FAMILY PATTERNS OF MIGRANTS TO THE NORTH

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

DESCRIPTION: This project will offer an in-depth investigation of the family patterns of southern migrants to the North during the twentieth century, with special attention devoted to: (1) the marital status of males and females, (2) the living arrangements of currently married males and females, (3) family headship by adult women with children, (4) parenthood among never married adult women, and (5) the living situations of young children, especially the presence or absence of parents. Many of the contemporary social problems of urban populations have been blamed on the "disintegrating" family. And, some have attributed the relatively high incidence of unstable marriages and single-parent households, more common among urban residents, to the transplantation of a southern "sharecropping culture" to northern cities. Yet, very little empirical evidence has been marshaled to describe thoroughly, much less explain, the family patterns of southern migrants. The project will rely heavily upon the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS). Residents of northern and western metropolitan areas will be extracted from the 1920, 1940, 1950, 1960, 1970, 1980, and 1990 files of the IPUMS. These residents will then be classified according to their migration histories. That is, did they have southern origins? If so, did they migrate recently, or in the more distant past? A comparative approach will be used to determine whether the family patterns of migrants differ from long-time residents of the North. Analyses across decades will be useful for assessing changes in the relationship between migration history and family patterns over time. Migrants will also be compared with the sedentary southern population. Multilevel analyses will be conducted to determine whether the characteristics of metropolitan areas (e.g., racial composition, unemployment, residential segregation, non-marital childbearing) affected the behavior of individuals, and/or aggravated the consequences of migrant status. Multivariate, "regression family" techniques such as logistic regression, multinomial logistic regression, and weighted least squares regression will be used to analyze the diverse data, with the primary objective of determining whether southern migrants exhibited family pattens that differed significantly from non-migrants. The evidence yielded by these analyses will provide important information regarding the historical origins of contemporary inner-city family patterns -- especially the viability of "cultural" explanations that stress the diffusion of a disorganized and unstable African-American family system from the South.