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Income Inequality and Education

By on August 26, 2015 in Articles

Richard Breen, Inkwan Chung

Sociological Science, August 26, 2015
DOI 10.15195/v2.a22

Abstract
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Many commentators have seen the growing gap in earnings and income between those with a college education and those without as a major cause of increasing inequality in the United States and elsewhere. In this article we investigate the extent to which increasing the educational attainment of the US population might ameliorate inequality. We use data from NLSY79 and carry out a three-level decomposition of total inequality into within-person, between-person and between-education parts. We find that the between-education contribution to inequality is small, even when we consider only adjusted inequality that omits the within-person component. We carry out a number of simulations to gauge the likely impact on inequality of changes in the distribution of education and of a narrowing of the differences in average incomes between those with different levels of education. We find that any feasible educational policy is likely to have only a minor impact on income inequality.
Richard Breen:  Nuffield College and Department of Sociology, University of Oxford.   Email: richard.breen@nuffield.ox.ac.uk

Inkwan Chung: Department of Sociology, Yale University.  Email: inkwan.chung@yale.edu

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Breen, Richard, and Inkwan Chung. 2015. “Income Inequality and Education.” Sociological Science 2: 454-477.
  • Received: April 3, 2015.
  • Accepted: April 19, 2015.
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Stephen Morgan
  • DOI: 10.15195/v2.a22

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Periodic Discordance Between Vote Equality and Representational Equality in the United States

By on August 19, 2015 in Articles

Sarah K. Cowan

Sociological Science, August 19, 2015
DOI 10.15195/v2.a21

Abstract
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American democracy has two central values that are often in tension: vote equality, that each vote has equal influence, and representational equality, that each elected official represents equal numbers of people. The electoral standard of “one person, one vote” ensures representational equality, and that often ensures vote equality. This relationship fails, however, under certain demographic conditions, namely, when a large, non-enfranchised population resides unevenly across jurisdictions. Then, representational equality is preserved and vote equality is violated. Prior to women’s suffrage, for example, western states had relatively fewer women than the remainder of the country, contributing to gross vote inequality, though rectified through extension of the franchise. Given recent high rates of immigration to some states, I ask whether the two values are in tension. I find that they are, and quantify the electoral consequences of this disjuncture at 13 House seats in 2010.
Sarah K. Cowan: Department of Sociology, New York University.   Email: sarahkcowan@nyu.edu .

Acknowledgements: Andy Katzman provided support and critically important feedback, as usual.

  • Citation: Cowan, Sarah K. 2015. “Periodic Discordance Between Vote Equality and Representational Equality in the United States.” Sociological Science 2:442-453.
  • Received: July 25, 2015.
  • Accepted: August 8, 2015.
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Stephen Morgan
  • DOI: 10.15195/v2.a21

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The Missing Main Effect of Welfare State Regimes: A Replication of ‘Social Policy Responsiveness in Developed Democracies’ by Brooks and Manza

By on August 17, 2015 in Articles

Nate Breznau

Sociological Science, August 17, 2015
DOI 10.15195/v2.a20

Abstract

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This article reports the results of a replication of Brooks and Manza’s “Social Policy Responsiveness in Developed Democracies” published in 2006 in the American Sociological Review. The article finds that Brooks and Manza utilized an interaction term but excluded the main effect of one of the interacted variables. This model specification has specific implications: statistically, that the omitted main effect variable has no correlation with the residual error term from their regression; theoretically speaking, this means that all unobserved historical, cultural, and other characteristics that distinguish liberal democratic welfare regimes from others can be accounted for with a handful of quantitative measures. Using replicated data, this article finds that the Brooks and Manza models fail these assumptions. A sensitivity analysis using more than 800 regressions with different configurations of variables confirms this. In 99.5 percent of the cases, addition of the main effect removes Brooks and Manza’s empirical findings completely. A theoretical discussion illuminates why these findings are not surprising. This article provides a reminder that models and theories are coterminous, each implied by the other.
Nate Breznau: Bremen International Graduate School of Social Sciences, University of Bremen, Germany. Email: breznau.nate@gmail.com

Acknowledgements: This research took place during my doctoral studies at the Bremen International Graduate School of Social Sciences at the University of Bremen. I thank Olaf Groh-Samberg, Steffen Mau, Jonathan Kelley, Judith Offerhaus, Nadine Schöneck- Voß, M.D.R. Evans, Philip Lersch, Olli Kangas, and Timm Fulge for their helpful comments.

Supplemental Material

GitHub replication materials: https://github.com/nbreznau/Replication-Brooks-Manza

Comment

  • Citation: Breznau, Nate. 2015. “The Missing Main Effect of Welfare State Regimes: A Replication of ’Social Policy Responsiveness in Developed Democracies’ by Brooks and Manza.” Sociological Science 2: 420-441.
  • Received: March 20, 2015.
  • Accepted: March 24, 2015.
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Olav Sorenson
  • DOI: 10.15195/v2.a20

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The Population Level Impacts of Differential Fertility Behavior of Parents of Children with Autism

By on August 10, 2015 in Articles

Kinga Makovi, Alix Winter, Ka-Yuet Liu, Peter Bearman

Sociological Science, August 10, 2015
DOI 10.15195/v2.a19

Abstract
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Drawing on population level data of exceptional quality (including detailed diagnostic information on the autism status of sibling pairs of over 3 million different mothers), this study confirms that stoppage is the average fertility response to a child born with autism, thereby reducing observed concordance in sibling pairs and leading to potentially biased estimation of genetic contributions to autism etiology. Using a counterfactual framework and applying matching techniques we show, however, that this average effect is composed of very different responses to suspicion of autism depending on birth cohort, the character of the disorder (severe versus less severe), the gender of the child, poverty status, and parental education. This study also sheds light on when parents suspect autism. We find that parents’ fertility behavior changes relative to matched controls very early after the birth of a child who will later be diagnosed with autism.
Kinga Makovi: Department of Sociology, Columbia University. Email: kinga.makovi@gmail.com.

Alix Winter: Department of Sociology, Harvard University. E-mail: alixsw@gmail.com.

Ka-Yuet Liu: Department of Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles. E-mail:ka@soc.ucla.edu.

Peter Bearman: INCITE, Columbia University. E-mail: psb17@columbia.edu.

Acknowledgements: We thank Keely Cheslack-Postava, Alexandra Brewer, Christine Fountain, and Soumya Mazumdar and the members of the Bearman-Minkoff group for helpful comments on previous drafts. This research is supported by the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award program, part of the NIH Roadmap for Medical Research, through grant number 1 DP1 OD003635-01.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Makovi, Kinga, Alix Winter, Ka-Yuet Liu and Peter Bearman. 2015. “The Population Level Impacts of Differential Fertility Behavior of Parents of Children with Autism.” Sociological Science 2: 398-419.
  • Received: January 24, 2014.
  • Accepted: March 13, 2015.
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Stephen L. Morgan
  • DOI: 10.15195/v2.a19

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Dissecting the Spirit of Gezi: Influence vs. Selection in the Occupy Gezi Movement

By on July 22, 2015 in Articles

Ceren Budak, Duncan J. Watts

Sociological Science, July 22, 2015
DOI 10.15195/v2.a18

Abstract
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1 Citation

Do social movements actively shape the opinions and attitudes of participants by bringing together diverse groups that subsequently influence one another? Ethnographic studies of the 2013 Gezi uprising seem to answer “yes,” pointing to solidarity among groups that were traditionally indifferent, or even hostile, to one another. We argue that two mechanisms with differing implications may generate this observed outcome: “influence” (change in attitude caused by interacting with other participants); and “selection” (individuals who participated in the movement were generally more supportive of other groups beforehand). We tease out the relative importance of these mechanisms by constructing a panel of over 30,000 Twitter users and analyzing their support for the main Turkish opposition parties before, during, and after the movement. We find that although individuals changed in significant ways, becoming in general more supportive of the other opposition parties, those who participated in the movement were also significantly more supportive of the other parties all along. These findings suggest that both mechanisms were important, but that selection dominated. In addition to our substantive findings, our paper also makes a methodological contribution that we believe could be useful to studies of social movements and mass opinion change more generally. In contrast with traditional panel studies, which must be designed and implemented prior to the event of interest, our method relies on ex post panel construction, and hence can be used to study unanticipated or otherwise inaccessible events. We conclude that despite the well known limitations of social media, their “always on” nature and their widespread availability offer an important source of public opinion data.
Ceren Budak: Microsoft Research. Email: cbudak@microsoft.com

Duncan J. Watts: Microsoft Research Email: duncan@microsoft.com

Acknowledgements: The authors are grateful to Sandra Gonzales-Bailon, David Rothschild, and Mathew Salganik for several helpful conversations as well as their extensive comments on an earlier version of this article.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Budak, Ceren, and Duncan J. Watts. 2015. “Dissecting the Spirit of Gezi: Influence vs. Selection in the Occupy Gezi Movement.” Sociological Science 2: 370-397.
  • Received: December 20, 2014.
  • Accepted: February 4, 2015.
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Sarah Soule
  • DOI: 10.15195/v2.a18

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Heterogeneous Causal Effects and Sample Selection Bias

By on July 8, 2015 in Articles

Richard Breen, Seongsoo Choi, Anders Holm

Sociological Science, July 8, 2015
DOI 10.15195/v2.a17

Abstract
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The role of education in the process of socioeconomic attainment is a topic of long standing interest to sociologists and economists. Recently there has been growing interest not only in estimating the average causal effect of education on outcomes such as earnings, but also in estimating how causal effects might vary over individuals or groups. In this paper we point out one of the under-appreciated hazards of seeking to estimate heterogeneous causal effects: conventional selection bias (that is, selection on baseline differences) can easily be mistaken for heterogeneity of causal effects. This might lead us to find heterogeneous effects when the true effect is homogenous, or to wrongly estimate not only the magnitude but also the sign of heterogeneous effects. We apply a test for the robustness of heterogeneous causal effects in the face of varying degrees and patterns of selection bias, and we illustrate our arguments and our method using National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79) data.
 
Richard Breen: Department of Sociology, Yale University.  Email: richard.breen@yale.edu

Seongsoo Choi: Department of Sociology, Yale University. Email: seongsoo.choi@yale.edu

Anders Holm: Department of Sociology, University of Copenhagen. Email: ah@soc.ku.dk

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Breen, Richard, Seongsoo Choi and Anders Holm. 2015. “Heterogeneous Causal Effects and Sample Selection Bias.” Sociological Science 2: 351-369.
  • Received: November 4, 2014.
  • Accepted: January 15, 2015
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Stephen L. Morgan
  • DOI: 10.15195/v2.a17

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Neighborhood and Network Disadvantage among Urban Renters

By on June 24, 2015 in Articles

Matthew Desmond, Weihua An

Sociological Science, June 24, 2015
DOI 10.15195/v2.a16

Abstract

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Drawing on novel survey data, this study maps the distribution of neighborhood and network disadvantage in a population of Milwaukee renters and evaluates the relationship between each disadvantage and multiple social and health outcomes. We find that many families live in neighborhoods with above average disadvantage but are embedded in networks with below average disadvantage, and vice versa. Neighborhood (but not network) disadvantage is associated with lower levels of neighborly trust but also with higher levels of community support (e.g., providing neighbors with food). Network (but not neighborhood) disadvantage is associated with lower levels of civic engagement. Asthma and diabetes are associated exclusively with neighborhood disadvantage, but depression is associated exclusively with network disadvantage. These findings imply that some social problems may be better addressed by neighborhood interventions and others by network interventions.
 
Matthew Desmond: Department of Sociology and Social Studies, Harvard University.  Email: mdesmond@fas.harvard.edu

Weihua An: Department of Sociology and Statistics, Indiana University.

Acknowledgements: Supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, through its “How Housing Matters” initiative, and the Harvard Society of Fellows. Deborah De Laurell, Carl Gershenson, Barbara Kiviat, Kristin Perkins, Tracey Shollenberger, Adam Slez, Van Tran, and the Sociological Science editors provided helpful comments on earlier drafts.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Desmond, Matthew, and Weihua An. 2015. “Neighborhood and Network Disadvantage among Urban Renters.” Sociological Science 2: 329-350
  • Received: January 15, 2015
  • Accepted: March 6, 2015
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Kim Weeden
  • DOI: 10.15195/v2.a16

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Niche Overlap and Discrediting Acts: An Empirical Analysis of Informing in Hollywood

By on June 8, 2015 in Articles

Giacomo Negro, Sasha Goodman

Sociological Science, June 9, 2015
DOI 10.15195/v2.a15

Abstract
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This article examines informing on others as a discrediting act between individual agents in a labor market. We conduct an empirical analysis of artists called to testify during the 1950s Congressional hearings into Communism in Hollywood, and multi-level regression models reveal that the odds of an artist informing on another increase when their career histories are more similar. The similarity reflects levels of niche overlap in the labor market. The finding that similarity contributes to discredit in the context of resource competition is compatible with a social comparison process, whereby uncertainty about performance leads more similar people to attend to and exclude one another to a greater extent.
 
Giacomo Negro: Emory University.  Email: giacomo.negro@emory.edu

Sasha Goodman: Northeastern University and Harvard University. Email: s.goodman@neu.edu

Acknowledgements: Emily Bianchi, Michael Hannan, Balázs Kovács, Wes Longhofer, John Levi Martin, James Moody, Jill Perry-Smith, Elizabeth Pontikes, Chris Rider, Peter Roberts, Gabriel Rossman, Jesper Sørensen, Olav Sorenson, Anand Swaminathan, Jim Wade, Dave Waguespack, and seminar participants at Stanford University, Oxford University, and Yale University offered helpful critiques on the current or previous versions of the manuscript. We thank Hayagreeva Rao for his contributions to earlier stages of the study. Olgert Denas provided research assistance.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Negro, Giacomo and Sasha Goodman. 2015. “Niche Overlap and Discrediting Acts: An Empirical Analysis of Informing in Hollywood” Sociological Science 2: 308-328
  • Received: January 16, 2015
  • Accepted: March 5, 2015
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Gabriel Rossman
  • DOI: 10.15195/v2.a15

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Extending the INGO Network Country Score 1950-2008

By on May 20, 2015 in Articles

Pamela Paxton, Melanie M. Hughes, Nicholas E. Reith

Sociological Science, May 20, 2015
DOI 10.15195/v2.a14

Abstract
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Hughes et al. (2009) introduced the INGO Network Country Score (INCS), a measure of country-level connectedness to the world polity, for three years: 1978, 1988, and 1998. The measure scores countries by centrality in the world country-INGO network, rather than on raw counts of INGO ties that do not acknowledge networks or power. In this article, we extend the measure by time, space, organization, and calculation. First, we extend the measure to the period 1950âAS2008, allowing closer correspondence to the years typically assessed by researchers. Second, we extend the country samples upon which the scores are based, allowing researchers greater flexibility in choosing samples. Third, we extend the number of INGOs from which the scores are created. The Hughes et al. (2009) INCS were based on a single-year maximum of 476 INGOs; ours are based on a single-year maximum of 1,604 INGOs (5,291 INGOs across all years). Finally, we provide both raw and scaled scores, which we use to discuss the observed increasing density in the world polity from 1950 to 2008, comparing scores across regions. Results reveal higher average INCS with less variability among Western countries, and significant inequality between the West and the rest of the world.
 
Pamela Paxton: Department of Sociology, The University of Texas at Austin.  Email: ppaxton@prc.utexas.edu

Melanie M. Hughes: Department of Sociology, University of Pittsburgh. Email: hughesm@pitt.edu

Nicholas E. Reith: Department of Sociology, The University of Texas at Austin.  Email:nreith@utexas.edu

Acknowledgements: We gratefully acknowledge the support of the National Science Foundation SES-1067218 and SES-1323130.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Paxton, Pamela, Melanie M. Hughes, and Nicholas E. Reith. 2015. “Extending the INGO Network Country Score, 1950–2008” Sociological Science 2: 287-307.
  • Received: July 15, 2014
  • Accepted: November 26, 2014
  • Editors: Jesper Sorensen, Sarah Soule
  • DOI: 10.15195/v2.a14

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Conceptual Spaces and the Consequences of Category Spanning

By on May 13, 2015 in Articles

Balázs Kovács, Michael T. Hannan

Sociological Science, May 13, 2015
DOI 10.15195/v2.a13

Abstract
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2 Citation

A general finding in economic and organizational sociology shows that objects that span categories lose appeal to audiences. This paper argues that the negative consequences of crossing boundaries are more severe when the categories spanned are distant and have high contrast. Available empirical strategies do not incorporate information on the distances among categories. Here we introduce novel measures of distance in conceptual space and derive measures for typicality, category contrast, and categorical niche width. Using the proposed measurement approach, we test our theory using data on online reviews of books and restaurants.
 
Balázs Kovács: Universita della Svizzerá italiana.  Email: kovacsb@usi.ch

Micheal T. Hannan: Graduate School of Business, Stanford University. Email: hannan@stanford.edu

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Kovács, Balázs, and Michael T. Hannan. 2015. “Conceptual Spaces and the Consequences of Category Spanning.” Sociological Science 2: 252-286.
  • Received: July 21, 2014
  • Accepted: September 24, 2014
  • Editors: Olav Sorenson
  • DOI: 10.15195/v2.a13

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