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Marriage, Kids, and the Picket Fence? Household Type and Wealth among U.S. Households, 1989 to 2019

By on April 25, 2022 in Articles

Christine Percheski, Christina Gibson-Davis

Sociological Science April 25, 2022
10.15195/v9.a7

Abstract

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Evidence on how parenthood affects household wealth in the United States has been inconclusive, partially because previous studies have decontextualized parenthood from gender, marital, and relationship status. Yet, insights from economic sociology suggest that wealth-related behaviors are shaped by the intersection of identities, not by a binary classification of parental status. We examine net worth by the intersection of gender, parental, and relationship status during a period of increasing wealth inequality and family diversification. Using data from the Survey of Consumer Finances from 1989 through 2019, we show that aggregate comparisons between parents and non-parents mask substantial wealth variation across nine household types. Despite changing social selection into marriage and parenthood, married parents consistently held a wealth advantage over demographically similar adults in other household types. Married parents’ wealth advantage descriptively arises from homeownership, perhaps because the combined spousal and parental identities are normatively and culturally associated with homeownership.
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Christine Percheski: Department of Sociology, Northwestern University
E-mail: c-percheski@northwestern.edu

Christina Gibson-Davis: Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University
E-mail: cgibson@duke.edu

Acknowledgments: We gratefully acknowledge funding from the National Science Foundation (award 1459631) and advice from Sara McLanahan, Michael Hout, Michelle Weinberger, and several anonymous reviewers.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Percheski, Christine, and Christina Gibson-Davis. 2022. “Marriage, Kids, and the Picket Fence? Household Type and Wealth among U.S. Households, 1989 to 2019.” Sociological Science 9: 159-183.
  • Received: March 10, 2021
  • Accepted: April 30, 2022
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Vida Maralani
  • DOI: 10.15195/v9.a7


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The Stalled Gender Revolution and the Rise of Top Earnings in the United States, 1980 to 2017

By on April 11, 2022 in Articles

Hadas Mandel, Assaf Rotman

Sociological Science April 11, 2022
10.15195/v9.a6

Abstract

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The steep rise of top wages is acknowledged as one of the main drivers of the rise in earnings inequality between workers in most postindustrial labor markets. Yet its relation to gender stratification, in particular to the stagnation in the gender pay gap, has received very little scholarly attention. Using data from the U.S. Current Population Survey, conducted between 1980 and 2017, we provide evidence of the enormous weight that the dynamic at the top of the earnings distribution exerts on the gender pay gap. We also show how this dynamic inhibits the consequences of the countervailing process of gender vertical desegregation. Although developments in gender inequality and in the rise of top wages have drawn extensive scholarly attention and have even penetrated into the public discourse in recent years, the two dimensions of inequality are often perceived as unrelated to one another. Our findings, then, highlight the connection between different forms of inequality—class inequality and gender inequality—a relation that demands much more attention in the new economy.
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Hadas Mandel: Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Tel Aviv University
E-mail: hadasm@tauex.tau.ac.il

Assaf Rotman: Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Tel Aviv University
E-mail: assafrot@tauex.tau.ac.il

Acknowledgments: We thank Amit Lazarus and Michael Shalev for their valuable comments on earlier versions of this article. This research was funded by the generous support of the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (Grant Agreement No. 724351). Authors are listed in alphabetical order, reflecting their equal contribution.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Mandel, Hadas, and Assaf Rotman. 2022. “The Stalled Gender Revolution and the Rise of Top Earnings in the United States, 1980 to 2017.” Sociological Science 9: 136-158.
  • Received: December 8, 2021
  • Accepted: January 26, 2022
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Cristobal Young
  • DOI: 10.15195/v9.a6


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Schedule Unpredictability and High-Cost Debt: The Case of Service Workers

By on April 4, 2022 in Articles

Mariana Amorim, Daniel Schneider

Sociological Science April 4, 2022
10.15195/v9.a5

Abstract

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High-cost financial services allow economically insecure families to make ends meet but often contribute to additional financial strain in the long run. This study uses novel data from the Shift Project to describe the link between schedule unpredictability and high-cost debt (i.e., payday loans, pawnshop loans, auto-title loans, overdrafts, and problematic credit card debt) among service workers. First, it compares the relative magnitude of the associations between high-cost debt, schedule unpredictability, and levels of income. Second, it investigates whether income volatility mediates the relationship between schedule unpredictability and high-cost debt. Finally, it describes whether the link between schedule unpredictability and high-cost debt varies by institutional and policy contexts. Results indicate that schedule unpredictability is a substantively meaningful, independent, and understudied dimension of inequality in financial outcomes.
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Mariana Amorim: Department of Sociology, Washington State University
E-mail: mariana.amorim@wsu.edu

Daniel Schneider: Department of Sociology, Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard University
E-mail: dschneider@hks.harvard.edu

Acknowledgments: We gratefully acknowledge support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (grant INV-002665), the RobertWood Johnson Foundation (award 74528), and theW. T. Grant Foundation (grant 188043). The findings and conclusions contained within are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect positions or policies of these foundations. We also thank Timothy Flake for his feedback on corporate programs addressing financial well-being, Megan Bea for the suggestion to use the State-Mandated Education Database, and Evelyn Bellew and Annette Gailliot for research assistance.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Amorim, Mariana, and Daniel Schneider. 2022. “Schedule Unpredictability and High-Cost Debt: The Case of Service Workers.” Sociological Science 9:102-135.
  • Received: November 10, 2021
  • Accepted: January 17, 2022
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Cristobal Young
  • DOI: 10.15195/v9.a5


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The Religious Work Ethic and the Spirit of Patriarchy: Religiosity and the Gender Gap in Working for Its Own Sake, 1977 to 2018

By on March 9, 2022 in Articles

Landon Schnabel, Cyrus Schleifer, Eman Abdelhadi, Samuel L. Perry

Sociological Science March 9, 2022
10.15195/v9.a4

Abstract

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Societal beliefs about women’s work have long been a metric for gender equality, with recent scholarship focusing on trends in these attitudes to assess the progress (or stalling) of the gender revolution. Moving beyond widely critiqued gender attitude questions thought to be the only available items for measuring change over time, this article considers women’s and men’s views toward their own work over the last half century. Traditional gender scripts frame women’s labor force participation as less than ideal, something to do if financially necessary but not because work is intrinsically rewarding. Historically, this gender frame was reinforced by religion. We examine the gender gap in working for its own sake over time and whether and how religious involvement moderates these trends. Overall, the gender gap has declined to the point where it is now virtually nonexistent. However, religious involvement acts as a countervailing influence, bolstering the gap such that frequently attending men and women have not yet converged in their desire to work. Although the most religious Americans have not yet converged, men’s dropping desire to work and women’s rising desire to work are society-wide trends, and even the most religious Americans could be expected to converge at some point in the future. Traditionalist institutions contribute to unevenness in the gender revolution, but preferences cannot explain the persistent society-wide precarity of women’s work: Women now prefer to work for work’s sake at the same rate men do.
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Landon Schnabel: Department of Sociology, Cornell University
E-mail: schnabel@cornell.edu

Cyrus Schleifer: Department of Sociology, University of Oklahoma
E-mail: cyrus.schleifer@ou.edu

Eman Abdelhadi: Department of Comparative Human Development, University of Chicago
E-mail: abdelhadi@uchicago.edu

Samuel L. Perry: Department of Sociology, University of Oklahoma
E-mail: samperry@ou.edu

Acknowledgments: Direct correspondence to Landon Schnabel, Department of Sociology, Cornell University, 323 Uris Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853. Email: schnabel@cornell.edu. The authors would like to thank Paula England, Brian Powell, and participants in the Cornell Center for the Study of Inequality Discussion Group for helpful feedback.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Schnabel, Landon, Cyrus Schleifer, Eman Abdelhadi, and Samuel L. Perry. 2022. “The Religious Work Ethic and the Spirit of Patriarchy: Religiosity and the Gender Gap in Working for Its Own Sake, 1977 to 2018.” Sociological Science 9: 75-101.
  • Received: October 26, 2021
  • Accepted: January 6, 2022
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Gabriel Rossman
  • DOI: 10.15195/v9.a4


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Dog Whistles and Work Hours: The Political Activation of Labor Market Discrimination

By on March 2, 2022 in Articles

Adam Goldstein, Tod Hamilton

Sociological Science March 2, 2022
10.15195/v9.a3

Abstract

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Many commentators have suggested that Donald Trump’s 2016 election emboldened discrimination against racial minorities. We focus on changes in weekly work hours among hourly paid employees during the five months following the 2016 election (relative to 12 months prior). Using two-wave panel data from the Current Population Survey, we find that black workers suffered temporary work hours and earnings losses relative to white workers in areas where Trump received greater electoral support. There were no within-person declines among non-Hispanic whites in high-Trump-support areas or among any groups in lower-Trump-support areas. These patterns are not driven by seasonality, industrial composition, or pre-election trends, suggesting that Trump’s victory exacerbated racial disparities where he received strong electoral support. The findings reveal how political events can catalyze surges of discriminatory behavior in labor markets over the short to medium term, and they provide new evidence about the effects of Trump’s early presidency on U.S. race relations.
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Adam Goldstein: Department of Sociology and School of International and Public Affairs, Princeton University
E-mail: amg5@princeton.edu

Tod Hamilton: Department of Sociology and Office of Population Research, Princeton University
E-mail: todh@princeton.edu

Acknowledgments: The authors thank seminar participants at Princeton University and Duke University for helpful comments.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Goldstein, Adam, and Tod Hamilton. 2022. “Dog Whistles and Work Hours: The Political Activation of Labor Market Discrimination.” Sociological Science 9: 40-74.
  • Received: December 7, 2021
  • Accepted: December 19, 2021
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Mario Small
  • DOI: 10.15195/v9.a3


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Education and Social Fluidity: A Reweighting Approach

By on February 23, 2022 in Articles

Kristian Bernt Karlson

Sociological Science February 23, 2022
10.15195/v9.a2

Abstract

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Although sociologists have devoted considerable attention to studying the role of education in intergenerational social class mobility using log-linear models for contingency tables, indings in this literature are not free from rescaling or non-collapsibility bias caused by adjusting for education in these models. Drawing on the methodological literature on inverse probability reweighting, I present a straightforward standardization approach free from this bias. The approach reweighs in an initial step the mobility table cell frequencies to create a pseudo-population in which social class origins and education are independent of each other, after which one can apply any loglinear model to the reweighted mobility table. In contrast to the Karlson-Holm-Breen method, the approach yields coefficients that are comparable across different studies because they are unaffected by education’s predictive power of class destinations. Moreover, the approach is easily applied to models for various types of mobility patterns such as those in the core model of fluidity; it yields a single summary measure of overall mediation; and it can incorporate several mediating variables, allowing researchers to control for additional merit proxies such as cognitive skills or potential confounders such as age. I illustrate the utility of the approach in four empirical examples.
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Kristian Bernt Karlson: Department of Sociology, University of Copenhagen
E-mail: kbk@soc.ku.dk

Acknowledgments: The research leading to the results presented in this article has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no. 851293).

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Karlson, Kristian Bernt. 2022. “Education and Social Fluidity: A Reweighting Approach.” Sociological Science 9: 27-39.
  • Received: September 9, 2021
  • Accepted: December 16, 2021
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Filiz Garip
  • DOI: 10.15195/v9.a2


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Leapfrogging the Melting Pot? European Immigrants' Intergenerational Mobility across the Twentieth Century

By on December 17, 2021 in Articles

Kendal Lowrey, Jennifer Van Hook, James D. Bachmeier, Thomas B. Foster

Sociological Science December 17, 2021
10.15195/v8.a23

Abstract

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During the early twentieth century, industrial-era European immigrants entered the United States with lower levels of education than the U.S. average. However, empirical research has yielded unclear and inconsistent evidence about the extent and pace of their integration, leaving openings for arguments that contest the narrative that these groups experienced rapid integration and instead assert that educational deficits among lower-status groups persisted across multiple generations. Here, we advance another argument, that European immigrants may have “leapfrogged” or exceeded U.S.-born non-Hispanic white attainment by the third generation. To assess these ideas, we reconstituted three-generation families by linking individuals across the 1940 census; years 1973, 1979, and 1981 to 1990 of the Current Population Survey; the 2000 census; and years 2001 to 2017 of the American Community Survey. Results show that most European immigrant groups not only caught up with U.S.-born whites by the second generation but surpassed them, and this advantage further increased in the third generation. This research provides a new understanding of the time to integration for twentieth-century European immigrant groups by showing that they integrated at a faster pace than previously thought, indicative of a process of accelerated upward mobility.
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Kendal Lowrey: Department of Sociology and Criminology, The Pennsylvania State University
E-mail: kll289@psu.edu

Jennifer Van Hook: Department of Sociology and Criminology, The Pennsylvania State University
E-mail: jxv21@psu.edu

James D. Bachmeier: Department of Sociology, Temple University
E-mail: james.bachmeier@temple.edu

Thomas B. Foster: Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau
E-mail: thomas.b.foster@census.gov

Acknowledgments: We acknowledge assistance provided by the Russell Sage Foundation; the U.S. Census Bureau; the Population Research Institute at Penn State University, which is supported by an infrastructure grant by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (P2CHD041025); and the National Institutes of Health under the Social Environments and Population Health Training Program (T-32HD007514), as well as Peter Catron for his helpful comments on our paper at the 2021 Population Association of America research conference and the 2021 Data-Intensive Research Conference.

Disclaimer: Any opinions and conclusions expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Census Bureau. The Census Bureau’s Disclosure Review Board has reviewed this data product for unauthorized disclosure of confidential information and have approved the disclosure avoidance practices applied to this release. DRB Approval Number: CBDRB-FY21-039.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Lowrey, Kendal, Jennifer Van Hook, James D. Bachmeier, and Thomas B. Foster. 2021. “Leapfrogging the Melting Pot? European Immigrants’ Intergenerational Mobility across the Twentieth Century.” Sociological Science 8: 480-512.
  • Received: October 22, 2021
  • Accepted: November 14, 2021
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Richard Breen
  • DOI: 10.15195/v8.a23


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Collaborative Practices in Crisis Science: Interdisciplinary Research Challenges and the Syrian War

By on December 10, 2021 in Articles

Fiona Greenland, Michelle D. Fabiani

Sociological Science December 10, 2021
10.15195/v8.a22

Abstract

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Crises present the scientific community with unusual demands, including the need for rapid solutions. This can translate into a greatly compressed time frame that curtails data collection and analysis procedures used in “normal” science. Researchers cope with these demands, while maintaining professional standards and a personal commitment to producing reliable work, by engaging in what we call performed separations. These are practices that allow people to adopt an ethical epistemic position while operating within constrained and urgent research situations. We distill the core features and effects of performed separations in the case of experts working to study archaeological looting in wartime Syria. We look specifically at how different practices of control allow for varying degrees of separation and the production of knowledge claims. By extension, performed separations facilitate making ethical claims about one’s role in the production of research and use of findings.
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Fiona Greenland: Department of Sociology, University of Virginia
E-mail: fg5t@virginia.edu

Michelle D. Fabiani: Criminal Justice Department, University of New Haven
E-mail: mfabiani@newhaven.edu

Acknowledgments: The authors thank Madeleine Peterson and Grant Tabler for research assistance and James Evans, William Greenland, and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments and questions. Earlier versions of this article were presented to the Human-Machine Intelligence group (HMI) at the University of Virginia and the Technology, Knowledge, and Society annual meeting in 2020. Support for this research was generously provided by the U.S. National Science Foundation (award no. 1754992).

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Greenland, Fiona, and Michelle D. Fabiani. 2021. “Collaborative Practices in Crisis Science: Interdisciplinary Research Challenges and the Syrian War.” Sociological Science 8: 455-479.
  • Received: April 27, 2021
  • Accepted: June 13, 2021
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Mario Small
  • DOI: 10.15195/v8.a22


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Segregated in Social Space: The Spatial Structure of Acquaintanceship Networks

By on November 29, 2021 in Articles

Barum Park

Sociological Science November 29, 2021
10.15195/v8.a20

Abstract

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With deepening cleavages on several social dimensions, social fragmentation has become a major concern across the social sciences. This article proposes a spatial approach to study the segregation pattern of acquaintanceship ties across multiple social dimensions simultaneously. A Bayesian unfolding model is developed and fitted to the 2006 General Social Survey. Results suggests that the segregation pattern of reported acquaintanceship ties reflect consolidated socioeconomic inequalities. Furthermore, among the 13 analyzed social groups, gay and lesbian people were the least segregated group in 2006, implying that individuals with very different network compositions had similar probabilities to know someone who is gay or lesbian. Lastly, contradicting previous findings that ideology and religiosity segregate acquaintanceship networks to an extent that rivals race, it is found that race stands out as the dominant dimension that shapes the distribution of these relationships.
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Barum Park: Department of Sociology, Cornell University
E-mail: b.park@cornell.edu

Acknowledgments: I am grateful to Delia Baldassarri, Siwei Cheng, Ned Crowley, Paul DiMaggio, Mike Hout, Harris Hyun-Soo Kim, Byungkyu Lee, Jeff Manza, John Levi Martin, Oscar Stuhler, and LarryWu for their invaluable comments. This article was presented in the Inequality Workshop at New York University, the Annual Conference of the Association of Korean Sociologists in America in 2018, and the American Sociological Association Annual Meeting in 2018. All remaining errors are my own.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Park, Barum. 2021. “Segregated in Social Space: The Spatial Structure of Acquaintanceship Networks.” Sociological Science 8: 397-428.
  • Received: August 15, 2019
  • Accepted: October 3, 2021
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Olav Sorenson
  • DOI: 10.15195/v8.a20


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The Link between Social and Structural Integration: Co- and Interethnic Friendship Selection and Social Influence within Adolescent Social Networks

By on November 22, 2021 in Articles

Georg Lorenz, Zerrin Salikutluk, Zsófia Boda, Malte Jansen, Miles Hewstone

Sociological Science November 22, 2021
10.15195/v8.a19

Abstract

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Assimilation theories argue that social ties with majority-group members enhance the structural integration of ethnic minority members, whereas under certain conditions, coethnic social ties can also benefit minority members’ socioeconomic outcomes. We examine these propositions through a social network perspective, focusing on friendship networks and educational expectations in adolescence, during which peer socialization is crucial. Longitudinal data from 1,992 adolescents in 91 classrooms allow us to investigate co- and interethnic social selection and social influence processes as well as their aggregated outcomes. In terms of friendship selection, we find that Turkishorigin minority adolescents in Germany have distinct preferences for friends with high educational expectations, among both co- and interethnic peers. In contrast, social influence on Turkish-minority adolescents’ educational expectations is not uniform: only majority-group friends exert a significant (positive) influence. Our results emphasize that bridging social capital gained from social ties with majority-group members enhances ethnic minority adolescents’ educational integration.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Georg Lorenz: Institute for Educational Quality Improvement (IQB), Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
E-mail: Georg.Lorenz@iqb.hu-berlin.de

Zerrin Salikutluk: Berlin Institute for Integration and Migration Research (BIM), Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
E-mail: Zerrin.Salikutluk@hu-berlin.de

Zsófia Boda: Department of Sociology and Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of Essex
E-mail: zsofia.boda@essex.ac.uk

Malte Jansen: Institute for Educational Quality Improvement (IQB), Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Centre for International Student Assessment (ZIB)
E-mail: Malte.Jansen@iqb.hu-berlin.de

Miles Hewstone: University of Oxford
E-mail: Miles.Hewstone@new.ox.ac.uk

Acknowledgments: The authors acknowledge financial support from the Volkswagen Foundation (project ISONET, funding number 93 489). The responsibility for the content of this publication lies with the authors.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Lorenz, Georg, Zerrin Salikutluk, Zsófia Boda, Malte Jansen, and Miles Hewstone. 2021. “The Link between Social and Structural Integration: Coand Interethnic Friendship Selection and Social Influence within Adolescent Social Networks.” Sociological Science 8: 371-396.
  • Received: March 3, 2021
  • Accepted: May 19, 2021
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Arnout van de Rijt
  • DOI: 10.15195/v8.a19


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Yes, Denmark Is a More Educationally Mobile Society than the United States: Rejoinder to Kristian Karlson

By on November 17, 2021 in Articles

Stefan B. Andrade, Jens-Peter Thomsen

Sociological Science November 17, 2021
10.15195/v8.a18

Abstract

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In this rejoinder to Kristian Bernt Karlson (KBK), we maintain that there are substantial differences in intergenerational educational mobility between Denmark and the United States. In fact, when we include additional parental information from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97) for the United States, as suggested by KBK, the gap between Denmark and the United States increases. To confirm our findings, we show that the same conclusion about markedly higher educational mobility in Denmark holds when data from the General Social Survey are substituted for the NLSY97.
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Stefan B. Andrade: The Danish National Centre for Social Science Research
E-mail: sba@vive.dk

Jens-Peter Thomsen: The Danish National Centre for Social Science Research
E-mail: jpt@vive.dk

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Andrade, Stefan B., and Jens-Peter Thomsen. 2021. “Yes, Denmark Is a More Educationally Mobile Society than the United States: Rejoinder to Kristian Karlson.” Sociological Science 8: 359-370.
  • Received: September 19, 2021
  • Accepted: September 21, 2021
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Filiz Garip
  • DOI: 10.15195/v8.a18


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Is Denmark a Much More Educationally Mobile Society than the United States? Comment on Andrade and Thomsen, "Intergenerational Educational Mobility in Denmark and the United States" (2018)

By on November 17, 2021 in Articles

Kristian Bernt Karlson

Sociological Science November 17, 2021
10.15195/v8.a17

Abstract

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I evaluate Andrade and Thomsen (A&T)’s (2018) study, which concludes that Denmark is significantly more educationally mobile than the United States. I make three observations. First, A&T overstate the difference in educational mobility between Denmark and the United States. Both in international comparison and compared with differences in intergenerational income mobility, A&T’s reported country differences in educational mobility are negligible. For example, whereas income mobility estimates reported in the literature differ by 300 to 600 percent between the two countries, the corresponding educational mobility estimates that A&T report differ by 10 to 20 percent. Second, I provide evidence suggesting that A&T’s use of crude categorical education measures leads them to overstate these negligible differences. Third, A&T’s empirical analyses of the U.S. data contain several statistical and data-related flaws, some so severe that they potentially undermine the credibility of their analyses. In sum, A&T’s results are perfectly consistent with the existence of a mobility paradox very similar to what Sweden–United States comparisons show: although Denmark and the United States are dissimilar with respect to income mobility, they are similar with respect to educational mobility. Understanding the nature of this paradox should be a key concern for future mobility research.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Kristian Bernt Karlson: Department of Sociology, University of Copenhagen
E-mail: kbk@soc.ku.dk
Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Karlson, Kristian Bernt. 2021. “Is Denmark a Much More Educationally Mobile Society than the United States? Comment on Andrade and Thomsen, ‘Intergenerational Educational Mobility in Denmark and the United States’ (2018).” Sociological Science 8: 346-358.
  • Received: June 11, 2021
  • Accepted: July 11, 2021
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Filiz Garip
  • DOI: 10.15195/v8.a17


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Filial Intelligence and Family Social Class, 1947 to 2012

By on October 20, 2021 in Articles

Lindsay Paterson

Sociological Science October 20, 2021
10.15195/v8.a16

Abstract

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Intelligence, or cognitive ability, is a key variable in reproducing social inequality. On the one hand, it is associated with the social class in which a child grows up. On the other, it is a predictor of educational attainment, labor-market experiences, social mobility, health and well-being, and length of life. Therefore measured intelligence is important to our understanding of how inequality operates and is reproduced. The present analysis uses social surveys of children aged 10 to 11 years in Britain between 1947 and 2012 to assess whether the social-class distribution of intelligence has changed. The main conclusions are that, although children’s intelligence relative to their peers remains associated with social class, the association may have weakened recently, mainly because the average intelligence in the highest-status classes may have moved closer to the mean.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Lindsay Paterson: School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh
E-mail: lindsay.paterson@ed.ac.uk

Acknowledgments: The research was funded by a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship (grant number MRF-2017-002). I am grateful to Professor Ian J. Deary, director of the Lothian Birth Cohorts, University of Edinburgh, for data from the 1947 survey; to the Medical Research Council (MRC) Unit for Lifelong Health and Ageing, University College London, and the principal investigators of the MRC National Survey of Health and Development (doi: 10.5522/NSHD/Q101), for data from the 1957 survey; and to the UK Data Archive for data from the 1969, 1980, and 2012 surveys. I thank the study participants in all these surveys for their data, and also members of the scientific and data collection teams who have been involved in the data collection. I am grateful to Ian J. Deary and Roxanne Connelly for comments on a draft of the article.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Paterson, Lindsay. 2021. “Filial Intelligence and Family Social Class, 1947 to 2012.” Sociological Science 8: 325-345.
  • Received: August 13, 2021
  • Accepted: August 25, 2021
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Richard Breen
  • DOI: 10.15195/v8.a16


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Crisis and Uncertainty: Did the Great Recession Reduce the Diversity of New Faculty?

By on October 14, 2021 in Articles

Kwan Woo Kim, Alexandra Kalev, Frank Dobbin, Gal Deutsch

Sociological Science October 14, 2021
10.15195/v8.a15

Abstract

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The demographic composition of the U.S. professoriate affects student composition and, thus, the pipeline for professional and managerial jobs. Amid concern about the effects of the COVID-19 crisis on the labor market, much remains unknown about how economic downturns affect faculty hiring and the demographic makeup of hires. We examine the effects of the Great Recession on faculty hiring. That crisis walloped the U.S. academic labor market. Tenure-track hires in four-year colleges and universities declined by 25 percent between 2007 and 2009, recovering slowly through 2015. Hires of black, Hispanic, and Asian American faculty declined disproportionately. Public institutions and research-oriented institutions, which faced the greatest resource challenges and uncertainty about the future, made the biggest cuts in the hiring of people of color. Our findings suggest that financial uncertainty led to a reversal in progress on faculty diversity. Faculty and administrators making hiring decisions in the years following the COVID-19 crisis should be aware of this pattern.
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Kwan Woo Kim: Department of Sociology, Harvard University
E-mail: kwanwookim@fas.harvard.edu

Alexandra Kalev: Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Tel Aviv University
E-mail: akalev@tauex.tau.ac.il

Frank Dobbin: Department of Sociology, Harvard University
E-mail: frank_dobbin@harvard.edu

Gal Deutsch: Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Tel Aviv University
E-mail: galdeutsch@mail.tau.ac.il

Acknowledgments: We thank the National Science Foundation (DGE-1444586) and Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (2013-10-26, G-2019-12369) for funding. Direct correspondence to KwanWoo Kim, Department of Sociology, Harvard University: kwanwookim@fas.harvard.edu.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Kim, Kwan Woo, Alexandra Kalev, Frank Dobbin, and Gal Deutsch. 2021. “Crisis and Uncertainty: Did the Great Recession Reduce the Diversity of New Faculty?” Sociological Science 8: 308-324.
  • Received: June 11, 2021
  • Accepted: July 3, 2021
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Sarah Soule
  • DOI: 10.15195/v8.a15


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Estimating Homophily in Social Networks Using Dyadic Predictions

By on August 2, 2021 in Articles

George Berry, Antonio Sirianni, Ingmar Weber, Jisun An, Michael Macy

Sociological Science August 2, 2021
10.15195/v8.a14

Abstract

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Predictions of node categories are commonly used to estimate homophily and other relational properties in networks. However, little is known about the validity of using predictions for this task. We show that estimating homophily in a network is a problem of predicting categories of dyads (edges) in the graph. Homophily estimates are unbiased when predictions of dyad categories are unbiased. Node-level prediction models, such as the use of names to classify ethnicity or gender, do not generally produce unbiased predictions of dyad categories and therefore produce biased homophily estimates. Bias comes from three sources: sampling bias, correlation between model errors and node degree, and correlation between node-level model errors along dyads. We examine three methods for estimating homophily: predicting node categories, predicting dyad categories, and a hybrid “ego–alter” approach. This analysis indicates that only the dyadic prediction approach is unbiased, whereas the node-level approach produces both high bias and high overall error. We find that node-level classification performance is not a reliable indicator of accuracy for homophily. Although this article focuses on a particular version of homophily, results generalize to heterophilous cases and other dyadic measures. We conclude with suggestions for research design. Code for this article is available at https://github.com/georgeberry/autocorr.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

George Berry: Department of Sociology, Cornell University
E-mail: geb97@cornell.edu

Antonio Sirianni: Department of Sociology, Dartmouth College
E-mail: antonio.d.sirianni@dartmouth.edu

Ingmar Weber: Qatar Computing Research Institute
E-mail: iweber@hbku.edu.qa

Jisun An: School of Computer and Information Systems, Singapore Management University
E-mail: jisun.an@acm.org

Michael Macy: Department of Sociology, Cornell University
E-mail: mwm14@cornell.edu

Acknowledgments: We thank Thomas Davidson, Mario Molina, Pablo Barberá, Christopher Cameron, Rebecca A. Johnson, Benjamin Cornwell, and Steven Strogatz; participants in the 2020 American Sociological Association section on Mathematical Sociology; the members of the Cornell Social Dynamics Lab; and the members of the Dartmouth Junior Faculty Writing Group for helpful comments and discussions.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Berry, George, Antonio Sirianni, Ingmar Weber, Jisun An, and Michael Macy. 2021. “Estimating Homophily in Social Networks Using Dyadic Predictions.” Sociological Science 8: 285-307.
  • Received: January 24, 2021
  • Accepted: April 4, 2021
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Filiz Garip
  • DOI: 10.15195/v8.a14


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Direct and Indirect Effects of Grandparent Education on Grandchildren's Cognitive Development: The Role of Parental Cognitive Ability

By on July 26, 2021 in Articles

Markus Klein, Michael Kühhirt

Sociological Science July 26, 2021
10.15195/v8.a13

Abstract

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The social stratification literature is inconclusive about whether there is a direct effect of grandparent resources on grandchildren’s educational outcomes net of parental characteristics. Some of this heterogeneity may be due to differences in omitted variable bias at the parental level. Our article accounts for a more extensive set of parent characteristics and explores the mediating role of parental cognitive ability in more detail. It further tackles methodological challenges (treatmentinduced mediator–outcome confounders, treatment–mediator interaction) in assessing any direct influences of grandparents by using a regression-with-residuals approach. Using the 1970 British Cohort Study, our results show that the direct effect of grandparent education on grandchildren’s verbal and numerical ability is small and statistically nonsignificant. Parental cognitive ability alone can account for more than two-thirds (numerical ability) or half (verbal ability) of the overall grandparent effect. These findings stress the importance of cognitive ability for intergenerational social mobility processes.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Markus Klein: School of Education, University of Strathclyde
E-mail: markus.klein@strath.ac.uk

Michael Kühhirt: Institute of Sociology and Social Psychology, University of Cologne, and Department of Social Sciences, Goethe-University Frankfurt
E-mail: michael.kuehhirt@uni-koeln.de

Acknowledgments: The authors gratefully acknowledge the participants in the 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70) for providing their information; the Centre for Longitudinal Studies at the Institute of Education, University of London, for collecting and managing the data; the Economic and Social Research Council for funding BCS70; and the UK Data Service for storing the data and making them available. Earlier versions of this research were presented at the International Sociological Association (ISA) World Congress in 2018 and the ISA RC28 Spring Meeting in 2021.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Klein, Markus, and Michael Kühhirt. 2021. “Direct and Indirect Effects of Grandparent Education on Grandchildren’s Cognitive Development: The Role of Parental Cognitive Ability.” Sociological Science 8:265-284.
  • Received: May 24, 2021
  • Accepted: June 22, 2021
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Richard Breen
  • DOI: 10.15195/v8.a13


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