Modeling Social Processes of Aggregation

This book demonstrates, via formal statements and empirical illustrations, that nonlinearities in social processes can be modeled systematically to create solutions with practical applications in the institutional forms of paid employment, schooling, and familial relations including marital and kinship ties and the rearing of children. It shows how social processes can be modeled accurately through analyzing time series data—specifically, a temporal sequence of process outcomes that is dense enough in observation time to support appropriate techniques of modeling the outcome sequence. The book illustrates techniques using minimal mathematical formalism which is explained also in careful narrative descriptions of the model logic.