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Socioeconomic, Ethnic, Racial, and Gender Gaps in Children’s Social/Behavioral Skills: Do They Grow Faster in School or out?

By on May 29, 2019 in Articles

Douglas B. Downey, Joseph Workman, Paul von Hippel

Sociological Science, May 29, 2019
10.15195/v6.a17

Abstract
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Children’s social and behavioral skills vary considerably by socioeconomic status (SES), race and/or ethnicity, and gender, yet it is unclear to what degree these differences are due to school or nonschool factors. We observe how gaps in social and behavioral skills change during school and nonschool (summer) periods from the start of kindergarten entry until the end of second grade in a recent and nationally representative sample of more than 16,000 children (the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study Kindergarten Class of 2010–11). We find that large gaps in social and behavioral skills exist at the start of kindergarten entry, and these gaps favor high-SES, white, and female children. Over the next three years, we observed that the gaps grow no faster when school is in than when school is out. In the case of social and behavioral skills, it appears that schools neither exacerbate inequality nor reduce it.
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Douglas B. Downey: Department of Sociology, The Ohio State University
E-mail: downey32@gmail.com

Joseph Workman: Department of Sociology, University of Missouri-Kansas City
E-mail: workmanj@umkc.edu

Paul von Hippel: Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, The University of Texas at Austin
E-mail: paulvonhippel.utaustin@gmail.com

Acknowledgements: Direct all correspondence to Douglas B. Downey (downey32@gmail.com), 1885 Neil Ave., Columbus, Ohio 43022.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Downey, Douglas B., Joseph Workman, and Paul von Hippel. 2019. “Socioeconomic, Ethnic, Racial, and Gender Gaps in Children’s Social/Behavioral Skills: Do They Grow Faster in School or out?” Sociological Science 6: 446-466.
  • Received: March 17, 2019
  • Accepted: March 30, 2019
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Stephen Morgan
  • DOI: 10.15195/v6.a17


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Buying In: Positional Competition, Schools, Income Inequality, and Housing Consumption

By on May 22, 2019 in Articles

Adam Goldstein, Orestes P. Hastings

Sociological Science, May 22, 2019
10.15195/v6.a16

Abstract
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Social scientists have suggested that a key sociobehavioral consequence of rising inequality is intensifying market competition for advantageous positions in the opportunity structure, such as residences that afford access to high-quality public schools. We assess empirical implications of inequality-fueled positional competition theories (PCTs) by analyzing the relationships between metropolitan income inequality, households’ efforts to secure residential positions in desirable school districts, and housing consumption behavior. We assemble a unique data set, which contains longitudinal information on household finances, residences, and geographic locations from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics; information on the quality of the school attendance areas in which these households reside; and information about the local real estate market. We find that greater inequality is associated with steeper housing price premia for residences in desirable areas, more pronounced social class sorting on school quality when relocating, and greater salience of schools relative to other housing amenities in families’ housing expenditure functions. Families in high-inequality regions exhibit modestly greater willingness to pay more (relative to their own incomes) for a given improvement in school desirability. The analysis brings important empirical nuance to oft-invoked but untested theories about positional competition as a mechanism by which inequality affects behaviors, consumption, and markets.
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Adam Goldstein: Departments of Sociology and Public Affairs, Princeton University
E-mail: amg5@princeton.edu

Orestes P. Hastings: Department of Sociology, Colorado State University
E-mail: Pat.Hastings@colostate.edu

Acknowledgements: The authors are grateful for helpful suggestions from Marianne Bertrand, Neil Fligstein, Kevin McKee, Ann Owens, Peter Rich, participants at the Tobin Project Conference on Inequality and Decision Making, and the editors of Sociological Science. This research was partially supported by funding from the Tobin Project. The first author was also supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Collection of the PSID data used in this study was partly supported by the National Institutes of Health (grants R01 HD069609 and R01 AG040213) and the National Science Foundation (awards SES 1157698 and 1623684).

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Goldstein, Adam, and Orestes P. Hastings. 2019. “Buying In: Positional Competition, Schools, Income Inequality, and Housing Consumption.” Sociological Science 6: 416-445.
  • Received: September 12, 2018
  • Accepted: March 22, 2019
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Kim Weeden
  • DOI: 10.15195/v6.a16


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The Intergenerational Transmission of Family-Income Advantages in the United States

By on May 15, 2019 in Articles

Pablo A. Mitnik, Victoria Bryant, Michael Weber

Sociological Science, May 15, 2019
10.15195/v6.a15

Abstract
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Estimates of economic persistence and mobility in the United States, as measured by the intergenerational elasticity (IGE), cover a very wide range. Nevertheless, careful analyses of the evidence suggested until recently that as much as half, and possibly more, of economic advantages are passed on from parents to children. This “dominant hypothesis” was seriously challenged by the first-ever study of family-income mobility based on tax data (Chetty et al. 2014), which provided estimates of family-income IGEs indicating that only one-third of economic advantages are transmitted across generations and claimed that previous highly influential IGE estimates were upward biased. Using a different tax-based data set, this article provides estimates of family-income IGEs that strongly support the dominant hypothesis. The article also carries out a one-to-one comparison between IGEs estimated with the two tax-based data sets and shows that Chetty et al.’s estimates were driven downward by a combination of attenuation, life-cycle, selection, and functional-form biases. Lastly, the article determines the exact relationship between parental income inequality, economic persistence, and inequality of opportunity for income. This leads to the conclusion that, in the United States, at least half of income inequality among parents is transformed into inequality of opportunity among their children.
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Pablo A. Mitnik: Center on Poverty and Inequality, Stanford University
E-mail: pmitnik@stanford.edu

Victoria Bryant: Statistics of Income Division, Internal Revenue Service
E-mail: victoria.l.bryant@irs.gov

Michael Weber: Statistics of Income Division, Internal Revenue Service
E-mail: michael.e.weber@irs.gov

Acknowledgements: The first author gratefully acknowledges research support from the Russell Sage Foundation and the Pew Charitable Trusts. The editors provided valuable feedback on an earlier version of the article. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not represent the opinions of the Internal Revenue Service or the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Mitnik, Pablo A., Victoria Bryant, and Michael Weber. 2019. “The Intergenerational Transmission of Family-Income Advantages in the United States.” Sociological Science 6: 380-415.
  • Received: February 4, 2019
  • Accepted: March 29, 2019
  • Editors: Kim Weeden
  • DOI: 10.15195/v6.a15


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Sharing Compromising Information as a Cooperative Strategy

By on May 8, 2019 in Articles

Diego Gambetta, Wojtek Przepiorka

Sociological Science, May 8, 2019
10.15195/v6.a14

Abstract
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Well-enforced norms create an opportunity for norm breakers to cooperate in ventures requiring trust. This is realized when norm breakers, by sharing evidence of their breaches, make themselves vulnerable to denunciation and therefore trustworthy. The sharing of compromising information (SCI) is a strategy employed by criminals, politicians, and other actors wary of their partners’ trustworthiness in which the cost of ensuring compliance is offloaded on clueless norm enforcers. Here we introduce SCI as a sui generis cooperative strategy and test its functioning experimentally. In our experiment, subjects first acquire the label “dove” or “hawk” depending on how cooperative or uncooperative they are, respectively. Hawks acquire compromising information embodied in their label and can reveal it before an interaction with trust at stake. Unlike doves, hawks who reveal their label make themselves vulnerable to their partners, who can inflict a penalty on them after interaction. We find that even students in as artificial a setting as a computerized decision laboratory grasp the advantage of SCI and use it to cooperate. Our results corroborate the idea that compromising information can be conceived as a “hostage” that, when mutually exchanged, makes each party to the interaction vulnerable and therefore trustworthy in joint endeavours.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Diego Gambetta: Collegio Carlo Alberto, Università di Torino
E-mail: diego.gambetta@carloalberto.org

Wojtek Przepiorka: Department of Sociology, Utrecht University
E-mail: w.przepiorka@uu.nl

Acknowledgements: Both authors contributed equally to this work and thank Ozan Aksoy, Maria Bigoni, Manfred Milinski, and Werner Raub for their helpful comments on earlier versions. D. G. gratefully acknowledges financial support from the Research Council of the European University Institute.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Gambetta, Diego, and Wojtek Przepiorka. 2019. “Sharing Compromising Information as a Cooperative Strategy.” Sociological Science 6: 352-379.
  • Received: February 20, 2019
  • Accepted: March 20, 2019
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Delia Baldassarri
  • DOI: 10.15195/v6.a14


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The Rise of Programming and the Stalled Gender Revolution

By on April 30, 2019 in Articles

Siwei Cheng, Bhumika Chauhan, Swati Chintala

Sociological Science, April 30, 2019
10.15195/v6.a13

Abstract
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Despite remarkable progress toward gender equality over the past half-century, the stalled convergence in the gender wage gap after the mid-1990s remains a puzzle. This study provides new insights into this puzzle by conducting the first large-scale investigation of the uneven impact of the rise of programming in the labor market for men and women since the mid-1990s. We argue that the increasing reliance on programming has favored men’s economic status relative to women’s and therefore may help explain the slow convergence of the gender wage gap. We differentiate between two effects: (1) the composition effect, wherein men experience a greater employment growth in programming-intensive occupations relative to women, and (2) the price effect, wherein the wage returns to programming intensity increase more for men than women. Our empirical analysis documents a strong relationship between the rise of programming and the slow convergence of the gender wage gap among college graduates. Counterfactual simulations indicate that the absence of the composition and price effects would have reduced the gender wage gap over the past two decades by an additional 14.70 percent. These findings call attention to the role gender institutions play in shaping the uneven labor market impact of technological change.
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Siwei Cheng: Department of Sociology, New York University
E-mail: siwei.cheng@nyu.edu

Bhumika Chauhan: Department of Sociology, New York University
E-mail: bhumikachauhan@nyu.edu

Swati Chintala: Department of Sociology, New York University
E-mail: swati.chintala@nyu.edu

Acknowledgements: Direct all correspondence to Siwei Cheng, assistant professor of sociology at New York University (295 Lafayette St, 4th Floor, New York, NY 10012). The authors acknowledge support from the Summer Research Fund at the Department of Sociology at New York University. The second and third authors contributed equally to the project. We thank Paula England, Kathleen Gerson, Claudia Goldin, Mike Hout, and Yu Xie for helpful comments on earlier versions of this article. This article was presented at the Harvard University Social Demography Seminar. All remaining errors are our own.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Cheng, Siwei, Bhumika Chauhan, and Swati Chintala. 2019. “The Rise of Programming and the Stalled Gender Revolution.” Sociological Science 6:321-351.
  • Received: December 18, 2018
  • Accepted: March 6, 2019
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Kim Weeden
  • DOI: 10.15195/v6.a13


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Racial Intermarriage in the Americas

By on April 23, 2019 in Articles

Edward Telles, Albert Esteve

Sociological Science, April 23, 2019
10.15195/v6.a12

Abstract
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We compare intermarriage in Brazil, Cuba, and the United States among the black, white, and mixed-race population using log-linear models with data from newly available anonymized and harmonized individual census microdata for the 2000 round of censuses. We find that black–white intermarriage is 105 times as likely in Brazil and 28 times as likely in Cuba compared to the United States; that Brazilian mulatos are four times as likely to marry whites than blacks, but Cuban mulatos are equally likely to marry whites and blacks; and negative educational gradients for black–white intermarriage for Cuba and Brazil but nonexistent or positive gradients in the United States. We propose a theory of intergenerational mixture and intermarriage and discuss implications for the role of preferences versus structure, universalism and education, and mulato escape-hatch theory.
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Edward Telles: Department of Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara
E-mail: etelles@soc.ucsb.edu

Albert Esteve: Centre d’Estudis Demogràfics, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
E-mail: aesteve@ced.uab.es

Acknowledgements: The research conducted by Albert Esteve in this article has received funding from the following grants: ERC-2014-StG-637768 for the Equalize project and CRISFAM CSO2015-64713-R.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Telles, Edward, and Albert Esteve. 2019. “Racial Intermarriage in the Americas.” Sociological Science 6: 293-320.
  • Received: January 7, 2019
  • Accepted: February 5, 2019
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Gabriel Rossman
  • DOI: 10.15195/v6.a12


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Why Does Parental Divorce Lower Children’s Educational Attainment? A Causal Mediation Analysis

By on April 16, 2019 in Articles

Jennie E. Brand, Ravaris Moore, Xi Song, Yu Xie

Sociological Science, April 16, 2019
10.15195/v6.a11

Abstract
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Mechanisms explaining the negative effects of parental divorce on children’s attainment have long been conjectured and assessed. Yet few studies of parental divorce have carefully attended to the assumptions and methods necessary to estimate causal mediation effects. Applying a causal framework to linked U.S. panel data, we assess the degree to which parental divorce limits children’s education among whites and nonwhites and whether observed lower levels of educational attainment are explained by postdivorce family conditions and children’s skills. Our analyses yield three key findings. First, the negative effect of divorce on educational attainment, particularly college, is substantial for white children; by contrast, divorce does not lower the educational attainment of nonwhite children. Second, declines in family income explain as much as one- to two-thirds of the negative effect of parental divorce on white children’s education. Family instability also helps explain the effect, particularly when divorce occurs in early childhood. Children’s psychosocial skills explain about one-fifth of the effect, whereas children’s cognitive skills play a minimal role. Third, among nonwhites, the minimal total effect on education is explained by the offsetting influence of postdivorce declines in family income and stability alongside increases in children’s psychosocial and cognitive skills.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Jennie E. Brand: Departments of Sociology and Statistics, University of California, Los Angeles; California Center for Population Research; and Center for Social Statistics
E-mail: brand@soc.ucla.edu

Ravaris Moore: Department of Sociology, Loyola Marymount University
E-mail: ravaris.moore@lmu.edu

Xi Song: Department of Sociology, University of Chicago
E-mail: xisong@uchicago.edu

Yu Xie: Department of Sociology, Princeton University
E-mail: yuxie@princeton.edu

Acknowledgements: Versions of this article were presented at Yale University; the University of Michigan; Stanford University; the University of Pennsylvania; Princeton University; Harvard University; the University of California, Irvine; the International Sociological Association Research Committee on Social Stratification and Mobility (RC28), and Population Association of America. We thank Elizabeth Thomson for useful comments on a prior version of this article. The National Institutes of Health (grant R01 HD07460301A1) provided financial support for this research. J. E. B. and R. M. benefited from facilities and resources provided by the California Center for Population Research at the University of California, Los Angeles, which receives core support (P2C-HD041022) from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. The ideas expressed herein are those of the authors.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Brand, Jennie E., Ravaris Moore, Xi Song, and Yu Xie. 2019. “Why Does Parental Divorce Lower Children’s Educational Attainment? A Causal Mediation Analysis.” Sociological Science 6: 264-292.
  • Received: January 25, 2019
  • Accepted: February 24, 2019
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Olav Sorenson
  • DOI: 10.15195/v6.a11


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On Elastic Ties: Distance and Intimacy in Social Relationships

By on April 9, 2019 in Articles

Stacy Torres

Sociological Science, April 9, 2019
10.15195/v6.a10

Abstract
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Drawing on five years of ethnographic fieldwork among older adults in a New York City neighborhood, I present empirical data that complement survey approaches to social isolation and push our understanding of social ties beyond weak and strong by analyzing relationships that defy binary classification. Usual survey items would describe these participants as isolated and without social support. When questioned, they minimize neighborhood relationships outside of close friends and family. But ethnographic observations of their social interactions with neighbors reveal the presence of “elastic ties.” By elastic ties, I mean nonstrong, nonweak relations between people who spend hours each day and share intimate details of their lives with those whom they do not consider “confidants.” Nonetheless, they provide each other with the support and practical assistance typically seen in strong-tie relationships. These findings show how people’s accounts may not accurately reflect the character and structure of their social ties. Furthermore, they demonstrate how a single social tie can vary between strong and weak depending on the social situation. Many social ties fall outside weak and strong; they are elastic in allowing elders (and other marginal groups) to connect and secure informal support while maintaining their distance and preserving their autonomy.
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Stacy Torres: Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, University of California, San Francisco
E-mail: stacy.torres@ucsf.edu

Acknowledgements: I thank Kathleen Gerson, Colin Jerolmack, Lynne Haney, Steven Lukes, Dalton Conley, Ronald Breiger, Anthony Paik, and Claude Fischer for their guidance and feedback on earlier versions of this article. A special thanks to my study participants, who shared their lives with me for several years. Support for data collection and project write-up was funded in part by fellowships from New York University, the American Sociological Association Minority Fellowship Program (cosponsored by Sociologists for Women in Society), the Ford Foundation, and the UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship Program. Publication is made possible in part by support from the UCSF Open Access Publishing Fund.

  • Citation: Torres, Stacy. 2019. “On Elastic Ties: Distance and Intimacy in Social Relationships.” Sociological Science 6: 235-263.
  • Received: November 15, 2018
  • Accepted: February 18, 2019
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Mario Small
  • DOI: 10.15195/v6.a10


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The Structure of Negative Social Ties in Rural Village Networks

By on March 6, 2019 in Articles

Alexander Isakov, James H. Fowler, Edoardo M. Airoldi, Nicholas A. Christakis

Sociological Science, March 6, 2019
10.15195/v6.a8

Abstract
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Negative (antagonistic) connections have been of longstanding theoretical importance for social structure. In a population of 24,696 adults interacting face to face within 176 isolated villages in western Honduras, we measured all connections that were present, amounting to 105,175 positive and 16,448 negative ties. Here, we show that negative and positive ties exhibit many of the same structural characteristics. We then develop a complete taxonomy of all 138 possible triads of two-type relationships. Consistent with balance theory, we find that antagonists of friends and friends of antagonists tend to be antagonists; but, in an important empirical refutation of balance theory, we find that antagonists of antagonists also tend to be antagonists, not friends. Finally, villages with comparable levels of animosity tend to be geographically proximate. Similar processes, involving social contact, give rise to both positive and negative social ties in rural villages, and negative ties play an important role in social structure.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Alexander Isakov: Yale Institute for Network Science, Yale University; Department of Sociology, Yale University
E-mail: alexander.isakov.11@gmail.com

James H. Fowler: Department of Medicine, University of California, San Diego; Political Science Department, University of California, San Diego
E-mail: fowler@ucsd.edu

Edoardo M. Airoldi: Department of Statistical Science, Fox School of Business, Temple University; Department of Statistics and Institute for Quantitative Social Sciences, Harvard University
E-mail: airoldi@fas.harvard.edu

Nicholas A. Christakis: Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Yale University; Department of Statistics and Data Science, Yale University
E-mail: nicholas.christakis@yale.edu

Acknowledgements: We thank Emily Erikson, Dan Gilbert, David Rand, Yongren Shi, Hiro Shirado, Maggie Traeger, Tom Snijders, Gijs Huitsing, and Arnav Tripathy for their helpful comments. We are also grateful to the data collection and software teams for the Honduras project, including Rennie Negron, Liza Nicoll, and Mark McKnight. This research was supported by a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Tata Group, the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health (grant P30-AG034420), the National Science Foundation (grant IIS-1409177), and the Office of Naval Research (grants N00014-17-1-2131). The authors declare no competing interests.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Isakov, Alexander, James H. Fowler, Edoardo M. Airoldi, and Nicholas A. Christakis. 2019. “The Structure of Negative Social Ties in Rural Village Networks.” Sociological Science 6: 197-218.
  • Received: January 16, 2019
  • Accepted: February 10, 2019
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Delia Baldassarri
  • DOI: 10.15195/v6.a8


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