AJS; American Journal Of Sociology[JOURNAL]
Sun
200 papers
Cultural Heterogeneity in Americans' Definitions of Racism, Sexism, and Classism: Results from a Mixed-Methods Study.
Valentino L, Warren E
AJS · 2025 Jan · PMID 39741563 · Full text
This sequential mixed-methods study examines how Americans ascribe meanings to the concepts , , and . We first conduct interviews ( = 40) using a symbolic boundaries elicitation approach, gathering examples of scenarios...
This sequential mixed-methods study examines how Americans ascribe meanings to the concepts , , and . We first conduct interviews ( = 40) using a symbolic boundaries elicitation approach, gathering examples of scenarios that do and do not "count" as racism, sexism, and classism. We then use these examples as vignettes in a nationally representative survey experiment ( = 2,000). Results reveal striking evidence for cultural heterogeneity in how Americans understand and define racism, sexism, and classism. We find that a person's definition of these concepts depends on their emphasis on intentionality, unequal treatment/outcomes, and power (a)symmetry. We also find that political partisanship, gender, age, and income shape the importance of these three components in their definitions. Finally, we show that Americans' definitions of racism, sexism, and classism strongly predict their discrimination-related public opinion and policy preferences, such as support for affirmative action and antidiscrimination laws, even after accounting for demographic controls, including political views.
Galvanizing the "Missing Revolution": Processes and Meanings of the Child/Adult Binary in the Social Construction of Age.
Barnes L, Johfre S, Munsch CL
AJS · 2024 Jul · PMID 41357071 · Full text
Sociologists understand that seemingly innate characteristics like race and gender are social constructs, yet a similar appreciation of age has failed to take hold. Using ethnographic, interview, and population-based sur...
Sociologists understand that seemingly innate characteristics like race and gender are social constructs, yet a similar appreciation of age has failed to take hold. Using ethnographic, interview, and population-based survey experiment data, we interrogate the child/adult binary in the context of healthcare to illuminate processes through which age categories are essentialized and legitimated and thereby how age is socially constructed. People use hyperbolic language to position children as wholly innocent and limitlessly deserving and adults as agentic, responsible, and less deserving of healthcare resources. Individuals "do" age strategically to obtain resources, and institutions formalize the child/adult binary through arbitrary and sometimes contradictory criteria. Our quantitative data further find age to have outsized effects on perceptions of deservedness and responsibility compared with other categories of social differentiation.
Twentieth-Century Change in the Educational Costs of Adolescent Childbearing.
Wolfe JD, Thomeer MB, Bauldry S
AJS · 2024 May · PMID 38912089 · Full text
Although studies observe heterogeneity in the effects of adolescent childbearing on schooling, little is currently known about when this pattern emerged or how it changed across cohorts of women who lived in distinct per...
Although studies observe heterogeneity in the effects of adolescent childbearing on schooling, little is currently known about when this pattern emerged or how it changed across cohorts of women who lived in distinct periods of US history. This article identifies the potential origins of effect heterogeneity in the educational costs of adolescent childbearing and extends recent advances in causal inference to detect group differences in heterogeneity. The analysis applies this approach to four cohorts of women from the National Longitudinal Surveys (NLS) who entered adolescence before, during, and after expansive economic, demographic, and cultural change in the twentieth century. Results suggest that the educational costs of adolescent childbearing, as well as heterogeneity in those costs, increased for women in the latter half of the twentieth century, especially for millennial women born 1980-84. The authors conclude that midcentury social changes fundamentally altered the educational costs of adolescent childbearing for women.
Structural Inequities in the Kin Safety Net: Mapping the Three-Generational Network throughout Early Adulthood.
Sohn H
AJS · 2023 May · PMID 38736557 · Full text
Research in the intergenerational transmission of socioeconomic status (SES) consistently shows that the SES of one generation benefits the next. Demographic processes shape the kin structures that serve as conduits for...
Research in the intergenerational transmission of socioeconomic status (SES) consistently shows that the SES of one generation benefits the next. Demographic processes shape the kin structures that serve as conduits for the transmission of SES. Few studies have examined these trends together to describe experiences in evolving kin structures throughout the life course and across generations. This article applies demographic techniques to fertility, marital, and mortality data from three generations in the Panel Survey of Income Dynamics to simulate the amount of time young adults would spend within consequential kin structures. High-SES adults spend more years of their young adulthood in advantageous kin structures with greater potential for kin support and capital accumulation, while low-SES adults spend a larger portion of their young adulthoods as single parents, sandwiched between widowed parents and children, and as adult orphans. The kin network inequities have grown since the 1980s, driven by lagging mortality improvements and increasing single parenthood among low-SES families.
Sibling Spillovers: Having an Academically Successful Older Sibling May be More Important for Children in Disadvantaged Families.
Zang E, Tan PL, Cook PJ
AJS · 2023 Mar · PMID 38298548 · Full text
This paper examines causal sibling spillover effects among students from different family backgrounds in elementary and middle school. Family backgrounds are captured by race, household structure, mothers' educational at...
This paper examines causal sibling spillover effects among students from different family backgrounds in elementary and middle school. Family backgrounds are captured by race, household structure, mothers' educational attainment, and school poverty. Exploiting discontinuities in school starting age created by North Carolina school-entry laws, we adopt a quasi-experimental approach and compare test scores of public school students whose older siblings were born shortly before and after the school-entry cutoff date. We find that individuals whose older siblings were born shortly after the school-entry cutoff date have significantly higher test scores in middle school, and that this positive spillover effect is particularly strong in disadvantaged families. We estimate that the spillover effect accounts for approximately one third of observed statistical associations in test scores between siblings, and the magnitude is much larger for disadvantaged families. Our results suggest that spillover effects from older to younger siblings may lead to greater divergence in academic outcomes and economic inequality between families.
Exposure to Nearby Homicides and Young Women's Reproductive Lives During the Transition to Adulthood.
Weitzman A, Barber J, Heinze J … +2 more , Kusunoki Y, Zimmerman M
AJS · 2023 Nov · PMID 40791966 · Full text
We merge information on the date and location of homicides in Flint, MI with georeferenced weekly panel data from the Relationship Dynamics and Social Life study to assess how and why nearby homicides immediately impact...
We merge information on the date and location of homicides in Flint, MI with georeferenced weekly panel data from the Relationship Dynamics and Social Life study to assess how and why nearby homicides immediately impact young women's risk of pregnancy. Women's probability of conceiving a pregnancy increased in weeks when homicides occurred within .25 miles of their homes relative to in other weeks. This increase in pregnancy risk reflected decreases in contraceptive use, especially of short-acting hormonal methods. Contraceptive changes, however, were not accompanied by immediate changes in feelings about pregnancy or contraception, nor by immediate changes in contraceptive access or forgetfulness. Rather, in weeks when nearby homicides occurred, women were less likely to use contraception "just because," suggesting a marked decline in their reproductive vigilance. Although the small sample causes uncertainty about the magnitude of these differences, when they culminate in pregnancy, the immediate consequences of nearby homicides can have lifelong ramifications for young adults.
Variation in the Relationship between School Spending and Achievement: Progressive Spending Is Efficient.
Rauscher E, Shen Y
AJS · 2022 Jul · PMID 37332619 · Full text
The equity-efficiency trade-off and cumulative return theories predict larger returns to school spending in areas with higher previous investment in children. Equity-not efficiency-is therefore used to justify progressiv...
The equity-efficiency trade-off and cumulative return theories predict larger returns to school spending in areas with higher previous investment in children. Equity-not efficiency-is therefore used to justify progressive school funding: spending more in communities with fewer financial resources. Yet it remains unclear how returns to school spending vary across areas by previous investment. Using county-level panel data for 2009-18 from the Stanford Education Data Archive, the Census Finance Survey, and National Vital Statistics, the authors estimate achievement returns to school spending and test whether returns vary between counties with low and high levels of initial human capital (measured as birth weight), child poverty, and previous spending. Spending returns are higher among counties with low previous investment (counties that also have a high percentage of Black students). Evidence of diminishing returns by previous investment documents another way that schools increase equality and establishes another argument for progressive school funding: efficiency.
Time Is Money? Wage Premiums and Penalties for Time-Related Occupational Demands.
Yu WH, Kuo JC
AJS · 2022 Nov · PMID 39526063 · Full text
Despite research linking time-related work demands to gender inequality, the literature lacks a comprehensive analysis of wage premiums and penalties associated with differing temporal demands. Using longitudinal data an...
Despite research linking time-related work demands to gender inequality, the literature lacks a comprehensive analysis of wage premiums and penalties associated with differing temporal demands. Using longitudinal data and fixed-effects models that address unobserved heterogeneity among workers, we examine how various temporal constraints imposed by occupations are associated with pay. Unlike prior studies, our analysis separates an individual's working hours from an occupation's expected work time. We find pay premiums attached to the requirements for long hours and meeting frequent deadlines, but we find wage penalties for occupations that require much temporal coordination and allow little work-structuring discretion. Schedule irregularity is linked to lower pay for women but higher pay for men. Thus, differing remuneration logics appear to apply to different time-related occupational demands. The analysis also indicates that the premium for the occupation's work-time expectation is lower for women, particularly professional and managerial women, even after considering their actual working hours. We suggest that employers' suspicion of women's ability to comply with their occupation's work-time norm, which is likely more pronounced for professional and managerial women, might contribute to these results.
Geographic Isolation, Compelled Mobility, and Everyday Exposure to Neighborhood Racial Composition Among Urban Youth.
Browning CR, Tarrence J, Calder CA … +2 more , Pinchak NP, Boettner B
AJS · 2022 Nov · PMID 38213504 · Full text
Foundational urban social theories view heterogeneity of exposure to spatial and social contexts as essential aspects of the urban experience. In contrast, contemporary neighborhood research emphasizes the isolation of c...
Foundational urban social theories view heterogeneity of exposure to spatial and social contexts as essential aspects of the urban experience. In contrast, contemporary neighborhood research emphasizes the isolation of city dwellers - particularly residents of racially segregated neighborhoods. Using geospatial data on a sample of youth from the 2014-16 Columbus, OH-based study, we explore the extent to which the neighborhood locations of everyday activities vary with respect to residential racial composition. In the context of segregated US metro areas, the approach expects home census tract racial composition to powerfully shape the racial composition of activity location neighborhoods. In this view, Black youth residing in high proportion Black neighborhoods are expected to spend the vast majority of their time exposed to similarly Black-concentrated neighborhoods. Consistent with an alternative approach, we find that Black youth residing in high proportion Black neighborhoods exhibit among the highest levels of heterogeneity in the racial composition of neighborhoods encountered. Moreover, Black youth residing in high proportion Black neighborhoods are expected to spend 39% of their non-home time (roughly 2.5 hours a day) in low proportion Black neighborhoods compared to 23% (1.5 hours) in high proportion Black neighborhoods. Exposures to low proportion Black neighborhoods among these youth are largely driven by organizationally-based resource seeking. These findings call into question the assumption that residence in Black segregated neighborhoods leads to homogeneously Black segregated neighborhood exposures and encourage theoretical development and data collection strategies that acknowledge the potential for significant heterogeneity in the everyday neighborhood experiences of urban youth.
"A NOWADAYS DISEASE": HIV/AIDS AND SOCIAL CHANGE IN A RURAL SOUTH AFRICAN COMMUNITY.
Mojola SA, Angotti N, Schatz E … +1 more , Houle B
AJS · 2021 Nov · PMID 35967824 · Full text
Why do some people adapt successfully to change while others do not? We examine this question in the context of a severe HIV/AIDS epidemic in South Africa, where adapting (or not) to social change has borne life and deat...
Why do some people adapt successfully to change while others do not? We examine this question in the context of a severe HIV/AIDS epidemic in South Africa, where adapting (or not) to social change has borne life and death consequences. Applying an age-period-cohort lens to the analysis of qualitative life history interviews among middle-aged and older adults, we consider the role of the life course and gendered sexuality in informing Africans' strategies of action, or inaction, and in differentially driving and stalling change in each cohort in response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Our study illuminates the unique challenges of adapting to social change that result from dynamic interactions among aging, prevailing social structures, and a cohort's socio-historical orientation to a new period.
Has There Been a Transgender Tipping Point? Gender Identification Differences in U.S. Cohorts Born between 1935 and 2001.
Lagos D
AJS · 2022 Jul · PMID 37829183 · Full text
Using a probability-based sample from 39 U.S. states from a general health survey, the author evaluates popular claims of a "transgender tipping point" by estimating probabilities of identifying as transgender and gender...
Using a probability-based sample from 39 U.S. states from a general health survey, the author evaluates popular claims of a "transgender tipping point" by estimating probabilities of identifying as transgender and gender nonconforming among cohorts of respondents born between 1935 and 2001. Respondents born after 1984 are significantly more likely to identify as transgender or gender nonconforming than respondents in earlier cohorts. However, cohort changes in identification as transgender and gender nonconforming vary along lines of sex assigned at birth, race/ethnicity, and college attendance. Within different cohorts, these factors have different associations with higher or lower odds of identifying as transgender or gender nonconforming, sometimes contrasting with popular narratives and media representation patterns. Analyzed in context, these findings provide empirical evidence that several distinct population-level biographical availability patterns, including convergences, reversals, and persistence of demographic associations, have shaped the prevalence and composition of U.S. transgender and gender nonconforming populations over time.
The Network Structure of Occupations: Fragmentation, Differentiation, and Contagion.
Lin KH, Hung K
AJS · 2022 Mar · PMID 38370008 · Full text
Abstract loading — click title to view on PubMed.
Deconstructed and Constructive Logics: Explaining Inclusive Language Change in Queer Nonprofits, 1998-2016.
Velasco K, Paxton P
AJS · 2022 Jan · PMID 37501815 · Full text
The United States is currently in the midst of a long, historic cultural transformation-redefining our collective representation to be inclusive of diverse sexual and gender identities. A core logic advancing this inclus...
The United States is currently in the midst of a long, historic cultural transformation-redefining our collective representation to be inclusive of diverse sexual and gender identities. A core logic advancing this inclusion is to discursively recognize an expanded set of discrete, deconstructed identities-gay and lesbian expands to LGBT, LGBTQ, LGBTQIA1, and so on. But a newer logic stipulates that inclusion arises through using constructive identities that encompass many fluid experiences under a single term (e.g., "queer"). To understand inclusive change, the authors leverage a unique mesolevel site of cultural (re)production: service and advocacy nonprofit organizations. Using event history models, the authors investigate inclusive language change by 735 organizations from 1998 to 2016. They supplement analyses of administrative data with semistructured interviews with 13 nonprofit leaders, providing converging evidence. Findings showcase how bottom-up, horizontal, and top-down pressures explain both the inclusion of discrete identity labels and the shift to constructive logics.
Marital Experiences and Depression in an Arranged Marriage Setting.
Zhang Y, Axinn WG
AJS · 2021 May · PMID 34720111 · Full text
Understanding the consequences of marital experiences for individual mental health provides insight into how social relationships shape individual wellbeing. Using newly available, clinically validated diagnostic intervi...
Understanding the consequences of marital experiences for individual mental health provides insight into how social relationships shape individual wellbeing. Using newly available, clinically validated diagnostic interviews with more than 10,000 respondents integrated with the longitudinal Chitwan Valley Family Study (CVFS), we assess the associations between marital experiences, intimate partner violence (IPV), and mental health and how they differ by gender in a setting of universal marriage-Nepal. Particularly novel, we integrate measures of arranged marriage, IPV, and marital quality into a single comprehensive analysis of the marital experiences shaping subsequent depression. This study reveals that becoming married can be positively associated with major depressive disorder (MDD) for women. IPV is a strong and independent risk factor for depression, but it only mediates a small portion of the consequences of marriage on depression. Among women, having no say at all in the selection of a spouse is also a strong and independent risk factor for depression, and IPV can only mediate a small portion of the consequences of arranged marriage on depression. We also investigate the associations between the positive (i.e., husband-wife emotional bond) and negative (i.e., spousal criticism and disagreement) dimensions of marital quality and depression. Frequent spousal disagreement significantly increases depression for women, but strong husband-wife emotional bond is not significantly associated with depression. Overall, the associations between marital experiences and mental health should be understood as contingent on both gender and the social contexts of marriage. Depending on these factors, specific marital experiences have the potential to increase transitions to depression, not just protect from depression.
A New Methodological Framework for Studying Status Exchange in Marriage.
Xie Y, Dong H
AJS · 2021 Mar · PMID 34366436 · Full text
We propose a new methodological framework for studying status exchange in marriage. As shown in recent debates on status-race or status-beauty exchange, the conventional loglinear modeling approach is prone to controvers...
We propose a new methodological framework for studying status exchange in marriage. As shown in recent debates on status-race or status-beauty exchange, the conventional loglinear modeling approach is prone to controversial specifications and alternative interpretations. In this study, we develop a simple method - the Exchange Index - with cohort-and-gender-specific relative status measures, statistical distribution balancing, and nonparametric matching. While allowing for multiple covariate controls, our Exchange Index measures the average difference in spouse's status between intermarriages and matched ingroup marriages. To demonstrate the new framework, we use two analytical examples of status-race and status-age exchange, based on the IPUMS 2000 US Census 5% microdata sample. To verify our new method, we also conduct replication and simulation studies. Our approach reduces model dependency, improves flexibility to account for confounders, allows for examination of heterogeneous patterns, speaks to fundamental concepts in status exchange theory, and takes advantage of increasingly available large-scale microdata.
Parents, Partners, and Professions: Reproduction and Mobility in a Cohort of College Women.
Hamilton LT, Armstrong EA
AJS · 2021 Jul · PMID 37736332 · Full text
This article draws on data from a twelve-year longitudinal qualitative interview study of forty-five white women who started college in 2004 at a public flagship university in the American Midwest. We compare the class p...
This article draws on data from a twelve-year longitudinal qualitative interview study of forty-five white women who started college in 2004 at a public flagship university in the American Midwest. We compare the class position of women's parents (captured when women began college) to women's own adult class position at age 30. Despite substantial downward mobility and modest upward mobility, we find that white women's social class was relatively sticky; that is, even downwardly mobile white women from privileged families did not fall far, while upwardly mobile white women from less privileged families were blocked from the top of the class structure. We develop the concept of "class projects," or multigenerational approaches to obtaining desired and imaginable economic circumstances, to explain patterns of intergenerational mobility in our data. We document three distinct class projects-gender complementarity, professional partnership, and self-reliance. Women experienced better outcomes when they engaged in a project that was a with family resources and motivations, as well as the larger socio-economic context. In addition, not all projects-even if successfully executed-led to the same level of economic security.
Climate Change and Migration: New Insights from a Dynamic Model of Out-Migration and Return Migration.
Entwisle B, Verdery A, Williams N
AJS · 2020 May · PMID 32773842 · Full text
In popular accounts, stories of environmental refugees convey a bleak picture of the impacts of climate change on migration. Scholarly research is less conclusive, with studies finding varying effects. This paper uses an...
In popular accounts, stories of environmental refugees convey a bleak picture of the impacts of climate change on migration. Scholarly research is less conclusive, with studies finding varying effects. This paper uses an agent-based model (ABM) of land use, social networks, and household dynamics to examine how extreme floods and droughts affect migration in Northeast Thailand. The ABM explicitly models the dynamic and interactive pathways through which climate-migration relationships might operate, including coupled out and return streams. Results suggest minimal effects on out-migration but marked negative effects on return. Social networks play a pivotal role in producing these patterns. In all, the portrait of climate change and migration painted by focusing only on environmental refugees is too simple. Climate change operates on already established migration processes that are part and parcel of the life course, embedded in dynamic social networks, and incorporated in larger interactive systems where out- and return migration are integrally connected.
The Disciplining Effect of Mass Incarceration on Labor Organization.
Reich A, Prins SJ
AJS · 2020 Mar · PMID 35991160 · Full text
Previous research has described the criminal justice system as a "labor market institution." In recent years, however, research on the relationship between the criminal justice system and the labor market has focused pri...
Previous research has described the criminal justice system as a "labor market institution." In recent years, however, research on the relationship between the criminal justice system and the labor market has focused primarily on the negative impact of criminal justice involvement on an individual's ability to find work post-release. This article explores how workers' exposure to the criminal justice system is related to labor organization-a labor market institution through which workers in the United States have secured benefits for themselves and which, structurally, has mitigated income inequality. Across four analyses, we find a negative relationship between exposure to the criminal justice system and involvement in labor organizations; and we present evidence that this relationship results from employers' increased power over those so exposed. Mass incarceration may discipline low-wage workers by decreasing their likelihood of participating in organizations through which they might gain economic power individually and collectively.
Economic Self-Reliance and Gender Inequality between U.S. Men and Women, 1970-2010.
Bloome D, Burk D, McCall L
AJS · 2019 Mar · PMID 41459322 · Full text
Women have become increasingly economically self-reliant, depending more on paid employment for their positions in the income distribution than in the past. We know little about what happened to men, however, because mos...
Women have become increasingly economically self-reliant, depending more on paid employment for their positions in the income distribution than in the past. We know little about what happened to men, however, because most prior research restricts changes in self-reliance to be "zero-sum," with women's changes necessitating opposite and proportionate changes among men. This article introduces a measure that allows asymmetric changes and also incorporates multiple population subgroups and income sources beyond couples' labor earnings. Using Current Population Survey data, the authors find that women's self-reliance increased dramatically, as expected, but men's declined only slightly. The authors decompose these trends into changes in family structure and redistribution, which increased and decreased self-reliance, respectively, for men and women, though more for women. Labor market shifts, by contrast, were asymmetric and opposing, reducing men's self-reliance much less than they increased women's. The authors' approach opens opportunities for new insight into both gender inequality and the income attainment process.
Men's Income Trajectories and Physical and Mental Health at Midlife.
Frech A, Damaske S
AJS · 2019 Mar · PMID 34176948 · Full text
Using time-varying, prospectively measured income in a nationally representative sample of Baby-Boomer men (the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth - 1979 [NLSY79]), we identify eight group-based trajectories of income...
Using time-varying, prospectively measured income in a nationally representative sample of Baby-Boomer men (the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth - 1979 [NLSY79]), we identify eight group-based trajectories of income between ages 25-49 and use multinomial treatment models to describe the associations between group-based income trajectories and mental and physical health at midlife. We find remarkable rigidity in income trajectories: less than 25% of our sample experiences significant upward or downward mobility between the ages of 25 to 49 and most who move remain or move into poverty. Men's physical and mental health at age fifty is strongly associated with their income trajectories, and some upwardly mobile men achieve the same physical and mental health as the highest earning men after adjusting for selection. The worse physical and mental health of men on other income trajectories is largely attributable to their early life disadvantages, health behaviors, and cumulative work experiences.
About
- Frequency
- Sun
- Papers found
- 200
- RSS feed
- Subscribe