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Research on neighborhood effects draws suggestive links between local spatial environments and a range of social, economic, and public health outcomes. Here, we consider the potential role of genetics in the geography of social stratification in the United States using genomic data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health. We find that those with genotypes related to higher educational attainment sort into neighborhoods that are better educated and have higher population densities, both descriptively and using formal school and sibling fixed-effects models. We identify four mechanisms through which this geographic sorting on genetic endowment can magnify social stratification: assortative mating, social-genetic effects, gene-by-environment interactions, and gene–by–social-genetic interactions. We examine the presence of the latter three in our data, finding provisional yet suggestive evidence for social-genetic effects that putatively amount to about one-third of the influence of one’s own genomic profile. We find no evidence, however, for the presence of interactions between environments and individual genetic background. Collectively, these findings highlight the potential for geographic sorting on genotype to emerge both as a key methodological concern in population genetics and social science research and also a potentially overlooked dimension of social stratification worthy of future study.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Thomas Laidley: Institute of Behavioral Science, University of Colorado Boulder
E-mail: thla0691@colorado.edu

Justin Vinneau: Institute of Behavioral Science, University of Colorado Boulder
E-mail: justin.vinneau@colorado.edu

Jason D. Boardman: Institute of Behavioral Science, University of Colorado Boulder
E-mail: boardman@colorado.edu

Acknowledgements: This research uses data from The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (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 federal agencies and foundations. Information on how to obtain the Add Health data files is available on the Add Health website (http://www.cpc.unc.edu/addhealth). Laidley and Vinneau acknowledge generous support from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant 5T32DA017637. This work has also benefited from research, administrative, and computing support provided by the University of Colorado Population Center (CUPC Project 2P2CHD066613-06) funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. We thank the editors for their feedback and guidance in preparing the manuscript as well as our colleagues at the Institute of Behavioral Science (IBS) and Institute for Behavioral Genetics (IBG) at the University of Colorado Boulder, who provided early feedback. Any remaining errors are ours alone. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily reflect the official views of the CUPC, NIH, IBS, IBG, or University of Colorado Boulder.

Citation: Laidley, Thomas, Justin Vinneau, and Jason D. Boardman. 2019. “Individual and Social Genomic Contributions to Educational and Neighborhood Attainments: Geography, Selection, and Stratification in the United States.” Sociological Science 6:580-608.
Received: September 16, 2019
Accepted: October 16, 2019
Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Gabriel Rossman
DOI: 10.15195/v6.a22

The Mere Mention of Asians in Affirmative Action

By Parker Webservices on September 26, 2019 in Articles

Jennifer Lee, Van C. Tran

Sociological Science, September 26, 2019
10.15195/v6.a21

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Presumed competent, U.S. Asians evince exceptional educational outcomes but lack the cultural pedigree of elite whites that safeguard them from bias in the labor market. In spite of their nonwhite minority status, Asians also lack the legacy of disadvantage of blacks that make them eligible beneficiaries of affirmative action. Their labor market disadvantage coupled with their exclusion from affirmative action programs place Asians in a unique bind: do they support policies that give preferences to blacks but exclude them? Given their self- and group interests, this bind should make Asians unlikely to do so. We assess whether this is the case by comparing their attitudes to those of whites, blacks, and Hispanics. Drawing on a novel three-way framing experiment embedded in the 2016 National Asian American Survey, we document how the “mere mention of Asians” in affirmative action frames affects support for the preferential hiring and promotion of blacks. Support shifts in different ways among all groups depending on the mere mention of Asians as either victims of affirmative action alongside whites or as victims of discrimination alongside blacks. Moreover, among Asians, support for affirmative action differs significantly by immigrant generation: first-generation Asians express the weakest support.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Jennifer Lee: Department of Sociology, Columbia University
E-mail: lee.jennifer@columbia.edu

Van C. Tran: Department of Sociology, The Graduate Center, CUNY
E-mail: vtran@gc.cuny.edu

Acknowledgements: Direct all correspondence to Jennifer Lee, Department of Sociology, Columbia University. E-mail: lee.jennifer@columbia.edu. This research was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (1558986) and the Russell Sage Foundation (93-17-07). For comments and suggestions, we thank Maria Abascal, Aixa Cintrón-Vélez, Thomas DiPrete, Florencia Torche, Andreas Wimmer, and the editors of Sociological Science.

Citation: Lee, Jennifer, and Van C. Tran. 2019. “The Mere Mention of Asians in Affirmative Action.” Sociological Science 6: 551-579.
Received: July 15, 2019
Accepted: September 2, 2019
Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Kim Weeden
DOI: 10.15195/v6.a21

A Large-Scale Test of Gender Bias in the Media

By Parker Webservices on September 3, 2019 in Articles

Eran Shor, Arnout van de Rijt, Babak Fotouhi

Sociological Science, September 3, 2019
10.15195/v6.a20

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A large body of studies demonstrates that women continue to receive less media coverage than men do. Some attribute this difference to gender bias in media reporting—a systematic inclination toward male subjects. We propose that in order to establish the presence of media bias, one has to demonstrate that the news coverage of men is disproportional even after accounting for occupational inequalities and differences in public interest. We examine the coverage of more than 20,000 successful women and men from various social and occupational domains in more than 2,000 news sources as well as web searches for these individuals as a behavioral measure of interest. We find that when compared with similar-aged men from the same occupational strata, women enjoy greater public interest yet receive less media coverage.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Eran Shor: Department of Sociology, McGill University
E-mail: eran.shor@mcgill.ca

Arnout van de Rijt: Social and Behavioural Sciences, Utrecht University
E-mail: arnoutvanderijt@gmail.com

Babak Fotouhi: Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, Harvard University
E-mail: babak_fotouhi@fas.harvard.edu

Citation: Shor, Eran, Arnout van de Rijt, and Babak Fotouhi. 2019. “A Large-Scale Test of Gender Bias in the Media.” Sociological Science 6: 526-550.
Received: June 6, 2019
Accepted: June 13, 2019
Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Olav Sorenson
DOI: 10.15195/v6.a20

Building Inequality: Housing Segregation and Income Segregation

By Parker Webservices on August 7, 2019 in Articles

Ann Owens

Sociological Science, August 7, 2019
10.15195/v6.a19

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This article foregrounds housing in the study of residential segregation. The spatial configuration of housing determines the housing opportunities in each neighborhood, the backdrop against which households’ resources, preferences, and constraints play out. I use census and American Community Survey data to provide the first evidence of the extent of housing segregation by type and by cost at multiple geographic scales in large metropolitan areas in the United States from 1990 to 2014. Segregation between single- and multifamily homes and renter- and owner-occupied homes increased in most metropolitan areas, whereas segregation by cost declined. Housing segregation varies among metropolitan areas, across geographic scales, and over time, with consequences for income segregation. Income segregation is markedly higher when and where housing segregation is greater. As long as housing opportunities remain segregated, residential segregation will change little, with urgent implications for urban and housing policy makers.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Ann Owens: Department of Sociology, University of Southern California
E-mail: annowens@usc.edu

Acknowledgements: This research was supported by a USC Lusk Center for Real Estate faculty research grant. Comments and suggestions from the 2019 Population Association of America Annual Meeting and from reviewers improved this article. All conclusions and errors are attributable to the author.

Citation: Owens, Ann. 2019. “Building Inequality: Housing Segregation and Income Segregation.” Sociological Science 6: 497-525.
Received: May 29, 2019
Accepted: June 23, 2019
Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Kim Weeden
DOI: 10.15195/v6.a19

Do Some Countries Discriminate More than Others? Evidence from 97 Field Experiments of Racial Discrimination in Hiring

By Parker Webservices on June 17, 2019 in Articles

Lincoln Quillian, Anthony Heath, Devah Pager, Arnfinn H. Midtbøen, Fenella Fleischmann, Ole Hexel

Sociological Science, June 17, 2019
10.15195/v6.a18

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Comparing levels of discrimination across countries can provide a window into large-scale social and political factors often described as the root of discrimination. Because of difficulties in measurement, however, little is established about variation in hiring discrimination across countries. We address this gap through a formal meta-analysis of 97 field experiments of discrimination incorporating more than 200,000 job applications in nine countries in Europe and North America. We find significant discrimination against nonwhite natives in all countries in our analysis; discrimination against white immigrants is present but low. However, discrimination rates vary strongly by country: In high-discrimination countries, white natives receive nearly twice the callbacks of nonwhites; in low-discrimination countries, white natives receive about 25 percent more. France has the highest discrimination rates, followed by Sweden. We find smaller differences among Great Britain, Canada, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, the United States, and Germany. These findings challenge several conventional macro-level theories of discrimination.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Lincoln Quillian: Department of Sociology, Northwestern University
E-mail: l-quillian@northwestern.edu

Anthony Heath: Centre for Social Investigation, Nuffield College
E-mail: anthony.heath@nuffield.ox.ac.uk

Devah Pager: Deceased, formerly Department of Sociology, Harvard University

Arnfinn H. Midtbøen: Institute for Social Research, Oslo, Norway
E-mail: a.h.midtboen@samfunnsforskning.no

Fenella Fleischmann: Interdisciplinary Social Science, Utrecht University
E-mail: F.Fleischmann@uu.nl

Ole Hexel: Department of Sociology, Northwestern University, and Observatoire Sociologique du Changement, Sciences Po, Paris, France
E-mail: ole.hexel@u.northwestern.edu

Acknowledgements: We have received financial support for this project from the Russell Sage Foundation and the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University. We thank Larry Hedges for methodological advice. We dedicate this article to Devah Pager, who learned a little from us and taught us much more.

Citation: Quillian, Lincoln, Anthony Heath, Devah Pager, Arnfinn H. Midtbøen, Fenella Fleischmann, and Ole Hexel. 2019. “Do Some Countries Discriminate More than Others? Evidence from 97 Field Experiments of Racial Discrimination in Hiring.” Sociological Science 6: 467-496.
Received: March 7, 2019
Accepted: April 23, 2019
Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Olav Sorenson
DOI: 10.15195/v6.a18

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

By Parker Webservices on May 29, 2019 in Articles

Douglas B. Downey, Joseph Workman, Paul von Hippel

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

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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.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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.

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

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

By Parker Webservices on May 22, 2019 in Articles

Adam Goldstein, Orestes P. Hastings

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

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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.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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).

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

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

By Parker Webservices on May 15, 2019 in Articles

Pablo A. Mitnik, Victoria Bryant, Michael Weber

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

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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.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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.

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

Sharing Compromising Information as a Cooperative Strategy

By Parker Webservices on May 8, 2019 in Articles

Diego Gambetta, Wojtek Przepiorka

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

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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.

This 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.

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

The Rise of Programming and the Stalled Gender Revolution

By Parker Webservices on April 30, 2019 in Articles

Siwei Cheng, Bhumika Chauhan, Swati Chintala

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

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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.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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.