation, and
the powerful effects that neighborhoods can have on
health; as well as contact information for
faculty members who can comment on Islam and the
Mideast, class size, emergency contraception, HIV,
holiday commercialism and foreign workers.
Research Notes is available on the
Internet at http://www.princeton.edu/pr/news.
For information, contact Marilyn Marks at (609)
258-5748 or mmarks@princeton.edu.
Research
Moving to Opportunity: A bold social
experiment that aims to transform people's lives by
moving them out of poor neighborhoods appears to be
succeeding, with families enjoying more safety,
fewer behavior problems among boys, and even better
health, according to a new study co-authored by
Jeffrey R. Kling, assistant professor of economics
and public affairs.
The study, by Kling and two Harvard University
colleagues, Lawrence F. Katz and Jeffrey B.
Liebman, reports on the early progress of Boston
families who moved out of high-poverty
neighborhoods as part of a U.S. Department of
Housing and Urban Development housing-voucher
experiment known as Moving to Opportunity. The
study and other information on the program are
available online at http://www.mtoresearch.org.
The Moving to Opportunity experiment began in
1994 in Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and
New York. Researchers wanted to know how
neighborhood conditions affect the life chances of
poor children -- and how those children would fare
when they were removed from their communities and
blended into the middle class.
Former HUD Assistant Secretary Xavier Briggs
described the research by Kling and his colleagues
as "extraordinarily significant," providing solid
evidence for the theory that neighborhoods have
powerful effects on many aspects of family
life.
"The theory has always been that it would take
years for effects to register," Briggs said. But
when you leave neighborhoods behind where you're
ducking bullets and worried for your life, and for
your children's lives, every minute of every day,
lo and behold it doesn't take long for things to
register at all."
Kling is available at 609-258-6153 or kling@princeton.edu.
Parental yelling: In a new study of
conservative Protestant child discipline, co-author
W. Bradford Wilcox, of Princeton's Center for
Research on Child Wellbeing, finds that although
these parents advocate corporal punishment, they
are less likely to yell at their pre-schoolers
and school-age children. Wilcox says the results
cast doubt on assertions that conservative
Protestant parents are abusive and authoritarian,
as high rates of parental yelling have been
associated with abusive parenting and
child-development problems.
Despite the use of corporal punishment, Wilcox
has found in previous research that conservative
Protestant parenting -- exemplified by best-selling
child-rearing guides such as Dare to Discipline
by Dr. James Dobson -- advances a style that is
warm and expressive, even as it stresses discipline
and control.
"In the 1990s, a number of scholars accused
conservative Protestant parents of being abusive
because they endorse corporal punishment," Wilcox
said. "This study, along with my earlier work,
shows that these parents are also less likely to
yell at their children and more likely to praise
and hug their children."
The study was co-authored by John P. Bartkowski
at Mississippi State University. It is available at
http://www.opr.princeton.edu/faculty/wbwilcox.html
and has been published in the September issue of
Social Forces. Wilcox may be reached at
wbwilcox@princeton.edu.
Stone treasures: When George
Scherer looks at Princeton's meticulously
maintained buildings and stone carvings, he
searches for problems -- the flaking stone here,
the eroded inscription there.
Scherer, a materials scientist who formerly
worked at DuPont and Corning, specializes in the
conservation of art, particularly stone buildings
and monuments. His research program is providing
insights into new materials that soak into stones
to prevent and repair damage. One such material
developed by Scherer may soon be tested on
crumbling walls around the ancient Greek city of
Rhodes.
The Greek conservators are "very interested in
having some of our materials to paint on the wall,"
Scherer said, "but we are all very conservative.
They, and we, want to make sure we've done it
right."
One challenge, he said, is to make sure that the
proposed solution does not do more harm than good.
"You always worry about doing something subtle, but
pathological, that may show up 10 years down the
road," he said.
Scherer may be contacted at 609-258-5680, or
scherer@princeton.edu.
Location, location: It's not surprising
that -- on average -- rich people live longer than
poor people, with access to better diets, health
care, and other services. But a new study by
Professor Christina Paxson and graduate student
Douglas Miller suggests that your life span also is
affected by how your income compares to the incomes
of others in the community.
Paxson, a professor of economics and public
affairs, directs the Center for Health and
Wellbeing in Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School,
which brings together the interdisciplinary study
of health and health policy. Her research examined
the relationship between mortality and relative
income at the state level -- that is, whether an
individual's life expectancy is affected by the
average income of others living in the same state.
For some groups, it was. Specifically, controlling
for their own income, groups that are poorer
relative to others who live in the same
state are at higher risk of dying. The relationship
was especially strong for working-age black
men.
"The argument here is that it's good to be
richer than those around you," Paxson said. "The
evidence supports the idea that you're better off
not being the poorest kid on the block" -- whatever
block that is.
Many questions remain, Paxson said. "There are
so many different theories as to why relative
income matters," she said. For example, incomes of
others in an area can affect the availability of
services and goods. Future research will focus on
the causes of death and issues such as social
isolation and psychosocial stress, she said, noting
that a growing body of evidence points to the link
between psychosocial stress and health
problems.
Researchers plan to do a similar analysis at the
city level. Paxson believes the results will be
even more informative.
Paxson and Miller's paper, "Relative Income,
Race, and Mortality," is available online at
http://www.wws.princeton.edu/~rpds/relincome.pdf.
Paxson may be contacted at 609-258-6474 or by email
at cpaxson@princeton.edu.
Hearing things: Until the 18th century,
it was common not only for people to speak to God,
but for God to speak back. Christianity is replete
with examples of heavenly or demonic voices -- but
this type of "spiritual listening" came under
attacks by critics who felt that only seeing was
believing.
In a new book, Hearing Things: Religion,
Illusion, and the American Enlightenment,
(Harvard University Press), Professor Leigh Schmidt
explores the relationship between the roles of
preachers and charlatans, prophets and imposters.
He traces how hearing voices increasingly became
associated with trickery or even insanity, and how
the learned made advances in anatomy, acoustic
technology and medical psychology to debunk what
they saw as pious frauds.
Enlightenment-era thinkers were threatened by
the power that immediate revelation possessed. In
order to establish a civil society governed by
reason and not religious authorities, they placed
sharp limits on divine speech.
It is an argument that continues today. "The
desire for a 'holy listening' has hardly subsided
in American culture," Schmidt writes in the book.
"If anything, the noisier and more frenetic the
contemporary world is perceived as being, the
stronger that spiritual longing becomes. The
popularity of music therapies among alternative
healers -- many of whom offer up 'mystical
acoustics' by which body, mind and cosmos are
harmonized -- is certainly one example of this
yearning for attunement."
Schmidt can be reached at 609-258-5285, or
leschmid@princeton.edu.
Resources
Islamic affairs: Akbar S. Ahmed, a
visiting professor in the anthropology, came to
Princeton from Cambridge University. A noted
anthropologist, writer and filmmaker, Ahmed -- the
former High Commissioner for the Islamic Republic
of Pakistan in the United Kingdom -- can comment on
many issues in the Islamic world. In addition to
giving lectures on Islam throughout the world,
Ahmed served as advisor on Islam to Prince Charles
and is known for an address at a British synagogue
on Islamophobia and anti-Semitism. The Archbishop
of Canterbury has called his book Islam Today: A
Short Introduction to the Muslim World (1999)
the best book on Islam in English. Ahmed's film,
Jinnah, was named best foreign film at the
Houston and Zanzibar film festivals. Contact
Professor Ahmed at 609-258-1629 or ahmed@princeton.edu.
Mideast turmoil: Michael Doran, assistant
professor of Near Eastern studies, also can comment
on issues related to the contemporary Middle East.
He will teach a course on the modern Middle East
next semester. Doran is available at 609-258-0256
or msdoran@princeton.edu.
Holiday commercialism: Religion Professor
Leigh E. Schmidt, an expert on popular religion and
consumer culture, can address December's perennial
issue of holiday commercialization. He is the
author of Consumer Rites: The Buying and Selling
of American Holidays, among other books.
Contact him at leschmid@princeton.edu
or 609-258-5285.
Class size: Princeton economist Alan B.
Krueger, who specializes in issues of economics and
education, has reviewed evidence on the impact of
class size on academic achievement and found that
smaller classes do increase student performance,
but the effect is subtle. Professor Krueger may be
reached at 609-258-4845 or akrueger@princeton.edu.
Contraception, HIV: James Trussell,
professor of economics and public affairs and
associate dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of
Public and International Affairs, is an expert on
reproductive health. Much of his recent work has
focused on emergency contraception. In addition to
his research, Trussell maintains an emergency
contraception website (http://opr.princeton.edu/ec/)
and launched a toll-free emergency contraception
hotline (1-888-NOT-2-LATE).
In addition, Trussell recently co-chaired a task
force of the National Academy of Sciences'
Institute of Medicine, which published a report
entitled No Time to Lose: Getting More from HIV
Prevention. The report, available at http://www.nap.edu/books/0309071372/html/,
outlines a national HIV prevention strategy for the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Contact
Trussell at 609-258-4810 or trussell@princeton.edu.
Foreign workers: Sociologist Thomas
Espenshade is an expert on immigrants and the
perceived shortage of skilled labor in the U.S. In
October, President Clinton signed into law
legislation increasing the number of visas
available to these workers -- a victory for
high-tech companies needing computer-savvy
employees.
Espenshade can speak on trends in skilled
immigration, including the growth and composition
of the science and engineering workforce and the
contribution of foreign-born scientists and
engineers. He notes in one recent paper that
despite the seeming scarcity of highly skilled
workers, the salaries of scientists and engineers,
measured in constant dollars, actually have been
falling in recent years -- suggesting that no
long-term shortage exists. Espenshade may be
reached at 609-258-5233 or tje@princeton.edu.
Events
"Clean Gene" on Adlai Stevenson: Former
senator and anti-war leader Eugene McCarthy will
join a panel of historians, biographers, and
political scientists Thursday, Nov. 9 to answer the
question, "Whatever Happened to Adlai Stevenson?"
The discussion -- the final event in Princeton
University's year-long celebration of the
centennial of Stevenson's birth -- will take place
at 4 p.m. in Dodds Auditorium in Robertson Hall. In
1960, McCarthy nominated Stevenson, a member of
Princeton's class of 1922, for president at the
Democratic national convention in Los Angeles. The
convention, however, selected John F. Kennedy as
the party's nominee.
Notable
Richard Serra's dramatic sculpture "The Hedgehog
and the Fox," on the Princeton campus, will be
dedicated at 2:30 p.m. Nov. 10. Hal Foster, a
Princeton professor of modern art, calls Serra the
most important sculptor of the last few decades and
among the most important of the 20th century. "He
has extended the space of sculpture more
creatively, and explored the experience of
sculpture more critically, than any other artist in
the postwar period," Foster said.
Serra's sculpture joins Princeton's renowned
collection of outdoor modern art.
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