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The Hidden Costs of War: Exposure to Armed Conflict and Birth Outcomes

By on December 7, 2015 in Articles

Florencia Torche, Uri Shwed

Sociological Science, December 7, 2015
DOI 10.15195/v2.a27

Abstract
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Research suggests that prenatal exposure to environmental stressors has negative effects after birth. However, capturing causal effects is difficult because exposed women may be selected on unobserved factors. We use the 2006 Israel–Hezbollah war as a natural experiment and a siblings fixed-effects methodology to address unobserved selectivity by comparing exposed and unexposed births of the same mother. Findings indicate that exposure to war in early and mid-pregnancy lowers birth weight and increases the probability of low birth weight. The effect is not driven by geographic sorting, migration, or increased miscarriages. Given that birth weight predicts health, developmental, and socioeconomic outcomes, prenatal exposure to acute stress may have long-term effects over the life course.
Florenia Torche: Department of Sociology, New York University  Email: florencia.torche@nyu.edu

Uri Shwed: Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Ben Gurion University of Negev  Email: shwed@bgu.ac.il

Acknowledgements: The authors thank Dvorit Angel of the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics for preparing the data sets used in this study and Uri Goldstein for excellent research assistantship. We are also grateful to Yinon Cohen and Seymour Spilerman for helpful comments and suggestions.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Torche, Florencia, and Uri Shwed. 2015. “The Hidden Costs of War: Exposure to Armed Conflict and Birth Outcomes.” Sociological Science 2: 558-581.
  • Received: April 15, 2015.
  • Accepted: May 21, 2015.
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Olav Sorenson
  • DOI: 10.15195/v2.a27

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Is There a Caring Class? Intergenerational Transmission of Care Work

By on September 30, 2015 in Articles

Maria Charles, Corrie Ellis, Paula England

Sociological Science, September 30, 2015
DOI 10.15195/v2.a25

Abstract
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Most research on intergenerational social reproduction has been concerned with upward and downward movements across rank-ordered, “big-class” categories or along continuous gradients of status, income, or skill. An exception is the more nominal conceptualization of the social structure offered in recent research that focuses on qualitative differences in life conditions across occupational “micro classes.” The present analysis broadens this nominal approach by considering social reproduction across an important qualitative dimension that bridges multiple occupations: whether or not one’s work centrally involves care. Based on data from the U.S. General Social Surveys, results provide little evidence that care work is transmitted from parents to children. While women and men whose parents worked in care are more likely to do so themselves, this association is attributable to a general tendency for people to work in the same detailed occupation as their parents. Parents pass along their vertical status positions, and sometimes their specific occupations, but not care work as such. Parent–child similarity in caring outcomes likely reflects transmission of values, skills, knowledge, and network ties that are specific to detailed occupations, rather than attributable to care work broadly defined.
Maria Charles: Department of Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara  Email: mcharles@soc.ucsb.edu

Corrie Ellis: Department of Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara  Email: corrieellis@umail.ucsb.edu

Paula England: Department of Sociology, New York University  Email: pe22@nyu.edu

Acknowledgements: Equal authors, listed alphabetically. This research was funded by a grant to England and Charles from the Russell Sage Foundation (RSF Project #85-12-05). We thank Alicia Cast, Erin Cech, Bridget Harr, Alexandra Hendley, Sarah Thebaud, and Catherine Weinberger for comments and suggestions, and Guadalupe Soto for research assistance.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Charles, Maria, Corrie Ellis, and Paula England. 2015.“Is There a Caring Class? Intergenerational Transmission of Care Work.” Sociological Science 2: 527-543.
  • Received: July 13, 2015.
  • Accepted: July 17, 2015.
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Kim Weeden
  • DOI: 10.15195/v2.a25

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Revisiting the Data from the New Family Structure Study: Taking Family Instability into Account

By on September 2, 2015 in Articles

Michael J. Rosenfeld

Sociological Science, September 2, 2015
DOI 10.15195/v2.a23

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This analysis revisits recent controversial findings about children of gay and lesbian parents, and shows that family instability explains most of the negative outcomes that had been attributed to gay and lesbian parents. Family transitions associated with parental loss of custody were more common than breakups of same-sex couples among family transitions experienced by subjects who ever lived with same-sex couples. The analyses also show that most associations between growing up with a single mother and later negative outcomes are mediated by childhood family transitions. I show that many different types of childhood family transitions (including parental breakup and the arrival of a parent’s new partner) are similarly associated with later negative outcomes.
Michael J. Rosenfeld: Department of Sociology, Stanford University.  Email: mrosenfe@Stanford.edu

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Rosenfeld, Michael J. 2015. “Revisiting the Data from the New Family Structure Study: Taking Family Instability into Account.” Sociological Science 2:478-501.
  • Received: April 17, 2015.
  • Accepted: June 11, 2015.
  • Editors: Kim Weeden
  • DOI: 10.15195/v2.a23

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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

  • 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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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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