Stratification Flashcards

Question

**Solon. 1992. “Intergenerational Income Mobility in the United States.”** What is the main finding? ## Footnote Social mobility and status attainment

Answer 1

Using data from the PSID on fathers and sons (sons born btwn 1951 and 1959), they find an intergenerational income correlation in the US of .4, which is higher than prior studies that overestimated mobility using short-term proxies of income or homogeneous samples, which estimated it to be around .2. They focus on sons at older ages for it to reflect “long-run” outcomes, but the average age of sons is still just 30! The results convey **a less mobile US society than previously understood. **

Answer 2

Advancing two-generation research on mobility, this paper expands the framework to three generations. Using data on parents who graduated from Wisconsin HSs in 1957, this finds that grandparents’ education, occupation, and income largely do not affect the educational attainment or occupational status of their grandchildren when parents’ characteristics are controlled. The data are **NOT consistent** with the hypothesis that grandparents origins directly affect grandchildren’s outcomes. In other words, **grandparents do not seem to pass advantages directly to children, outside of the indirect path of grandparents’ characteristics shaping parents’ characteristics which shape grandchildrens’ characteristics**.

Answer 3

**New Home Economics, a line of economic work on the family, should be taken more seriously by sociologists. NHE suggests that household production is the central activity of families, and it changes throughout history and across societies. Families seek to maximize their utility or well-being, subject to constraints of time and money. They must solve the problem of how to best allocate their time and resources across the various tasks in domestic/care work and in the market. ** Understanding household production—its content, how it is organized, and its implications—is essential to understanding families. They specifically call for more research on housework, the daily activities of meeting material needs (Marxist influences), which hadn’t been largely addressed by sociologists to this point with a few important exceptions. Sociologists have been mistaken in viewing only activities outside the home as instrumental (383). **Berk and Berk call for studying work and family jointly, since work in one domain cannot be applied to the other**. “Household work and market work are of equal conceptual status and are jointly determined” (382). This is why, in my regressions on labor stuff, you include a variable for marital status and spouse’s employment status! NHE is also based on neoclassical assumptions—like that households seek to maximize utility—which sociologists should grapple with and empirically test.

Answer 4

Single mothers are disproportionately at risk of poverty and have received attention in efforts to curb overall poverty. Using data on 18 affluent democracies from around the year 2000, this paper looks at the **individual and national policy contributors to single mother poverty**. Individually, single-mother households with multiple earners, well-educated and older heads of household, and multiple adults are less likely to be poor. However, there are significant cross-national differences in single-mother poverty and **the effects of social policies had bigger effects than the individual-level variables. Measures of universal social policies—including a welfare state index—significantly reduce single-mother poverty, and targeted policies—including a single-mother entitlement— have mixed and smaller effects.** They argue that generous, **universal welfare policies could be a more effective anti-poverty strategy, despite all the focus on altering the behavior or characteristics of single mothers**. The universal policies do not seem to have “undesirable” effects like labor supply. A note that the US has one of the highest rates of single motherhood and the highest rate of single-mother poverty among the countries studied.

Answer 5

Using 1982-1993 longitudinal NLSY data with fixed effects, Budig and England (2001) find a **7% gross motherhood wage penalty and a 5% net penalty for each child, the latter controlling for human capital measures including education, seniority, and experience. **Traditional explanations for the motherhood penalty include discrimination, human capital/job experience differences, productivity differences, compensating differentials (mothers pursuing “mother-friendly” job characteristics at the expense of pay), and selection effects. Budig attempts to adjudicate between these mechanisms. She advances prior research in the US and elsewhere on the motherhood penalty by paying close attention to experience and seniority. * Around ⅓ of the penalty appears to be explained by decreased seniority/experience (so, motherhood leads to employment breaks, part-time employment, and the accumulation of less experience and seniority) and the remaining ⅔ could be driven by discrimination or productivity differences. * Compensating differentials explain very little of the penalty. There is limited variation by social location: not a lot of variation by race (only in third and subsequent children), how demanding or “male” the job is, or by women’s education. * Never-married women have lower child penalties than married or divorced women. The first child has the greatest penalty. They conclude that **mothers are penalized disproportionately for having and raising children, and that the possibility of bias against mothers and mothers losing work experience etc. are equally troubling, and both require policy interventions (such as publicly-funded child care, family allowances, etc.).**

Answer 6

Mothers experience a wage penalty in the labor market. One possible mechanism is discrimination. To **test for discrimination against mothers and no discrimination against fathers**, this **foundational experimental study** (the first audit study to assess parenting discrimination) conducts two studies: a laboratory experiment where college students rate applicants in terms of perceived competence, workplace commitment, hireability, promotability, and recommended salary; an audit study in which parental status is manipulated among fictitious applications to mid-level marketing and business jobs at a Northeastern city newspaper and call-backs are measured. * In the lab study, **mothers were judged more harshly in every area compared to women without children**: as less competent, less committed, less hireable, less promotable, and less likely to be recommended for management. They were **also held to harsher standards for hireability**, including an exam score and punctuality requirements. **Fathers were not discrimination against and in fact judged more favorably in a few areas than men without children**, including being more committed, recommended for a higher salary, and received more leniency on punctuality requirements. * The audit study found that **childless women received ~2 times as many callbacks as equally qualified mothers**. They did not find a statistically significant difference in call backs for fathers vs. childless men. **Overall, they found evidence of a (A) motherhood penalty across a wide range of measures, lending support to the claim that motherhood is a devalued status in the workplace setting. (B) There is also a double standard: parental status negatively impacts women, but not men. **

Answer 7

Drawing on individual-level data in the US from around 1960 to 2000, this paper finds that **mothers’ situations have diverged greatly over these decades, within the context of so-called second demographic transition (delays in fertility and marriage and higher maternal employment).** She finds that during this time, relative to less-educated mothers, **highly-educated mothers have become older (at first birth), have higher employment rates, less single motherhood (more resources), more household income, have more fathers’ involvement, and less divorce**. These trends are leading to greater disparities in parents’ time and money available for children, contributing to **inequality**. She points to 4 broad societal changes that contribute to these diverging behaviors, and here her evidence is more case-based/theoretical. They include access to (1) feminist ideas in colleges, (2) access to birth control, (3) changes in the labor market that preferences higher educated men and women (e.g., economic changes that greatly rewarded the college educated), and (4) the design of welfare that disincentives marriage (questionable?). Women from more-advantaged backgrounds seized rewarding, new opportunities and established more stable unions, whereas women from less-advantaged backgrounds lagged behind. Policy interventions are warranted.

Answer 8

The “Moynihan Report” written by Assistant Secretary of Labor Daniel Moynihan for President Johnson in 1965 aimed to address Black poverty and highlighted instability and single motherhood among Black families as a major cause, driven by broad forces like lack of economic opportunity for Black men and persistent discrimination and segregation. * He called for a federal effort to provide jobs for Black men as a solution to the Black family “crisis.” * The federal response was limited, and Moynihan was soon heavily criticized for potentially placing blame on Black families and women (though his main focus was structural), partially driven by his blunt and inflammatory language, so research on the links between family and poverty was stalled. * The issues raised by Moynihan, especially racial divides in the labor market, persist. * Research on the connections between family and poverty eventually picked up again, identifying nuanced connections. One lesson learned **since the report is that since the 1970s, inequality became increasingly structured by class**, which meant that working-class whites, as well as minorities, were subject to the difficult economic conditions that Moynihan pointed to as a cause of family instability. As white male earnings stagnated, unwed fertility and divorce have all risen among whites while marriage rates have fallen. Massey and Sampson call for more research on these links.

Answer 9

There is concern about divorced women, as they undergo much larger declines in income post divorce than men do, and economic benefits of marriage have been documented, though the causal ordering of marriage and economic well-being is contested. Is divorce the actual cause? Using national longitudinal data from the late 80s early 90s, they find that: * If divorced women had remained married, they still would have fared worse than women who actually remained married. Women who divorce have lower economic status prior to disruption. * Nevertheless, divorced women would fare somewhat better if they had stayed married, especially in terms of family income. **Thus, there is some selection into divorce that contributes to the observed economic toll of divorce, but divorce on its own does appear to impose economic hardships; due to the division of labor in marriage, many women accrue less and more discontinuous work experience. This paper contributes to evidence that the occurrence and stability of marriage are both consequences and causes of economic well-being.**

Answer 10

Drawing on a 5-year interview study at a large Midwestern University, Armstrong and Hamilton document how inequalities are perpetuated in this type of university context. * **Class differences shape students’ experiences and their graduation/employment prospects**: different resources available to students include financial, social, and cultural resources, including parental support of fees and living expenses, expectation that college will be fun and about meeting people, and number who they knew on arrival (social capital). * The **“party pathway” is the most institutionally supported pathway, yet is only a route to success for a small, highly affluent segment** of the MU population. This pathway ends up disadvantageous to those outside of it or those who are inside of it and struggling to keep up financially and socially. * There is also **residential segregation by class and race**. The university did not make an effort to integrate students. As a result of these factors and others, many people end up in their same class, and working-class students fail to graduate in 4 or 5 years. ***Overall these chapters shed light on how higher education institutions are not necessarily engines of mobility, and that their organizational features matter. ***

Answer 11

This paper attempts to explain a puzzle that has emerged on racial inequality: schools appear to exacerbate black/white disparities in learning while mitigating social class gap. Schools can mitigate non-school factors that drive inequalities, or they can produce inequalities within and between schools. This paper sheds light on **how educational achievement gaps emerge**. Using longitudinal data on children from kindergarten to first grade starting in 1998, Condron finds that: * **Non-school factors account for much of the class gap** and little of the race gap. * **School factors account for much of the race gap** and little of the class gap. * **Racial segregation is the leading mechanism of schools widening the black/white gap**. Both schools and housing are more segregated by race than by class. Impacts on school achievement are one of the many harmful consequences of racial segregation for Blacks.

Answer 12

Neuroscience research suggests that early childhood is when essential development occurs that is essential for later outcomes and is most receptive to environmental influences. **Income gaps in cognitive and noncognitive skills emerge by age 4**, related to environmental and financial inequalities. These gaps persist, as developing later skills requires a foundation. In fact, **income gaps remain relatively stable after age 6**, as later schooling and quality have little effect on reducing or widening the gaps that appear before students enter school (this is not too incompatible with Condron 2009’s findings about class gaps since his study is on K and 1st grade – young, so schools help!). Drawing on evaluations of various interventions, Heckman plots the economic returns to investing in children at various ages and finds that early interventions targeted toward disadvantaged children have much higher returns than later interventions such as public job training, post-incarceration rehabilitation programs, and tuition subsidies. The rate of return is the increase in earnings or other outcomes per year for each dollar invested in the child). He argues that **there is still value in investing in later ages, but that for those investments to be productive, the early investments need to be in place**.

Answer 13

Using data from sophomores in high school in 1980, Lucas finds that **social background appears to matter for the kind of high school education received rather than for high school completion**. This type of tracking has implications for the likelihood of pursuing more education. This is consistent with a broader theory of “**effectively maintained inequality,” which posits that socioeconomically advantaged actors secure some degree of advantage wherever advantages are commonly possible**. Specifically, ***when a level of education increases in access, more within-level stratification will emerge*** (e.g., through horizontal stratification of institutions, tracks, etc.). The use of privilege doesn’t disappear but just changes to secure a qualitatively better position. Thus, **social background continues to matter even in the presence of universal access**, which gives us reason to question whether universal access to educational institutions can alone ameliorate the impact of disparate social resources.

Answer 14

In a meta-analysis of national studies, Reardon finds that: * **As the income gap between high and low income families has widened, so has the achievement gap** (reading and math skills) between children in those families: the income achievement gap has been growing for at least fifty years, from **1950 to 2000**. This has happened **within all racial groups**. * **Contrastingly, the black-white achievement gap has declined over this period** (perhaps due to major efforts to address racial inequality starting in the 1970s, menahile, income inequality was skyrocketing. * OTHER FACTORS: The rising income achievement gap is not solely explained by widening income gaps between the top and the bottom. Other studies, including qualitative ones like Lareau 2002, suggest it may be driven by **increasing parental investment in children’s cognitive development** in the last half-century, particularly for higher-income families, due to increased focus on standardized test scores and cultural perceptions of parenthood. Note that family income has risen nearly to the importance of parental education in predicting children’s achievement (duh?). Consistent with Heckman (2006), the **income achievement gap is big at kindergarten and does not appear to grow or narrow much as children go through school**.

Answer 15

Drawing on five longitudinal data sets like the GSS and NLSY, Torche analyzes intergenerational mobility in terms of class, occupational status, earnings, and household income for men and women BY educational attainment. She finds that, **for virtually all SES indicators, intergenerational SES association is strong among those with low educational attainment, weakens or disappears among bachelor’s degree holders, and reemerges among those with advanced degrees, leading to a U-shaped pattern of parental influence**. The finding is consistent with ***Hout 1988***, who found that the occupational association between adults and children is much weaker—virtually zero—among college grads than among those with less schooling. * This suggests that a **college degree allows for meritocracy/mobility among those who get one, but advanced degrees not as much**. * **Mechanism for mobility among BAs may be that labor markets for college graduates are quite meritocratic**. * Suggests there may be **horizontal stratification for advanced-degree holders and not as much for college-degree holders**. I think she does test evidence of horizontal stratification, finding, among advanced-degree holders, horizontal stratification in institutional selectivity, field of study, and type of program, meaning an association between social origins and selectivity of institution for this group. (This is in line with effectively maintained inequality theory→when a level of education increases in access, more within-level stratification will emerge (e.g., through horizontal stratification of institutions, tracks, etc.) from ***Lucas 2001***). Of course, mobility among BAs does not mean the elimination or reduction of inequality, as access to college is strongly dependent on parental resources. * **Rewards to college completion are significant and increased with time**. College completion has increased significantly across cohorts, hovering around 30% in 1975 with differences by gender.

Answer 16

People are distributed in the social space based on the volume and structure of two types of capital: **economic and cultural**. Some professions have high economic capital but low cultural capital like plumbers, while others have high cultural capital and low economic capital like higher education teachers (lol). Those with a similar volume and structure of the capitals occupy a similar social position in the social space. Each of these social positions correspond to a “habitus.” * **Habitus is unconscious schemes that guide behavior and perception. It is formed by the social and material conditions in which people live: the “conditions of your existence” and positon in the class system**. * Habitus is internalized and converted into distinctive tastes, preferences and lifestyles (including consumption), which perceived through the schemas of habitus become sign systems (symbolic capital), which can be deployed in different fields. * Thus, **habitus transforms the distribution of capital into a system of perceived differences** and (IMO) deployable symbolic capital. Importantly, the practices of individuals with a low volume of capitals are constrained to what is necessary, which leads to adaptation to this necessity. Through these practices, habitus may make inequalities seem natural and reinforce inequality? Method: interview and survey of men and women in France.

Answer 17

From interviews with upper-middle-class white men in New York and Paris, Lamont compares how **symbolic boundaries operate in these cultures**. Symbolic boundaries are conceptual distinctions that we make to categorize objects, people, practices, etc. She focuses on three types: Socioeconomic, Cultural, and Moral boundaries. **Boundaries are involved in inequality production because they are (1) used to define and discriminate between worthy and less worthy persons, (2) they create groups, and (3) they are the medium through which people acquire status, monopolize resources, ward off threats, or legitimate social advantages.** Symbolic boundaries are a "a necessary but insufficient condition for the creation of inequality, and exclusion itself.” * various criteria for these boundaries are more salient than others and that salience varies across contexts, * the cultures differed in which boundary/distinction they viewed as most important. Thus, status assessment differs across these cultures. These are powerful men, and thus the symbolic boundaries that they draw may contribute to the reproduction of class inequality and contribute to broader societal frames. VS BOURDIEU: In line with Bourdieu’s Distinction, her work suggests that the elites can be reproduced vis a vis the status signals they prefer, shaped by their habitus, but Bourdieu neglected the role of moral boundaries, focusing entirely on cultural capital/tastes/lifestyle and material conditions. Both would agree that habitus produces a “code used to classify others” (i.e., one’s symbolic boundaries) (pg 187). Bourdieu’s also didn’t consider the role of broader structures and cultural resources, factors beyond their immediate social position.

Answer 18

Lamont and Small examine **six ways culture has been conceived and examined—as frames, repertoires, narratives, cultural capital, symbolic boundaries, institutions**. Some uniting features that Lamont and Small agree with is a focus on **within-group variation, meaning, and culture being something that individuals exist in, respond to, use, and create**. * As an example of heterogeneity and frames/narratives, we see Small (2004) showing how low-income individuals’ framings of their neighborhoods shapes their actions→ how framing influences the response to poverty. * They are generally **against the cultural perspective on poverty that living in poverty creates self-perpetuating and pernicious cultural inclinations**.

Answer 19

Based on interviews and participant observation on an elite professional services hiring committee, Rivera finds that **employers explicitly see “*cultural fit*” as a critical hiring criterion, and it sometimes outweighs concerns about competence**. They seek candidates who are not only competent but also culturally similar to themselves in terms of **self-presentation styles, experiences, and leisure pursuits** (akin to the signals described by Bourdieu 1986). Fit may be judged based on org identity (e.g., fratty) or self match via interests, etc. This paper contributes to a broader literature on the **role that culture plays in occupational attainment: hiring is more than just a process of skills sorting, it is also a process of cultural matching between candidates, evaluators, and firms**. There could be **stratifying effects** due to the attraction to cultural similarity, as it yields advantages to those who have similarity to those in power, and the types of cultural similarities discussed have a strong socio-economic dimension.

Answer 20

Through historical analysis, Thompson argues that **class creation is a cultural, relational process**. He argues that the UK working class consciousness of mutuality emerged even before industrialization (1800s) from ‘friendly societies’—**voluntary mutual aid organizations**. These groups emphasized community, collectivism, traditionalism, and values of discipline and dignity. They eventually **gave rise to trade unions** and developed a mentality of “meetings over mobs,” establishing a dominant moral code. They created **sanctions for not following the norms and traditions of a discipline or profession**. Collective self-consciousness with corresponding theory, institutions, discipline, and community values which distinguishes the 19th century working class from the 18th century mob. Thus, **class is when productive work + relations = are translated into culture, traditions, values, and institutions.** Since these were “institutions,” this is also an institutional explanation. This links to Durkheim’s view of corporations, which also provide norms and values within the economy.

Answer 21

Through ethnography of non-academic working class boys and comparison groups in England, Willis argues that working class **boys produce a “counter-school culture” with features like opposition to authority**. Their reaction against the disciplinary mechanisms of school **leads them to embrace subordinate, working-class, manual labor as more affirming and authentic, what he calls their “self-damnation**” (4). Thus, **counter-school culture–and the site of schools themselves—play a role in reproducing class positions. ** * This is in line with critiques of schools as inequality reproducers (Condron 2009), as schools can perpetuate class inequality by setting kids up for this counter-school culture. * Somewhat in line with culture as reproducing poverty, but also acknowledges that this culture is self-made, creative, logical, and experienced as resistance.

Answer 22

Burt’s broader theory of structural holes: It is advantageous to be located near structural holes in the broader social structure. **Structural holes are the lack of ties between two contacts, making them non-redundant**. Being located near the holes/brokering across them means reaping **(1) the additive information of non-redundant contacts** and** (2) the ability to exert control over the relationship** (e.g. playing two buyers off against each other to get a higher price → the hole between the two contacts is important to prevent them from banding together against you). It also** (3) promotes good ideas** (the contribution of this specific chapter) due to exposure to alternative ways of thinking and behaving (as opposed to people located in more homogeneous networks). Thus, **having a large, diverse network with gaps generates many returns to social capital: information, control, and ideas**. Burt tests this idea drawing on archival and survey data from an American electronics company and finds that people whose networks span structural holes have higher compensation and evidence of better ideas. This paper probably **pertains to inequality because some people have an advantage because of their location in the social structure**. Their advantageous position generates more advantages. Other people are located in networks with high cohesion or overlapping circles.

Answer 23

Granovetter argues that **weak ties can act as a ‘bridge’ that span parts of a social network and connect otherwise disconnected social groups**. Strong ties RARELY bridge groups, as they usually connect people to redundant ties. Granovetter argues that for **diffusion across a network, it is the weak ties that are most valuable**. Weak ties reach more people. An **innovation** spread by those with few weak ties is more likely confined to a few cliques. * As evidence, uses a survey of job seekers and found that among people who found a job through a connection, the vast majority rarely or occasionally interacted with that comparison, versus seeing them regularly. Thus, it was more likely to be a weak tie. Those to whom we are weakly tied are more likely to move in circles different from our own and will thus have access to information different from that which we receive. * Weak ties play a key role in **shaping individuals’ opportunities and their “integration into communities**” whereas strong ties contribute to local cohesion and lead to fragmentation. Individuals’ experiences are bound up with larger-scale aspects of social structure.

Answer 24

**Contacts don’t appear to matter causally in job outcomes to the extent that network theories of social capital have argued**. Using contacts does not appear to make a difference on wages or occupational prestige. **Social capital affects wages, but not the probability of using contacts, so the relationship appears spurious**. The intuition that being “well-connected” should improve job outcomes seems right, so Mouw calls for more research on concrete mechanisms. This casts doubt on networks being a mechanism of inequality then

Answer 25

Much research has focused on how and why neighborhood poverty contributes to worse individual outcomes. One way is through worse **social capital**. Small examines how neighborhood poverty—in a Puerto Rican neighborhood, Villa Victoria—affects social capital, specifically local community participation (in Ch 6). Small finds that **social capital is shaped by people’s narrative frames—the way in which they make sense of their neighborhood—which affects how they act in or toward it. People can view the same neighborhood very differently**. Older cohorts have higher social capital in the form of friendships, familiar ties, and participation in local social organizations because the neighborhood narrative frame they employed viewed the neighborhood as beautiful and worth investing in, while newer cohorts saw the neighborhood as a “ghetto” not worth investing time in or making ties with. **Frames are shaped by the historical experiences through which they came to live in Villa Victoria and other factors**. Narrative frames are cognitive, consistent with **Bourdieu’s notion of habitus **(1977; Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992), which is a cognitive perception that predisposes individuals to act in a particular fashion. However, these perceptions can be vocalized. **This paper seems to suggest that poverty doesn’t shape social capital in a ubiquitous way.**

Answer 26

Using in-depth interviews and surveys of 105 low-income African-Americans, Smith finds that **Black job contacts were hesitant to help their job-seeking ties given concerns that they would act irresponsibly on the job (and jeopardize their own reputation and position), which were similar to concerns expressed by employers**. IMO this is based on racial stereotypes. Willingness to help depends on the perceived reputation of the job-seeker and their own standing with their employer. Thus, **social capital weaknesses of the “Black urban poor” seems to have less to do with less access to ties but rather weaknesses in the ties themselves—specifically, a pervasive lack of trust and a precariousness of their own labor market positions**. Thus, **Blacks are less likely to benefit from their networks perhaps than other racial groups due to (IMO) broader forces of inequality and discrimination**. * This paper is consistent with critiques of social isolation theory like Wellman (1979) whose “community liberated” perspective argues that social networks are not tied to physical neighborhoods in the ways they once were, due to advances in transportation, communication, etc.

Answer 27

In an experimental study with undergrad participants, Correll contributes to the literature on **supply-side drivers of gender occupational segregation (a persistent inequality issue) by arguing that cultural beliefs about gender have a constraining effect on the career aspirations of men and women.** She finds that * when men and women are primed to believe that women are worse at a task, men assess their performance better than women, though they perform the same. Men in this condition also had higher aspirations for career activities related to the task. No gender differences were observed when participants were primed to believe that me and women had equal task ability. * Status beliefs about men and women create gendered standards for assessing performance of others and themselves, which appear to shape career aspirations and may ultimately influence the career choices made. Overall, **cultural beliefs can produce inequality → “the culture in which individuals are embedded constraints or limits what these individuals deem possible or appropriate, thereby shaping the preferences and aspirations that individuals develop for activities leading to various careers, often starting early in the life course**” (95), influenced by Bourdieu 1984’s concept of habitus (in which social class frames or constrains preferences and choices).

Answer 28

Using NLSY longitudinal data from the 60s and 70s, England seeks to explain occupational sex segregation and wage differentials and: * Find **no evidence for neoclassical explanations**: that female-dominated occupations provide less penalties to work interruptions or better working conditions (compensating differentials), * **Finds evidence that female-dominated jobs pay less than male-dominated jobs even when they are of “equal worth”—**requiring the same human capital, skills, and working conditions. This could be caused by discrimination, socialization based on traditionally feminine skills and preferences (Correll 2004), institutional practices like lower mobility in female dominated jobs, and devaluation/underpay of work women do. **Human capital differences do explain some of the gender wage gap, but have failed to explain occupational segregation, as well as differences. **

Answer 29

From interviews and observations with couples in the 70s and 80s, Hochschild **finds that although women dramatically entered the labor force since 1950, workplace arrangements and male’s gender ideologies have not adapted to these changes,** resulting in what she calls a “stalled revolution.” “The workforce has changed. Women have changed. But most workplaces have remained inflexible in the face of the family demands of their workers, and at home, most men have yet to really adapt to the changes in women. **This strain between the change in women and the absence of change in much else leads me to speak of a "stalled revolution."** (12). Hochschild argues that a more human revolution would involve social arrangements that ease life for working parents—childcare, paid leave, affordable housing near work—and notions of manhood that embrace sharing the second shift. **As a consequence of the SR, many women work a “second shift” at home. **In figuring out how to manage and divide up housework and childcare (think Berk and Berk 1983), women take responsibility for housework, childcare, and their jobs. This causes women stress, lack of sleep and a negative perception by others. It also causes a “leisure gap” in the home. Couples have different “strategies” of addressing this problem, drawing from one’s gender ideology. Some engage in “work” to see their arrangements as equal. The “supermom” cultural image is a cultural cover up.

Answer 30

Using data from various industries—including blue-collar, clerical technical, professional, and administrative—in the 70s and 80s, Petersen and Morgan find a substantial **gender wage gap in line with prior work and find that it is mostly driven by wage differences *across occupations (detailed jobs) and establishments, rather than within job differences* (or within-job discrimination). **There is some variation in terms of establishments vs. occupations as being the primary driver by industry. This paper provides **empirical evidence for prior arguments that the gender wage gap is largely driven by women sorting into lower-paying occupations and establishments—and the lower pay of occupations held primarily by women—rather than pay differences within the same job**. They argue that policies should focus on allocative and valuative issues rather than within-job wage discrimination, though the latter has received more attention. They acknowledge that segregation patterns may be due to discrimination or to differences in productive capacities.

Answer 31

In this annual review piece, Reskin argues that sociologists have done a lot of documenting and describing of race and sex disparities. **Sociologists focused too much on the motives of those who create disparities, which have weaknesses like * motives are difficult to test * motives don’t actually point to the intervening mechanism that gives rise to the inequality * motive-based research encourages inequality research to be siloed by ascriptive characteristics** (e.g., motives for sex discrimination vs. motives for race discrimination), which could be masking processes that are common across these various inequalities. **Different inequalities could emerge from similar processes**. One example of motive-based research is Kanter (1977) arguing that managers’ preference for XYZ motivated them to exclude women. Or IMO Rivera (2012) saying that employers are motivated by cultural fit. ***Instead of motives, we need to study mechanisms, the specific processes that link ascriptive group membership to outcomes such as earnings. ***Mechanisms are essential for understanding inequality and identifying policy solutions. Examples are organizational practices, like how employers set wages, and mechanisms that prevent associations between categories and wages, like minimum wage laws. Reskin calls on scholars to find general explanations for ascriptive inequality and then determine how they must be modified for particular ascriptive characteristics. **Mechanisms contribute to ascriptive inequality at four levels of analysis—intrapsychic, interpersonal, societal, and organizational:** * Intrapsychic: hardest to measure, in/out group biases. IDK - isn’t this motive? * Interpersonal: converts allocators’ mental states into differential behavior * Societal: includes mechanisms like norms, laws, enforcement nowms * Organizational: practices by which employers link worker’s ascriptive characteristics to work outcomes; can check or permit mechanisms at other levels, like reporting wages by gender. She argues that organizational mechanisms are the most proximate to the outcome.

Answer 32

Using various data sources including census data and case studies, Reskin and Roos aim to explain the (A) persistent occupational segregation that characterized most of the 1900s, which started to decline in the 1970s, and (B) why women made inroads into certain male-dominated occupations in the 70s but not others. They argue that ***queues of jobs and workers affect occupational sex composition and how it changes over time.*** For various reasons, **labor queues typically operate as gender queues that favor men over women, and race is factored in as well**, while on the job side, according to prior research, men and women generally agree on which jobs are more or less desirable. Changes in the sizes of groups, sizes of occupation, and preferences can adjust queues and lead occupations’ sex composition to change. * For example, growth in a desirable occupation and a shortage of qualified men will exhaust the preferred worker and tap into the less preferred (women) (e.g., accounting). Also, growth in an occupation while rewards like pay or prestige decline, shifts these jobs lower in the queue and exhausts the preferred worker (who has moved on) and taps into the less preferred (for whom these jobs represent a step up) (e.g., school teaching, bank telling). * Another example is of a change in group size: when returning male soldiers bumped women from factory jobs after WW I, white women displaced black women from domestic jobs. This theory emphasizes the role of socially structured rankings of groups and occupations rather than individual rational choice. It also helps explain why occupational segregation often persists as the labor market changes (e.g, so many new jobs have been created thru technology, and women don’t just walk up the queue!)

Answer 33

Alba and Nee critique the old approach to immigrant assimilation (“assimilation theory”) on several grounds, such as that** (A) it was based on ethnocentric assumptions about the superiority of Anglo-American culture, (B) was one directional (new conforming to existing, hegemony), and (C) didn’t allow for positive effects of racial and ethnic community (e.g, like the potential for taking advance of economic niche or providing solidarity). ** They propose a new assimilation theory, based on the premise that the mainstream can consist of diverse peoples producing a common culture. They argue that a viable conception of assimilation includes recognizing that** (1) ethnicity is a social boundary; (2) this boundary is embedded in and validated by a variety of social and cultural differences between groups; and (3) assimilation occurs through changes taking place on both sides of the boundary.** What has been neglected is the mainstream incorporating the new. Both sides may make changes contributing to a composite culture. In fact, cultural elements from immigrant groups have continually been integrated into mainstream American culture. It is also important to acknowledge that even mainstream culture is highly variant by class, region, etc.

Answer 34

From interviews with inner-city Chicago businesses regarding mainly minimally skilled jobs, **the authors find that employers discriminate against inner-city Black men. Employers make hiring decisions based on characteristics that they associate with race,** which is a form of “statistical discrimination” rather than “pure discrimination.” Pure discrimination is intentional disregard for a group, while statistical discrimination is a cognitive process whereby people use group membership as a proxy for productivity when information is lacking. **Race interacts with perceptions of class and space (the “inner city”) to become conflated with poor work ethic and other negative employee characteristics**. Ethnicity, class, and space were often confounded, but employers also acknowledged heterogeneity (e.g, employers sometimes looked for class signals among Black applicants.) Note that this explanation is in contrast to others of difficult labor outcomes for inner city Black people like social isolation.** In explicit contrast with Wilson (1987), they argue that race still matters in the job market. **

Answer 35

WEALTH: a measure not just of income but also of one’s investments, savings, inheritance, income and prudent consumption over a lifetime The make the case for studying wealth inequality over income inequality, as ***wealth is a more complete measure of social inequality and wealth inequalities are even greater than income inequalities. *** Whites possess nearly twelve times as much median net worth as blacks. Oliver and Shapiro describe **how black-white wealth inequality emerged through racialized and discriminatory state policies, and it is perpetuated today**. For example, starting in the 1930s, Blacks were blocked from low-interest government loans or redlined by financial institutions, denying them the ability to build housing wealth during boon times. This had intergenerational consequences for investing in education or self-employment. In more contemporary times there is still racial discrimination in lending. While there have been improvements in educational and income racial inequality, racial wealth inequality is staggering and persistent, which challenges the idea that providing equal opportunity can solve racial inequality problems or that the race issue is just about class. Acknowledges Wilson (1978)’s view that suggests that “the racial barriers of the past are less important than present-day social class attributes in determining the economic life chances of black Americans” (12). In other words, **race only has an effect in terms of the accumulated effects of past oppressions**, especially being on the bottom of the economic ladder. **This perspective places a strong emphasis on addressing education over discrimination in terms of the path forward. However, racial wealth inequality challenges this view, as there is vast wealth inequality between blacks and whites with even the same achievement and credentials**.

Answer 36

In this experimental audit study, Pager finds that a **criminal record substantially reduces callback rates for jobs**, in this case entry-level position. She finds a ratio of callbacks for nonoffenders relative to ex-offenders of 2:1 for whites and 3:1 for Blacks. Thus, the effect of a criminal record may be even worse for Blacks than for whites (the difference is not stat sig). This paper provides evidence that **higher rates of incarceration, and disproportionate effects of a criminal record, for Blacks than whites are harming Black’s job prospects, contributing to inequality**. Thus, the criminal **justice system is another institution, on top of schools and the family etc., that affect racial inequality**. For context, the rise of “tough on crime” policies, imposing harsher penalties for a wider range of offenses, contributed to mass incarceration, starting in X years. This had massive implications for the Black population, as incarcerations rates were substantially higher for Blacks than whites.

Answer 37

From interviews with West Indian immigrants, Black Americans, and managers in low-paying jobs, Waters finds that **Black immigrants from the Caribbean have certain advantages over Black Americans in the US like lower expectations of low-paid work, immigrant networks, and employer preferences for immigrants due to perceived work ethic** (Waters acknowledges that Kirschenman and Neckerman 1991 also found that employers had higher regard for immigrants for their work ethic over native minorities). But eventually, the structural and interpersonal discrimination by Americans overwhelms these components, especially in the second generation **as their bar for desirable jobs increases and segregation into bad neighborhoods prevents their educational advancement. The second generation faces limited assimilation options**. This study emphasizes the importance of “changing the racist structures and behaviors that deny equal opportunities to people identified in our society as black” (8). It also **rejects the “culture of poverty” argument** because **even the “good” culture of the immigrants cannot overcome structural mechanisms of racial disadvantage.**

Answer 38

Using historical and demographic analyses, Wilson argues that **class is more of a determining factor for blacks’ well-being and life chances than race**. In the past, this was not the case. But in the post-WWII era, there was a transition from racial inequality to class inequality due to changes in the mode of production and state policies, including civil rights laws and affirmative action. This segmented both races by class. **At the top, blacks can excel and compete with whites based on education and skills rather than race.** Racial motivations drove prior barriers, but present-day barriers “have racial significance only in their consequences, not in their origins.” **It is class oppression—with blacks disproportionately at the bottom due to historical racism—not ongoing racism most affecting the “black underclass.”** In this paper he focuses on the economic sphere and acknowledges that racism may have ongoing importance in other spheres like politics. IMO there is plenty of evidence against this theory including wealth inequality among white and blacks with equal credentials (*Oliver and Shapiro 1997*), greater effects of CJ record on Blacks than Whites (*Pager 2003*), discrimination against urban Blacks in jobs (*Kirschenman and Neckerman 1991*), and discrimination even against immigrant Blacks (*Waters, 1999*). In his revisited essay, he takes a more measured stance, calling for race-based solutions, like affirmative action, as well as class-based solutions, such as programs to increase employment in areas with the highest rates of joblessness.

Answer 39

In line with prior theorists, Wimmer states that **ethnicity is the product of a social process**. * This process has produced many **different types of ethnic boundaries**, including different degrees of salience of boundaries, of social closure and exclusion (i.e., consequences) along boundaries, and stability over time. * Wimmer proposes a **multi-level model for ethnic boundary making to account for these types of variations, which leads from the macrostructural level to the agency of individuals and aggregates their actions back to the macrostructural level. ** * **Actors will pursue different strategies** of ethnic boundary making to best support their claims for prestige, moral worth, and political power, but these **strategies are constrained by their position in and networks in the power hierarchy**, and those strategies then result in macro-level ethnic boundaries. * Cites Lamont 2000 (not what we read) in terms of boundary making.

Answer 40

**Changes in the labor market and family pose challenges to the post-war capitalist welfare state. *** A welfare state is a government that works to protect and promote the well-being of its citizens, though there is considerable variability in its form (e.g., liberal, social democratic). * These changes include the (1) “second demographic transition”—the changing role of women, evolving new household forms—and (2) the rise of service employment, which has low wages and low wage growth (i.e. a growth of bad jobs). * **The present welfare state is built around a set of egalitarian ideals and risk profiles that predominated earlier times**: a largely homogenous male workforce, stable families w high fertility, a female population devoted largely to housewifery, etc. **Welfare states have not adapted. ** * Calls for a **focus on the household economy to understand postindustrial society**. It is difficult to harmonize some egalitarian goals with a return to full employment (like, who does the child rearing?).

Answer 41

From analyzing data sources from the US and other countries, Fischer argues that **inequality is socially constructed and shaped by policy choices**. This work critiques the Bell Curve myth (Herrnstein & Murray 1994), which claims that inequality is natural and inevitable due to distribution of genetic skills. This is an insufficient explanation for who ends up in what class and the dramatic differences in life chances between the classes. Instead, differences in inequality over time or across countries are **determined by policy**. Some policies in the US reduce inequality, like Medicare, but **many policies increase inequality in the US**, including (visible) limited direct help to some of the poor (means-tested), doing little to raise people out of poverty, and uneven distribution of access to health care, and (more invisible) subsidies to the middle and upper class including corporate tax breaks/subsidies, tax breaks for homeownership but not renters, investment in highways connecting suburbs to downtown business areas, and Reagan tax cuts for the wealthy. * Also policies driving low unionization rates and decentralized wage settings create wage inequality. Many countries have a more centralized wage setting that involves bargaining between unions and employers' associations! * **Overall, intentional policies, as well as somewhat economic forces, explain the US expanding economic inequality (there has been dramatic growth in US inequality since the 1970s and its high inequality compared to other similar countries).** Since the late 1970s, the US slowed or rolled back public investments/New Deal reforms shown to reduce inequality (e.g., labor power building).

Answer 42

In this mainly theoretical piece based on historical and economic analyses, Jencks argues that equalizing **opportunity is not the most effective way to improve equality, as it is extremely difficult and slow** (e.g., advantaged parents will find ways to pass advantages down as long as society is competitive and rewards adults unequally). **Unless a society completely eliminates ties between parents and children, inequality among parents guarantees some degree of inequality in the opportunities available to children** (a la Lucas 2001 effectively maintained inequality)). Thus, approaches like schooling won't achieve it. What is more effective is deciding how serious these inequalities must be and moving rewards to be more equal. Potential measures include insurance systems, income-sharing, progressive taxes, free public services, government mandating limited inequality between highest and lowest paid worker. **We should work on equalizing income rather than waiting for equality of opportunity to be reached (which it never will).**

Answer 43

Similarly to Oliver and Shapiro (1997), Katznelson uses historical analysis to describe how government programs in the 20th century (especially the New Deal of the 1930s which established “universal” social security and unemployment insurance) **exacerbated racial inequalities, highlighting the role of institutions in producing inequality**. These programs were developed and implemented in deeply discriminatory way. (1) Social security and unemployment benefits excluded agricultural and domestic workers—the most common occupations for Blacks. For the first 25 years of its existence, social security excluded farmworkers or domestics, thus excluding 65% of African Americans. Even after this exclusion was removed, policy requirements of stable, regular employment prevented them from benefitting from both SSA and UI. (2) Failures to protect voting rights of Blacks especially in the South gave undue power to Southern whites to shape these policies and prevent things from changing (2 senate seats per state!). Like **Fischer et al. (1996), highlights that these programs subsidized and helped create a modern white middle class. They increased the living standards and opportunities of whites but not Blacks, thus contributing to the racial inequality of today**. Considers this affirmative action for whites!

Answer 44

Using data on 18 OECD countries, Korpi and Palme **assess different types of social policy institutions for their effectiveness in reducing inequality and poverty**. They address debates around targeted (for only the poor) versus universal (for everyone) programs and flat-rate (equal for all) versus earnings-related benefits (related to previous earnings and income). ***They ultimately recommend a model that involves coupling universalism with earnings-related benefits*** (earnings-related benefits for economically active and basic security for all). Their analysis associates this system with the most reduction in inequality and poverty. Why? **Higher degrees of lower-income targeting is associated with smaller budgets, partially because universality attracts broad public support** (more than means- or income-tested programs). The earnings-related benefits generate incentives to work and also avoid poverty traps. This paper seems to **suggest that institutions, when well designed, can improve inequality**.

Answer 45

In this mainly theoretical and historical piece, Marshall argues that in England, a series of rights related to citizenship were secured in a sequence over three centuries: from (1) ***civil rights*** (individual freedoms) in the 18th century, to (2) ***political rights*** (participate in exercise of political power) in the 19th, and (3) ***social rights*** (right to economic welfare and life as civilized being) in the 20th. * **Social citizenship/social rights may encompass basic welfare/security** or the ability to “share to the full in the social heritage and live the life of a civilized being according to the standards prevailing in society.” Linked to this idea is the **educational system, social services, minimum wage laws**, etc. * Importantly, social rights mitigate inequalities generated by markets without abolishing markets. Each of the three rights should bolster the others in a decent society. Specifically, social rights help people exercise their civil and political rights. This piece **demonstrates that our concept of full citizenship has broadened to include people’s well-being, which directs our attention to many inequalities. Legacy: the idea of social citizenship was influential, with many contemporary states viewing social citizenship as their responsibility**. It reflects social democratic thinking —a concern for both liberty and equality

Answer 46

Using cross-country analyses, Orloff **argues that social provision is gendered and gendering. She argues that the social welfare system is paternal in that it has evolved to support men’s “family wage” and basically ignored women’s rights. Social provisions have historically treated the sexual division of labor and paid and unpaid labor unjustly **(e.g., many welfare states just DEPEND on women’s tremendous care work, while social democratic regimes socialize the cost of familyhood by taking on day care and parental leaves). * They have **gendered stratification consequences (e.g., women and men get access to very different social protections**. The most stable and well-funded programs like social security require claims of paid work and thus mainly support employed men; women get access to family-based services that like welfare that are less stable and funded). * **These institutions have institutionalized gender relations including the consignment of care work to women and women being second-class workers**. * Future social provision should promote access to paid work (a source of economic and political power) and the ability to survive and support children without having to marry (freedom from compulsion to marry/stay in marriage to obtain economic support). * Orloff builds on Marshall (1950)’s concept of social citizenship in acknowledging that social provision can have emancipatory effects; without freedoms to support themselves and their families, women can’t exercise their political and civil rights, like exiting a bad marriage! Overall, **the mainstream literature on the welfare state is gender-blind, but the welfare state affects the conditions of women and reproduces male dominance.**

Answer 47

While many scholars describe the US as having had an “unregulated” labor market, particularly in comparison to the welfare states of Europe, Western and Beckett argue that **the US actually has a major institutional intervention: the expansion of the penal system**. **US incarceration artificially lowers unemployment by removing workers from the labor force counts**. Strong US employment performance in the 1980s and 1990s was due in part from high and increasing incarceration rates. But, their analysis of NLSY data shows that: * incarceration reduces the job prospects of ex-convicts and thus could raise unemployment in the US in the long-term. * Thus, continued strong US employment would require continued expansion of the penal system. Overall, **this paper casts doubt on the theory that deregulation is associated with better labor market performance/lower unemployment. It also adds the penal system to the list of institutions that shape labor markets, like the welfare state and institutions for wage setting. The penal system as an institition also deepens existing market inequalities because incarceration is highest among young, unskilled, minority men**. Consistent with Pager (2003)’s findings.

Answer 48

In this mainly theoretical piece drawing on existing work, DiPrete explains why sociology has been surprisingly silent about rising earnings inequality in the US as well as between the US and other industrialized countries (at least through the late 90s). **Reasons include: (1) More of an interest in occupation and class over wages. (2) Focus on race, gender, and mobility over distribution**. But occupation and other measures of class don’t fully reflect the income issues because the relative pay of occupations was changing and because inequality in pay within occupations was increasing (Katz & Autor, 1999). In this sociology vacuum,** primary explanations for rising inequality are market-based, especially skill-biased technological change** (SBTC) theory from Katz and Autor (1999) that argues that technological change has increased demand for high-skill labor relative to low-skill labor, evidenced by the returns to higher education rising. However, this theory has issues and it’s likely that **institutions are important in explaining the rise of income inequality in the US and its extreme growth relative to other OECD countries. It is likely some role of exogenous shocks like technology but institutional differences between counties appear to make a big difference**. For example, there is evidence that the decline in unionization and decline in the real median wage explain a large part of the growth of inequality in the US. Thus, institutional effects are strong and may be the dominant factors accounting for growth of inequality in the US and relative to Europe. We must try to **understand why institutions change, like why unionization declined**; the explanations are probably social and political (work of sociologists)--are these also driven by SBTC? Unlikely.

Answer 49

This paper uses a longitudinal case study of a food processing plant that transitioned to a higher-tech facility and process to test a popular explanation for increased wage inequality since the 1970s: **skill-biased technological change** (SBTC). * SBTC from Katz and Autor (1999) argues that technological change has increased demand for high-skill labor relative to low-skill labor, evidenced by the returns to higher education rising despite the rise in supply of highly educated workers, which suggests an increase in demand for them. * SBTC has also been linked to the declining fortunes of minorities. * Fernandez finds that **SBTC contributes to rising wage inequality within the firm—more than the growth in inequality in the local labor market—and greater racial and gender wage inequality, in line with the theory that SBTC contributes to rising income inequality**. ***However***, Fernandez argues that **organizational decisions can greatly reduce the impacts of these tech shocks, given that the case-study firm’s “no layoff” policy and union collaboration made the income effects not as extreme as they may have been** (by reducing turnover, which is one of the driving forces of rising inequalities (?)). Potential of social contracts! This choice did benefit the employer in many ways.

Answer 50

Through analysis of US labor market data and existing studies, Kalleberg argues that **employment relations have become more precarious since the 70s across the globe.** Evidence includes: 1. an increase in **nonstandard work**, as evidenced by increases in independent contractors, on-call workers, temp workers, and workers provided by contract firms, 2. decline in **job stability**, with substantial reductions in the firm tenure, 3. **decline in hiring from within** - if workers can’t climb the ladder within firms, they are likely to feel more precarious and insecure than in the past, 4. rise in **involuntary job loss**, 5. rise in **long-term unemployment**, 6. shift in **risk from employers to employees**, especially in benefits (e.g., an increase in defined contribution plans (where employees absorb more risk) and decline in defined benefit plans (where employers absorb more risk)), 7. rise in self-reported insecurity in jobs. Causes? **Globalization** and **technology** increased competition and made it easy to move production and people around, and outsourcing and temp work helped reduce costs. **Neoliberal ideologies and policies encouraged a weakened welfare state**, weakened unions, etc. These trends occurred at the same time as Americans abandoned the implicit social contract (the idea of mutual commitment and responsibility) that once bonded government, labor, and business (it emphasized collective solutions to collective problems). **Results? The balance of power has shifted more toward employers. ** **Solution? Kalleberg calls for a new social contract that balances flexibility and for employers and security for workers. **In the US, which is already super committed to giving firms flexibility, we need to give workers more economic security to help them deal with treacherous labor market like portable health, retirement, and unemployment benefits, skill security (opportunities for re-skill), and representation security (unions).

Answer 51

Using data on income inequality in 3,098 U.S. counties from 1970-2000, the authors **assess the social mechanisms driving geographical variation in inequality (over time and across counties).** They seek to better adjudicate between labor market, demographic, and institutional contexts - cites DiPrete 2007 who stresses institutions. * They find that **institutions and policy help “some.”** Unions help, more public employment helps, increased minimum wage helps, increased welfare spending has helped, while decreased education spending has enhanced inequality. * **Labor market and demographic trends matter a lot, especially a U shaped relationship between median income** (a sign of economic development) and inequality, with high income eventually becoming associated with high inequality, complex relationship with higher education. **Less population density, less women working, less female-headed families, less racial heterogeneity, more manufacturing is better for equality.**

Answer 52

Using CPS data from the 80s - 2000, Mouw and Kalleberg evaluate the role of occupations in explaining the increase in US wage inequality, continuing the sociology tradition of seeing occupations as key to stratification. They find that most of the **increase in wage inequality is due to differences between occupations**, and the explanatory power of occupations has increased over time. Their evidence is consistent with the view that **rising inequality is linked to a growing polarization of occupations, through the growth of high- and low-wage occupations and the decline of middle-level occupations**, such as the decline of blue-collar occupations due to trade and technology and the rise in high-paying managerial and professional jobs like lawyers and computer scientists due to tech, deregulation of markets, and globalization. Their paper is consistent with: * Prior work arguing that occupational structure (i.e., the relative size and average wages of different occupations) is central to explanations of inequality **(Blau and Duncan 1967).** * Evidence that within occupations people are pretty homogenous, so between occupations is prob most significant in determining life chances * **Weeden (2002)** finding that some occupations benefit from being able to use institionalized social closure (e.g., licensing).

Answer 53

Using tax data from 1913 to 1998, Piketty and Saez find that **top income and wage share display a U-shaped pattern over the century**. Looks at various percentiles. Income includes various income sources including ***capital***. The shape features a huge decline starting with the beginning of WWII, a long post war steady state, and then an increase in the 70s. * Piketty and Saez attribute the **sharp drop of top shares to declines in capital incomes** (which could be the post-World War I depression and the Great Depression destroying many businesses - economic shocks). * The increase in top shares since the 70s was largely linked to a rise of top wages, which suggests that the working rich have replaced the rentiers. Thus, ***increasingly inequality is being driven by wages***. *Before WW II, the richest Americans were overwhelmingly rentiers deriving most of their income from wealth holdings (mainly in the form of dividends). In contrast, in 1998 more than half of the very top taxpayers derive the major part of their income in the form of wages and salaries.* * This should reinforce our interest in wages and occupations IMO. * They argue that this trend does not fully add up to just a technical change story. For example, top shares didn’t increase immediately after the war economy controls were removed. Piketty and Saez theorize that in**stitutions and social norms likely play an important role in determining the wage structure. **The compression period included high public support for redistribution programs and substantial increases in unionization, for example. Progressive taxation may also have contributed to the decrease in top shares and kept them from recovering after WW II. The decline in income tax progressivity since the 1980s and the projected repeal of the estate tax (which happened in 2010) might increase inequality even more going forward.

Answer 54

Using CPS data from 1975 - 2005, they find that in this period, **inequality (variance of income) among families w/ children has increased substantially more than families w/o children (in line with rising income inequality in general).** What explains raising income inequality? * They find that a (A) large increase in the income advantage of **families headed by college graduates** plays a role. If the share of parents with college education doesn’t rise (it seems to have plateaued in the 90s), it will be a problem. * (B) **Rising rates of single parenthood** also play a role. Single parenthood, which has risen since the mid 1960s, increases income inequality by adding to the number of low-income families. * (A) Educational inequality + (B) rising single parenthood led to rising income inequality, BUT this was offset by increasing education levels and women’s employment. **Key conclusion: the rise in income inequality between families was caused by changes in within group inequality, rather than changes in the size of groups**. aka, over half of the increase in the variance of family incomes is related to the growth of within-group inequality. * Labor market researchers view within-group inequality as reflecting the insecurity of earnings. It can be driven by the (C) erosion of labor market institutions (like labor unions, minimum wage standards), in that it allows for more variation overall, increasing the heterogeneity of wages among workers with similar skills and occupations. This is consistent with the idea of a risk shift (Kalleberg 2000).

Answer 55

Using data on US metropolitan areas from 1970 to 2000, examine how the growth in income inequality affected patterns of income segregation (uneven geographic distribution of income groups). * They find a robust relationship between within-race income inequality and within-race income segregation in metropolitan areas. **Income inequality affects income segregation primarily via its effect on the large-scale spatial segregation of affluence, not of poverty.** * This effect is bigger for blacks. The authors find different relationships between income inequality and segregation for Black and white families. **As a result of the growing Black middle class and amelioration of housing segregation since the 1970s, income segregation among Black families increased dramatically 1970-1990, as middle class Blacks moved into suburban neighborhoods**. * However, **income inequality does not appear to account for the spatial segregation of poverty (possibly due to housing policy),** nor for small-scale income segregation (e.g. the gentrification of urban neighborhoods that are proximate to poor neighborhoods). * The effects of income inequality on income segregation are primarily driven by the effects of inequality on macro-scale patterns of segregation. **Via middle-class flight from lower-income neighborhoods, aka, higher-earning families to move away from lower-income families**. * The implications of higher income segregation is that higher-income households may be **even more advantaged** relative to lower-income households, beyond their income differences, due to differences in the advantages or disadvantages they get from their neighbors via neighborhood effects.

Answer 56

Using multiple data sources including surveys, census data, and police records, Sampson argues that neighborhood differentiation has durable properties – with cultural and social mechanisms of reproduction – and with effects that span a wide variety of social phenomena (e.g. poverty, crime, infant mortality, low birth weight, incarceration, and unemployment correlate in space). In Chicago and the US, there is **“concentrated disadvantage,” that social disadvantages have a neighborhood component, and this correlation is more amplified, durable, and has greater effects on subsequent generations in Black communities because of racial segregation.** Looking over time from 1960 to 2007, he finds that neighborhoods are quite durable in their relative positioning over time, only really downgrading. Once a certain threshold of Black or poor residents is met in a neighborhood, further change will likely take place in the direction of greater racial homogeneity and greater poverty. The enduring vulnerability in some neighborhoods is not simply the result of residents’ SES: it also has **perceptual and cultural bases, as collectively shared perceptions of disorder influence residential choice, stigmatization, and other long-term processes that reinforce the concentrated poverty of those areas. ** Sampson **criticizes broken-windows theory**, which asserts that cues of disorder increase crime. **He finds that shared perceptions of disorder rather than systematically observed disorder are a mechanism of durable inequality. **Thus, disorder rooted in shared historical assessments (rather than the current cues themselves) influences individual perceptions and further social outcomes and comes to define and “mark” the neighborhood environment and residents. This is in line with Small (2004)’s findings on neighborhood narratives. This lends credence to a claim that social and cultural mechanisms matter in determining poverty, too. Sampson criticizes the Moving to Opportunity experiment. MTO was a national experiment in the 1990s designed to lift poor families out of concentrated poverty and into the American Dream. MTO seemed to have no effect on the families who took part but, it focused on individuals (which we can’t generalize to other effects) and actually provided only a modest treatment effect. **Experiments like MTO only give us one kind of answer in posing an individual-level intervention; they do not address the complicated “tangle” of causes and consequences of selection, neighborhood-level effects, and neighborhood social mechanisms.**

Answer 57

25 years after initial publication (1987), Wilson reflects on the contributions and legacy of The Truly Disadvantaged, in which he examined why certain social problems (e.g. long-term unemployment or joblessness, crime or other “aberrant behaviors,” and long-term welfare dependency) disproportionately affect the urban underclass in inner cities. He had argued that neighborhood poverty matters more than individual wealth for a variety of life outcomes due to "concentration effects" in the ghetto, which becomes "socially isolated" from mainstream society (growth of spatially concentrated poverty and “concentration effects”), driven by (A) lack of jobs and (B) job networks. * **(A) Jobs are lacking because of economic changes that radically change cities such as the withdrawal of large industries from inner cities and the move from goods to service-based economies.** These changes deeply affected the urban black population because historical discrimination left them in the most marginal positions in the labor force to weather these economic changes. * (B) **Joblessness is perpetuated by growing social isolation including social network/job network/school quality/job opportunity issues, contributing to high inner city poverty**. Poor Blacks continue to have marginal positions in the labor force due to lack of opportunity for stable and legitimate employment. Wilson reiterates that neither racism (left) nor the welfare state or culture of poverty (right) is responsible for worsening inner city conditions. Historic racism created the “ghetto” and contemporary discrimination aggravates it, but we must consider the complex web of factors, especially the role of the modern American economy. Wilson acknowledges the role of economic, cultural, social, and psychological (e.g., shared perceptions of disorder) factors, so he is quite encompassing. * He largely agrees with Sampson (2012)’s interpretation of the MTO’s mixed results and other findings re: concentrated disadvantage.

Answer 58

Using PSID data from 1968-1997, this paper finds neighborhood effects are lasting and cumulative, it’s not just about where you’re living at one point of time. Aka, **sustained exposure to disadvantaged neighborhoods throughout the entire childhood has a severe impact on high school graduation on black and nonblack children that is considerably larger than effects reported in prior research, which only used point of time measures of residence**. Results show very large disparities in neighborhood quality by race, cross sectionally, and even larger racial disparities in neighborhood quality, over time. They include a nice summary of the various camps of neighborhood effects: social isolation (role models, social networks, job networks, cultural repertories), social organization (cohesion), neighborhood resources (good schools, daycares, grocery stores), physical environment (pollution and health)—though they do not do much work on mechanisms. Their research highlights the continued importance of neighborhood-effects on the reproduction of poverty

Stratification Flashcards

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