Sociological Science, May 6, 2015
DOI 10.15195/v2.a12
Abstract
Previous research has shown that being born in the months immediately preceding the school entry cut-off date leads to lower educational outcomes in countries with a strict admission policy. In this article we use the effect of age at school entry in England as an identification device to provide a causal estimate of the compensatory advantage enjoyed by children from high social origin families. We find that the negative effects of a young school entry age are stronger for children from low social origin families. We also investigate when social origin differences in school entry age effects emerge, and test possible mechanisms. We find that before starting school, a younger school entry age leads to lower test scores for children of both low and highly educated families. For children from highly educated families the negative effect, however, progressively declines over the school career and almost vanishes by age 16. With respect to the mechanisms underlying this compensatory effect, we find no strong mediating role for parental involvement in homework and private lessons or for school choice.
Previous research has shown that being born in the months immediately preceding the school entry cut-off date leads to lower educational outcomes in countries with a strict admission policy. In this article we use the effect of age at school entry in England as an identification device to provide a causal estimate of the compensatory advantage enjoyed by children from high social origin families. We find that the negative effects of a young school entry age are stronger for children from low social origin families. We also investigate when social origin differences in school entry age effects emerge, and test possible mechanisms. We find that before starting school, a younger school entry age leads to lower test scores for children of both low and highly educated families. For children from highly educated families the negative effect, however, progressively declines over the school career and almost vanishes by age 16. With respect to the mechanisms underlying this compensatory effect, we find no strong mediating role for parental involvement in homework and private lessons or for school choice.
Fabrizio Bernardi: European University Institute Department of Political and Social Sciences. Email: fabrizio.bernardi@eui.eu
Michael Grätz: European University Institute Department of Political and Social Sciences. Email: michael.gratz@eui.eu
Citation: Bernardi, Fabrizio and Michael Grätz. 2015. “Making Up for an Unlucky Month of Birth in School: Causal Evidence on the Compensatory Advantage of Family Background in England.” Sociological Science 2:235-251
Sociological Science, April 29, 2015
DOI 10.15195/v2.a11
Abstract
Adult attainment projects (AAP) consist of a series of traditional adult statuses: labor force participation, residential independence, marriage, parenthood, and homeownership. This article examines these status indicators as integral parts of an individualized attainment project that is best assessed later in adulthood. Close examination of AAP gives novel insights into the changing U.S. opportunity structure that go beyond what can be achieved through studying temporal patterns of adult status indicators independently. From 1980 to 2010, rates of completed AAP declined by double digits, and the difference in the odds of completing AAP between men on different ends of the income distribution doubled. There are structural and cultural explanations for these trends. Divergence hypotheses favor structural explanations involving social stratification processes. Convergence hypotheses favor cultural explanations based on the loosening of norms regarding traditional adult statuses. This article uses factor analytic models on data from the Current Population Survey, in conjunction with formal measurement invariance testing, to evaluate these hypotheses. The adaptive differentiation hypothesis, a blended explanation positing analytically distinct AAP profiles for different socioeconomic groups, receives the most empirical support. The results affirm a structurally prevailing change in the lives of poor, working class, and lower-middle class Americans.
Adult attainment projects (AAP) consist of a series of traditional adult statuses: labor force participation, residential independence, marriage, parenthood, and homeownership. This article examines these status indicators as integral parts of an individualized attainment project that is best assessed later in adulthood. Close examination of AAP gives novel insights into the changing U.S. opportunity structure that go beyond what can be achieved through studying temporal patterns of adult status indicators independently. From 1980 to 2010, rates of completed AAP declined by double digits, and the difference in the odds of completing AAP between men on different ends of the income distribution doubled. There are structural and cultural explanations for these trends. Divergence hypotheses favor structural explanations involving social stratification processes. Convergence hypotheses favor cultural explanations based on the loosening of norms regarding traditional adult statuses. This article uses factor analytic models on data from the Current Population Survey, in conjunction with formal measurement invariance testing, to evaluate these hypotheses. The adaptive differentiation hypothesis, a blended explanation positing analytically distinct AAP profiles for different socioeconomic groups, receives the most empirical support. The results affirm a structurally prevailing change in the lives of poor, working class, and lower-middle class Americans.
Jeremy Pais: Department of Sociology, University of Connecticut. Email: j.pais@uconn.edu
D. Matthew Ray: Department of Sociology, University of Connecticut. Email: matt.ray@uconn.edu
Citation: Pais, Jeremy, and D. Matthew Ray. 2015. “Class Inequality and Adult Attainment Projects among Middle-Aged Men in the United States, 1980—2010.” Sociological Science 2:211-234.
Sociological Science, April 20, 2015
DOI 10.15195/v2.a10
Abstract
In this article we show that imitation is not the mechanism behind the observed increase in suicides subsequent to highly publicized celebrity suicides. Instead, we show that most celebrity suicides are exceptional events and because of that have similar effects on the daily suicide rate as other exciting events. This finding suggests that Durkheim was right in rejecting the Tardean hypothesis that imitation is an operative mechanism and provides substantial support for the competing hypothesis that disruptive and/or exciting events (whether favorable or unfavorable) induce anomie and with it suicide.
In this article we show that imitation is not the mechanism behind the observed increase in suicides subsequent to highly publicized celebrity suicides. Instead, we show that most celebrity suicides are exceptional events and because of that have similar effects on the daily suicide rate as other exciting events. This finding suggests that Durkheim was right in rejecting the Tardean hypothesis that imitation is an operative mechanism and provides substantial support for the competing hypothesis that disruptive and/or exciting events (whether favorable or unfavorable) induce anomie and with it suicide.
Mark Anthony Hoffman: Department of Sociology, Columbia University. Email: mh3279@columbia.edu
Peter S. Bearman: Department of Sociology, Columbia University. Email: psb17@columbia.edu.
Citation: Hoffman, Mark A., and Peter S. Bearman. 2015. “Bringing Anomie Back In: Exceptional Events and Excess Suicide.” Sociological Science 2: 186-210.
Sociological Science, April 1, 2015
DOI 10.15195/v2.a9
Abstract
The first lesson from the history of research on smoking hazards is that scientists should be wary of collaboration with interested industries. This lesson, which is influential in the literature on science–industry relationships, comes from a historiography focused on the carcinogenicity debate of the 1950s and 1960s and the passive smoking debate of the 1980s and 1990s. Few studies have examined research in the 1970s. This article fills this lacuna using novel bibliometrical methods augmented with a qualitative analysis of the associations between periods and literary camps, as expressed in scientific texts. The mixed-methods approach identifies the temporal dynamics of the literature on smoking hazards to reveal that the well-documented attempts of the tobacco industry to stall and hamper science had unanticipated consequences. Specifically, an industry–science collaboration to develop a less hazardous cigarette put scholars on the path to discovering the hazards of passive smoking. The analyses supply a narrative that has room for actors’ complex interests and actions and demonstrates that such complexity may only be revealed in research whose outcomes are never known in advance.
The first lesson from the history of research on smoking hazards is that scientists should be wary of collaboration with interested industries. This lesson, which is influential in the literature on science–industry relationships, comes from a historiography focused on the carcinogenicity debate of the 1950s and 1960s and the passive smoking debate of the 1980s and 1990s. Few studies have examined research in the 1970s. This article fills this lacuna using novel bibliometrical methods augmented with a qualitative analysis of the associations between periods and literary camps, as expressed in scientific texts. The mixed-methods approach identifies the temporal dynamics of the literature on smoking hazards to reveal that the well-documented attempts of the tobacco industry to stall and hamper science had unanticipated consequences. Specifically, an industry–science collaboration to develop a less hazardous cigarette put scholars on the path to discovering the hazards of passive smoking. The analyses supply a narrative that has room for actors’ complex interests and actions and demonstrates that such complexity may only be revealed in research whose outcomes are never known in advance.
Uri Shwed: Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Ben Gurion University of the Negev. Email: shwed@bgu.ac.il
Citation: Shwed, Uri. 2015. “Robust Science: Passive Smoking and Scientific Collaboration with the Tobacco Industry in the 1970s.” Sociological Science 2:158-185.
Domenico Parisi, Daniel T. Lichter, Michael C. Taquino
Sociological Science, March 25, 2015
DOI 10.15195/v2.a8
Abstract
The conventional wisdom is that racial diversity promotes positive race relations and reduces racial residential segregation between blacks and whites. We use data from the 1990–2010 decennial censuses and 2007–2011 ACS to test this so-called “buffering hypothesis.” We identify cities, suburbs, and small towns that are virtually all white, all black, all Asian, all Hispanic, and everything in between. The results show that the most racially diverse places—those with all four racial groups (white, black, Hispanic, and Asian) present—had the lowest black-white levels of segregation in 2010. Black-white segregation also declined most rapidly in the most racially diverse places and in places that experienced the largest recent increases in diversity. Support for the buffering hypothesis, however, is counterbalanced by continuing high segregation across cities and communities and by rapid white depopulation in the most rapidly diversifying communities. We argue for a new, spatially inclusive perspective on racial residential segregation.
The conventional wisdom is that racial diversity promotes positive race relations and reduces racial residential segregation between blacks and whites. We use data from the 1990–2010 decennial censuses and 2007–2011 ACS to test this so-called “buffering hypothesis.” We identify cities, suburbs, and small towns that are virtually all white, all black, all Asian, all Hispanic, and everything in between. The results show that the most racially diverse places—those with all four racial groups (white, black, Hispanic, and Asian) present—had the lowest black-white levels of segregation in 2010. Black-white segregation also declined most rapidly in the most racially diverse places and in places that experienced the largest recent increases in diversity. Support for the buffering hypothesis, however, is counterbalanced by continuing high segregation across cities and communities and by rapid white depopulation in the most rapidly diversifying communities. We argue for a new, spatially inclusive perspective on racial residential segregation.
Domenico Parisi: Department of Sociology, Mississippi State University. Email: mimmo.parisi@nsparc.msstate.edu
Daniel T. Lichter: Policy Analysis & Management and Sociology, Cornell University. Email: dtl28@cornell.edu
Michael C. Taquino: National Strategic Planning & Analysis Research Center, Mississippi State University. Email: mtaquino@nsparc.msstate.edu
Citation: Parisi, Domenico, Daniel T. Lichter and Michael C. Taquino. 2015. “The Buffering Hypothesis: Growing Diversity and Declining Black-White Segregation in America’s Cities, Suburbs, and Small Towns?” Sociological Science 2:125-157.
David R. Johnson, Christopher P. Scheitle, Elaine Howard Ecklund
Sociological Science, March 11, 2015
DOI 10.15195/v2.a7
Abstract
The religion-science relationship has been the focus of a growing body of research. Such analyses have often suffered from poorly specified concepts related to religion and to science. At the individual level, scholars often assume that an individual’s religiosity will affect her orientation towards science. But an orientation towards science consists of several sub-concepts, each of which may have a unique relationship, or lack thereof, with religiosity. We use observed measures from the 2008 General Social Survey to build latent variables representing science orientation sub-concepts and assess their relationships using structural equation modeling. We find that religiosity has no significant association with interest in or knowledge of science. Religiosity does, however, have a significant negative association with confidence in science. This suggests that the lack of faith in science held by religious individuals is not a product of interest or ignorance, but is instead based on theological or institutional reservations.
The religion-science relationship has been the focus of a growing body of research. Such analyses have often suffered from poorly specified concepts related to religion and to science. At the individual level, scholars often assume that an individual’s religiosity will affect her orientation towards science. But an orientation towards science consists of several sub-concepts, each of which may have a unique relationship, or lack thereof, with religiosity. We use observed measures from the 2008 General Social Survey to build latent variables representing science orientation sub-concepts and assess their relationships using structural equation modeling. We find that religiosity has no significant association with interest in or knowledge of science. Religiosity does, however, have a significant negative association with confidence in science. This suggests that the lack of faith in science held by religious individuals is not a product of interest or ignorance, but is instead based on theological or institutional reservations.
David R. Johnson: Department of Sociology, Rice University. E-mail: drj4@rice.edu
Christopher P. Scheitle: Department of Sociology, St John’s University. Email: cscheitle@csbsju.edu
Elaine Howard Ecklund: Department of Sociology, Rice University. Email: ehe@rice.edu
Citation: Johnson, David R., Christopher P. Scheitle and Elaine Howard Ecklund. 2015. “Individual Religiosity and Orientation towards Science: Reformulating Relationships.” Sociological Science 2: 106-124.
Dalton Conley, Benjamin W. Domingue, David Cesarini, Christopher Dawes, Cornelius A. Rietveld, Jason D. Boardman
Sociological Science, February 25, 2015
DOI 10.15195/v2.a6
Abstract
Parental education is the strongest measured predictor of offspring education, and thus many scholars see the parent–child correlation in educational attainment as an important measure of social mobility. But if social changes or policy interventions are going to have dynastic effects, we need to know what accounts for this intergenerational association, that is, whether it is primarily environmental or genetic in origin. Thus, to understand whether the estimated social influence of parental education on offspring education is biased owing to genetic inheritance (or moderated by it), we exploit the findings from a recent large genome-wide association study of educational attainment to construct a genetic score designed to predict educational attainment. Using data from two independent samples, we find that our genetic score significantly predicts years of schooling in both between-family and within-family analyses. We report three findings that should be of interest to scholars in the stratification and education fields. First, raw parent–child correlations in education may reflect one-sixth genetic transmission and five-sixths social inheritance. Second, conditional on a child’s genetic score, a parental genetic score has no statistically significant relationship to the child’s educational attainment. Third, the effects of offspring genotype do not seem to be moderated by measured sociodemographic variables at the parental level (but parent–child genetic interaction effects are significant). These results are consistent with the existence of two separate systems of ascription: genetic inheritance (a random lottery within families) and social inheritance (across-family ascription). We caution, however, that at the presently attainable levels of explanatory power, these results are preliminary and may change when better-powered genetic risk scores are developed.
Parental education is the strongest measured predictor of offspring education, and thus many scholars see the parent–child correlation in educational attainment as an important measure of social mobility. But if social changes or policy interventions are going to have dynastic effects, we need to know what accounts for this intergenerational association, that is, whether it is primarily environmental or genetic in origin. Thus, to understand whether the estimated social influence of parental education on offspring education is biased owing to genetic inheritance (or moderated by it), we exploit the findings from a recent large genome-wide association study of educational attainment to construct a genetic score designed to predict educational attainment. Using data from two independent samples, we find that our genetic score significantly predicts years of schooling in both between-family and within-family analyses. We report three findings that should be of interest to scholars in the stratification and education fields. First, raw parent–child correlations in education may reflect one-sixth genetic transmission and five-sixths social inheritance. Second, conditional on a child’s genetic score, a parental genetic score has no statistically significant relationship to the child’s educational attainment. Third, the effects of offspring genotype do not seem to be moderated by measured sociodemographic variables at the parental level (but parent–child genetic interaction effects are significant). These results are consistent with the existence of two separate systems of ascription: genetic inheritance (a random lottery within families) and social inheritance (across-family ascription). We caution, however, that at the presently attainable levels of explanatory power, these results are preliminary and may change when better-powered genetic risk scores are developed.
Dalton Conley: Department of Sociology, New York University. E-mail: conley@nyu.edu.
Benjamin W. Domingue: Institute of Behavioral Science, University of Colorado Boulder
David Cesarini: Center for Experimental Social Science, Department of Economics, New York University
Christopher Dawes: Wilff Family Department of Politics, New York University
Cornelius A. Rietveld: Erasmus School of Economics and Erasmus University Rotterdam Institute for Behavior and Biology, Erasmus University.
Jason D. Boardman: Institute of Behavioral Science and Department of Sociology, University of Colorado Boulder.
Citation: Conley, Dalton, Benjamin W. Domingue, David Cesarini, Christopher Dawes, Cornelius A. Rietveld and Jason D. Boardman. 2015. “Is the Effect of Parental Education on Offspring Biased or Moderated by Genotype?” Sociological Science 2: 82-105.
Sociological Science, February 18, 2015
DOI 10.15195/v2.a5
Abstract
Women now surpass men in overall rates of college graduation in many industrialized countries, but sex segregation in fields of study persists. In a world where gender norms have changed but gender stereotypes remain strong, we argue that men’s and women’s attitudes and orientations toward fields of study in college are less constrained by gendered institutions than is the ranking of these fields. Accordingly, the sex segregation in the broader choice set of majors considered by college applicants may be lower than the sex segregation in their first preference field of study selection. With unique data on the broader set of fields considered by applicants to elite Israeli universities, we find support for this theory. The factors that drive the gender gap in the choice of field of study, in particular labor market earnings, risk aversion, and the sex composition of fields, are weaker in the broad set of choices than in the first choice. The result is less segregation in considered majors than in the first choice and, more broadly, different gender patterns in the decision process for the set of considered majors and for the first choice. We consider the theoretical implications of these results.
Women now surpass men in overall rates of college graduation in many industrialized countries, but sex segregation in fields of study persists. In a world where gender norms have changed but gender stereotypes remain strong, we argue that men’s and women’s attitudes and orientations toward fields of study in college are less constrained by gendered institutions than is the ranking of these fields. Accordingly, the sex segregation in the broader choice set of majors considered by college applicants may be lower than the sex segregation in their first preference field of study selection. With unique data on the broader set of fields considered by applicants to elite Israeli universities, we find support for this theory. The factors that drive the gender gap in the choice of field of study, in particular labor market earnings, risk aversion, and the sex composition of fields, are weaker in the broad set of choices than in the first choice. The result is less segregation in considered majors than in the first choice and, more broadly, different gender patterns in the decision process for the set of considered majors and for the first choice. We consider the theoretical implications of these results.
Sigal Alon: Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Tel Aviv University. Email: salon1@post.tau.ac.il
Thomas A. DiPrete: Department of Sociology, Columbia University. Email: tad61@columbia.edu
Sociological Science, February 4, 2015
DOI 10.15195/v2.a4
Abstract
Previous research has shown that reciprocity can be contagious when there is no option to repay the benefactor and the recipient instead channels repayment toward strangers. In this study, we test whether retaliation can also be contagious. Extending previous work on “paying it forward,” we tested two mechanisms for the social contagion of antisocial behavior: generalized reciprocity (a victim of antisocial behavior is more likely to pay it forward) and third-party influence (an observer of antisocial behavior is more likely to emulate it). We used an online experiment with randomized trials to test the two hypothesized mechanisms and their interaction by manipulating the extent to which participants experienced and observed antisocial behavior. We found that people are more likely to harm others if they have been harmed and they are less likely to do so if they observe that others do not harm.
Previous research has shown that reciprocity can be contagious when there is no option to repay the benefactor and the recipient instead channels repayment toward strangers. In this study, we test whether retaliation can also be contagious. Extending previous work on “paying it forward,” we tested two mechanisms for the social contagion of antisocial behavior: generalized reciprocity (a victim of antisocial behavior is more likely to pay it forward) and third-party influence (an observer of antisocial behavior is more likely to emulate it). We used an online experiment with randomized trials to test the two hypothesized mechanisms and their interaction by manipulating the extent to which participants experienced and observed antisocial behavior. We found that people are more likely to harm others if they have been harmed and they are less likely to do so if they observe that others do not harm.
Milena Tsvetkova: Department of Sociology, Cornell University E-mail: mvt9@cornell.edu
Michael W. Macy: Department of Sociology and Department of Information Science, Cornell University Email: m.macy@cornell.edu
Email: lewis@usd.edu