Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Getting To The Heart Of Social And Educational Disadvantage: Exploring The Impact Of Social Interactions Across The Class Divide, Ryan M. Pickering

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Economic inequality between rich and poor in the United States is now at an all- time high. The increasing economic inequality in the United States may have deleterious effects for social interactions across the so-called “class divide.” Individuals from different socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds may find cross-class interactions stressful or intimidating, particularly when they are from a lower-status group.

Across two studies, I examine the impact of cross-class social interactions on cognitive performance and physiological reactivity. In the first study, individuals from lower-SES backgrounds participate in a social interaction with an individual from either a higher or lower-SES background, or …

The Role Of Local Attributes In Community Choice, Michele Ann Mcmahon

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Residential location choices are analyzed to determine the significance of local attributes in the moving decision. A unique data set consisting of 602 recent movers in Maine is used to perform the analysis. Additionally, municipality-level data for 531 municipalities in Maine are used in the analysis. The community-level data are fiscal, social, and environmental in nature. A conditional logit model is estimated to model the choice of community as a function of the community characteristics, and a mixed logit model is estimated to model the choice of community as a function of both community characteristics and characteristics of the household. …