No abstract

In the past several decades, a new life stage has emerged: early adulthood. No longer adolescents, but not yet ready to assume the full responsibilities of an adult, many young people are caught between needing to learn advanced job skills and depending on their family to support them during the transition.

Previous research demonstrates that auditors' directional goals influence their reporting decisions. For example, when auditors have goals of accepting client-preferred accounting methods, they tend to exploit ambiguity in reporting standards to justify those methods, even when they are aggressive (Hackenbrack and Nelson 1996). We report an experimental investigation of the likely effectiveness of regulation designed to curb this tendency. Specifically, regulators suggest that having auditors identify benchmarks or assess the quality of various methods will “raise the bar” for method acceptability, thereby reducing auditor acceptance of aggressive reporting methods. However, this reasoning ignores the fact that ambiguity typically surrounds quality assessment. Following motivated reasoning theory, we argue that, in order to meet the increased standard for acceptability, auditors with high commitment to directional goals will exploit the ambiguity surrounding the quality of various methods when making quality assessments, with the result that the client-preferred method will be deemed best, or at least of high enough relative quality to be used. This theory suggests that auditor acceptance will increase with goal commitment, and that the increase will be most dramatic when quality assessment is performed. Results of our experiment support our hypotheses that performing a quality assessment amplifies the effects of auditors' directional goals on their acceptance of client-preferred methods and on their ratings of the quality of that method. Moreover, auditors making quality assessments are more likely to identify the client's method as the most appropriate method when they are more committed to their directional goals. An implication of our theory and results is that regulation (such as SAS No. 90) that requires auditors to make quality assessments may decrease auditors' objectivity when auditors have directional goals to accept client methods.

This article critically evaluates the available data on trends in divorce in the United States. We find that both vital statistics and retrospective survey data on divorce after 1990 underestimate recent marital instability. These flawed data have led some analysts to conclude that divorce has been stable or declining for the past three decades. Using new data from the American Community Survey and controlling for changes in the age composition of the married population, we conclude that there was actually a substantial increase in age-standardized divorce rates between 1990 and 2008. Divorce rates have doubled over the past two decades among persons over age 35. Among the youngest couples, however, divorce rates are stable or declining. If current trends continue, overall age-standardized divorce rates could level off or even decline over the next few decades. We argue that the leveling of divorce among persons born since 1980 probably reflects the increasing selectivity of marriage.

In 2007, the Current Population Survey (CPS) introduced a measure that identifies all cohabiting partners in a household, regardless of whether they describe themselves as “unmarried partners” in the relationship to householder question. The CPS now also links children to their biological, step-, and adoptive parents. Using these new variables, we analyze the prevalence of cohabitation as well as the demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of different-sex cohabiting couples during the years 2007–2009. Estimates of cohabitation produced using only unmarried partnerships miss 18 % of all cohabiting unions and 12 % of children residing with cohabiting parents. Although differences between unmarried partners and most newly identified cohabitors are small, newly identified cohabitors are older, on average, and are less likely to be raising shared biological or adopted children. These new measures also allow us to identify a small number of young, disadvantaged couples who primarily reside in households of other family members, most commonly with parents. We conclude with an examination of the complex living arrangements and poverty status of American children, demonstrating the broader value of these new measures for research on American family and household structure.