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Racial and Gender Disparities among Evicted Americans

By on December 16, 2020 in Articles

Peter Hepburn, Renee Louis, Matthew Desmond

Sociological Science December 16, 2020
10.15195/v7.a27

Abstract
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Drawing on millions of court records of eviction cases filed between 2012 and 2016 in 39 states, this study documents the racial and gender demographics of America’s evicted population. Black renters received a disproportionate share of eviction filings and experienced the highest rates of eviction filing and eviction judgment. Black and Latinx female renters faced higher eviction rates than their male counterparts. Black and Latinx renters were also more likely to be serially filed against for eviction at the same address. These findings represent the most comprehensive investigation to date of racial and gender disparities among evicted renters in the United States.
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Peter Hepburn: Department of Sociology & Anthropology, Rutgers University-Newark
E-mail: peter.hepburn@rutgers.edu

Renee Louis: Department of Sociology, Princeton University
E-mail: reneel@princeton.edu

Matthew Desmond: Department of Sociology, Princeton University
E-mail: matthew.desmond@princeton.edu

Acknowledgments: Members of the Eviction Lab at Princeton University offered valuable feedback on an early draft of this article. Sandra Park of the American Civil Liberties Union provided guidance on the structure of disparate impact claims and the Fair Housing Act. The Eviction Lab is funded by the JPB, Gates, and Ford Foundations as well as the C3.ai Digital Transformation Institute and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. Research reported in this publication was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) under award number P2CHD047879. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not represent the official views of the NIH.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Hepburn, Peter, Renee Louis, and Matthew Desmond. 2020. “Racial and Gender Disparities among Evicted Americans.” Sociological Science 7: 649-662.
  • Received: September 21, 2020
  • Accepted: November 14, 2020
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Kim Weeden
  • DOI: 10.15195/v7.a27


2

Threshold Models of Collective Behavior II: The Predictability Paradox and Spontaneous Instigation

By on December 8, 2020 in Articles

Michael W. Macy, Anna Evtushenko

Sociological Science December 8, 2020
10.15195/v7.a26

Abstract
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Collective behavior can be notoriously hard to predict. We revisited a possible explanation suggested by Granovetter’s classic threshold model: collective behavior can unexpectedly fail, despite a group’s strong interest in the outcome, because of the sensitivity of cascades to small random perturbations in group composition and the distribution of thresholds. Paradoxically, we found that a small amount of randomness in individual behavior can make collective behavior less sensitive to these perturbations and therefore more predictable. We also examined conditions in which collective behavior unexpectedly succeeds despite the group’s weak interest in the outcome. In groups with an otherwise intractable start-up problem, individual randomness can lead to spontaneous instigation, making outcomes more sensitive to the strength of collective interests and therefore more predictable. These effects of chance behavior become much more pronounced as group size increases. Although randomness is often assumed to be a theoretically unimportant residual category, our findings point to the need to bring individual idiosyncrasy back into the study of collective behavior.
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Michael W. Macy: Department of Sociology and Department of Information Science, Cornell University
E-mail: mwm14@cornell.edu

Anna Evtushenko: Department of Information Science, Cornell University
E-mail: ae392@cornell.edu

Acknowledgments: We thank Jon Kleinberg, Dana Warmsley, and Danielle Toupo for contributing ideas and technical suggestions. This research was supported by the National Science Foundation (SES 1756822, “Testing Unpredictability with MultipleWorlds”). Correspondence should be sent to Michael W. Macy, Department of Sociology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Macy, Michael W., and Anna Evtushenko. 2020. “Threshold Models of Collective Behavior II: The Predictability Paradox and Spontaneous Instigation.” Sociological Science 7: 628-648.
  • Received: October 18, 2020
  • Accepted: November 1, 2020
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Olav Sorenson
  • DOI: 10.15195/v7.a26


0

The Inheritance of Race Revisited: Childhood Wealth and Income and Black–White Disadvantages in Adult Life Chances

By on December 1, 2020 in Articles

David Brady, Ryan Finnigan, Ulrich Kohler, Joscha Legewie

Sociological Science December 1, 2020
10.15195/v7.a25

Abstract
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1 Citation


Vast racial inequalities continue to prevail across the United States and are closely linked to economic resources. One particularly prominent argument contends that childhood wealth accounts for black–white (BW) disadvantages in life chances. This article analyzes how much childhood wealth and childhood income mediate BW disadvantages in adult life chances with Panel Study of Income Dynamics and Cross-National Equivalent File data on children from the 1980s and 1990s who were 30+ years old in 2015. Compared with previous research, we exploit longer panel data, more comprehensively assess adult life chances with 18 outcomes, and measure income and wealth more rigorously. We find large BW disadvantages in most outcomes. Childhood wealth and income mediate a substantial share of most BW disadvantages, although there are several significant BW disadvantages even after adjusting for childhood wealth and income. The evidence mostly contradicts the prominent claim that childhood wealth is more important than childhood income. Indeed, the analyses mostly show that childhood income explains more of BW disadvantages and has larger standardized coefficients than childhood wealth. We also show how limitations in prior wealth research explain why our conclusions differ. Replication with the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and a variety of robustness checks support these conclusions.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

David Brady: School of Public Policy, University of California, Riverside, and WZB Berlin Social Science Center
E-mail: dbrady@ucr.edu

Ryan Finnigan: Department of Sociology, University of California, Davis
E-mail: rfinnigan@ucdavis.edu

Ulrich Kohler: Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, University of Potsdam
E-mail: ukohler@uni-potsdam.de

Joscha Legewie: Department of Sociology, Harvard University
E-mail: jlegewie@fas.harvard.edu

Acknowledgments: Direct correspondence to David Brady, School of Public Policy, University of California, INTS 4133, 900 University Ave., Riverside, CA 92521; email:dbrady@ucr.edu. The last three authors are listed alphabetically and contributed equally. This article benefitted from presentations at the New York University–Abu Dhabi Social Research and Public Policy seminar; University of California, Santa Barbara, Broom Center for Demography; the PAA meetings; the University of California Riverside Applied/Development Economics Brown Bag; theWorking Groups on Stratification, Inequality, and Mobility and Movements, Organizations, and Markets in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles; and the WZBUSP Writing Workshop. We appreciate suggestions from Sociological Science reviewers and editor Jesper Sorensen, Thomas Biegert, Agnes Blome, Irene Boeckmann, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Tyson Brown, Mareike Buenning, Rich Carpiano, Joe Cummins, Chenoa Flippen, Sanjiv Gupta, Martin Hällsten, Lena Hipp, Sabine Huebgen, Bob Kaestner, Sasha Killewald, Nadia Kim, Matthew Mahutga, Fabian Pfeffer, Emanuela Struffolino, Florencia Torche, Zachary Van Winkle, Andres Villarreal, and Hanna Zagel.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Brady, David, Ryan Finnigan, Ulrich Kohler, and Joscha Legewie. 2020. “The Inheritance of Race Revisited: Childhood Wealth and Income and Black–White Disadvantages in Adult Life Chances.” Sociological Science 7: 599-627.
  • Received: August 7, 2020
  • Accepted: September 24, 2020
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Kim Weeden
  • DOI: 10.15195/v7.a25


1

Who Supports Global Cooperation? Cooperative Internationalism at the Intersection of Social Class and Economic Development

By on November 23, 2020 in Articles

Brandon Gorman, Charles Seguin

Sociological Science November 23, 2020
10.15195/v7.a24

Abstract
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Throughout the twentieth century, the world has seen a rapid increase in global social, economic, and political integration. According to many studies, attitudes toward international organizations and international cooperation have also grown more positive, particularly among elites and in the affluent, densely connected countries of the global core. Using survey responses on 18 different questions from six cross-national attitude surveys, we find that “cooperative-internationalist” attitudes, though widely popular, are no more common in the global core than on the periphery. Furthermore, we find elites are more likely to hold proglobal attitudes than non-elites only in wealthy core countries. These results indicate that scholars may have incorrectly assumed that (modest) class differences in cooperative-internationalist attitudes in Western countries generalize globally, both within and between countries. We conclude with a call to theorize cooperative internationalism as a function of how different groups of people interpret their own costs and benefits of global cooperation.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Brandon Gorman: Department of Sociology, University at Albany, SUNY
E-mail: bgorman@albany.edu

Charles Seguin: Department of Sociology and Criminology, Pennsylvania State University
E-mail: czs792@psu.edu

Acknowledgments: The authors are listed in alphabetical order; each contributed equally. We thank Daniel Laurison, Eric Schoon, and members of the Culture and Politics Workshop
at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for comments and guidance on earlier drafts. Mayuko Nakatsuka and Elise Wolff provided able research assistance for this project.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Gorman, Brandon, and Charles Seguin. 2020. “Who Supports Global Cooperation? Cooperative Internationalism at the Intersection of Social Class and Economic Development.” Sociological Science 7: 570-598.
  • Received: August 27, 2020
  • Accepted: October 14, 2020
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Delia Baldassarri
  • DOI: 10.15195/v7.a24


0

Concept Class Analysis: A Method for Identifying Cultural Schemas in Texts

By on November 9, 2020 in Articles

Marshall A. Taylor, Dustin S. Stoltz

Sociological Science November 9, 2020
10.15195/v7.a23

Abstract
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Recent methodological work at the intersection of culture, cognition, and computational methods has drawn attention to how cultural schemas can be “recovered” from social survey data. Defining cultural schemas as slowly learned, implicit, and unevenly distributed relational memory structures, researchers show how schemas—or rather, the downstream consequences of people drawing upon them—can be operationalized and measured from domain-specific survey modules. Respondents can then be sorted into “classes” on the basis of the schema to which their survey response patterns best align. In this article, we extend this “schematic class analysis” method to text data. We introduce concept class analysis (CoCA): a hybrid model that combines word embeddings and correlational class analysis to group documents across a corpus by the similarity of schemas recovered from them. We introduce the CoCA model, illustrate its validity and utility using simulations, and conclude with considerations for future research and applications.
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Marshall A. Taylor: Department of Sociology, New Mexico State University
E-mail: mtaylor2@nmsu.edu

Dustin S. Stoltz: Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Lehigh University
E-mail: dss219@lehigh.edu

Acknowledgments: A replication repository for this article can be found at: https://github.com/Marshall-Soc/CoCA. We thank Jesper Sørensen, the deputy editor, and the consulting editor for their thoughtful comments on this article.

  • Citation: Taylor, Marshall A., and Dustin S. Stoltz. 2020. “Concept Class Analysis: A Method for Identifying Cultural Schemas in Texts.” Sociological Science 7:544-569.
  • Received: July 31, 2020
  • Accepted: October 4, 2020
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Gabriel Rossman
  • DOI: 10.15195/v7.a23


0

Microaggressions in the United States

By on November 2, 2020 in Articles

Kiara Wyndham Douds, Michael Hout

Sociological Science November 2, 2020
10.15195/v7.a22

Abstract
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“Microaggressions” is the term scholars and cultural commentators use to describe the ways that racism and other systems of oppression are upheld in everyday interactions. Although prior research has documented the types of microaggressions that individuals experience, we have lacked representative data on the prevalence of microaggressions in the general population. We introduce and evaluate five new survey items from the 2018 General Social Survey intended to capture five types of microaggressions. We assess the prevalence of each microaggression as well as a constructed microaggression scale across a key set of sociodemographic characteristics. We find that black Americans experience more microaggressions than other racialized groups, twice the rate of the general public for some types. Younger people report more microaggressions than older people. Women are more likely to report some types of microaggressions, and men others. Experiencing microaggressions is associated with an array of negative physical and mental health outcomes.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Kiara Wyndham Douds: Department of Sociology, New York University
E-mail: kiara.douds@nyu.edu

Michael Hout: Department of Sociology, New York University
E-mail: mikehout@nyu.edu

Acknowledgments: This research was conducted with institutional support from New
York University and no external funding.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Douds, Kiara Wyndham, and Michael Hout. 2020. “Microaggressions in the United States.” Sociological Science 7: 528-543.
  • Received: September 11, 2020
  • Accepted: September 25, 2020
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Kim Weeden
  • DOI: 10.15195/v7.a22


0

Sexual Identity Disclosure among Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Individuals

By on October 19, 2020 in Articles

Long Doan, Trenton D. Mize

Sociological Science October 19, 2020
10.15195/v7.a21

Abstract
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1 Citation


Most research on sexual prejudice explicitly or implicitly assumes that an individual’s sexual orientation identity is known to observers. However, there has been little large-scale survey evidence examining differential rates of disclosure among lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) individuals, and there remains much to be studied as to why and when LGB individuals choose to disclose their sexual identity to others. Using data from a nationally representative sample of LGB Americans (N=1,085), we assess the contexts and conditions under which LGB individuals disclose their sexual identities. Results show that bisexual women and men are significantly less likely to disclose their sexual identity across several important social domains, such as family and the workplace. This disclosure gap is partially explained by measures of identity commitment but surprisingly not by measures of perceived social acceptance. We discuss implications of these findings for sexuality and identity research.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Long Doan: Department of Sociology, University of Maryland
E-mail: longdoan@umd.edu

Trenton D. Mize: Department of Sociology and Advanced Methodologies, Purdue University
E-mail: tmize@purdue.edu

Acknowledgments: We thank Brian Powell, Lisa R. Miller, and Brian T. Connor for excellent suggestions on various drafts of this paper. Parts of this paper were presented at the Indiana University Social Psychology, Health, and the Life Course seminar and the 2017 ASA Meetings. We thank audience members in both venues for their valuable comments. We are also grateful to the Pew Research Center for collecting the data used in our analyses. Partial funding for open access was provided by the UMD Libraries’ Open Access Publishing Fund. Opinions, findings, and ‘conclusions presented in this paper are ours and do not necessarily represent the views of any of the organizations or individuals above.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Doan, Long, and Trenton D. Mize. 2020. “Sexual Identity Disclosure among Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Individuals.” Sociological Science 7: 504-527.
  • Received: August 19, 2020
  • Accepted: September 19, 2020
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Gabriel Rossman
  • DOI: 10.15195/v7.a21


1

Generalized Markovian Quantity Distribution Systems: Social Science Applications

By on October 8, 2020 in Articles

Noah E. Friedkin, Anton V. Proskurnikov

Sociological Science October 8, 2020
10.15195/v7.a20

Abstract
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We propose a model of Markovian quantity flows on connected networks that relaxes several properties of the standard compartmental Markov process. The motivation of our generalization are social science applications of the standard model that do not comport with its steady state predictions. The proposed generalization relaxes the predictions that every node belonging to the same nontrivial strong component of a network must acquire the same fraction of its members’ initial quantities and that the sink component(s) of the network must absorb all of the system’s available initial quantity. For example, when applied to refugee flows from a nation in chaos to other nations on a network with one or more sink nations, the standard model predicts that all the refugees will be eventually located in the sink(s) of the network and none that will permanently locate themselves in the nations along the paths to the sink(s). We illustrate this and several other social science applications to which our proposed model is applicable.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Noah E. Friedkin: Department of Sociology and the Center for Control, Dynamical Systems, and Computation, University of California, Santa Barbara
E-mail: friedkin@soc.ucsb.edu

Anton V. Proskurnikov: Politecnico di Torino, Turin, Italy, and the Institute for Problems of Mechanical Engineering of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, Russia
E-mail: anton.p.1982@ieee.org

  • Citation: Friedkin, Noah E., and Anton V. Proskurnikov. 2020. “Generalized Markovian Quantity Distribution Systems: Social Science Applications.” Sociological Science 7: 487-503.
  • Received: September 3, 2020
  • Accepted: September 10, 2020
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Olav Sorenson
  • DOI: 10.15195/v7.a20


0

Interactions between Polygenic Scores and Environments: Methodological and Conceptual Challenges

By on September 21, 2020 in Articles

Benjamin W. Domingue, Sam Trejo, Emma Armstrong-Carter, Elliot M. Tucker-Drob

Sociological Science September 21, 2020
10.15195/v7.a19

Abstract
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Interest in the study of gene–environment interaction has recently grown due to the sudden availability of molecular genetic data—in particular, polygenic scores—in many long-running longitudinal studies. Identifying and estimating statistical interactions comes with several analytic and inferential challenges; these challenges are heightened when used to integrate observational genomic and social science data. We articulate some of these key challenges, provide new perspectives on the study of gene–environment interactions, and end by offering some practical guidance for conducting research in this area. Given the sudden availability of well-powered polygenic scores, we anticipate a substantial increase in research testing for interaction between such scores and environments. The issues we discuss, if not properly addressed, may impact the enduring scientific value of gene–environment interaction studies.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Benjamin W. Domingue: Graduate School of Education, Stanford University
E-mail: bdomingu@stanford.edu

Sam Trejo: La Follette School of Public Affairs & Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin–Madison
E-mail: sam.trejo@wisc.edu

Emma Armstrong-Carter: Graduate School of Education, Stanford University
E-mail: emmaac@stanford.edu

Elliot M. Tucker-Drob: Department of Psychology and Population Research Center, University of Texas at Austin
E-mail: tuckerdrob@utexas.edu

Acknowledgments: This work has been supported by the Russell Sage Foundation and the Ford Foundation (grant 96-17-04). S.T. was supported by the National Science Foundation (grant DGE-1656518) and the Institute of Education Sciences (grant R305B140009). E.M.T.-D. was supported by the National Institutes of Health (grants R01AG054628, R01MH120219, and R01HD083613) and by the Jacobs Foundation. Any opinions expressed are those of the authors alone and should not be construed as representing the opinions of any foundation. The authors would like to thank Jason Boardman and Jason Fletcher for comments on an early draft of this article.

  • Citation: Domingue, Benjamin W., Sam Trejo, Emma Armstrong-Carter, and Elliot M. Tucker-Drob. 2020. “Interactions between Polygenic Scores and Environments: Methodological and Conceptual Challenges.” Sociological Science 7: 465-486.
  • Received: June 5, 2020
  • Accepted: August 24, 2020
  • Editors: Olav Sorenson
  • DOI: 10.15195/v7.a19


0

Bounded Solidarity in Cross-National Encounters: Individuals Share More with Others from Poor Countries but Trust Them Less

By on September 8, 2020 in Articles

Felix Bader, Marc Keuschnigg

Sociological Science September 8, 2020
10.15195/v7.a17

Abstract
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Globalization makes cross-national encounters increasingly common. Hesitant cooperation across national, ethnic, and cultural boundaries, however, undercuts the microlevel stabilizers of global integration and, most importantly, the willingness to share with and place trust in members of other social groups. In a 109-country online experiment, we convey information on interaction partners’ nationalities to indicate membership in a broader in- or out-group, cultural distance, and perceived material neediness—or status differences more generally—to 1,674 participants in incentivized games of generosity (dictator game) and trust (trust game). We find consistent evidence for in-group favoritism and—against this benchmark—demonstrate that individuals across the globe share more with but place less trust in interaction partners from poor countries and that cultural distance moderates this status effect.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Felix Bader: Department of Social Sciences, Technical University of Kaiserslautern
E-mail: felix.bader@sowi.uni-kl.de

Marc Keuschnigg: Institute for Analytical Sociology, Linköping University
E-mail: marc.keuschnigg@liu.se

Acknowledgments: We thank Hanna Nau, Leona Przechomski, and Fabian Thiel for excellent research assistance and Amelie Aidenberger, Johanna Gereke, Wojtek Przepiorka, and Heiko Rauhut for discussions. This research received funding from the German Research Foundation (KE 2020/2-1). M.K. further acknowledges the Swedish Research Council (2018-05170). Address correspondence to felix.bader@sowi.uni-kl.de.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Bader, Felix, and Marc Keuschnigg. 2020. “Bounded Solidarity in Cross-National Encounters: Individuals Share More with Others from Poor Countries but Trust Them Less.” Sociological Science 7: 415-432.
  • Received: June 5, 2020
  • Accepted: July 22, 2020
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Delia Baldassarri
  • DOI: 10.15195/v7.a17


0

Signs of the End of the Paradox? Cohort Shifts in Smoking and Obesity and the Hispanic Life Expectancy Advantage

By on August 31, 2020 in Articles

Jennifer Van Hook, Michelle L. Frisco, Carlyn E. Graham

Sociological Science August 31, 2020
10.15195/v7.a16

Abstract
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Hispanics’ paradoxical life expectancy advantage over whites has largely been attributed to Hispanics’ lower smoking prevalence. Yet across birth cohorts, smoking prevalence has declined for whites and Hispanics, and Hispanics’ obesity prevalence has increased substantially. Our analysis uses data from the 1989 to 2014 National Health Interview Survey and Linked Mortality files to investigate whether these trends could lead Hispanics to lose their comparative mortality advantage. Simulations suggest that foreign-born Hispanics’ life expectancy advantage over whites is likely to persist because cohort trends in smoking and obesity largely offset each other. However, U.S.-born Hispanics’ life expectancy advantage over whites is likely to diminish or disappear entirely as the 1970s and 1980s birth cohorts age due to increases in obesity prevalence and the relatively high mortality risks of those who are obese. Results have important implications for understanding the future of immigrants’ health advantages and ethnic disparities in health.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Jennifer Van Hook: Department of Sociology, Penn State University
E-mail: jxv21@psu.edu

Michelle L. Frisco: Department of Sociology, Penn State University
E-mail: mlf112@psu.edu

Carlyn E. Graham: Department of Sociology, Penn State University
E-mail: ceg248@psu.edu

Acknowledgments: We are grateful to Virginia Chang for helpful comments in her role as a discussant of this article at the 2019 meeting of the Population Association of America. We also acknowledge assistance provided by the Population Research Institute at Penn State University, which is supported by an infrastructure grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (P2CHD041025).

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Van Hook, Jennifer, Michelle L. Frisco, and Carlyn E. Graham. 2020. “Signs of the End of the Paradox? Cohort Shifts in Smoking and Obesity and the Hispanic Life Expectancy Advantage.” Sociological Science 7: 391-414.
  • Received: June 13, 2020
  • Accepted: July 20, 2020
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Sarah Soule
  • DOI: 10.15195/v7.a16


0

What Age Is in a Name?

By on August 24, 2020 in Articles

Sasha Shen Johfre

Sociological Science August 24, 2020
10.15195/v7.a15

Abstract
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Social scientists often describe fictional people in survey stimuli using first names. However, which name a researcher chooses may elicit nonrandom impressions, which could confound results. Although past research has examined how names signal race and class, very little has examined whether names signal age, which is a highly salient status characteristic involved in person construal. I test the perceived demographics of 228 American names. I find that most strongly signal age, with older-sounding names much more likely to be perceived as white than as black. Furthermore, participants’ perceptions of the age of a name poorly match with the true average birth year of people with that name, suggesting that researchers cannot simply use birth records as a proxy for perceived age. To assist researchers in name selection, I provide a set of candidate names that strongly signal a matrix of combined age, race, and gender categories.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Sasha Shen Johfre: Department of Sociology, Stanford University
E-mail: sjohfre@stanford.edu

Acknowledgments: Many thanks to David Pedulla, Jeremy Freese, Amy Johnson, Hesu Yoon, Jennifer Freyd, and Hannah Johfre Shen for their very helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article. This research was made possible through financial support from the Stanford Laboratory for Social Research and the Stanford Center on Longevity.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Johfre, Sasha Shen. 2020. “What Age Is in a Name?” Sociological Science 7: 367-390.
  • Received: May 16, 2020
  • Accepted: July 2, 2020
  • Editors: Gabriel Rossman, Arnout van de Rijt
  • DOI: 10.15195/v7.a15


0

Pretrial Detention and the Costs of System Overreach for Employment and Family Life

By on August 17, 2020 in Articles

Sara Wakefield, Lars Højsgaard Andersen

Sociological Science August 17, 2020
10.15195/v7.a14

Abstract
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Using unique Danish register data that allow for comparisons across both conviction and incarceration status, this article analyzes the association between pretrial detention and work, family attachment, and recidivism. We find that pretrial detention may impose unique social costs, apart from conviction or additional punishments. Most notably, men who are detained pretrial experience poorer labor market trajectories than men who are convicted of a crime (but not incarcerated). Importantly, this result holds even for men who are detained pretrial but who are not convicted of the crime. Consistent with prior research, we also find that pretrial detention is unrelated to later family formation but might disrupt preexisting household arrangements. Finally, the associations between pretrial detention and work and family life are not counterbalanced by reductions in recidivism.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Sara Wakefield: School of Criminal Justice, Rutgers University, Newark
E-mail: sara.wakefield@rutgers.edu

Lars Højsgaard Andersen: ROCKWOOL Foundation Research Unit
E-mail: lha@rff.dk

Acknowledgments: We thank Robert Apel and Christopher Wildeman for helpful comments and the ROCKWOOL Foundation for their support of this research.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Wakefield, Sara, and Lars Højsgaard Andersen. 2020. “Pretrial Detention and the Costs of System Overreach for Employment and Family Life.” Sociological Science 7: 342-366.
  • Received: April 18, 2020
  • Accepted: June 20, 2020
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Sarah Soule
  • DOI: 10.15195/v7.a14


0

The Influence of Changing Marginals on Measures of Inequality in Scholarly Citations: Evidence of Bias and a Resampling Correction

By on August 10, 2020 in Articles

Lanu Kim, Christopher Adolph, Jevin D. West, Katherine Stovel

Sociological Science August 10, 2020
10.15195/v7.a13

Abstract
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Scholars have debated whether changes in digital environments have led to greater concentration or dispersal of scientific citations, but this debate has paid little attention to how other changes in the publication environment may impact the commonly used measures of inequality. Using Monte Carlo experiments, we demonstrate that a variety of inequality measures—including the Gini coefficient, the Herfindahl-Hirschman index, and the percentage of articles ever cited—are substantially biased downward by increases in the total number of articles and citations. We propose and validate a resampling-based correction for this “marginals bias” and apply this correction to empirical data on scholarly citation distributions using Web of Science data covering four broad scientific fields (health, humanities, mathematics and the computer sciences, and the social sciences) from 1996 to 2014. We find that in each field the bulk of the apparent decline in citation inequality in recent years is an artifact of marginals bias, as are most apparent interfield differences in citation inequality. Researchers using inequality measures to compare citation distributions and other distributions with many cases at or near the zero-bound should interpret these metrics carefully and account for the influence of changing marginals.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Lanu Kim: Graduate School of Education, Stanford University
E-mail: lanu@stanford.edu

Christopher Adolph: Department of Political Science, University of Washington, Seattle
E-mail: cadolph@uw.edu

Jevin D. West: Information School, University of Washington, Seattle
E-mail: jevinw@uw.edu

Katherine Stovel: Department of Sociology, University of Washington, Seattle
E-mail: stovel@uw.edu

Acknowledgments: We thank Clarivate Analytics for providing the Web of Science data, and Elena Erosheva, Bas Hofstra, and Joe Cho for helpful conversations. This research was supported by National Science Foundation grant #1735194, Katherine Stovel primary investigator, Jevin West co–primary investigator.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Kim, Lanu, Christopher Adolph, Jevin D. West, and Katherine Stovel. 2020. “The Influence of Changing Marginals on Measures of Inequality in Scholarly Citations: Evidence of Bias and a Resampling Correction.” Sociological Science 7: 314-341.
  • Received: June 16, 2020
  • Accepted: July 3, 2020
  • Editors: Arnout van de Rijt
  • DOI: 10.15195/v7.a13


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Status and Vocal Accommodation in Small Groups

By on August 3, 2020 in Articles

Joseph Dippong

Sociological Science August 3, 2020
10.15195/v7.a12

Abstract
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Sociological research on vocal dynamics demonstrates that as actors engage in conversation, their vocal frequencies tend to converge over time. Previous scholars have theorized that patterns of vocal accommodation serve as a mechanism through which speakers non-consciously communicate perceptions of each other’s relative status. In this article I discuss existing evidence linking vocal accommodation to status perceptions. Next, I report results from a laboratory experiment in which I test the proposed causal link between status and vocal accommodation by randomly assigning members of dyadic task groups to occupy either a higher or lower status position and assessing patterns of vocal accommodation. Results support the theorized causal relationship between group status structure and vocal accommodation. I argue that, as an unobtrusive and non-conscious indicator of status, vocal accommodation is a valuable, yet underused tool for assessing group status structures in a wide variety of situations and regarding many substantive sociological questions.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Joseph Dippong: Department of Sociology, University of North Carolina at Charlotte
E-mail: jdippong@uncc.edu

Acknowledgments: The research reported here was funded in whole under award W911NF-17-1-0008 from the U.S. Army Research Office/Army Research Laboratory. The views expressed are those of the author and should not be attributed to the Army Research Office/Army Research Laboratory.

  • Citation: Dippong, Joseph. 2020. “Status and Vocal Accommodation in Small Groups.” Sociological Science 7: 291-313.
  • Received: May 6, 2020
  • Accepted: June 8, 2020
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Mario Small
  • DOI: 10.15195/v7.a12


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Re-examining How Partner Co-presence and Multitasking Affect Parents’ Enjoyment of Childcare and Housework

By on July 28, 2020 in Articles

Allison Dunatchik, Svetlana Speight

Sociological Science July 28, 2020
10.15195/v7.a11

Abstract
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Partner co-presence and multitasking are two contextual characteristics of time use that are commonly theorized to affect parental well-being. Although partner co-presence is often assumed to promote greater well-being, multitasking is frequently conceptualized as an indicator of time pressure. This study re-examines the relationship between these contextual characteristics and parents’ enjoyment of childcare and housework. Using data from the U.K. Time Use Survey (2014–2015), our results indicate that associations between partner co-presence, multitasking, and enjoyment of unpaid work vary substantively depending on the type of task carried out. They also vary by gender of the parent. Mothers reported greater enjoyment of housework and interactive childcare with a partner present; however, this association did not extend to other types of childcare. Fathers’ enjoyment varied little by partner co-presence. Similarly, multitasking was a varied experience depending on the types of activities parents combined. In some instances, combining unpaid work activities (e.g., housework with childcare) was associated with lower enjoyment; however, combining unpaid work with leisure was often associated with greater enjoyment. These results add nuance to prior research on how the contextual characteristics of time use relate to parental well-being and suggest that prior conceptualizations of partner co-presence and multitasking are incomplete.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Allison Dunatchik: The University of Pennsylvania, Department of Sociology
E-mail: adunat@sas.upenn.edu

Svetlana Speight: The National Centre for Social Research
E-mail: svetlana.speight@natcen.ac.uk

Acknowledgments: This research was funded by a grant from the Economic and Social Research Council’s Secondary Data Analysis Initiative ES/R004854/1. We are grateful to Professor Oriel Sullivan for her comments on previous versions of this manuscript, which have greatly improved the article. We would also like to thank Robert Wishart, who provided analytical advice and expertise. Finally, we thank members of the project Advisory Group for their input and support throughout the project.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Dunatchik, Allison, and Svetlana Speight. 2020. “Re-examining How Partner Copresence and Multitasking Affect Parents’ Enjoyment of Childcare and Housework.” Sociological Science 7: 268-290.
  • Received: March 1, 2020
  • Accepted: May 24, 2020
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Mario Small
  • DOI: 10.15195/v7.a11


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It's All about the Parents: Inequality Transmission across Three Generations in Sweden

By on June 1, 2020 in Articles

Per Engzell, Carina Mood, Jan O. Jonsson

Sociological Science June 1, 2020
10.15195/v7.a10

Abstract
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A recent literature studies the role of grandparents in status transmission. Results have been mixed, and theoretical contributions highlight biases that complicate the interpretation of these studies. We use newly harmonized income tax records on more than 700,000 Swedish lineages to establish four empirical facts. First, a model that includes both mothers and fathers and takes a multidimensional view of stratification reduces the residual three-generation association in our population to a trivial size. Second, data on fathers’ cognitive ability show that even extensive controls for standard socioeconomic variables fail to remove omitted variable bias. Third, the common finding that grandparents compensate poor parental resources can be attributed to greater difficulty of observing parent status accurately at the lower end of the distribution. Fourth, the lower the data quality, and the less detailed the model, the greater is the size of the estimated grandparent coefficient. Future work on multigenerational mobility should pay less attention to the size and significance of this association, which depends heavily on arbitrary sample and specification characteristics, and go on to establish a set of more robust descriptive facts.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Per Engzell: Nuffield College and Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science, University of Oxford; Swedish Institute for Social Research, Stockholm University
E-mail: per.engzell@nuffield.ox.ac.uk

Carina Mood: Swedish Institute for Social Research, Stockholm University; Institute for Futures Studies, Stockholm
E-mail: carina.mood@sofi.su.se

Jan O. Jonsson: Nuffield College and Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science, University of Oxford; Swedish Institute for Social Research, Stockholm University; Institute for Futures Studies, Stockholm
E-mail: janne.jonsson@nuffield.ox.ac.uk

Acknowledgments: This work received funding from the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life, and Welfare (FORTE), grant no. 2016-07099. The first author also acknowledges support from Nuffield College and the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science, The Leverhulme Trust. Previous versions of this study have been circulated under the title “Putting the Grandparents to Rest: False Positives in Multigenerational Mobility Research” and presented at the Swedish Institute for Social Research, the European Consortium for Sociological Research (ECSR) Conference in Paris 2018, and the Population Association of America (PAA) Annual Meeting in Austin 2019. We thank participants at these occasions, in particular Robert Erikson, Sara Kjellsson, Simon Hjalmarsson, Are Skeie Hermansen, and Florencia Torche, for helpful comments and criticism. Thanks also to the Editor, Deputy Editor, and Consulting Editor at Sociological Science who handled our manuscript. Any errors remain our own.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Engzell, Per, Carina Mood, and Jan O. Jonsson. 2020. “It’s All about the Parents: Inequality Transmission across Three Generations in Sweden.” Sociological Science 7: 242-267.
  • Received: March 24, 2020
  • Accepted: April 13, 2020
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Kim Weeden
  • DOI: 10.15195/v7.a10


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