Showing papers in "American Sociological Review in 2010"
TL;DR: This article found that religious people are more satisfied with their lives because they regularly attend religious services and build social networks in their congregations, however, the effect of within-congregation friendship is contingent on the presence of a strong religious identity.
Abstract: Although the positive association between religiosity and life satisfaction is well documented, much theoretical and empirical controversy surrounds the question of how religion actually shapes life satisfaction. Using a new panel dataset, this study offers strong evidence for social and participatory mechanisms shaping religion’s impact on life satisfaction. Our findings suggest that religious people are more satisfied with their lives because they regularly attend religious services and build social networks in their congregations. The effect of within-congregation friendship is contingent, however, on the presence of a strong religious identity. We find little evidence that other private or subjective aspects of religiosity affect life satisfaction independent of attendance and congregational friendship.
737 citations
TL;DR: The study of institutional myths has been central to organizational sociology, cultural sociology, and the sociology of education for 30 years as mentioned in this paper, and it has been examined how the myth concept has been used in various contexts.
Abstract: The study of institutional myths has been central to organizational sociology, cultural sociology, and the sociology of education for 30 years. This article examines how the myth concept has been u...
640 citations
TL;DR: It is concluded that segregation was an important contributing cause of the foreclosure crisis, along with overbuilding, risky lending practices, lax regulation, and the bursting of the housing price bubble.
Abstract: Although the rise in subprime lending and the ensuing wave of foreclosures was partly a result of market forces that have been well-identified in the literature, in the United States it was also a highly racialized process. We argue that residential segregation created a unique niche of poor minority clients who were differentially marketed risky subprime loans that were in great demand for use in mortgage-backed securities that could be sold on secondary markets. We test this argument by regressing foreclosure actions in the top 100 U.S. metropolitan areas on measures of black, Hispanic, and Asian segregation while controlling for a variety of housing market conditions, including average creditworthiness, the extent of coverage under the Community Reinvestment Act, the degree of zoning regulation, and the overall rate of subprime lending. We find that black residential dissimilarity and spatial isolation are powerful predictors of foreclosures across U.S. metropolitan areas. In order to isolate subprime lending as the causal mechanism whereby segregation influences foreclosures, we estimate a two-stage least squares model that confirms the causal effect of black segregation on the number and rate of foreclosures across metropolitan areas. In the United States segregation was an important contributing cause of the foreclosure crisis, along with overbuilding, risky lending practices, lax regulation, and the bursting of the housing price bubble.
605 citations
TL;DR: How the economic return to a college education varies across members of the U.S. population is considered and evidence suggesting negative selection is found is found.
Abstract: We consider how the economic return to a college education varies across members of the U.S. population. Based on principles of comparative advantage, positive selection is commonly presumed, i.e., individuals who are most likely to select into college benefit most from college. Net of observed economic and non-economic factors influencing college attendance, we conjecture that individuals who are least likely to obtain a college education benefit most from college. We call this theory the negative selection hypothesis. To adjudicate between the two hypotheses, we study the effects of completing college on earnings by propensity score strata using an innovative hierarchical linear model with data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 and the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study. For both data sources, for men and for women, and for every observed stage of the life course, we find evidence suggesting negative selection. Results from auxiliary analyses lend further support to the negative selection interpretation of the results.
515 citations
TL;DR: For example, this paper found that professional and formalized groups that employ routine advocacy tactics, mobilize large numbers of people, and work on issues that overlap with newspapers' focus on local economic growth and well-being do not garner as much attention in local media outlets.
Abstract: Increasingly, scholars have come to see the news media as playing a pivotal role in shaping whether social movements are able to bring about broader social change. By drawing attention to movements’ issues, claims, and supporters, the news media can shape the public agenda by influencing public opinion, authorities, and elites. Why are some social movement organizations more successful than others at gaining media coverage? Specifically, what organizational, tactical, and issue characteristics enhance media attention? We combine detailed organizational survey data from a representative sample of 187 local environmental organizations in North Carolina with complete news coverage of those organizations in 11 major daily newspapers in the two years following the survey (2,095 articles). Our analyses reveal that local news media favor professional and formalized groups that employ routine advocacy tactics, mobilize large numbers of people, and work on issues that overlap with newspapers’ focus on local economic growth and well-being. Groups that are confrontational, volunteerled, or advocate on behalf of novel issues do not garner as much attention in local media outlets. These findings have important implications and challenge widely held claims about the pathways by which movement actors shape the public agenda through the news media.
397 citations
TL;DR: The authors investigated the motherhood wage penalty in the United States and found that the penalty itself, and the mechanisms to penalize mothers' earnings inequality has not been fully considered, yet.
Abstract: Earnings inequality has grown in recent decades in the United States, yet research investigating the motherhood wage penalty has not fully considered how the penalty itself, and the mechanisms prod...
295 citations
TL;DR: By developing the concept of Gastronationalism, the authors challenges conceptions of the homogenizing forces of globalism, and analyzes the ways in which food production, distribution, and con...
Abstract: By developing the concept of “gastronationalism,” this article challenges conceptions of the homogenizing forces of globalism. I analyze (1) the ways in which food production, distribution, and con...
292 citations
TL;DR: This article found that having a husband who works long hours significantly increases a woman's likelihood of quitting, whereas having a wife who works a long hours does not appear to increase a man's likelihood to quit.
Abstract: This study examines whether long work hours exacerbate gender inequality. As working long hours becomes increasingly common, a normative conception of gender that prioritizes men’s careers over women’s careers in dual-earner households may pressure women to quit their jobs. I apply multilevel models to longitudinal data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation to show that having a husband who works long hours significantly increases a woman’s likelihood of quitting, whereas having a wife who works long hours does not appear to increase a man’s likelihood of quitting. This gendered pattern is more prominent among workers in professional and managerial occupations, where the norm of overwork and the culture of intensive parenting are strong. Furthermore, the effect is stronger among workers who have children. Findings suggest that overwork can reintroduce the separate spheres arrangement, consisting of breadwinning men and homemaking women, to many formerly dual-earner households.
250 citations
TL;DR: This paper found that between-occupation changes explain 66 percent of the increase in wage inequality from 1992 to 2008, and that occupation-level effects on wage inequality using data from the Current Population Survey for 1983 through 2008.
Abstract: Occupations are central to the stratification systems of industrial countries, but they have played little role in empirical attempts to explain the well-documented increase in wage inequality that occurred in the United States in the 1980s and 1990s. We address this deficiency by assessing occupation-level effects on wage inequality using data from the Current Population Survey for 1983 through 2008. We model the mean and variance of wages for each occupation, controlling for education and demographic factors at the individual level to test three competing explanations for the increase in wage inequality: (1) the growth of between-occupation polarization, (2) changes in education and labor force composition, and (3) residual inequality unaccounted for by occupations and demographic characteristics. After correcting for a problem with imputed data that biased Kim and Sakamoto’s (2008) results, we find that between-occupation changes explain 66 percent of the increase in wage inequality from 1992 to 2008, ...
244 citations
TL;DR: This article found that relatively darker-skinned Latino immigrants experience skin-color-based discrimination in the realm of annual income, and that those who are most integrated into the United States are the most likely to opt out of the existing U.S. racial categorization scheme.
Abstract: How do Latino immigrants in the United States understand existing racial categories? And how does the existing U.S. racial order influence this understanding? Using data from the New Immigrant Survey (NIS), our analysis points to changes in how the U.S. racial order might operate in the future. We find that most Latino immigrants recognize the advantages of a White racial designation when asked to self-identify, but wider society is not often accepting of this White expansion. Our findings suggest that relatively darker-skinned Latino immigrants experience skin-color-based discrimination in the realm of annual income. Furthermore, Latinos who are most integrated into the United States are the most likely to opt out of the existing U.S. racial categorization scheme. We predict that a racial boundary is forming around some Latino immigrants: those with darker skin and those who have more experience in the U.S. racial stratification system.
227 citations
TL;DR: It is found that state EITCs increase birth weights and reduce maternal smoking, however, results related to AFDC/TANF and varying EITC effects across maternal ages raise cautionary messages.
Abstract: This study estimates the effects of prenatal poverty on birth weight using changes in state Earned Income Tax Credits (EITC) as a natural experiment. We seek to answer two questions about poverty a...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors use unique cross-national and longitudinal data on the criminal regulation of rape, adultery, sodomy, and child sexual abuse, which reveal striking counter-directional trends in sex-law reforms, which simultaneously elaborated regulations protecting individuals and dissolved laws protecting collective entities.
Abstract: Between 1945 and 2005, nation-states around the world revised their criminal laws on sexual activities. This global reform wave—across countries and domains of sexual activity—followed from the reconstitution of world models of society around individuals rather than corporate bodies. During the post-World War II period, this process rearranged the global cultural and organizational underpinnings of sex, eroding world-level support for criminal laws aimed at protecting collective entities—especially the family and the nation—and strengthening world support for laws aimed at protecting individualized persons. To make our case, we use unique cross-national and longitudinal data on the criminal regulation of rape, adultery, sodomy, and child sexual abuse. The data reveal striking counter-directional trends in sex-law reforms, which simultaneously elaborated regulations protecting individuals and dissolved laws protecting collective entities. World-level negative-binomial regression analyses and country-level ...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors return to the classic question of political economy: the zero-sum conflict between capital and labor over the division of the national income pie, and present a detailed description of labor's shar...
Abstract: This article returns to a classic question of political economy: the zero-sum conflict between capital and labor over the division of the national income pie. A detailed description of labor’s shar...
TL;DR: This article showed that existing explanations of tokenism predict similar experiences for all numerically small, low-status groups, however, these explanations cannot account for variation in the experiences of different groups.
Abstract: Existing explanations of tokenism predict similar experiences for all numerically small, low-status groups. These explanations, however, cannot account for variation in the experiences of different...
TL;DR: It is shown that as consensus forms, the importance of internal divisions to the overall network structure declines, and a typology of trajectories that scientific propositions may experience en route to consensus is revealed.
Abstract: This article engages with problems that are usually opaque: What trajectories do scientific debates assume, when does a scientific community consider a proposition to be a fact, and how can we know that? We develop a strategy for evaluating the state of scientific contestation on issues. The analysis builds from Latour's black box imagery, which we observe in scientific citation networks. We show that as consensus forms, the importance of internal divisions to the overall network structure declines. We consider substantive cases that are now considered facts, such as the carcinogenicity of smoking and the non-carcinogenicity of coffee. We then employ the same analysis to currently contested cases: the suspected carcinogenicity of cellular phones, and the relationship between vaccines and autism. Extracting meaning from the internal structure of scientific knowledge carves a niche for renewed sociological commentary on science, revealing a typology of trajectories that scientific propositions may experience en route to consensus.
TL;DR: This comment emphasizes the problem of influential cases and presents ways to detect and deal with them and provides recommendations and tools to detection and handle influential cases, specifically in cross-sectional multilevel analyses.
Abstract: A large number of cross-national survey datasets have become available in recent decades. Consequently, scholars frequently apply multilevel models to test hypotheses on both the individual and the country level. However, no currently available cross-national survey project covers more than 54 countries (GESIS 2009). Multilevel modeling therefore runs the risk that higher-level slope estimates (and the substantial conclusions drawn from these estimates) are unreliable due to one or more influential cases (i.e., countries). This comment emphasizes the problem of influential cases and presents ways to detect and deal with them. To detect influential cases, one may use both graphic tools (e.g., scatter plots at the aggregate level) and numeric tools (e.g., diagnostic tests such as Cook’s D and DFBETAS). To illustrate the usefulness and necessity of these tools, we apply them to a study that was recently published in this journal (Ruiter and De Graaf 2006). Finally, we provide recommendations and tools to detect and handle influential cases, specifically in cross-sectional multilevel analyses.
TL;DR: The authors investigated how experiences with public policies affect levels of civic and political engagement among the poor, and found that policies not just as politica, but also as policy feedback affect the level of political engagement.
Abstract: This article investigates how experiences with public policies affect levels of civic and political engagement among the poor. Studies of “policy feedback” investigate policies not just as politica...
TL;DR: This paper found that research on race in Latin America focuses almost exclusively on countries in the region with a large number of immigrants, while U.S. race relations focus on countries with relatively few immigrants.
Abstract: Latin America is often used as a backdrop against which U.S. race relations are compared. Yet research on race in Latin America focuses almost exclusively on countries in the region with a large re...
TL;DR: The idea of community is especially prominent in late-twentieth-century U.S. society as discussed by the authors. But the term community resonates throughout social policy, scholarship, popular culture, and everyday social inter...
Abstract: Ideas about community are especially prominent in late-twentieth-century U.S. society. The term community resonates throughout social policy, scholarship, popular culture, and everyday social inter...
TL;DR: In this paper, the origins of voluntary associations devoted to environmental protection are examined, focusing on the divergent trajectories of industrialized versus developing countries, and a wide range of topics are considered.
Abstract: We examine the origins of voluntary associations devoted to environmental protection, focusing on the divergent trajectories of industrialized versus developing countries. We consider a wide range ...
TL;DR: This article examines social stratification in individual health trajectories for multiple cohorts in the context of China's dramatically changing macro-social environment using data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey and finds significant socioeconomic status (SES) differences in the mean level of health.
Abstract: This article examines social stratification in individual health trajectories for multiple cohorts in the context of China's dramatically changing macro-social environment. Using data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey, we find significant socioeconomic status (SES) differences in the mean level of health and that these SES differentials generally diverge over the life course. We also find strong cohort variations in SES disparities in the mean levels of health and health trajectories. The effect of education on health slightly decreases across successive cohorts. By contrast, the income gap in health trajectories diverges for earlier cohorts but converges for most recent cohorts. Both effects are more pronounced in rural areas. Given that these cohort effects are opposite those reported in recent U.S. studies, we discuss China's unique social, economic, and political settings. We highlight the association between SES and health behaviors, China's stage of epidemiologic transition, and the changing power of the state government and its implications for health care.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors used a new dataset with information on 145 of today's states to understand why the nation-state proliferated across the world over the past 200 years, replacing empires, kingdoms, city-states, and the like.
Abstract: Why did the nation-state proliferate across the world over the past 200 years, replacing empires, kingdoms, city-states, and the like? Using a new dataset with information on 145 of today’s states ...
TL;DR: The gender gap in self-reported violent crime among adolescents across neighborhoods is examined and it is found that the gender difference in the relationship between peer violence and offending is explained by the tendency for females to have more intimate friendships than do males.
Abstract: Although researchers consistently demonstrate that females engage in less criminal behavior than males across the life course, research on the variability of the gender gap across contexts is sparse. To address this issue, we examine the gender gap in self-reported violent crime among adolescents across neighborhoods. Multilevel models using data from the Project of Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN) indicate that the gender gap in violent crime decreases as levels of neighborhood disadvantage increase. Further, the narrowing of the gender gap is explained by gender differences in peer influence on violent offending. Neighborhood disadvantage increases exposure to peer violence for both sexes, but peer violence has a stronger impact on violent offending for females than for males, producing the reduction in the gender gap at higher levels of disadvantage. We also find that the gender difference in the relationship between peer violence and offending is explained, in part, by (1) the tendency for females to have more intimate friendships than males, and (2) the moderating effect of peer intimacy on the relationship between peer violence and self-reported violent behavior.
TL;DR: The authors suggest that moral panics exert spillover effects through stigma by mere association, and individuals are harmed even if their ties to stigmatized affiliates are heterophilous and high-status.
Abstract: We suggest that moral panics exert spillover effects through stigma by mere association. Individuals are harmed even if their ties to stigmatized affiliates are heterophilous, and high-status indiv...
TL;DR: This paper examined the influence of an interstate network created by intergovernmental organizations (IGO) on the global diffusion of democracy and found that IGOs facilitate democracy diffusion by transmitting information between member states and by interpreting that information according to prevailing norms in the world society, where democracy is viewed as the legitimate form of government.
Abstract: We examine the influence of an interstate network created by intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) on the global diffusion of democracy. We propose that IGOs facilitate democracy’s diffusion by transmitting information between member states and by interpreting that information according to prevailing norms in the world society, where democracy is viewed as the legitimate form of government. We employ a network autocorrelation model to track changes in democracy among all of the world’s countries from 1815 to 2000. We find that democracy does diffuse through the IGO network and that the influence of democratic countries is stronger than that of undemocratic countries. Evidence indicates that the IGO network serves as a basis for normative diffusion. This is an important contribution to sociological accounts of globalization, which tend to emphasize diffusion divorced from network structure or diffusion dependent on the coercive influence of a small set of international organizations.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors used Academy Award nominations for acting to explore how artistic achievement is situated within a collaborative context and found that actors are most likely to be consecrated when working with elite collaborators.
Abstract: This article uses Academy Award nominations for acting to explore how artistic achievement is situated within a collaborative context. Assessment of individual effort is particularly difficult in film because quality is not transparent, but the project-based nature of the field allows us to observe individuals in multiple collaborative contexts. We address these issues with analyses of the top-10 credited roles from films released in theaters between 1936 and 2005. Controlling for an actor's personal history and the basic traits of a film, we explore two predictions. First, we find that status, as measured by asymmetric centrality in the network of screen credits, is an efficient measure of star power and mediates the relationship between experience and formal artistic consecration. Second, we find that actors are most likely to be consecrated when working with elite collaborators. We conclude by arguing that selection into privileged work teams provides cumulative advantage.
TL;DR: The authors used the 2003 National Survey of College Graduates to investigate earnings differentials between white and Asian American men, and they extended prior literature by disaggregating Asian Americans by thei...
Abstract: We use the 2003 National Survey of College Graduates to investigate earnings differentials between white and Asian American men. We extend prior literature by disaggregating Asian Americans by thei...
TL;DR: Despite decades of research on the benefits of educational expectations, researchers have failed to show that unrealized plans are consequential for mental health, as self-discrepancy and other soci...
Abstract: Despite decades of research on the benefits of educational expectations, researchers have failed to show that unrealized plans are consequential for mental health, as self-discrepancy and other soc...
TL;DR: The migration of millions of southerners out of the South between 1910 and 1970 is largely attributed to economic and social push factors in the South, combined with pull factors in other regions o...
Abstract: The migration of millions of southerners out of the South between 1910 and 1970 is largely attributed to economic and social push factors in the South, combined with pull factors in other regions o...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examined the causes of financial malfeasance in the largest U.S. corporations between 1995 and 2004 and found that differential social structures create dependencies, incentives, and opportunities to engage in financial misbehavior.
Abstract: This article examines the causes of financial malfeasance in the largest U.S. corporations between 1995 and 2004. The findings support organizational-political embeddedness theory, which suggests that differential social structures create dependencies, incentives, and opportunities to engage in financial malfeasance. The historical analysis shows that neoliberal policies enacted between 1986 and 2000 resulted in organizational and political structures that permitted managers to engage in financial malfeasance. Our quantitative analysis provides three main findings. First, capital dependence on investors creates incentives to engage in financial malfeasance. Second, managerial strategies to increase shareholder value create incentives to engage in financial malfeasance. Third, the multilayer-subsidiary form and the political structure permitting corporate PAC contributions create opportunities to engage in financial malfeasance. These findings have important implications for public policy; the corporate an...