Navigation

You are here: Home

Linking Self-Employment Before and After Migration: Migrant Selection and Human Capital

By on November 20, 2019 in Articles

Andrey Tibajev

Sociological Science, November 20, 2019
10.15195/v6.a23

Abstract
PDF (2347 views)
0 Citation


In linking self-employment before and after migration, the often-cited home-country self-employment hypothesis states that immigrants who come from countries with large self-employment sectors are themselves more likely to have been self-employed and hence have a higher propensity for self-employment in their destination country. Using Swedish data, this study shows that the first part of the hypothesis, that origin-country average rates of self-employment can be used to approximate individual experience, is false; but the second part, the connection between self-employment before and after migration, is true if the measurement is done on the individual level. Migrants who have been self-employed before migration accumulate entrepreneurial human capital, making future self-employment a more desirable labor market alternative vis-à-vis wage employment. But because of migrant selection, this association cannot be captured by aggregate measures, and this is the reason why the home-country self-employment hypothesis, although intuitive, has underperformed in previous empirical tests.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Andrey Tibajev: Institute for Research on Migration, Ethnicity and Society, Linköping University
E-mail: andti116@student.liu.se

Acknowledgements: I am grateful for insightful comments from Moa Bursell, Martin Hällsten, Karin Krifors, Olav Nygård, Ognjen Obucina and Zoran Slavnic as well as the conference participants of the European Consortium for Sociological Research Annual Conference in Paris and International Migration, Integration, and Social Cohesion Annual Conference in Barcelona.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Tibajev, Andrey. 2019. “Linking Self-Employment Before and After Migration: Migrant Selection and Human Capital.” Sociological Science 6: 609-634.
  • Received: October 7, 2019
  • Accepted: October 16, 2019
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Olav Sorenson
  • DOI: 10.15195/v6.a23


0

Individual and Social Genomic Contributions to Educational and Neighborhood Attainments: Geography, Selection, and Stratification in the United States

By on November 13, 2019 in Articles

Thomas Laidley, Justin Vinneau, Jason D. Boardman

Sociological Science, November 13, 2019
10.15195/v6.a22

Abstract
PDF (2533 views)
0 Citation


Research on neighborhood effects draws suggestive links between local spatial environments and a range of social, economic, and public health outcomes. Here, we consider the potential role of genetics in the geography of social stratification in the United States using genomic data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health. We find that those with genotypes related to higher educational attainment sort into neighborhoods that are better educated and have higher population densities, both descriptively and using formal school and sibling fixed-effects models. We identify four mechanisms through which this geographic sorting on genetic endowment can magnify social stratification: assortative mating, social-genetic effects, gene-by-environment interactions, and gene–by–social-genetic interactions. We examine the presence of the latter three in our data, finding provisional yet suggestive evidence for social-genetic effects that putatively amount to about one-third of the influence of one’s own genomic profile. We find no evidence, however, for the presence of interactions between environments and individual genetic background. Collectively, these findings highlight the potential for geographic sorting on genotype to emerge both as a key methodological concern in population genetics and social science research and also a potentially overlooked dimension of social stratification worthy of future study.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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

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

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

Acknowledgements: This research uses data from The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), a program project directed by Kathleen Mullan Harris and designed by J. Richard Udry, Peter S. Bearman, and Kathleen Mullan Harris at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and funded by grant P01-HD31921 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, with cooperative funding from 23 other federal agencies and foundations. Information on how to obtain the Add Health data files is available on the Add Health website (http://www.cpc.unc.edu/addhealth). Laidley and Vinneau acknowledge generous support from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant 5T32DA017637. This work has also benefited from research, administrative, and computing support provided by the University of Colorado Population Center (CUPC Project 2P2CHD066613-06) funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. We thank the editors for their feedback and guidance in preparing the manuscript as well as our colleagues at the Institute of Behavioral Science (IBS) and Institute for Behavioral Genetics (IBG) at the University of Colorado Boulder, who provided early feedback. Any remaining errors are ours alone. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily reflect the official views of the CUPC, NIH, IBS, IBG, or University of Colorado Boulder.

Supplemental Material

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


0

The Mere Mention of Asians in Affirmative Action

By on September 26, 2019 in Articles

Jennifer Lee, Van C. Tran

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

Abstract
PDF (6192 views)
2 Citation


Presumed competent, U.S. Asians evince exceptional educational outcomes but lack the cultural pedigree of elite whites that safeguard them from bias in the labor market. In spite of their nonwhite minority status, Asians also lack the legacy of disadvantage of blacks that make them eligible beneficiaries of affirmative action. Their labor market disadvantage coupled with their exclusion from affirmative action programs place Asians in a unique bind: do they support policies that give preferences to blacks but exclude them? Given their self- and group interests, this bind should make Asians unlikely to do so. We assess whether this is the case by comparing their attitudes to those of whites, blacks, and Hispanics. Drawing on a novel three-way framing experiment embedded in the 2016 National Asian American Survey, we document how the “mere mention of Asians” in affirmative action frames affects support for the preferential hiring and promotion of blacks. Support shifts in different ways among all groups depending on the mere mention of Asians as either victims of affirmative action alongside whites or as victims of discrimination alongside blacks. Moreover, among Asians, support for affirmative action differs significantly by immigrant generation: first-generation Asians express the weakest support.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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

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

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

Supplemental Material

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


2

A Large-Scale Test of Gender Bias in the Media

By on September 3, 2019 in Articles

Eran Shor, Arnout van de Rijt, Babak Fotouhi

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

Abstract
PDF (9930 views)
0 Citation


A large body of studies demonstrates that women continue to receive less media coverage than men do. Some attribute this difference to gender bias in media reporting—a systematic inclination toward male subjects. We propose that in order to establish the presence of media bias, one has to demonstrate that the news coverage of men is disproportional even after accounting for occupational inequalities and differences in public interest. We examine the coverage of more than 20,000 successful women and men from various social and occupational domains in more than 2,000 news sources as well as web searches for these individuals as a behavioral measure of interest. We find that when compared with similar-aged men from the same occupational strata, women enjoy greater public interest yet receive less media coverage.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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

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

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

Supplemental Material

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


0

Building Inequality: Housing Segregation and Income Segregation

By on August 7, 2019 in Articles

Ann Owens

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

Abstract
PDF (6826 views)
0 Citation


This article foregrounds housing in the study of residential segregation. The spatial configuration of housing determines the housing opportunities in each neighborhood, the backdrop against which households’ resources, preferences, and constraints play out. I use census and American Community Survey data to provide the first evidence of the extent of housing segregation by type and by cost at multiple geographic scales in large metropolitan areas in the United States from 1990 to 2014. Segregation between single- and multifamily homes and renter- and owner-occupied homes increased in most metropolitan areas, whereas segregation by cost declined. Housing segregation varies among metropolitan areas, across geographic scales, and over time, with consequences for income segregation. Income segregation is markedly higher when and where housing segregation is greater. As long as housing opportunities remain segregated, residential segregation will change little, with urgent implications for urban and housing policy makers.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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

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

Supplemental Material

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


0

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

By on June 17, 2019 in Articles

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

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

Abstract
PDF (49805 views)
16 Citation


Comparing levels of discrimination across countries can provide a window into large-scale social and political factors often described as the root of discrimination. Because of difficulties in measurement, however, little is established about variation in hiring discrimination across countries. We address this gap through a formal meta-analysis of 97 field experiments of discrimination incorporating more than 200,000 job applications in nine countries in Europe and North America. We find significant discrimination against nonwhite natives in all countries in our analysis; discrimination against white immigrants is present but low. However, discrimination rates vary strongly by country: In high-discrimination countries, white natives receive nearly twice the callbacks of nonwhites; in low-discrimination countries, white natives receive about 25 percent more. France has the highest discrimination rates, followed by Sweden. We find smaller differences among Great Britain, Canada, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, the United States, and Germany. These findings challenge several conventional macro-level theories of discrimination.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Supplemental Material

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


16

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

By on May 29, 2019 in Articles

Douglas B. Downey, Joseph Workman, Paul von Hippel

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

Abstract
PDF (3306 views)
0 Citation


Children’s social and behavioral skills vary considerably by socioeconomic status (SES), race and/or ethnicity, and gender, yet it is unclear to what degree these differences are due to school or nonschool factors. We observe how gaps in social and behavioral skills change during school and nonschool (summer) periods from the start of kindergarten entry until the end of second grade in a recent and nationally representative sample of more than 16,000 children (the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study Kindergarten Class of 2010–11). We find that large gaps in social and behavioral skills exist at the start of kindergarten entry, and these gaps favor high-SES, white, and female children. Over the next three years, we observed that the gaps grow no faster when school is in than when school is out. In the case of social and behavioral skills, it appears that schools neither exacerbate inequality nor reduce it.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Douglas B. Downey: Department of Sociology, The Ohio State University
E-mail: downey32@gmail.com

Joseph Workman: Department of Sociology, University of Missouri-Kansas City
E-mail: workmanj@umkc.edu

Paul von Hippel: Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, The University of Texas at Austin
E-mail: paulvonhippel.utaustin@gmail.com

Acknowledgements: Direct all correspondence to Douglas B. Downey (downey32@gmail.com), 1885 Neil Ave., Columbus, Ohio 43022.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Downey, Douglas B., Joseph Workman, and Paul von Hippel. 2019. “Socioeconomic, Ethnic, Racial, and Gender Gaps in Children’s Social/Behavioral Skills: Do They Grow Faster in School or out?” Sociological Science 6: 446-466.
  • Received: March 17, 2019
  • Accepted: March 30, 2019
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Stephen Morgan
  • DOI: 10.15195/v6.a17


0

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

By on May 22, 2019 in Articles

Adam Goldstein, Orestes P. Hastings

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

Abstract
PDF (3251 views)
0 Citation


Social scientists have suggested that a key sociobehavioral consequence of rising inequality is intensifying market competition for advantageous positions in the opportunity structure, such as residences that afford access to high-quality public schools. We assess empirical implications of inequality-fueled positional competition theories (PCTs) by analyzing the relationships between metropolitan income inequality, households’ efforts to secure residential positions in desirable school districts, and housing consumption behavior. We assemble a unique data set, which contains longitudinal information on household finances, residences, and geographic locations from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics; information on the quality of the school attendance areas in which these households reside; and information about the local real estate market. We find that greater inequality is associated with steeper housing price premia for residences in desirable areas, more pronounced social class sorting on school quality when relocating, and greater salience of schools relative to other housing amenities in families’ housing expenditure functions. Families in high-inequality regions exhibit modestly greater willingness to pay more (relative to their own incomes) for a given improvement in school desirability. The analysis brings important empirical nuance to oft-invoked but untested theories about positional competition as a mechanism by which inequality affects behaviors, consumption, and markets.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Adam Goldstein: Departments of Sociology and Public Affairs, Princeton University
E-mail: amg5@princeton.edu

Orestes P. Hastings: Department of Sociology, Colorado State University
E-mail: Pat.Hastings@colostate.edu

Acknowledgements: The authors are grateful for helpful suggestions from Marianne Bertrand, Neil Fligstein, Kevin McKee, Ann Owens, Peter Rich, participants at the Tobin Project Conference on Inequality and Decision Making, and the editors of Sociological Science. This research was partially supported by funding from the Tobin Project. The first author was also supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Collection of the PSID data used in this study was partly supported by the National Institutes of Health (grants R01 HD069609 and R01 AG040213) and the National Science Foundation (awards SES 1157698 and 1623684).

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Goldstein, Adam, and Orestes P. Hastings. 2019. “Buying In: Positional Competition, Schools, Income Inequality, and Housing Consumption.” Sociological Science 6: 416-445.
  • Received: September 12, 2018
  • Accepted: March 22, 2019
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Kim Weeden
  • DOI: 10.15195/v6.a16


0

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

By on May 15, 2019 in Articles

Pablo A. Mitnik, Victoria Bryant, Michael Weber

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

Abstract
PDF (4241 views)
0 Citation


Estimates of economic persistence and mobility in the United States, as measured by the intergenerational elasticity (IGE), cover a very wide range. Nevertheless, careful analyses of the evidence suggested until recently that as much as half, and possibly more, of economic advantages are passed on from parents to children. This “dominant hypothesis” was seriously challenged by the first-ever study of family-income mobility based on tax data (Chetty et al. 2014), which provided estimates of family-income IGEs indicating that only one-third of economic advantages are transmitted across generations and claimed that previous highly influential IGE estimates were upward biased. Using a different tax-based data set, this article provides estimates of family-income IGEs that strongly support the dominant hypothesis. The article also carries out a one-to-one comparison between IGEs estimated with the two tax-based data sets and shows that Chetty et al.’s estimates were driven downward by a combination of attenuation, life-cycle, selection, and functional-form biases. Lastly, the article determines the exact relationship between parental income inequality, economic persistence, and inequality of opportunity for income. This leads to the conclusion that, in the United States, at least half of income inequality among parents is transformed into inequality of opportunity among their children.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Pablo A. Mitnik: Center on Poverty and Inequality, Stanford University
E-mail: pmitnik@stanford.edu

Victoria Bryant: Statistics of Income Division, Internal Revenue Service
E-mail: victoria.l.bryant@irs.gov

Michael Weber: Statistics of Income Division, Internal Revenue Service
E-mail: michael.e.weber@irs.gov

Acknowledgements: The first author gratefully acknowledges research support from the Russell Sage Foundation and the Pew Charitable Trusts. The editors provided valuable feedback on an earlier version of the article. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not represent the opinions of the Internal Revenue Service or the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Mitnik, Pablo A., Victoria Bryant, and Michael Weber. 2019. “The Intergenerational Transmission of Family-Income Advantages in the United States.” Sociological Science 6: 380-415.
  • Received: February 4, 2019
  • Accepted: March 29, 2019
  • Editors: Kim Weeden
  • DOI: 10.15195/v6.a15


0

Sharing Compromising Information as a Cooperative Strategy

By on May 8, 2019 in Articles

Diego Gambetta, Wojtek Przepiorka

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

Abstract
PDF (2452 views)
0 Citation


Well-enforced norms create an opportunity for norm breakers to cooperate in ventures requiring trust. This is realized when norm breakers, by sharing evidence of their breaches, make themselves vulnerable to denunciation and therefore trustworthy. The sharing of compromising information (SCI) is a strategy employed by criminals, politicians, and other actors wary of their partners’ trustworthiness in which the cost of ensuring compliance is offloaded on clueless norm enforcers. Here we introduce SCI as a sui generis cooperative strategy and test its functioning experimentally. In our experiment, subjects first acquire the label “dove” or “hawk” depending on how cooperative or uncooperative they are, respectively. Hawks acquire compromising information embodied in their label and can reveal it before an interaction with trust at stake. Unlike doves, hawks who reveal their label make themselves vulnerable to their partners, who can inflict a penalty on them after interaction. We find that even students in as artificial a setting as a computerized decision laboratory grasp the advantage of SCI and use it to cooperate. Our results corroborate the idea that compromising information can be conceived as a “hostage” that, when mutually exchanged, makes each party to the interaction vulnerable and therefore trustworthy in joint endeavours.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Diego Gambetta: Collegio Carlo Alberto, Università di Torino
E-mail: diego.gambetta@carloalberto.org

Wojtek Przepiorka: Department of Sociology, Utrecht University
E-mail: w.przepiorka@uu.nl

Acknowledgements: Both authors contributed equally to this work and thank Ozan Aksoy, Maria Bigoni, Manfred Milinski, and Werner Raub for their helpful comments on earlier versions. D. G. gratefully acknowledges financial support from the Research Council of the European University Institute.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Gambetta, Diego, and Wojtek Przepiorka. 2019. “Sharing Compromising Information as a Cooperative Strategy.” Sociological Science 6: 352-379.
  • Received: February 20, 2019
  • Accepted: March 20, 2019
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Delia Baldassarri
  • DOI: 10.15195/v6.a14


0

The Rise of Programming and the Stalled Gender Revolution

By on April 30, 2019 in Articles

Siwei Cheng, Bhumika Chauhan, Swati Chintala

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

Abstract
PDF (3819 views)
0 Citation


Despite remarkable progress toward gender equality over the past half-century, the stalled convergence in the gender wage gap after the mid-1990s remains a puzzle. This study provides new insights into this puzzle by conducting the first large-scale investigation of the uneven impact of the rise of programming in the labor market for men and women since the mid-1990s. We argue that the increasing reliance on programming has favored men’s economic status relative to women’s and therefore may help explain the slow convergence of the gender wage gap. We differentiate between two effects: (1) the composition effect, wherein men experience a greater employment growth in programming-intensive occupations relative to women, and (2) the price effect, wherein the wage returns to programming intensity increase more for men than women. Our empirical analysis documents a strong relationship between the rise of programming and the slow convergence of the gender wage gap among college graduates. Counterfactual simulations indicate that the absence of the composition and price effects would have reduced the gender wage gap over the past two decades by an additional 14.70 percent. These findings call attention to the role gender institutions play in shaping the uneven labor market impact of technological change.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Siwei Cheng: Department of Sociology, New York University
E-mail: siwei.cheng@nyu.edu

Bhumika Chauhan: Department of Sociology, New York University
E-mail: bhumikachauhan@nyu.edu

Swati Chintala: Department of Sociology, New York University
E-mail: swati.chintala@nyu.edu

Acknowledgements: Direct all correspondence to Siwei Cheng, assistant professor of sociology at New York University (295 Lafayette St, 4th Floor, New York, NY 10012). The authors acknowledge support from the Summer Research Fund at the Department of Sociology at New York University. The second and third authors contributed equally to the project. We thank Paula England, Kathleen Gerson, Claudia Goldin, Mike Hout, and Yu Xie for helpful comments on earlier versions of this article. This article was presented at the Harvard University Social Demography Seminar. All remaining errors are our own.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Cheng, Siwei, Bhumika Chauhan, and Swati Chintala. 2019. “The Rise of Programming and the Stalled Gender Revolution.” Sociological Science 6:321-351.
  • Received: December 18, 2018
  • Accepted: March 6, 2019
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Kim Weeden
  • DOI: 10.15195/v6.a13


0

Racial Intermarriage in the Americas

By on April 23, 2019 in Articles

Edward Telles, Albert Esteve

Sociological Science, April 23, 2019
10.15195/v6.a12

Abstract
PDF (4791 views)
0 Citation


We compare intermarriage in Brazil, Cuba, and the United States among the black, white, and mixed-race population using log-linear models with data from newly available anonymized and harmonized individual census microdata for the 2000 round of censuses. We find that black–white intermarriage is 105 times as likely in Brazil and 28 times as likely in Cuba compared to the United States; that Brazilian mulatos are four times as likely to marry whites than blacks, but Cuban mulatos are equally likely to marry whites and blacks; and negative educational gradients for black–white intermarriage for Cuba and Brazil but nonexistent or positive gradients in the United States. We propose a theory of intergenerational mixture and intermarriage and discuss implications for the role of preferences versus structure, universalism and education, and mulato escape-hatch theory.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Edward Telles: Department of Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara
E-mail: etelles@soc.ucsb.edu

Albert Esteve: Centre d’Estudis Demogràfics, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
E-mail: aesteve@ced.uab.es

Acknowledgements: The research conducted by Albert Esteve in this article has received funding from the following grants: ERC-2014-StG-637768 for the Equalize project and CRISFAM CSO2015-64713-R.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Telles, Edward, and Albert Esteve. 2019. “Racial Intermarriage in the Americas.” Sociological Science 6: 293-320.
  • Received: January 7, 2019
  • Accepted: February 5, 2019
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Gabriel Rossman
  • DOI: 10.15195/v6.a12


0

Why Does Parental Divorce Lower Children’s Educational Attainment? A Causal Mediation Analysis

By on April 16, 2019 in Articles

Jennie E. Brand, Ravaris Moore, Xi Song, Yu Xie

Sociological Science, April 16, 2019
10.15195/v6.a11

Abstract
PDF (13795 views)
0 Citation


Mechanisms explaining the negative effects of parental divorce on children’s attainment have long been conjectured and assessed. Yet few studies of parental divorce have carefully attended to the assumptions and methods necessary to estimate causal mediation effects. Applying a causal framework to linked U.S. panel data, we assess the degree to which parental divorce limits children’s education among whites and nonwhites and whether observed lower levels of educational attainment are explained by postdivorce family conditions and children’s skills. Our analyses yield three key findings. First, the negative effect of divorce on educational attainment, particularly college, is substantial for white children; by contrast, divorce does not lower the educational attainment of nonwhite children. Second, declines in family income explain as much as one- to two-thirds of the negative effect of parental divorce on white children’s education. Family instability also helps explain the effect, particularly when divorce occurs in early childhood. Children’s psychosocial skills explain about one-fifth of the effect, whereas children’s cognitive skills play a minimal role. Third, among nonwhites, the minimal total effect on education is explained by the offsetting influence of postdivorce declines in family income and stability alongside increases in children’s psychosocial and cognitive skills.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Jennie E. Brand: Departments of Sociology and Statistics, University of California, Los Angeles; California Center for Population Research; and Center for Social Statistics
E-mail: brand@soc.ucla.edu

Ravaris Moore: Department of Sociology, Loyola Marymount University
E-mail: ravaris.moore@lmu.edu

Xi Song: Department of Sociology, University of Chicago
E-mail: xisong@uchicago.edu

Yu Xie: Department of Sociology, Princeton University
E-mail: yuxie@princeton.edu

Acknowledgements: Versions of this article were presented at Yale University; the University of Michigan; Stanford University; the University of Pennsylvania; Princeton University; Harvard University; the University of California, Irvine; the International Sociological Association Research Committee on Social Stratification and Mobility (RC28), and Population Association of America. We thank Elizabeth Thomson for useful comments on a prior version of this article. The National Institutes of Health (grant R01 HD07460301A1) provided financial support for this research. J. E. B. and R. M. benefited from facilities and resources provided by the California Center for Population Research at the University of California, Los Angeles, which receives core support (P2C-HD041022) from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. The ideas expressed herein are those of the authors.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Brand, Jennie E., Ravaris Moore, Xi Song, and Yu Xie. 2019. “Why Does Parental Divorce Lower Children’s Educational Attainment? A Causal Mediation Analysis.” Sociological Science 6: 264-292.
  • Received: January 25, 2019
  • Accepted: February 24, 2019
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Olav Sorenson
  • DOI: 10.15195/v6.a11


0

On Elastic Ties: Distance and Intimacy in Social Relationships

By on April 9, 2019 in Articles

Stacy Torres

Sociological Science, April 9, 2019
10.15195/v6.a10

Abstract
PDF (3080 views)
0 Citation


Drawing on five years of ethnographic fieldwork among older adults in a New York City neighborhood, I present empirical data that complement survey approaches to social isolation and push our understanding of social ties beyond weak and strong by analyzing relationships that defy binary classification. Usual survey items would describe these participants as isolated and without social support. When questioned, they minimize neighborhood relationships outside of close friends and family. But ethnographic observations of their social interactions with neighbors reveal the presence of “elastic ties.” By elastic ties, I mean nonstrong, nonweak relations between people who spend hours each day and share intimate details of their lives with those whom they do not consider “confidants.” Nonetheless, they provide each other with the support and practical assistance typically seen in strong-tie relationships. These findings show how people’s accounts may not accurately reflect the character and structure of their social ties. Furthermore, they demonstrate how a single social tie can vary between strong and weak depending on the social situation. Many social ties fall outside weak and strong; they are elastic in allowing elders (and other marginal groups) to connect and secure informal support while maintaining their distance and preserving their autonomy.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Stacy Torres: Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, University of California, San Francisco
E-mail: stacy.torres@ucsf.edu

Acknowledgements: I thank Kathleen Gerson, Colin Jerolmack, Lynne Haney, Steven Lukes, Dalton Conley, Ronald Breiger, Anthony Paik, and Claude Fischer for their guidance and feedback on earlier versions of this article. A special thanks to my study participants, who shared their lives with me for several years. Support for data collection and project write-up was funded in part by fellowships from New York University, the American Sociological Association Minority Fellowship Program (cosponsored by Sociologists for Women in Society), the Ford Foundation, and the UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship Program. Publication is made possible in part by support from the UCSF Open Access Publishing Fund.

  • Citation: Torres, Stacy. 2019. “On Elastic Ties: Distance and Intimacy in Social Relationships.” Sociological Science 6: 235-263.
  • Received: November 15, 2018
  • Accepted: February 18, 2019
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Mario Small
  • DOI: 10.15195/v6.a10


0

The Structure of Negative Social Ties in Rural Village Networks

By on March 6, 2019 in Articles

Alexander Isakov, James H. Fowler, Edoardo M. Airoldi, Nicholas A. Christakis

Sociological Science, March 6, 2019
10.15195/v6.a8

Abstract
PDF (4287 views)
0 Citation


Negative (antagonistic) connections have been of longstanding theoretical importance for social structure. In a population of 24,696 adults interacting face to face within 176 isolated villages in western Honduras, we measured all connections that were present, amounting to 105,175 positive and 16,448 negative ties. Here, we show that negative and positive ties exhibit many of the same structural characteristics. We then develop a complete taxonomy of all 138 possible triads of two-type relationships. Consistent with balance theory, we find that antagonists of friends and friends of antagonists tend to be antagonists; but, in an important empirical refutation of balance theory, we find that antagonists of antagonists also tend to be antagonists, not friends. Finally, villages with comparable levels of animosity tend to be geographically proximate. Similar processes, involving social contact, give rise to both positive and negative social ties in rural villages, and negative ties play an important role in social structure.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Alexander Isakov: Yale Institute for Network Science, Yale University; Department of Sociology, Yale University
E-mail: alexander.isakov.11@gmail.com

James H. Fowler: Department of Medicine, University of California, San Diego; Political Science Department, University of California, San Diego
E-mail: fowler@ucsd.edu

Edoardo M. Airoldi: Department of Statistical Science, Fox School of Business, Temple University; Department of Statistics and Institute for Quantitative Social Sciences, Harvard University
E-mail: airoldi@fas.harvard.edu

Nicholas A. Christakis: Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Yale University; Department of Statistics and Data Science, Yale University
E-mail: nicholas.christakis@yale.edu

Acknowledgements: We thank Emily Erikson, Dan Gilbert, David Rand, Yongren Shi, Hiro Shirado, Maggie Traeger, Tom Snijders, Gijs Huitsing, and Arnav Tripathy for their helpful comments. We are also grateful to the data collection and software teams for the Honduras project, including Rennie Negron, Liza Nicoll, and Mark McKnight. This research was supported by a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Tata Group, the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health (grant P30-AG034420), the National Science Foundation (grant IIS-1409177), and the Office of Naval Research (grants N00014-17-1-2131). The authors declare no competing interests.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Isakov, Alexander, James H. Fowler, Edoardo M. Airoldi, and Nicholas A. Christakis. 2019. “The Structure of Negative Social Ties in Rural Village Networks.” Sociological Science 6: 197-218.
  • Received: January 16, 2019
  • Accepted: February 10, 2019
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Delia Baldassarri
  • DOI: 10.15195/v6.a8


0

How Much Do You Have to Publish to Get a Job in a Top Sociology Department? Or to Get Tenure? Trends over a Generation

By on February 27, 2019 in Articles

John Robert Warren

Sociological Science, February 27, 2019
10.15195/v6.a7

Abstract
PDF (17456 views)
5 Citation


Many sociologists suspect that publication expectations have risen over time—that how much graduate students have published to get assistant professor jobs and how much assistant professors have published to be promoted have gone up. Using information about faculty in 21 top sociology departments from the American Sociological Association’s Guide to Graduate Departments of Sociology, online curricula vitae, and other public records, I provide empirical evidence to support this suspicion. On the day they start their first jobs, new assistant professors in recent years have already published roughly twice as much as their counterparts did in the early 1990s. Trends for promotion to associate professor are not as dramatic but are still remarkable. I evaluate several potential explanations for these trends and conclude that they are driven mainly by changes over time in the fiscal and organizational realities of universities and departments.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

John Robert Warren: Department of Sociology, Minnesota Population Center, University of Minnesota
E-mail: warre046@umn.edu

Acknowledgements: This article was prepared for presentation at the Sociology Department Workshop at the University of Minnesota, whose College of Liberal Arts’ Dean’s Freshman Research and Creative Scholars program provided support for this project. Support has also come from the Minnesota Population Center, which receives core funding (P2C HD041023) from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. I sincerely thank graduate research assistant Chris Levesque; undergraduate interns Harold Carpenter, Kristina Mann, Charles Massie, Zixiong Peng, and Morgan Schmitt-Morris; and undergraduate research assistants Megan Bursch, James Crim, Julina Duan, Alejandra Narvaez, Shannyn Telander, and Nathan Torunsky for their hard and careful work on this research. I am also very grateful to my colleagues Jack DeWaard, Doug Hartmann, Jonas Helgertz, Jennifer C. Lee, Chandra Muller, Gina Rumore, and Barbara Schneider for providing helpful comments and suggestions. However, errors and omissions are my responsibility. Please direct correspondence to me at warre046@umn.edu.

  • Citation: Warren, John Robert. 2019. “How Much Do You Have to Publish to Get a Job in a Top Sociology Department? Or to Get Tenure? Trends over a Generation.” Sociological Science 6:172-196.
  • Received: December 10, 2018
  • Accepted: January 10, 2018
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Gabriel Rossman
  • DOI: 10.15195/v6.a7


5

The Social Stratification of Environmental and Genetic Influences on Education: New Evidence Using a Register-Based Twin Sample

By on February 20, 2019 in Articles

Tina Baier, Volker Lang

Sociological Science, February 20, 2019
10.15195/v6.a6

Abstract
PDF (4185 views)
1 Citation


The relative importance of genes and shared environmental influences on stratification outcomes has recently received much attention in the literature. We focus on education and the gene-environmental interplay. Specifically, we investigate whether—as proposed by the Scarr-Rowe hypothesis—genetic influences are more important in advantaged families. We argue that the social stratification of family environments affects children’s chances to actualize their genetic potential. We hypothesize that advantaged families provide more child-specific inputs, which enhance genetic expression, whereas the rearing environments of children in disadvantaged families are less adapted to children’s individual abilities, leading to a suppression of genetic potential. We test this relationship in Germany, which represents an interesting case due to its highly selective schooling system characterized by early tracking and the broad coverage of part-time schools. We use novel data from the TwinLife panel, a population-register–based sample of twins and their families. Results of ACE-variance decompositions support the Scarr-Rowe hypothesis: Shared environmental influences on education matter only in disadvantaged families, whereas genetic influences are more important in advantaged families. Our findings support the growing literature on the importance of the gene-environmental interplay and emphasize the role of the family environment as a trigger of differential genetic expression.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Tina Baier: Department Educational Decisions and Processes, Migration, Returns to Education, Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories
E-mail: tina.baier@lifbi.de

Volker Lang: Department of Sociology, Bielefeld University
E-mail: volker.lang@uni-bielefeld.de

Acknowledgements: This article was supported by a grant from the German Research Foundation (awarded to Martin Diewald [DI 759/11-1], Rainer Riemann [RI 595/8-1], and Frank M. Spinath [SP 610/6-1]) and the European Consortium for Sociological Research (ECSR) internship grant. We received excellent comments from participants in the ECSR conference in Milan in August 2017, the “Reading Group” held at the University of Oxford in November 2017, and the “Social Inequality and Social Demography” colloquium held at Humboldt University of Berlin in January 2018. We also would like to thank especially Martin Diewald, Anette Fasang, and the editors for their valuable feedback on an earlier version of the article.

Supplemental Material

  • Citation: Baier, Tina, and Volker Lang. 2019. “The Social Stratification of Environmental and Genetic Influences on Education: New Evidence Using a Register-Based Twin Sample.” Sociological Science 6: 143-171.
  • Received: September 25, 2018
  • Accepted: December 31, 2018
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Olav Sorenson
  • DOI: 10.15195/v6.a6


1
SiteLock