Tag Archives | Inequality

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Studies of colorism—the idea that racial hierarchies coexist with gradational inequalities based on skin color—consistently find that darker skin correlates with lower socioeconomic outcomes. Despite the causal nature of this debate, evidence remains predominantly associational. This study revisits the colorism literature by proposing a causal model underlying these theories. It discusses conditions under which associations may reflect contemporary causal effects of skin color and evaluates strategies for identifying these effects. Using data from the AddHealth and NLSY97 surveys and applying two identification strategies, the study estimates the causal effects of skin color on college degree attainment, personal earnings, and family income among White, Black, and Hispanic populations in the United States. Results show that darker skin correlates with poorer educational and economic outcomes within racial groups. However, evidence of contemporary causal effects of skin color is partial, limited to college attainment of Whites and family income of Hispanics. For Blacks, results suggest a generalized penalty associated with being Black rather than gradation based on skin tone. Methodologically, the article advocates using sensitivity analyses to account for unobserved confounders in models for skin color effects and uses sibling fixed-effects as a secondary complementary strategy.

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

Mauricio Bucca: Department of Sociology, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. E-mail: mebucca@uc.cl.

Acknowledgements: I wish to thank Fabrizio Bernardi, Kendra Bischoff, Lucas Drouhot, Matias Fernandez, Vida Maralani, Mario Molina, Ben Rosche, Daniela Urbina, Sebastian Urbina, Kim Weeden as well as audiences at the 2021 Population Association of America (PAA) Annual Meeting and the Comparative Life Course and Inequality Research Centre (CLIC) at the European University Institute in Florence for helpful comments and criticisms on earlier versions of the article. I am also grateful for financial support from FONDECYT Iniciación grant project No. 11221171 and ANID Milenio Labor Market Mismatch – Causes and Consequences, LM2C2 (NCS2022045). Direct correspondence to Mauricio Bucca, mebucca@uc.cl

Data: This research uses data from 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 fed- eral agencies and foundations. Special acknowledgment is due Ronald R. Rindfuss and Barbara Entwisle for assistance in the original design. Information on how to obtain the Add Health data files is available on the Add Health website (http://www.cpc.unc.edu/addhealth). No direct support was received from grant P01-HD31921 for this analysis. Access to restricted data through the National Institutes of Health Grant R01HD091125, led by Principal Investigator Kelly Musick.

Replication Package: The code necessary for reproducing the data manipulation, modeling, and findings is accessible at https://osf.io/vm647/?view_only=5b6477b89c284a88 9d9e3c77fc6e8fe1.

Citation: Bucca, Mauricio. 2024. “Colorism Revisited: The Effects of Skin Color on Educational and Labor Market Outcomes in the United States.” Sociological Science 11: 517-552.
Received: February 23, 2024
Accepted: March 26, 2024
Editors: Ari Adut, Maria Abascal
DOI: 10.15195/v11.a19

From Metallica to Mozart: Mapping the Cultural Hierarchy of Lifestyle Activities

By Parker Webservices on April 12, 2024 in Articles

Mads Meier Jæger, Mikkel Haderup Larsen

Sociological Science April 12, 2024
10.15195/v11.a15

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Theories of cultural stratification argue that a widely shared cultural hierarchy legitimizes status differences and inequality. Yet, we know little about this hierarchy empirically. To address this limitation, we collected survey data in Denmark and asked respondents to rate the implied social rank of 60 activities, genres, and objects belonging to six lifestyle domains (music, food, performing arts, leisure, sport, and literature). We use ratings of social rank to infer about the cultural hierarchy, arguing that higher ratings imply higher perceived status. First, respondents link activities often considered highbrow (e.g., opera, caviar, and golf) with higher social rank than activities often considered lowbrow (e.g., heavy metal, nuggets, and boxing), suggesting that a cultural hierarchy exists. Second, ratings of implied social rank differ little by respondents’ objective and subjective socioeconomic position, suggesting that the cultural hierarchy is widely shared. Third, respondents bundle the 60 activities in a perceived highbrow, middlebrow, and lowbrow lifestyle, suggesting that “brows” are salient in distinguishing lifestyles. Overall, our results support the idea that a cultural hierarchy exists.

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

Mads Meier Jæger: Department of Sociology, University of Copenhagen
E-mail: mmj@soc.ku.dk

Mikkel Haderup Larsen: Department of Sociology, University of Copenhagen
E-mail: mhl@soc.ku.dk

Acknowledgements: We have presented earlier versions of this article at the 2023 ECSR conference in Prague, the RC28 Spring Meeting in Paris, the 2023 CEPDISC Conference in Aarhus, and at seminars at the University of Utrecht, University of Copenhagen, the Danish National Centre for Social Research, the Rockwool Foundation, and the European Commission. We thank participants at these events for constructive comments. The research presented in this article was funded by the Carlsberg Foundation (grant number CF21-325) and the Rockwool Foundation (grant number 934121, “Lifestyle Discrimination and Inequality”).

Replication Package: All data used are publicly available at https://osf.io/y9hiq/ and https://osf.io/kaqi5/. A replication package with R code is available at https://osf.io/j5wxu/

Citation: Jæger, Mads Meier, and Mikkel Haderup Larsen. 2024. “From Metallica to Mozart: Mapping the Cultural Hierarchy of Lifestyle Activities.” Sociological Science 11: 413-438.
Received: November 21, 2023
Accepted: March 4, 2024
Editors: Arnout van de Rijt, Stephen Vaisey
DOI: 10.15195/v11.a15

Feasible Peer Effects: Experimental Evidence for Deskmate Effects on Educational Achievement and Inequality

By Parker Webservices on November 6, 2023 in Articles

Tamás Keller, Felix Elwert

Sociological Science November 6, 2023
10.15195/v10.a28

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Schools routinely employ seating charts to influence educational outcomes. Dependable evidence for the causal effects of seating charts on students’ achievement levels and inequality, however, is scarce. We executed a large pre-registered field experiment to estimate causal peer effects on students’ test scores and grades by randomizing the seating charts of 195 classrooms (N=3,365 students). We found that neither sitting next to a deskmate with higher prior achievement nor sitting next to a female deskmate affected learning outcomes on average. However, we also found that sitting next to the highest-achieving deskmates improved the educational outcomes of the lowest-achieving students; and sitting next to the lowest-achieving deskmates lowered the educational outcomes of the highest-achieving students. Therefore, compared to random seating charts, achievement-discordant seating charts would decrease inequality; whereas achievement concordant seating charts would increase inequality. We discuss policy implications.

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

Tamás Keller: HUN-REN Centre for Social Sciences, Computational Social Science – Research Center for Educational and Network Studies, Budapest, Hungary HUN-REN Centre for Economic and Regional Studies, Institute of Economics, Budapest, Hungary. TÁRKI Social Research Institute, Budapest, Hungary
E-mail: keller.tamas@tk.hu

Felix Elwert: Department of Sociology & Department of Biostatistics and Medical Informatics, University of Wisconsin-Madison
E-mail: elwert@wisc.edu

Acknowledgements: The authors thank Carlo Barone, Dorottya Baross, Steven Durlauf, Edina Gábor, Eric Grodsky, Judit Kerek, Gábor Kertesi, Gábor Kézdi, Andreas Kotsadam, Xinran Li, Károly Takács, Jeffrey Smith, and audiences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of Chicago, ISA RC28 Spring Meeting in Frankfurt am Main, the Annual Meeting of the International Network of Analytical Sociologists (INAS) in St. Petersburg, the Meeting of the Economics of Education Association (AEDE) in Las Palmas, the Universita Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, and the European Research Network on Transitions in Youth (TiY) in Mannheim for valuable discussions. This research was funded by grants from the Hungarian National Research, Development, and Innovation Office (NKFIH), grant number K-135766; a János Bolyai Research Scholarship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, #BO/00569/21/9; the New National Excellence Program of the Ministry for Culture and Innovation, #ÚNKP- 23-5-CORVINUS-149; and a Romnes Fellowship and a Vilas Midcareer Faculty Award, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Direct correspondence to Tamás Keller (keller.tamas@tk.hu) and Felix Elwert (elwert@wisc.edu).

Citation: Keller, Tamás, and Felix Elwert. 2023. “Feasible Peer Effects: Experimental Evidence for Deskmate Effects on Educational Achievement and Inequality” Sociological Science 7: 806-829.
Received: July 12, 2023
Accepted: May 2, 2023
Editors: Arnout van de Rijt, Peter Bearman
DOI: 10.15195/v10.a28

Shattered Dreams: Paternal Incarceration, Youth Expectations, and the Intergenerational Transmission of Disadvantage

By Parker Webservices on September 19, 2023 in Articles

Garrett Baker

Sociological Science September 19, 2023
10.15195/v10.a20

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Children’s expectations and aspirations have a substantial effect on a variety of life course outcomes, including their health, education, and earnings. However, little research to date has considered empirically how expectations and aspirations are shaped by adverse events—such as experiencing a parent be incarcerated. In this article, I leverage Add Health’s retrospective parental incarceration questions to employ an innovative analytic strategy that accounts for selection bias and unobserved heterogeneity above and beyond typical observational methods. Results indicate that paternal incarceration is associated with one-fourth to one-third of a standard deviation lower youth expectations and aspirations, and these results are robust to various methods and specifications. Given that paternal incarceration is both common and disproportionately experienced by disadvantaged youth, the large magnitude and robust nature of these results reveal an important pathway through which mass incarceration has contributed to the intergenerational transmission of inequality in the U.S. in recent decades.

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

Garrett Baker: Duke University Department of Sociology and Sanford School of Public Policy
E-mail: garrett.baker@duke.edu

Acknowledgements: I am especially grateful to Chris Wildeman for his immense patience and continued guidance as this article evolved over the years. I would also like to thank Brielle Bryan, Anna Gassman-Pines, Sarah Komisarow, Martin Ruef, and Steve Vaisey for their thoughtful comments on earlier drafts of this article. Participants at the 2022 American Sociological Association (ASA) Annual Meeting, the 2022 Population Association of America (PAA) Annual Meeting, and the 2022 American Society of Criminology (ASC) Annual Meeting also provided helpful feedback. This research uses data from Add Health, funded by grant P01 HD31921 (Harris) from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), with cooperative funding from 23 other federal agencies and foundations. Add Health is currently directed by Robert A. Hummer and funded by the National Institute on Aging cooperative agreements U01 AG071448 (Hummer) and U01AG071450 (Aiello and Hummer) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Add Health was designed by J. Richard Udry, Peter S. Bearman, and Kathleen Mullan Harris at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Citation: Baker, Garrett. 2023. “Shattered Dreams: Paternal Incarceration, Youth Expectations, and the Intergenerational Transmission of Disadvantage.” Sociological Science 10: 559-584.
Received: February 21, 2023
Accepted: March 27, 2023
Editors: Arnout van de Rijt, Peter Bearman
DOI: 10.15195/v10.a20

Pathways to Skin Color Stratification: The Role of Inherited (Dis)Advantage and Skin Color Discrimination in Labor Markets

By Parker Webservices on August 29, 2022 in Articles

Maria Abascal, Denia Garcia

Sociological Science August 29, 2022
10.15195/v9.a14

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Research has uncovered associations between skin color and myriad outcomes. What drives these associations? We develop a theoretical framework that synthesizes the multiple pathways linking skin color with life chances. Skin color stratification should be conceptualized in historical, structural terms: as the result of unequal treatment and inherited (dis)advantage, that is, unequal resources transmitted by families with different skin tones. We assess the role of two pathways— discrimination and inherited (dis)advantage—for Blacks’ and Latinos’ employment, earnings, and occupational prestige. We use the National Longitudinal Study of Youth 1997, which includes a visual skin color measure; multiple indicators of family background; and a sibling subsample that allows us, using fixed-effects models, to recover the effect of skin color net of family background. First, we find that darker skin tone is associated with worse labor market outcomes. Indicators of family background account for 29 to 44 percent of skin color’s associations with employment, earnings, and occupational prestige. Second, using sibling fixed-effects models, we find that darker skin tone is associated with worse labor market outcomes, but these associations are not statistically significant. In sum, our findings suggest that we pay attention to the multiple pathways linking skin color with life chances.

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

Maria Abascal: Department of Sociology, New York University
E-mail: m.abascal@nyu.edu

Denia Garcia: La Follette School of Public Affairs, University of Wisconsin–Madison
E-mail: dgarcia28@wisc.edu

Acknowledgments: We thank Siyeona Chang for invaluable research assistance. We are grateful to Jason Fletcher, Mike Hout, Patricia McManus, Rourke O’Brien, Edward Telles, and members of the Center for Research on Race and Ethnicity in Society workshop at Indiana University, Bloomington for their feedback. Both authors contributed equally to this work. Direct correspondence to Maria Abascal, 295 Lafayette Street, New York, NY 10027, m.abascal@nyu.edu, and Denia Garcia, 1225 Observatory Drive, Madison, WI 53706, dgarcia28@wisc.edu.

Citation: Abascal, Maria, and Denia Garcia. 2022. “Pathways to Skin Color Stratification: The Role of Inherited (Dis)Advantage and Skin Color Discrimination in Labor Markets.” Sociological Science 9: 346-373.
Received: May 31, 2022
Accepted: July 13, 2022
Editors: Ari Adut, Filiz Garip
DOI: 10.15195/v9.a14

Education and Social Fluidity: A Reweighting Approach

By Parker Webservices on February 23, 2022 in Articles

Kristian Bernt Karlson

Sociological Science February 23, 2022
10.15195/v9.a2

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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.

This 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

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).

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

Genres, Objects, and the Contemporary Expression of Higher-Status Tastes

By Parker Webservices on July 14, 2021 in Articles

Clayton Childress, Shyon Baumann, Craig M. Rawlings, Jean-François Nault

Sociological Science July 14, 2021
10.15195/v8.a12

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Are contemporary higher-status tastes inclusive, exclusive, or both? Recent work suggests that the answer likely is both. And yet, little is known concerning how configurations of such tastes are learned, upheld, and expressed without contradiction. We resolve this puzzle by showing the affordances of different levels of culture (i.e., genres and objects) in the expression of tastes. We rely on original survey data to show that people of higher status taste differently at different levels of culture: more inclusively for genres and more exclusively for objects. Inclusivity at the level of genres is fostered through familial socialization, and exclusivity at the level of objects is fostered through formal schooling. Individuals’ taste configurations are mirrored in and presumably reinforce their adult social-structural positions. The results have important implications for understanding the subtle maintenance of status in an increasingly diverse and putatively meritocratic society.

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

Clayton Childress: Department of Sociology, University of Toronto
E-mail: clayton.childress@utoronto.ca

Shyon Baumann: Department of Sociology, University of Toronto
E-mail: shyon.baumann@utoronto.ca

Craig M. Rawlings: Department of Sociology, Duke University
E-mail: craig.rawlings@duke.edu

Jean-François Nault: Department of Sociology, University of Toronto
E-mail: jf.nault@mail.utoronto.ca

Acknowledgments: All authors contributed equally to this work. Prior versions of this article were presented at the Toronto TheoryWorkshop and at the Sociology of Culture panel at the Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association. We are grateful to attendees and fellow presenters in both of these venues for their trenchant feedback and comments. In particular, we also thank Jordan Foster, Jennifer Lena, Ann Mullen, Dan Silver, and Omar Lizardo for their time and attention in improving this work. The G7 workshop, per usual, also substantially contributed to the improvement of this work. All mistakes are our own. Direct correspondence to Craig M. Rawlings, Duke University Sociology Department, Reuben-Cooke Building Rm. 270, Durham, NC 27708; craig.rawlings@duke.edu.

Citation: Childress, Clayton, Shyon Baumann, Craig M. Rawlings, and Jean-François Nault. 2021. “Genres, Objects, and the Contemporary Expression of Higher-Status Tastes.” Sociological Science 8: 230-264.
Received: January 9, 2021
Accepted: February 4, 2021
Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Gabriel Rossmann
DOI: 10.15195/v8.a12

Racial Differences in Women’s Role-Taking Accuracy: How Status Matters

By Parker Webservices on June 7, 2021 in Articles

Tony P. Love, Jenny L. Davis

Sociological Science June 7, 2021
10.15195/v8.a8

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Role-taking is the process of mentally and affectively placing the self in the position of another, understanding the world from the other’s perspective. Role-taking serves an expressive function within interpersonal interaction, supporting others to pursue instrumental tasks that are recognized, valued, and rewarded. In the present work, we compare role-taking accuracy between white women and black women across status-varying interactional arrangements. Data for this study come from a series of two laboratory experiments. Experiment 1 establishes racial differences in white and black women’s role-taking accuracy, showing that women of color are significantly more attuned to others within social encounters. Experiment 2 implements an intervention to undermine racial disparities in role-taking accuracy, showing that expressive labors equalize when black women are empowered within the social structure. Findings highlight the entwinement of status structures with interpersonal processes while demonstrating the efficacy and value of structural reforms.

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

Tony P. Love: Department of Sociology, University of Kentucky; School of Sociology, Australian National University
E-mail: tony.love@uky.edu

Jenny L. Davis: School of Sociology, Australian National University
E-mail: jennifer.davis@anu.edu.au

Acknowledgments: The authors wish to thank the American Sociological Association for their funding of this research through the Fund for the Advancement of the Discipline (FAD) and the Australian National University for their funding through the Futures Scheme. Additional gratitude is due to Paige Adkins and Rachel Barczak for their assistance in conducting these studies.

Citation: Love, Tony P., and Jenny L. Davis. 2021. “Racial Differences in Women’s Role-Taking Accuracy: How Status Matters.” Sociological Science 8: 150-169.
Received: February 2, 2021
Accepted: March 6, 2021
Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Sarah Soule
DOI: 10.15195/v8.a8

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

By Parker Webservices on December 1, 2020 in Articles

David Brady, Ryan Finnigan, Ulrich Kohler, Joscha Legewie

Sociological Science December 1, 2020
10.15195/v7.a25

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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.

This 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.

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

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

By Parker Webservices on August 10, 2020 in Articles

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

Sociological Science August 10, 2020
10.15195/v7.a13

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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.

This 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.