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Social Status and the Moral Acceptance of Artificial Intelligence

By on October 29, 2024 in Articles

Patrick Schenk, Vanessa A. Müller, Luca Keiser

Sociological Science October 29, 2024
10.15195/v11.a36

Abstract

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The morality of artificial intelligence (AI) has become a contentious topic in academic and public debates. We argue that AI’s moral acceptance depends not only on its ability to accomplish a task in line with moral norms but also on the social status attributed to AI. Agent type (AI vs. computer program vs. human), gender, and organizational membership impact moral permissibility. In a factorial survey experiment, 578 participants rated the moral acceptability of agents performing a task (e.g., cancer diagnostics). We find that using AI is judged less morally acceptable than employing human agents. AI used in high-status organizations is judged more morally acceptable than in low-status organizations. No differences were found between computer programs and AI. Neither anthropomorphic nor gender framing had an effect. Thus, human agents in high-status organizations receive a moral surplus purely based on their structural position in a cultural status hierarchy regardless of their actual performance.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Patrick Schenk: Department of Sociology, University of Lucerne
E-mail: patrick.schenk@unilu.ch

Vanessa A. Müller: Department of Sociology, University of Lucerne
E-mail: vanessa.mueller2@unilu.ch

Luca Keiser: gfs.bern
E-mail: luca.keiser@gfsbern.ch

Acknowledgements: We thank Gabriel Abend, Michael Sauder, the editor of Sociological Science, and an anonymous reviewer for their valuable comments. Earlier versions of this article were presented at the Congress of the Academy of Sociology in Bern, Switzerland, and the Conference of the European Sociological Association in Porto, Portugal.

Funding: This study was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (grant number 100017_200750/1).

Supplemental Materials

Reproducibility Package: A reproduction package with data, codebook, and statistical code is available through the following link: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13850548.

  • Citation: Schenk, Patrick, Vanessa A. Müller, Luca Keiser. 2024. “Social Status and the Moral Acceptance of Artificial Intelligence.” Sociological Science 11: 989-1016.
  • Received: August 20, 2024
  • Accepted: September 29, 2024
  • Editors: Ari Adut, Stephen Vaisey
  • DOI: 10.15195/v11.a36


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Hunkering Down or Catching Up? No Long-Term Effect of Ethnic Minority Share on Neighborhood Contacts

By on October 18, 2024 in Articles

Stephan Dochow-Sondershaus

Sociological Science October 18, 2024
10.15195/v11.a35

Abstract

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This study reexamines the relationship between the coexistence of distinct ethno-cultural groups and social connectedness. Although previous research suggests a negative association between neighborhood-level ethnic diversity or ethnic minority shares and individual integration, alternative theoretical perspectives propose that integration can occur equally well in neighborhoods with distinct ethnic groups but may require more time. Moreover, the causal nature of the observed negative relationship is unclear due to potential confounding biases related to neighborhood selection. To address these issues, this study presents a framework for estimating the longitudinal effects of neighborhood ethnic composition on social ties with neighbors. The objective is to estimate the differences in neighborly contacts between individuals in low- and high-minority share neighborhoods, under a counterfactual scenario where all households stay in their neighborhood for the same period. The findings challenge previous research by showing that the ethnic composition does not impact the quality of neighborly contacts. In addition, residing in a neighborhood for five years significantly enhances social connectivity, regardless of ethnic composition. These results suggest that reduced cohesion in areas with higher minority presence may be due to other factors such as socioeconomic disadvantage and housing instability.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Stephan Dochow-Sondershaus: Department of Sociology, University of Copenhagen
E-mail: stdo@soc.ku.dk

Acknowledgements: I would like to express my gratitude to Michael Windzio, Merlin Schaeffer, Celine Teney, and Jan Goebel for their invaluable support and feedback on this article. I am also thankful to the Bremen International Graduate School of Social Sciences for providing the necessary resources to complete this work. In addition, I appreciate the valuable feedback from participants at the 2021 Conference of the German Academy of Sociology, the 2022 German Socio-Economic Panel User Conference, and the 2024 Conference of the Nordic Sociological Association. Finally, I am grateful to Philipp Kaminsky, Christine Kurka, and Michaela Engelmann at the DIW in Berlin for providing a supportive work environment and for their uplifting spirit.

Supplemental Materials

Reproducibility Package: Stata and R code for replication is available on the author’s Open Science Framework page (https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/RCFN4). The datasets were made available by the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) Study at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) in Berlin. The SOEP data can be requested after signing a data assignment contract (https://www.diw.de/en/diw_01.c.601584.en/data_access.html). For more information, visit https://doi.org/10.5684/soep.core.v36eu. The Microm-SOEP dataset for neighborhood data is provided by and accessible to researchers at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) in Berlin.

  • Citation: Dochow-Sondershaus, Stephan. 2024. “Hunkering Down or Catching Up? No Long-Term Effect of Ethnic Minority Share on Neighborhood Contacts.” Sociological Science 11: 965-988.
  • Received: April 10, 2024
  • Accepted: September 21, 2024
  • Editors: Arnout van de Rijt, Maria Abascal
  • DOI: 10.15195/v11.a35


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The Surprising Decline of Workplace Sexual Harassment Incidence in the U.S. Federal Workforce

By on October 7, 2024 in Articles

Michael J. Rosenfeld

Sociological Science October 7, 2024
10.15195/v11.a34

Abstract

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U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board (USMSPB) surveys document a decline of more than 50 percent between 1987 and 2016 in the percentage of women working for the federal government who have been sexually harassed (narrowly or broadly defined) in the prior two years. This decline has been underappreciated due to the infrequency of USMSPB surveys and the delayed release of the USMSPB report based on the 2016 survey. The decline in workplace sexual harassment of women has taken place across all federal agencies and at all workplace gender balances. While, in 1987, there was a strong positive correlation between male predominance in the workplace and women’s report of sexual harassment, this association was greatly diminished by 2016. The formerly substantial gender divide in attitudes toward sexual harassment was also mostly diminished by 2016. By extrapolating the USMSPB surveys of federal workers to the entire U.S. workforce, I estimate that 4.8 million U.S. women were harassed at work in 2016 (using a narrow definition of harassment) and 7.6 million U.S. women were harassed at work in 1987 when the female workforce was substantially smaller. More than 700 women were sexually harassed at work in the United States in 2016 for every sexual harassment complaint filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The observed decline in sexual harassment has implications for theories about law and social change.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Michael J. Rosenfeld: Stanford University
E-mail: mrosenfe@stanford.edu

Acknowledgements: The idea of this article started from discussions with research assistant Camilla Camargo about a research project comparing the history of coworker dating with workplace sexual harassment. Research assistant Jasleen Gosal excavated some obscure aspects of the history of federal government agencies training programs with respect to sexual harassment. Thanks to the staff at the Merit Systems Protection Board who answered many questions about surveys and data. The following people gave feedback on earlier drafts of the article: Hannah Tessler, Alisa Feldman, Michaela Simmons, Amy Hontalas, Kimberly Higuera, Justine Tinkler, and the Stanford Graduate Family Workshop. A previous version of these results was presented at the Population Association of America Conference in 2024.

Funding: None.

Supplemental Materials

Reproducibility Package: All original data, codes, and analysis are available at OpenICPSR, https://doi.org/10.3886/E209051V1.

  • Citation: Rosenfeld, J. Michael. 2024. “The Surprising Decline of Workplace Sexual Harassment Incidence in the U.S. Federal Workforce.” Sociological Science 11: 934-964.
  • Received: July 24, 2024
  • Accepted: September 13, 2024
  • Editors: Ari Adut, Kristen Schilt
  • DOI: 10.15195/v11.a34


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Life-Course Transitions and Political Orientations

By on September 27, 2024 in Articles

Turgut Keskintürk

Sociological Science September 27, 2024
10.15195/v11.a33

Abstract

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Do life-course transitions in adulthood shape political orientations? One framework suggests that life events expose people to new information, allowing actors to assess their political beliefs and preferences in response to these social experiences. An alternative framework suggests that the link between one’s life-course position and personal politics may be ambiguous, and early experiences should be more informative for political orientations. In this article, I use four household surveys across three countries and 40 items on political beliefs and preferences to test whether lifecourse transitions change one’s political orientations. In doing this, I employ difference-in-differences models to identify the effects of six life transitions across family and work domains on a wide variety of propositional survey items. I find that life-course transitions have no substantive influence on political orientations, and the general findings are not sensitive to differences in political interest or the age at which individuals experience these life events.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Turgut Keskintürk: Department of Sociology, Duke University
E-mail: turgut.keskinturk@duke.edu

Acknowledgements: I thank Stephen Vaisey, Craig Rawlings, and Christopher Wildeman for their extensive feedback on different versions of this manuscript, and Andrés Castro Araújo, Kevin Kiley, and the participants of the Worldview Lab at the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University for their thoughtful comments on the project.

Supplemental Materials

Reproducibility Package: The code to reproduce the full set of analyses and instructions on how to access the household surveys are provided at https://osf.io/hu3yj/.

  • Citation: Keskintürk, Turgut 2024. “Life-Course Transitions and Political Orientations” Sociological Science 11: 907-933.
  • Received: July 3, 2024
  • Accepted: September 10, 2024
  • Editors: Arnout van de Rijt, Jeremy Freese
  • DOI: 10.15195/v11.a33


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Factorial Survey Experiments to Predict Real-World Behavior: A Cautionary Tale from Hiring Studies

By on September 24, 2024 in Articles

Andrea G. Forster, Martin Neugebauer

Sociological Science September 24, 2024
10.15195/v11.a32

Abstract

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Factorial surveys (FSs) are increasingly used to predict real-world decisions. However, there is a paucity of research assessing whether these predictions are valid and, if so, under what conditions. In this preregistered study, we sent out N = 3,002 applications to job vacancies in Germany and measured real-world responses. Eight weeks later, we presented nearly identical applicant profiles to the same employers as a part of an FS. To explore the conditions under which FSs provide valid behavioral predictions, we varied the topic sensitivity and tested whether behavioral predictions were more successful after filtering out respondents who gave socially desirable answers or did not exert sufficient effort when answering FS vignettes. Across conditions, the FS results did not correspond well with the real-world benchmark. We conclude that researchers must exercise caution when using FSs to study (hiring) behavior.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Andrea G. Forster: Utrecht University, Heidelberglaan 8, 3584 CS Utrecht, The Netherlands
E-mail: a.g.forster@uu.nl

Martin Neugebauer: Karlsruhe University of Education, Bismarckstr. 10, 76133 Karlsruhe, Germany
E-mail: martin.neugebauer@ph-karlsruhe.de

Acknowledgements: Both authors contributed equally to this study. We would like to thank Lukas Zielinski, Stefan Gunzelmann, Tim Skroblien, Pablo Neitzsch, and Franz Geiger for their help with the design of the experiments and the collection of the data. Furthermore, we would like to thank Katrin Auspurg, Annabell Daniel, Tamara Gutfleisch, Knut Petzold, and Katharina Stückradt as well as 16 professional experts (recruiters and job councelors) for their feedback on our experimental design and materials. Finally, we would like to thank the participants of ECSR 2022, ACES 2022, DGS 2022, the ISOL paper seminar, the Research Colloquium Sociology (University of Bern), and the Research Colloquium Analytical Sociology (LMU Munich) for their feedback on earlier versions of this article. This research was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education grant number 16PX21011.

Supplemental Materials

Reproducibility Package: The code and data needed to reproduce the analyses are available at the Open Science Framework: https://osf.io/x2tcp/.

  • Citation: Forster, G. Andrea and Martin Neugebauer. 2024. “Factorial Survey Experiments to Predict Real-World Behavior: A Cautionary Tale from Hiring Studies.” Sociological Science 11: 886-906.
  • Received: April 26, 2024
  • Accepted: August 23, 2024
  • Editors: Arnout van de Rijt, Stephen Vaisey
  • DOI: 10.15195/v11.a32


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Decomposing Heterogeneity in Inequality of Educational Opportunities: Family Income and Academic Performance in Brazilian Higher Education

By on September 10, 2024 in Articles

Adriano S. Senkevics, Rogério J. Barbosa, Flavio Carvalhaes, Carlos A. Costa Ribeiro

Sociological Science September 10, 2024
10.15195/v11.a31

Abstract

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Access to higher education depends on the interaction between social origins and academic performance: background resources boost academic skills; but even when controlling for performance, privileged students are more likely to make ambitious choices and further transitions. Recent literature has shown that inequality in educational choices is heterogeneous across countries. However, it is still not well understood how different institutional designs within countries may affect the workings of those effects and how they can strengthen or weaken the inequality of educational opportunities. Using high-quality register data from the Brazilian higher education system, our work contributes to this understanding by investigating how SES and performance interact and drive students’ choice between three different tracks: not entering higher education, entering the private system, or entering the public system. We developed a strategy to encompass multinomial choices and decompose the inequalities into primary and secondary effects. Using the Shapley Value decomposition strategy, we correct an intrinsic asymmetry that biased previous results. Our findings suggest affluent students enjoy dual advantages: high exam performance amplifies access to public universities (indirect effect) and family resources offset subpar performance, ensuring private university access (direct effect). We found no signs of multiplicative advantages.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Adriano S. Senkevics: National Institute for Educational Studies and Research, Ministry of Education of Brazil
E-mail: adriano.senkevics@alumni.usp.br

Rogério J. Barbosa: Institute of Social and Political Studies, State University of Rio de Janeiro
E-mail: rogerio.barbosa@iesp.uerj.br

Flavio Carvalhaes: Department of Sociology, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro
E-mail: flaviocarvalhaes@gmail.com

Carlos A. Costa Ribeiro: Institute of Social and Political Studies, State University of Rio de Janeiro
E-mail: carloscr@iesp.uerj.br

Acknowledgements: We extend our gratitude to the editors and reviewers for their insightful suggestions. We are thankful to Marcelo Medeiros, Thomas DiPrete, and Scott Davies, as well as the School of International and Public Affairs and the Institute of Latin American Studies at Columbia University and the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto for their hospitality during the authors’ visit. Special thanks go to the National Institute for Educational Studies and Research (INEP) for granting access to the restricted microdata. We are also appreciative of the financial support provided by Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro – FAPERJ (grants E-26/201.343/2021 and 010.002639/2019); Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Tecnológico – CNPq (grant 400786/2016-8); Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior – CAPES (grant 88887.368106/2019-00); and Pro-Ciência from the State University of Rio de Janeiro – UERJ.

Supplemental Materials

Reproducibility Package: The replication package is available at https://osf.io/pru32/; however, due to the use of restricted microdata from INEP’s Protected Data Access Service, it does not enable the replication of the full results as the data set is subject to specific limitations.

  • Citation: Senkevics, Adriano S., Rogério J. Barbosa, Flavio Carvalhaes, and Carlos A. Costa Ribeiro. 2024. “Decomposing Heterogeneity in Inequality of Educational Opportunities: Family Income and Academic Performance in Brazilian Higher Education.” Sociological Science 11: 854-885.
  • Received: November 26, 2023
  • Accepted: April 19, 2024
  • Editors: Arnout van de Rijt, Jeremy Freese
  • DOI: 10.15195/v11.a31


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Prosociality Beyond In-Group Boundaries: A Lab-in-the-Field Experiment on Selection and Intergroup Interactions in a Multiethnic European Metropolis

By on September 6, 2024 in Articles

Delia Baldassarri, Johanna Gereke, Max Schaub

Sociological Science September 6, 2024
10.15195/v11.a30

Abstract

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How does prosocial behavior extend beyond in-group boundaries in multiethnic societies? The differentiation of Western societies presents an opportunity to understand the tension between societal pressures that push people outside the comfort zones of their familiar networks to constructively interact with unknown diverse others and the tendency toward homophily and in-group favoritism. We introduce a three-step model of out-group exposure that includes macrostructural conditions for intergroup encounters and microlevel dynamics of intergroup selection and interaction. Using lab-in-the-field experiments with a large representative sample of Italian natives and immigrants from the multiethnic city of Milan, we find that, when pushed to interact with non-coethnics, Italians generally treat them similarly to how they treat coethnics and value signs of social and market integration. However, when given the opportunity to select their interaction partners, Italians favor coethnics over immigrants. Taken together, these results help reconcile classical findings concerning the positive effects of intergroup contact with evidence documenting the persistence of out-group discrimination in selection processes.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Delia Baldassarri: Julius Silver, Roslyn S. Silver, and Enid Silver Winslow Professor, Department of Sociology, New York University and Senior Researcher, Dondena Center, Bocconi University
E-mail: delia.b@nyu.edu

Johanna Gereke: Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Mannheim Centre for European Social Research, University of Mannheim
E-mail: johanna.gereke@uni-mannheim.de

Max Schaub: Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Hamburg
E-mail: max.schaub@uni-hamburg.de

Acknowledgements: We are grateful to Maria Abascal, Shannon Rieger, Merlin Schaeffer, Nan Zhang, and Diego Gambetta as well as several seminar participants for their valuable comments. Funding from ERC Starting Grant 639284. Direct correspondence to Delia Baldassarri, 383 Lafayette Street, Department of Sociology, New York University, New York, NY, 10012 (delia.b@nyu.edu).

Supplemental Materials

Reproducibility Package: Data and code for replication are available at OSF https://osf.io/3rzgj.

  • Citation: Baldassarri, Delia, Johanna Gereke, and Max Schaub. 2024. “Prosociality Beyond In-Group Boundaries: A Lab-in-the-Field Experiment on Selection and Intergroup Interactions in a Multiethnic European Metropolis.” Sociological Science 11: 815-853.
  • Received: June 14, 2024
  • Accepted: August 5, 2024
  • Editors: Arnout van de Rijt, Ray Reagans
  • DOI: 10.15195/v11.a30


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Housework as a Woman's Job? What Looks Like Gender Ideologies Could Also Be Stereotypes

By on September 3, 2024 in Articles

Katrin Auspurg, Sabine Düval

Sociological Science September 3, 2024
10.15195/v11.a29

Abstract

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We question the validity of standard measures of gender ideology. When asked about “men” and “women” in general, respondents may imagine women (men) with lower (higher) labor market resources. Therefore, standard measures may conflate gender ideologies (injunctive norms) with stereotypical beliefs (descriptive norms). We test this hypothesis with an experiment in the German family panel pairfam: ∼1,200 respondents rated the appropriate division of housework in ∼3,700 hypothetical couples. By gradually adding information about labor market resources, we were able to override respondents’ stereotypical beliefs. We find that with more information, even “traditional” respondents support egalitarian housework arrangements. The main difference between “traditional” and “egalitarian” respondents is not in their ideologies (as previously thought), but in their interpretation of vague items. This leads us to conclude that standard measures overestimate traditional gender ideologies. Our study also illustrates how varying the amount of information can help identify respondents’ implicit beliefs.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Katrin Auspurg: Department of Sociology, LMU Munich
E-mail: katrin.auspurg@lmu.de

Sabine Düval: German Youth Institute (DJI)
E-mail: dueval@dji.de

Acknowledgements: We thank the participants of the Conference of the European Survey Research Association (ESRA) in 2019, the Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association (ASA) in 2019, the pairfam User Conference in 2019, and the seminar on “Analytical Sociology: Theory and Empirical Applications” at at the Venice International University in 2018 for helpful suggestions. We are also grateful for comments on an earlier version we received from Josef Brüderl. We used data from the German Family Panel pairfam, coordinated by Josef Brüderl, Sonja Drobniè, Karsten Hank, Johannes Huinink, Bernhard Nauck, Franz J. Neyer, and Sabine Walper. From 2004 to 2022, pairfam was funded as priority program and long-term project by the German Research Foundation (DFG). Sabine Düval worked on the manuscript and data analysis mainly during her PhD studies at the LMU Munich. Part of this work was done while Katrin Auspurg was a Visiting Fellow at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence.

Supplemental Materials

Reproducibility Package: The data we used (pairfam data release 10.0) can be accessed here: https://www.pairfam.de/en/data/data-access. Our replication files (Stata dofiles and data on response times not included in the pairfam release) are available on the following OSF platform: https://osf.io/3fqw9 (Auspurg and Düval 2024).

  • Citation: Auspurg, Katrin, and Sabine Düval. 2024. “Housework as a Woman’s Job?: What Looks Like Gender Ideologies Could Also Be Stereotypes.” Sociological Science 11: 789-814.
  • Received: September 21, 2023
  • Accepted: February 22, 2024
  • Editors: Arnout van de Rijt, Maria Abascal
  • DOI: 10.15195/v11.a29


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Examining Attitudes toward Asians throughout the COVID-19 Pandemic with Repeated Cross-Sectional Survey Experiments

By on August 30, 2024 in Articles

Yao Lu, Neeraj Kaushal, Xiaoning Huang, S. Michael Gaddis, Ariela Schachter

Sociological Science August 30, 2024
10.15195/v11.a28

Abstract

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This study examines how COVID-induced and general attitudes toward Asians have changed over the course of the pandemic using nationally representative survey experiments in 2020 and 2022. First, we measured COVID-induced anti-Asian attitudes as the effect of a treatment reminding respondents of the pandemic on whether respondents would be willing to live or work with someone who is East or South Asian. The results suggest that the COVID-19 treatment worsened attitudes toward East and South Asians in the social domain and toward East Asians in the economic domain in 2020, but not in 2022. Second, we measured change in general attitudes toward Asians by comparing the control group responses in 2020 and 2022. The results demonstrate that, over the same period, general attitudes toward Asians have not improved despite growing attention toward anti-Asian biases. This finding underscores the persistence of general negative attitudes toward Asians beyond the immediate context of the pandemic and the ongoing imperative to actively address deeply ingrained biases against Asians.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Yao Lu: Department of Sociology, Columbia University
E-mail: yl2479@columbia.edu

Neeraj Kaushal: School of Social Work, Columbia University
E-mail: nk464@columbia.edu

Xiaoning Huang: Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University
E-mail: jack.huang@northwestern.edu

S. Michael Gaddis: Research and Policy Partnerships, NWEA
E-mail: michael.gaddis@nwea.org

Ariela Schachter: Washington University in St. Louis
E-mail: ariela@wustl.edu

Acknowledgements: We thank Tiffany Huang, Jennifer Lee, and participants of the Experimental Design Workshop at Columbia University, and the Asia and Asian America Working Group at University of Pennsylvania for their helpful comments. This research was funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (1R21HD105183), the Columbia Population Research Center, the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy, the Center for Pandemic Research, and the Weatherhead East Asian Institute at Columbia University.

Supplemental Materials

Replication Package: Study materials can be found at the Open Science Framework https://osf.io/a6ewy/.

  • Citation: Lu, Yao, Neeraj Kaushal, Xiaoning Huang, S. Michael Gaddis, and Ariela Schachter. 2024. “Examining Attitudes toward Asians throughout the COVID-19 Pandemic with Repeated Cross-Sectional Survey Experiments.” Sociological Science 11:777-788.
  • Received: October 27, 2023
  • Accepted: March 16, 2024
  • Editors: Ari Adut, Maria Abascal
  • DOI: 10.15195/v11.a28


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Teacher Bias in Assessments by Student Ascribed Status: A Factorial Experiment on Discrimination in Education

By on August 27, 2024 in Articles

Carlos J. Gil-Hernández, Irene Pañeda-Fernández, Leire Salazar, Jonatan Castaño Muñoz

Sociological Science August 27, 2024
10.15195/v11.a27

Abstract

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Teachers are the evaluators of academic merit. Identifying if their assessments are fair or biased by student-ascribed status is critical for equal opportunity but empirically challenging, with mixed previous findings. We test status characteristics beliefs, statistical discrimination, and cultural capital theories with a pre-registered factorial experiment on a large sample of Spanish pre-service teachers (n = 1, 717). This design causally identifies, net of ability, the impact of student-ascribed characteristics on teacher short- and long-term assessments, improving prior studies’ theory testing, confounding, and power. Findings unveil teacher bias in an essay grading task favoring girls and highbrow cultural capital, aligning with status characteristics and cultural capital theories. Results on teachers’ long-term expectations indicate statistical discrimination against boys, migrant origin, and working-class students under uncertain information. Unexpectedly, ethnic discrimination changes from teachers favoring native origin in long-term expectations to migrant origin in short-term evaluations, suggesting compensatory grading. We discuss the complex roots of discrimination in teacher assessments as an educational (in)equality mechanism.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Carlos J. Gil-Hernández∗: Department of Statistics, Computer Science, Applications, University of Florence
∗Corresponding author, E-mail: carlos.gil@unifi.it

Irene Pañeda-Fernández: WZB Berlin Social Science Center
E-mail: irene.paneda@wzb.eu

Leire Salazar: Institute for Public Goods and Policies, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas
E-mail: leire.salazar@cchs.csic.es

Jonatan Castaño Muñoz: Departamento de Didática y Organización Educativa, Universidad de Sevilla
E-mail: jcastanno@us.es

Acknowledgements: This project has been funded through the JRC Centre for Advanced Studies and the project Social Classes in the Digital Age (DIGCLASS). Jonatan Castaño Muñoz acknowledges the support of a) the ‘Ramón y Cajal’ grant RYC2020-030157 funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and by “ESF Investing in your future”; and b) University of Seville “VI University research plan” (VI plan propio de investigación). We thank Lilian Weikert, William Foley, Zbigniew Karpiñski, David Martínez de Lafuente, Alberto López, and Mario Spiezio for their valuable feedback and support. We also thank the participants at the following venues where we presented earlier versions of the article: the ‘Experiments on Social Inequality’ Workshop at Sciences Po-LIEPP, the ‘Colloquium of the Migration and Diversity Department’ at the WZB Berlin Social Science Centre, the ECSR Thematic Conference ‘Effort and Social Inequality’ and ‘2024 IC3JM Conference’ at Carlos III-Juan March Institute of Social Sciences, the FES ‘Inequality and Social Stratification Committee Workshop’ in Oviedo, the ‘Education and Social Inequalities Seminar’ at University of Sevilla, the ‘CLIC Seminar Series’ at the European University Institute, the SISEC conference in Cagliari, and the FES National Congress in Sevilla.

Supplemental Materials

Replication Package: Data and replication code are publicly accessible at the GitHub repository: https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.12666534. The hypotheses and research design were publicly pre-registered with a pre-analysis plan (PAP) before data collection and analysis at the Open Science Foundation repository: https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/DZB3S.

  • Citation: J. Gil-Hernández, Carlos, Irene Pañeda-Fernández, Leire Salazar, Jonatan Castaño Muñoz, 2024. “Teacher Bias in Assessments by Student Ascribed Status: A Factorial Experiment on Discrimination in Education” Sociological Science 11: 743-776.
  • Received: January 6, 2024
  • Accepted: July 9, 2024
  • Editors: Ari Adut, Stephen Vaisey
  • DOI: 10.15195/v11.a27


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Algorithmic Risk Scoring and Welfare State Contact Among US Children

By on August 23, 2024 in Articles

Martin Eiermann

Sociological Science August 23, 2024
10.15195/v11.a26

Abstract

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Predictive Risk Modeling (PRM) tools are widely used by governing institutions, yet research on their effects has yielded divergent findings with low external validity. This study examines how such tools influence child welfare governance, using a quasi-experimental design and data from more than one million maltreatment investigations in 121 US counties. It demonstrates that the adoption of PRM tools reduced maltreatment confirmations among Hispanic and Black children but increased such confirmations among high-risk and low-SES children. PRM tools did not reduce the likelihood of subsequent maltreatment confirmations; and effects were heterogeneous across counties. These findings demonstrate that the use of PRM tools can reduce the incidence of state interventions among historically over-represented minorities while increasing it among poor children more generally. However, they also illustrate that the impact of such tools depends on local contexts and that technological innovations do not meaningfully address chronic state interventions in family life that often characterize the lives of vulnerable children.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Martin Eiermann: Department of Sociology, Duke University
E-mail: martin.eiermann@duke.edu.

Acknowledgements: The author thanks Olivia Kim and Henry Zapata for invaluable research assistance, and thanks Garrett Baker, Alexandra Gibbons, Sarah Sernaker, and Christopher Wildeman for constructive feedback.

Replication Package: Access to restricted-use NCANDS data can be requested through the National Data Archive on Child Abuse and Neglect (NDACAN). Other data and replication code are available at: https://osf.io/dq3xp/.

  • Citation: Eiermann, Martin. 2024. “Algorithmic Risk Scoring and Welfare State Contact Among US Children” Sociological Science 11: 707-742.
  • Received: May 20, 2024
  • Accepted: July 2, 2024
  • Editors: Arnout van de Rijt, Maria Abascal
  • DOI: 10.15195/v11.a26


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Status Ambiguity and Multiplicity in the Selection of NBA Awards

By on August 20, 2024 in Articles

Peter McMahan, Eran Shor

Sociological Science August 20, 2024
10.15195/v11.a25

Abstract

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Sociologists of culture have long noted that contrasting cultural frames can lead to status ambiguity and status multiplicity. We explore these phenomena in the domain of professional sports by first replicating and then extending and challenging recently published findings on selections for the National Basketball Association (NBA) All-Star game. Relying on a large data set that includes more than 10,000 player–years, we show that accounting for better-justified performance measures reduces but does not nullify the effects of status cumulative advantage on All-Star selections. However, when replacing All-Star selections with a less ambiguous measure (selections to All-NBA teams), we no longer find evidence of decoupling between player performance and award nomination. From this we conclude that cumulative status advantage only affects selection when voters view factors other than statistical performance as legitimate, perhaps even desired, selection criteria. These findings have relevance for our understanding of status evaluations beyond professional sports, including in domains as diverse as the film industry, the performing arts, literature, politics, and the sciences.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Peter McMahan: Department of Sociology, McGill University
Email: peter.mcmahan@mcgill.ca

Eran Shor: Department of Sociology, McGill University
Email: eran.shor@mcgill.ca

Supplemental Material

Replication Package: Reproduction package is available at https://github.com/mcmahanp/nba_status.

  • Citation: McMahan, Peter, and Eran Shor. 2024. “Status ambiguity and multiplicity in the selection of NBA awards.” Sociological Science 11: 680-706.
  • Received: January 5, 2024
  • Accepted: June 2, 2024
  • Editors: Ari Adut, Ray Reagans
  • DOI: 10.15195/v11.a25


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Unemployment Insurance and the Family: Heterogeneous Effects of Benefit Generosity on Reemployment and Economic Precarity

By on August 16, 2024 in Articles

Ursina Kuhn, Debra Hevenstone, Leen Vandecasteele, Samin Sepahniya, Dorian Kessler

Sociological Science August 16, 2024
10.15195/v11.a24

Abstract

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We investigate how unemployment insurance generosity impacts reemployment and economic precarity by family type. With Swiss longitudinal administrative data and a regression discontinuity design using potential benefit duration, we examine differences between single households and primary and secondary or equal earners, as well as differences by gender and presence of children. Less generous unemployment insurance (shorter potential benefit duration) speeds up reemployment for all family types during the period with benefit cuts whereas longer-term effects are stronger for single households, secondary and equal earners, and those without children. Economic precarity increases for singles, single-parents, and primary earners during the period with lower benefits though there are no long-term effects. We argue that those with higher financial responsibility (i.e., primary earners or those with children) face pressure to find jobs irrespective of benefit generosity whereas those with lower financial responsibility (i.e., secondary or equal earners and those without children) have more capacity to react.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Ursina Kuhn: Social Work, Bern University of Applied Sciences. Swiss Centre of Expertise in the Social Sciences (FORS)
E-mail: ursina.kuhn@fors.unil.ch

Debra Hevenstone: SocialWork, Bern University of Applied Sciences
E-mail: debra.hevenstone@bfh.ch

Leen Vandecasteele: Swiss Centre of Expertise in Life Course Research (LIVES), Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, University of Lausanne
E-mail: leen.vandecasteele@unil.ch

Samin Sepahniya: Social Work and Health, University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland
E-mail: samin.sepahniya@fhnw.ch

Dorian Kessler: Social Work, Bern University of Applied Sciences
E-mail: dorian.kessler@bfh.ch

Acknowledgements: This article was written as part of the project Family Models and Unemployment (grant number 176371) funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF). We would like to acknowledge the SNSF project “Coupled Inequalities. Trends and Welfare State Differences in the Role of Partner’s Socio-Economic Resources for Employment Careers” (grant number 100017_182406) and the Swiss Centre of Expertise in Life Course Research (LIVES) for fruitful collaboration and exchange. We thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments which helped to clarify the paper. We also thank the SNSF for open access funding of this article.

Supplemental Material

Replication Package: The code for data analysis, data description, and instructions on how data can be requested for replication is provided on SwissUbase. https://doi.org/10.25597/tm2k-jf98

  • Citation: Kuhn, Ursina, Debra Hevenstone, Leen Vandecasteele, Samin Sepahniya and Dorian Kessler. 2024. “Unemployment Insurance and the Family: Heterogeneous Effects of Benefit Generosity on Reemployment and Economic Precarity.” Sociological Science 11: 649-679.
  • Received: July 4, 2024
  • Accepted: March 18, 2024
  • Editors: Ari Adut, Vida Maralani
  • DOI: 10.15195/v11.a24


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Disparate Impact? Career Disruptions and COVID-19 Impact Statements in Tenure Evaluations

By on August 13, 2024 in Articles

Lauren A. Rivera, Katherine Weisshaar, András Tilcsik

Sociological Science August 13, 2024
10.15195/v11.a23

Abstract

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Extensive research reveals employer biases against workers with career disruptions, particularly those related to caregiving. However, the effectiveness of organizational practices intended to mitigate such biases is less well understood. This study examines the use of COVID-19 impact statements in tenure decisions at research universities, an organizational intervention that was designed to reduce biases but raised concerns that it might inadvertently amplify them. Contrary to concerns about unintended consequences, a pre-registered survey experiment with 602 full professors in STEM fields reveals that the inclusion of impact statements leads to more favorable tenure evaluations, regardless of faculty gender and disruption type. Qualitative evidence suggests that perceptions of pandemic-related disruptions as legitimate, externally imposed, time-limited events in the past help circumvent previously documented biases. This study enhances our understanding of organizational practices that effectively mitigate biases and points to the potential role of narrative framing in workplace evaluations and organizational inequalities.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Lauren A. Rivera: Department of Management and Organizations, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University
E-mail: L-rivera@kellogg.northwestern.edu

Katherine Weisshaar: Department of Sociology, Northwestern University
E-mail: kate.weisshaar@northwestern.edu

András Tilcsik: Department of Strategic Management, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto
E-mail: andras.tilcsik@rotman.utoronto.ca

Acknowledgements: We are deeply grateful to Jeannette Colyvas for formative discussions about COVID-19 impact statements. We also thank Anne Bowers, Clayton Childress, Stefan Dimitriadis, Laura Doering, Alicia Eads, Angelina Grigoryeva, Ryann Manning, Santiago Campero Molina, Sida Liu, Katherine Spoon, the Toronto Group of Seven, participants at the International Conference on Science of Science and Innovation, and seminar participants at the Amsterdam Centre for Inequality Studies, Stanford University, and Columbia University for useful feedback on early drafts.

Supplemental Material

Replication Package: Deidentified survey data and the code needed to replicate the findings are available at https://doi.org/10.5683/SP3/UAM9PJ.

  • Citation: Rivera, Lauren A., Katherine Weisshaar, and András Tilcsik. 2024. “Disparate Impact? Career Disruptions and COVID-19 Impact Statements in Tenure Evaluations. Sociological Science 11: 626-648.
  • Received: May 13, 2024
  • Accepted: June 17, 2024
  • Editors: Arnout van de Rijt, Kristen Schilt
  • DOI: 10.15195/v11.a23


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Labor Market Consequences of Grandparenthood

By on August 9, 2024 in Articles

Won-tak Joo, Felix Elwert, Martin D. Munk

Sociological Science August 9, 2024
10.15195/v11.a22

Abstract

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Little is known about the labor market consequences of becoming a grandparent. We estimate grandparenthood effects on labor supply and earnings using detailed multigenerational data from Danish population registers. Results show that the consequences of grandparenthood are unequally distributed and starkly patterned. Becoming a grandparent reduces hours worked and income, especially for grandmothers, more so when the grandchild is born to a daughter, and most when the grandmother’s daughter gives birth as a teenager. Grandfathers also experience a reduction in hours worked (but not income) from their daughter’s teen birth, but the reduction is much smaller than among grandmothers. The effects of a daughter’s teen birth are further amplified for low-income grandmothers. Our results imply that childbearing has multigenerational consequences that are structured by gendered caregiving, the caregiving needs of the parent generation, and the delegating capacity of the grandparent generation.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Won-tak Joo: Department of Sociology and Criminology & Law, University of Florida
E-mail: wjoo@ufl.edu

Felix Elwert: Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison
E-mail: elwert@wisc.edu

Martin D. Munk: School of Health and Welfare, Halmstad University; SEC, Department of Sociology, Uppsala University
E-mail: mdmunk@gmail.com; Martin.David.Munk@hh.se

Acknowledgements: We thank Kasper Lolk for outstanding research assistance; Peter Fallesen, Jingying He, Michael Sobel, and audiences at the University of Chicago for discussions and advice; and Statistics Denmark for redacting public replication code and data setup. This research received support from the Independent Research Fund Denmark, Social Sciences (#0602-02227B); Helse Foundation (Helsefonden); the Danish School of Education at Aarhus University; the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute for Child Health and Human Development through the Center for Demography and Ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (#T1 R01HD102125 and #T32 HD007014-42) and the Berkeley Population Center at the University of California, Berkeley (#P2CHD073964); and the National Institute on Aging through the Center for Demography of Health and Aging at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (#P30AG017266) and the Berkeley Center on the Economics and Demography of Aging (#5P30AG012839) and the Berkeley Population Center (#R01AG058940) at the University of California, Berkeley as well as a Romnes Fellowship from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Supplemental Material

Replication Package: Because our data-use agreement prohibits direct sharing of our analytic data and original code, we share minimally redacted (removal of identifiers) analytic code and instructions to access our replication package at https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/OV3IEK. Interested parties may apply to Statistics Denmark (https://www.dst.dk/en/TilSalg/Forskningsservice/Dataadgang/) for access to the replication package.

  • Citation: Joo, Won-tak, Felix Elwert, and Martin D. Munk. 2024. “Labor Market Consequences of Grandparenthood” Sociological Science 11: 600-625.
  • Received: January 18, 2024
  • Accepted: June 12, 2024
  • Editors: Ari Adut, Vida Maralani
  • DOI: 10.15195/v11.a22


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Three Lions or Three Scapegoats: Racial Hate Crime in the Wake of the Euro 2020 Final in London

By on August 6, 2024 in Articles

Christof Nägel, Mathijs Kros, Ryan Davenport

Sociological Science August 6, 2024
10.15195/v11.a21

Abstract

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Does (under-)performance of athletes from stigmatized racial groups influence the incidence of racial hate crimes? We consider the case of the English national football team during the 2020 European Football Championship and analyze whether the performance of black players during the final at Wembley affected the number of racial hate crimes committed in London. The three English players who missed their penalties in the final are all black English players. Combining insights from (displaced) frustration-aggression and scapegoat theory, we argue that the frustration of losing the final resulted in violence directed at racial minority group members in London. Our findings show that the lost final triggered a 30 percent increase in racial hate crimes in the weeks following the event. The immediate impact was larger in boroughs with higher pre-event levels of racial hate crimes, indicating a galvanizing instead of a mobilizing exacerbation of this trigger event.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Christof Nägel: Insitute of Sociology & Social Psychology, University of Cologne
E-mail: naegel@wiso.uni-koeln.de

Mathijs Kros: Department of Sociology, Utrecht University
E-mail: m.kros@uu.nl

Ryan Davenport: University College London
E-mail: ryan.davenport@ucl.ac.uk

Acknowledgements: We are grateful to Frank van Tubergen, Huyen Nguyen, Jan-Willem Simons, Eva Jaspers, Chloé Lavest, Lucas Drouhot, Jeffrey Mitchell, Malcom Fairbrother, and Alexandra Heyden for feedback on an earlier version of this article.

Supplemental Material

Replication Package: A package to reproduce the results presented in this article is accessible at https://osf.io/hzuqk/.

  • Citation: Nägel, Christof, Mathijs Kros, and Ryan Davenport. 2024. “Three Lions or Three Scapegoats: Racial Hate Crime in the Wake of the Euro 2020 Final in London” Sociological Science 11: 579-599.
  • Received: April 10, 2024
  • Accepted: June 10, 2024
  • Editors: Ari Adut, Bart Bonikowski
  • DOI: 10.15195/v11.a21


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Homebound: The Long-Term Rise in Time Spent at Home Among U.S. Adults

By on August 2, 2024 in Articles

Patrick Sharkey

Sociological Science August 2, 2024
10.15195/v11.a20

Abstract

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1 Citation


The changes in daily life induced by the COVID-19 pandemic brought renewed attention to longstanding concerns about social isolation in the United States. Despite the links between the physical setting for individuals’ daily lives and their connections with family, friends, and the various institutions of collective life, trends in where American adults spend their time have been largely overlooked as researchers have focused on how and with whom they spend their time. This article analyzes data from the American Time Use Survey over a timeframe spanning nineteen years and argues that the changes in Americans’ daily routines induced by the COVID era should be seen as an acceleration of a longer-term trend: the rise of time spent at home. Results show that from 2003 to 2022, average time spent at home among American adults has risen by one hour and 39 minutes in a typical day. Time at home has risen for every subset of the population and for virtually all activities. Preliminary analysis indicates that time at home is associated with lower levels of happiness and less meaning, suggesting the need for enhanced empirical attention to this major shift in the setting of American life.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Patrick Sharkey: William S. Tod Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs, Princeton School of Public and International Affairs
E-mail: psharkey@princeton.edu

Acknowledgements: I would like to thank the March, 2024 cohort of the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center Residency Program. I began thinking about and working on this article during the residency, and my colleagues there provided insightful feedback, questions, and comments on the analysis. I thank Michael Maesano for excellent research assistance.

Supplemental Material

Replication Package: All data files and code for replication are available here: https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/R4P98D.

  • Citation: Sharkey, Patrick. 2024. “Homebound: The long-term rise in time spent at home among U.S. adults” Sociological Science 11: 553-578.
  • Received: May 15, 2024
  • Accepted: June 26, 2024
  • Editors: Ari Adut, Jeremy Freese
  • DOI: 10.15195/v11.a20


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Colorism Revisited: The Effects of Skin Color on Educational and Labor Market Outcomes in the United States

By on June 10, 2024 in Articles

Mauricio Bucca

Sociological Science June 10, 2024
10.15195/v11.a19

Abstract

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Studies of colorism—the idea that racial hierarchies coexist with gradational inequalities based on skin color—consistently find that darker skin correlates with lower socioeconomic outcomes. Despite the causal nature of this debate, evidence remains predominantly associational. This study revisits the colorism literature by proposing a causal model underlying these theories. It discusses conditions under which associations may reflect contemporary causal effects of skin color and evaluates strategies for identifying these effects. Using data from the AddHealth and NLSY97 surveys and applying two identification strategies, the study estimates the causal effects of skin color on college degree attainment, personal earnings, and family income among White, Black, and Hispanic populations in the United States. Results show that darker skin correlates with poorer educational and economic outcomes within racial groups. However, evidence of contemporary causal effects of skin color is partial, limited to college attainment of Whites and family income of Hispanics. For Blacks, results suggest a generalized penalty associated with being Black rather than gradation based on skin tone. Methodologically, the article advocates using sensitivity analyses to account for unobserved confounders in models for skin color effects and uses sibling fixed-effects as a secondary complementary strategy.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Mauricio Bucca: Department of Sociology, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. E-mail: mebucca@uc.cl.

Acknowledgements: I wish to thank Fabrizio Bernardi, Kendra Bischoff, Lucas Drouhot, Matias Fernandez, Vida Maralani, Mario Molina, Ben Rosche, Daniela Urbina, Sebastian Urbina, Kim Weeden as well as audiences at the 2021 Population Association of America (PAA) Annual Meeting and the Comparative Life Course and Inequality Research Centre (CLIC) at the European University Institute in Florence for helpful comments and criticisms on earlier versions of the article. I am also grateful for financial support from FONDECYT Iniciación grant project No. 11221171 and ANID Milenio Labor Market Mismatch – Causes and Consequences, LM2C2 (NCS2022045). Direct correspondence to Mauricio Bucca, mebucca@uc.cl

Data: This research uses data from Add Health, a program project directed by Kathleen Mullan Harris and designed by J. Richard Udry, Peter S. Bearman, and Kathleen Mullan Harris at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and funded by grant P01-HD31921 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, with cooperative funding from 23 other fed- eral agencies and foundations. Special acknowledgment is due Ronald R. Rindfuss and Barbara Entwisle for assistance in the original design. Information on how to obtain the Add Health data files is available on the Add Health website (http://www.cpc.unc.edu/addhealth). No direct support was received from grant P01-HD31921 for this analysis. Access to restricted data through the National Institutes of Health Grant R01HD091125, led by Principal Investigator Kelly Musick.

Supplemental Material

Replication Package: The code necessary for reproducing the data manipulation, modeling, and findings is accessible at https://osf.io/vm647/?view_only=5b6477b89c284a88 9d9e3c77fc6e8fe1.

  • Citation: Bucca, Mauricio. 2024. “Colorism Revisited: The Effects of Skin Color on Educational and Labor Market Outcomes in the United States.” Sociological Science 11: 517-552.
  • Received: February 23, 2024
  • Accepted: March 26, 2024
  • Editors: Ari Adut, Maria Abascal
  • DOI: 10.15195/v11.a19


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