Sociological studies of society-environment interactions are based on a premise that population well-being is dependent on the environment. Here, I argue that not only are people innately connected to the environment, but the environment also bonds people to one another. That is, people have a mutual obligation to one another to care for the environment. An often ignored factor is that individual participation toward protecting and improving the quality of the environment rests upon the local social and spatial context in which the individual is situated. The ability of individuals in a local environment to come together to identify issues, develop common interests, and act collectively toward the local environment can be understood from a social capital perspective. Social capital represents social resources such as trust, information sources, and social norms embedded in social networks that promote common environmental values and facilitate proenvironmental actions. The main objective of this study was to examine the extent to which social capital differentially influences environmentalism, net of demographic and economic characteristics, across rural and urban populations and across geographic regions. Data for this study came from the 2000 General Social Survey (GSS) Environment II Module conducted in conjunction with the 2000 International Social Survey Program. The dataset was used to operationalize dependent and independent variables and test the research hypotheses regarding differential effects of social and spatial context on environmentalism using a national cross-sectional sample. For the dependent variable, I conceptualized three dimensions of environmentalism: environmental attitudes, environmental concern, and environmental behavior. The study included three sets of independent variables: social capital, sociodemographic, and spatial context. The multivariate analysis included two parts. The first examined the relationship between environmentalism and social capital, net of sociodemographic and spatial characteristics. The second part of the analysis examined the extent to which the social capital parameters, net of other factors, changed in urban and rural contexts. The most relevant finding of the study was that the influence of social capital on various aspects of environmentalism is inconsistent. In general, results confirm social capital is an important correlate of environmentalism.

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Since the late 1980's, China has experienced the world's largest peacetime out-migration of its rural labor force to urban areas. The temporary nature of the labor migration complicates the control on this mobile population, and its multi-faceted influence on the whole economy makes the migration policy controversial. Based on cross-sectional Chinese rural household survey data, this study analyzes the effects of migration on rural areas and explores the determinants of the participation and duration of the temporary migration. The first chapter investigates how parental migration affects the decision of enrolling children in high school through migration's effects on household income and the opportunity cost of schooling in rural China. The opportunity cost of schooling is approximated by the marginal productivity of children imputed from family production estimation, which controls for potential endogeneity in the time allocation decisions of family members. The empirical results show that temporary migration of parents raises their children's probability of high school enrollment by 3.2%, resulting primarily from a positive income effect. These findings suggest that reductions in barriers to migration raise rural household earnings, and foster the investment in children's education. The second chapter studies the determinants of participation and duration of temporary rural-urban migration in China highlighting the role of education and migrant networks. The Probit and Logit models are fitted to the dichotomous migration participation estimation. To correct for the sample selection bias, Heckman's two-step procedure is used to estimate the length of migratory work. Empirical results confirm the existence of a migrant network effect on both migration participation and migration length. Schooling increases migration probability non-linearly and its effect on migration length is insignificant once migration is controlled. Furthermore, the positive effect of migrant networks on migration participation is especially prominent among individuals with junior and senior high school education. / Ph. D.

The parenting literature has long explored the influence that socioeconomic status has on parenting practices, but more recent theorists have suggested that contextual factors may influence or explain this relation in some capacity. The current study sought to explore the influence of these contextual factors within a nationwide sample of caregiving grandparents. The results indicate that grandparental financial well-being, depressive symptoms, scarcity of resources, and grandparenting practices share significant associations. Further, contextual factors (i.e., grandparental depressive symptoms and access to resources) mediate the relation between financial well-being and both the positive and negative grandparenting practices that are employed. These findings suggest that there are additional factors that may better explain differences in parenting practices employed by a group of caregivers who are typically within lower socioeconomic strata. This may allow for more targeted interventions to further support a large proportion of child caregivers.

Liu, Ye. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2013. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 134-149). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts also in Chinese; appendix II in Chinese.

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Large scale rural out-migration has gained momentum over the past four decades in Iran, contributing to urbanization at unprecedented rates. In the wake of the Islamic Revolution, it was recognized that in order to reduce reliance on oil revenues and foster self-sufficiency and social equity, it was essential to ensure the viability of agriculture and rural settlements. As a part of this new strategy, a rural infrastructure provision policy (RIPP) was undertaken in order to bring about rural prosperity and to curb out-migration. Yet, the plight of villagers and out-migration persist. This dissertation focuses on the village end of the problem, and on permanent outmigration in post-revolutionary Iran. It investigates the causes of rural out-migration and their impacts on the remaining rural households. Further, it examines the potential of RIPP to reduce out-migration and enhance village viability. In terms of methodology, a cross-analysis was conducted at the levels of individual, household, and community. Both qualitative and quantitative research methods were employed. Data were collected from primary and secondary sources. While the latter served analysis needs at the macro-level, the former, which included case studies in five villages in Hamadan Province, served those at the micro- and meso-levels. The macro-level analysis reveals population pressure on agricultural resources and rural-urban disparities as the overriding causes of rural out-migration in Iran. Correspondingly, the micro- and meso-level analyses: (a) highlight the critical importance of the middle strata (MS) for the future viability of rural Iran; (b) identify household insecurity, resulting from precarious and uncertain rural livelihoods as the root cause of out-migration for MS; and (c) suggest that the ongoing migration of youth from MS must be contained to ensure the next generation of farmers. Finally, five roles are identified for RIPP to target the overriding causes as well as those pertaining specifically to MS. While there is need for policy changes in the macro-economic sphere in Iran, RIPP has the potential to reduce rural out-migration. More fundamentally, it suggests that it is not merely the presence of physical infrastructure and its direct role, but rather an effectively functioning social infrastructure and its intermediary roles that are vital to curbing excessive out-migration and ensuring village viability.

Large scale rural out-migration has gained momentum over the past four decades in Iran, contributing to urbanization at unprecedented rates. In the wake of the Islamic Revolution, it was recognized that in order to reduce reliance on oil revenues and foster self-sufficiency and social equity, it was essential to ensure the viability of agriculture and rural settlements. As a part of this new strategy, a rural infrastructure provision policy (RIPP) was undertaken in order to bring about rural prosperity and to curb out-migration. Yet, the plight of villagers and out-migration persist. This dissertation focuses on the village end of the problem, and on permanent outmigration in post-revolutionary Iran. It investigates the causes of rural out-migration and their impacts on the remaining rural households. Further, it examines the potential of RIPP to reduce out-migration and enhance village viability. In terms of methodology, a cross-analysis was conducted at the levels of individual, household, and community. Both qualitative and quantitative research methods were employed. Data were collected from primary and secondary sources. While the latter served analysis needs at the macro-level, the former, which included case studies in five villages in Hamadan Province, served those at the micro- and meso-levels. The macro-level analysis reveals population pressure on agricultural resources and rural-urban disparities as the overriding causes of rural out-migration in Iran. Correspondingly, the micro- and meso-level analyses: (a) highlight the critical importance of the middle strata (MS) for the future viability of rural Iran; (b) identify household insecurity, resulting from precarious and uncertain rural livelihoods as the root cause of out-migration for MS; and (c) suggest that the ongoing migration of youth from MS must be contained to ensure the next generation of farmers. Finally, five roles are identified for RIPP to target the overriding causes as well as those pertaining specifically to MS. While there is need for policy changes in the macro-economic sphere in Iran, RIPP has the potential to reduce rural out-migration. More fundamentally, it suggests that it is not merely the presence of physical infrastructure and its direct role, but rather an effectively functioning social infrastructure and its intermediary roles that are vital to curbing excessive out-migration and ensuring village viability. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of / Graduate