Tag Archives | Race

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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

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

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

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

By Parker Webservices 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

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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.

This 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.

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

How States Make Race: New Evidence from Brazil

By Parker Webservices on November 26, 2018 in Articles

Stanley R. Bailey, Fabrício M. Fialho, Mara Loveman

Sociological Science, November 26, 2018
10.15195/v5.a31

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The Brazilian state recently adopted unprecedented race-targeted affirmative action in government hiring and university admissions. Scholarship would predict the state’s institutionalization of racial categories has “race-making” effects. In this article, we ask whether the Brazilian state’s policy turnabout has affected racial subjectivities on the ground, specifically toward mirroring the categories used by the state. To answer, we conceptualize race as multidimensional and leverage two of its dimensions—lay identification and government classification (via open-ended and closed-ended questions, respectively)—to introduce a new metric of state race-making: a comparison of the extent of alignment between lay and government dimensions across time. Logistic regression on large-sample survey data from before the policy turn (1995) and well after its diffusion (2008) reveals an increased use of state categories as respondents’ lay identification in the direction of matching respondents’ government classification. We conclude that the Brazilian state is making race but not from scratch nor in ways that are fully intended.

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

Stanley R. Bailey: Department of Sociology, University of California, Irvine
E-mail: bailey@uci.edu

Fabrício M. Fialho: Centre de Recherches Internationales, Sciences Po Paris, France
E-mail: fabriciofialho@gmail.com

Mara Loveman: Department of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley
E-mail: mloveman@berkeley.edu

Citation: Bailey, Stanley R., Fabrício M. Fialho, and Mara Loveman. 2018. “How States Make Race: New Evidence from Brazil.” Sociological Science 5: 722-751.
Received: September 4, 2018
Accepted: September 27, 2018
Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Delia Baldassarri
DOI: 10.15195/v5.a31

Benefit Inequality among American Workers by Gender, Race, and Ethnicity, 1982–2015

By Parker Webservices on July 19, 2018 in Articles

Tali Kristal, Yinon Cohen, Edo Navot

Sociological Science, July 19, 2018
10.15195/v5.a20

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Gender, racial, and ethnic gaps in wages are well known, but group disparities in employer-provided benefits, which account for one-quarter of total compensation, are not. We use benefit costs data to study levels and trends in gender, racial, and ethnic gaps in voluntary employer-provided benefits. Analyzing Employer Costs for Employee Compensation microdata on wages and benefit costs for the years 1982 to 2015, matched to Current Population Survey files by wage decile in the industrial sector, we find that (1) benefit gaps were wider than wage gaps for minorities but were narrower for gender, (2) racial and ethnic gaps in benefits increased faster than wage gaps, and (3) the gender gap in benefits decreased faster than the wage gap. We show that these findings reflect the types of jobs women, blacks, and Hispanics have held for the past three decades.

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

Tali Kristal: Department of Sociology, University of Haifa
E-mail: kristal@soc.haifa.ac.il

Yinon Cohen: Department of Sociology, Columbia University
E-mail: yc2444@columbia.edu

Edo Navot:United States Department of Labor
E-mail: navot.edo@dol.gov

Acknowledgements: We thank the United States–Israel Binational Science Foundation for its partial support of this project. Earlier versions of this article were presented at the summer meeting of the International Sociological Association Research Committee on Social Stratification and Mobility (in 2017) and the Intergenerational Mobility and Income Inequality Workshop held at the University of Haifa (in March 2018). We thank Yitchak Haberfeld and the participants in these meetings for their comments. We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and its staff, who facilitated this research with generosity and patience. The research was conducted with restricted access to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. The views expressed in any publication resulting from an analysis of these data do not necessarily reflect the views of the BLS. Additionally, the views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the United States Department of Labor or any agency within it.

Citation: Kristal, Tali, Yinon Cohen, and Edo Navot. 2018. “Benefit Inequality among American Workers by Gender, Race and Ethnicity, 1982–2015.” Sociological Science 5: 461-488.
Received: April 17, 2018
Accepted: June 5, 2018
Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Kim Weeden
DOI: 10.15195/v5.a20

Mass Imprisonment and the Extended Family

By Parker Webservices on June 14, 2018 in Articles

Pil H. Chung, Peter Hepburn

Sociological Science, June 14, 2018
10.15195/v5.a15

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This study employs microsimulation techniques to provide an accounting of exposure to imprisoned or formerly imprisoned kin. We characterize the risk and prevalence of imprisonment within full kinship networks and find that the life course trajectories of familial imprisonment experienced by black and white Americans take on qualitatively distinct forms: the average black American born at the height of the prison boom experienced the imprisonment of a relative for the first time at age 7 and by age 65 belongs to a family in which more than 1 in 7 working-age relatives have ever been imprisoned. By contrast, the average white American who experiences the imprisonment of a relative does not do so until age 39 and by age 65 belongs to a family in which 1 in 20 working-age relatives have ever been imprisoned. Future reductions in imprisonment rates have the potential to meaningfully reduce these racial disparities in family imprisonment burden.

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

Pil H. Chung: Departments of Sociology and Demography, University of California, Berkeley
E-mail: pchung@berkeley.edu

Peter Hepburn: Departments of Sociology and Demography, University of California, Berkeley
E-mail: pshepburn@demog.berkeley.edu

Acknowledgements: We gratefully acknowledge David Harding, Kristin Turney, Sandra Susan Smith, Daniel Schneider, Christopher Wildeman, Robert Pickett, and Elayne Oliphant for the invaluable advice and feedback they provided at various stages of this work.

Citation: Chung, Pil H., and Peter Hepburn. 2018. “Mass Imprisonment and the Extended Family.” Sociological Science 5: 335-360.
Received: March 29, 2018
Accepted: April 24, 2018
Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Stephen Morgan
DOI: 10.15195/v5.a15

Income Inequality and the Persistence of Racial Economic Disparities

By Parker Webservices on March 12, 2018 in Articles

Robert Manduca

Sociological Science, March 12, 2018
DOI 10.15195/v5.a8

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More than 50 years after the Civil Rights Act, black–white family income disparities in the United States remain almost exactly the same as what they were in 1968. This article argues that a key and underappreciated driver of the racial income gap has been the national trend of rising income inequality. From 1968 to 2016, black–white disparities in family income rank narrowed by almost one-third. But this relative gain was negated by changes to the national income distribution that resulted in rapid income growth for the richest—and most disproportionately white—few percentiles of the country combined with income stagnation for the poor and middle class. But for the rise in income inequality, the median black–white family income gap would have decreased by about 30 percent. Conversely, without the partial closing of the rank gap, growing inequality alone would have increased the racial income gap by 30 percent.

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

Robert Manduca: Department of Sociology, Harvard University
Email: rmanduca@g.harvard.edu

Acknowledgements: I am grateful to Victoria Asbury, Alex Bell, Lawrence Bobo, Hope Harvey, Nathaniel Hendren, Roland Neil, Devah Pager, Robert Sampson, Roseanna Sommers, James Sidanius, Mo Torres, Adam Travis, Bruce Western, and the seminar participants at the Harvard University Contemporary Studies of Race and Ethnicity Workshop for their helpful comments and feedback. This research has been supported by the Harvard Multidisciplinary Program in Inequality and Social Policy.

Citation: Manduca, Robert. 2018. “Income Inequality and the Persistence of Racial Economic Disparities.” Sociological Science 5: 182-205.
Received: December 11, 2017
Accepted: January 6, 2018
Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Sarah Soule
DOI: 10.15195/v5.a8

The Partial Deinstitutionalization of Affirmative Action in U.S. Higher Education, 1988 to 2014

By Parker Webservices on August 28, 2017 in Articles

Daniel Hirschman, Ellen Berrey

Sociological Science, August 28, 2017
DOI 10.15195/v4.a18

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Since the 1990s, affirmative action opponents have targeted colleges’ and universities’ race-conscious admissions policies and secured bans on the practice in eight states. Although scholarly and media attention has focused on these dynamics at a handful of elite institutions, little is known about race-conscious admissions across the broader field of higher education. We provide a descriptive, quantitative account of how different types of colleges and universities responded to this political context. Through analysis of almost 1,000 selective colleges and universities, we find a dramatic shift in stated organizational policy starting in the mid-1990s. In 1994, 60 percent of selective institutions publicly declared that they considered race in undergraduate admissions; by 2014, just 35 percent did. This decline varied depending on status (competitiveness) and sector (public or private). Race-conscious admissions remain the stated policy of almost all of the most elite public and private institutions. The retreat from race-conscious admissions occurs largely among schools lower in the status hierarchy: very competitive public institutions and competitive public and private institutions. These patterns are not explained by implementation of state-level bans. We suggest that the anti–affirmative action movement had a diffuse impact whose effects varied across different strata of American higher education.

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

Daniel Hirschman: Department of Sociology, Brown University
Email: daniel_hirschman@brown.edu

Ellen Berrey: Department of Sociology, University of Toronto
Email: ellen.berrey@utoronto.ca

Acknowledgements: We thank Prabhdeep Kehal for his excellent research assistance and instructive comments. Mikaila Mariel Lemonik Arthur, Ronit Dinovitzer, Steve Hoffman, Ashley Rubin, and Terri Taylor provided feedback that improved this article. Research funding was provided by Brown University’s Program in Business, Entrepreneurship and Organizations.

Citation: Hirschman, Daniel, and Ellen Berrey. 2017. “The Partial Deinstitutionalization of Affirmative Action in U.S. Higher Education, 1988 to 2014.” Sociological Science 4: 449-468.
Received: June 21, 2017
Accepted: July 28, 2017
Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Sarah Soule
DOI: 10.15195/v4.a18

Obesity Is in the Eye of the Beholder: BMI and Socioeconomic Outcomes across Cohorts

By Parker Webservices on April 19, 2017 in Articles

Vida Maralani, Douglas McKee

Sociological Science, April 19, 2017
DOI 10.15195/v4.a13

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The biological and social costs of body mass cannot be conceptualized in the same way. Using semiparametric methods, we show that the association between body mass index (BMI) and socioeconomic outcomes such as wages, being married, and family income is distinctly shaped by gender, race, and cohort rather than being above a specific threshold of BMI. For white men, the correlation between BMI and outcomes is positive across the “normal” range of BMI and turns negative near the cusp of the overweight range, a pattern that persists across cohorts. For white women, thinner is nearly always better, a pattern that also persists across cohorts. For black men in the 1979 cohort, the association between BMI and wages is positive across the normal and overweight ranges for wages and family income and inverted U–shaped for marriage. For black women in the 1979 cohort, thinner is better for wages and marriage. By the 1997 cohort, however, the negative association between body mass and outcomes dissipates for black Americans but not for white Americans. In the social world, “too fat” is a subjective, contingent, and fluid judgment that differs depending on who is being judged, who does the judging, and the social domain.

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

Vida Maralani: Department of Sociology, Cornell University
Email: vida.maralani@cornell.edu

Douglas McKee: Department of Economics, Cornell University
Email: douglas.mckee@cornell.edu

Acknowledgements: We thank Maurice Gesthuizen, Richard Breen, and Jason Fletcher for their comments and suggestions and Sam Stabler, Luke Wagner, Kate Bradley, and Isadora Milanez for providing superb research assistance.

This research uses data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 and 1997, and also 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 federal 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.