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From about seven children per woman in 1960, the fertility rate in Mexico has dropped to about 2.6. Such changes are part of a larger transformation explored in this book, a richly detailed ethnographic study of generational and migration-related redefinitions of gender, marriage, and sexuality in rural Mexico and among Mexicans in Atlanta.

We examine whether property price differentials reflecting flood risk increase following a large flood event, and whether this change is temporary or permanent. We use single-family residential property sales in Dougherty County, Georgia, between 1985 and 2004 in a difference-in-differences spatial hedonic model framework. After the 1994 \"flood of the century,\" prices of properties in the 100-year floodplain fell significantly. This effect was, however, short-lived. In spatial hedonic models that explicitly incorporate both linear and nonlinear temporal flood-zone effects, we show that the flood risk discount disappeared between four and nine years after the flood, depending upon the specification. (JEL Q51, Q54)

Over the past several years, scholars have asked how citizen satisfaction with public services might be affected by the expectations citizens have for service quality. Might satisfaction with public services be affected just not only by the perceived quality of those services but also by the quality citizens expect services to have? This line of questioning uses the so-called \"expectancy disconfirmation\" model drawn from private sector research, which views consumer satisfaction with privately provided goods and services as typically deriving from a comparison of perceived performance to expected performance. This article extends this research by examining the effects of expectations and expectancy confirmation/disconfirmation on motorists' satisfaction with road conditions, traffic flow, and safety on state highways in Georgia. Expectations were found to have consistently negative, though modest, effects on satisfaction, with satisfaction declining as expectations increase. Those effects obtain in addition to those of perceived performance, grades, and expectancy confirmation/disconfirmation, providing further support for the expectancy disconfirmation model and clarifying some mixed findings from prior research. The conclusions discuss what these findings suggest about possible future research.

Academics and journalists have depicted government bureaucracies as particularly subject to administrative constraints, including the infamous red tape and personnel rules that sharply constrain pay, promotion, and dismissal and weaken their relations to performance. Research on these topics has often focused on public organizations alone or on comparisons of public and private organizations. The analysis reported here extends this research to include nonprofit organizations. Certain theoretical perspectives would predict sharp differences between public and nonprofit organizations, whereas others would predict no differences. Using survey data from managerial-level respondents in state government and nonprofit organizations in Georgia and Illinois, this analysis compares perceptions of red tape and personnel rule constraints in public and nonprofit organizations. We investigate whether or not public and nonprofit respondents differ in their perceptions about levels of organizational red tape and about whether formal rules enable or constrain managers in promoting and rewarding good employees and removing poor performers. The results indicate sharp public and nonprofit differences, with public managers reporting higher perceived organizational red tape and lower levels of personnel flexibility. In addition to public and nonprofit comparisons, the analysis takes into account other factors that might influence public and nonprofit managers' perceptions of red tape and personnel flexibility in their organizations, including individual motivations to choose the job, the respondent's state (Georgia or Illinois), and others.

This article reports the findings from a study that investigates the relationship between ethical climates and police whistle-blowing on five forms of misconduct in the State of Georgia. The results indicate that a friendship or team climate generally explains willingness to blow the whistle, but not the actual frequency of blowing the whistle. Instead, supervisory status, a control variable investigated in previous studies, is the most consistent predictor of both willingness to blow the whistle and frequency of blowing the whistle. Contrary to popular belief, the results also generally indicate that police are more inclined than civilian employees to blow the whistle in Georgia - in other words, they are less inclined to maintain a code of silence.

Scholars and policy-makers have increasingly sought to understand the relationship between poverty and place in the inner city. This paper examines the spatiality of an anti-poverty strategy called 'gentrification with justice' and implemented by an urban ministry collective in three neighbourhoods in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. This place-based approach centres on the movement of middle-class 'strategic neighbours' into impoverished neighbourhoods as a way to transform the local socio-spatial dialectic of poverty. The urban ministry collective draws upon notions of diverse community, social justice, the 'where' of faithful practice and a faith-governed market in seeking to redevelop neighbourhoods. Based on archival analysis and semi-structured, in-depth interviews with leaders and members of the urban ministry collective, this paper provides a deeper understanding of the place-making role that faith-motivated actors play in local contexts of poverty.

This history of the idea of \"neighborhood\" in a major American city examines the transition of Atlanta, Georgia, from a place little concerned with residential segregation, tasteful surroundings, and property control to one marked by extreme concentrations of poverty and racial and class exclusion. Using Atlanta as a lens to view the wider nation, LeeAnn Lands shows how assumptions about race and class have coalesced with attitudes toward residential landscape aesthetics and home ownership to shape public policies that promote and protect white privilege. Lands studies the diffusion of property ideologies on two separate but related levels: within academic, professional, and bureaucratic circles and within circles comprising civic elites and rank-and-file residents. By the 1920s, following the establishment of park neighborhoods such as Druid Hills and Ansley Park, white home owners approached housing and neighborhoods with a particular collection of desires and sensibilities: architectural and landscape continuity, a narrow range of housing values, orderliness, and separation from undesirable land uses-and undesirable people. By the 1950s, these desires and sensibilities had been codified in federal, state, and local standards, practices, and laws. Today, Lands argues, far more is at stake than issues of access to particular neighborhoods, because housing location is tied to the allocation of a broad range of resources, including school funding, infrastructure, and law enforcement. Long after racial segregation has been outlawed, white privilege remains embedded in our culture of home ownership.

Initiated by a 1996 Georgia statute, \"radical\" civil service reform quickly swept the United States. This article expUins the wax and eventual wane of state efforts to increase the number of at-will employees at the expense of the popuUtion of fully protected merit system employees. Using an event history approach to expUin this policy diffusion with state-level variables, the author shows that electoral competition and gubernatorial powers are the most significant determinants of this kind of policy diffusion. Whereas previous literature concluded that these reforms ceased spreading because the new programs were failing to create the promised governmental efficiency, this article argues that the institutional conditions for these human resource management policies have been less propitious in recent years. The article signifies an important contribution in that it brings civil service reform back into the scope of policy diffusion literature and identifies political insights into a perpetually important question.

Food insufficiency is associated with medication non-adherence among people living with HIV/AIDS. The current study examines the relationship between hunger and medication adherence in a US urban and peri-urban sample of people living with HIV/AIDS. Men ( N  = 133) and women ( N  = 46) living with HIV/AIDS were recruited using snowball sampling and small media in Atlanta, Georgia. Participants completed computerized behavioral interviews that included measures of demographics, food insufficiency, social support, depression, and substance use, and provided blood specimens to determine HIV viral load. Participants also completed monthly unannounced pill counts to prospectively monitor medication adherence over 8 months. Results indicated that 45% of participants were less than 85% adherent to their medications and that food insufficiency was related to non-adherence; nearly half of non-adherent participants reported recent hunger. Geocoding of participant residences showed that 40% lived more than 5 miles from the city center. Multivariable logistic regression controlling for demographics and common factors associated with adherence showed that the interaction between distance from downtown and experiencing hunger significantly predicted non-adherence over and above all other factors. Medication adherence interventions should address access to food, particularly for people living outside of urban centers.

This article examines whether adolescent females involved in the juvenile justice system, who were never gang members but have had boyfriends who were gang members, are at higher risk for negative psychological, relationship and sexual risk outcomes compared to their counterparts. Data were collected from a convenience sample of African American adolescent females involved in the juvenile justice system, age 13–17, currently incarcerated in a short-term detention facility in Georgia (N = 137). Multiple logistic regression models controlling for age and SES documented that having a gang-involved boyfriend was associated with a greater risk for emotional and physical abuse, depression, PTSD, drug use, diminished perceived life chances and a variety of sexual risk predictors, such as decreased relationship control, partner infidelity, shorter time to sex with a casual sexual partner and reduced likelihood of HIV testing. These findings suggest that these women should be included in early prevention and intervention initiatives traditionally targeted at youth involved in gangs.